Tuesday, May 5, 2009

What's the shortest English sentence that, when in quotes, gets no results on Google?

So far, my best is "Arcs burp."

Looks like today is cool and rainy. I may make a point of not doing anything productive today.

So, I'm now "that American guy who comes to a German philosophy seminar in Germany where everyone else is speaking German and asks his questions in English." Oh well. But it was either that, asking stumbling, unintelligible questions in embarrassing German, or just sitting quietly. I may yet ask a stumbling, unintelligible question in embarrassing German, but I realized that 5 years of being in grad school has made me unable to just sit quietly when philosophy's being discussed.

On a different note: I had a new thought about religious commandments that don't have a direct moral justification. The starting thought is that it's better for the world if there is cultural diversity. A single culture can get swept along in morally bad trends, people are more creative when they're surrounded by different viewpoints, etc. But the things that make for cultural diversity (1) shouldn't in any way imply that any culture is inferior or superior and (2) shouldn't in any way imply that we have different fundamental moral obligations. If that's right, then the things that distinguish cultures should be, from a neutral perspective, transparently arbitrary, so that a member of a given culture can honestly say, "we don't do X, but there's nothing wrong with you doing X." And so then a given culture should make some specific effort towards preserving those morally permissible but non-obligatory rules.

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