JACKSON LA ROSE: "How would everyone feel about a philiosophy section? I ended up taking a break on these fora because of the assumed philisophical standpoint required to be relevant on the current forum topics turned me into a thread derailer and accused troll, which was never my intention.
I feel a dedicated philiosophy section would be a great addition and quite relevant, given the large divergence of member’s opinions concerning philosophical matters, such as the basis of ethics, objectivist vs. relativist, etc.
I was on a pretty decent philosophy forum, and the whole thing was just assimilated into ask2know, a general forum with pretty terrible formatting. There are a lot of dissatisfied members of the former philosophy forums looking for a good home, and this is without a doubt the finest forum I’ve ever come across on the web. Possible first time exposure to Austrian Principles is worth it alone, IMHO.
Start one indeed. We would do well to have more people arguing out the various philosophical aspects of Austrian Economics and further. And perhaps help those of us who are nubs when it comes to philosophy. Like moi.
I agree. I know that that there can be practical problems with creating too many different forums. But, a “Philosophy and Ethics” forum would allow those discussions to stay there, and concentrate there. Members who are unfamiliar with these ideas can read through the threads to learn. Members who have a keen interest can focus their thoughts in one place.
I think breaking the forum into sections would be excellent (without turning into vBulletin). You could organize it so when you go to the forums section you would see Economics, Politics, Philosophy, Miscellaneous, About, and Administrative. The bottom of the page on browse discussions would just have Politics and Philosophy added to the list (or organized differently). When you go to the forums page under Economics, Politics, Philosophy, and Miscellaneous you would see the past five recent post for each (or whatever number you think is best). This would better group the economics questions from the philosophy questions instead of having them all mashed together on a page filled with different types of post.
There are some fantastic ideas in here. And they will be considered carefully as we eventually (hopefully soon) migrate to a new software platform. (That’s all I can say about that right now. :p)
I must take back what I said about the “Browse Discussions” section at the bottom, it would be eliminated since it would serve no purpose since the sections would already have been broken up. What I have below is a rough idea (without putting any effort into formatting). Economics and it’s sub-sections would all be links, and obviously clicking Economics brings you to all economics post (view all), and clicking Questions brings you to all questions. Past 5 post would show the most recent regardless of sub-section.
Economics
-Theory
-Economic History
-Current Economics
-Questions
*Recent Post
*Recent Post
*Recent Post
*Recent Post
*Recent Post
Politics
-Theory
-Current Politics
-Political History
*Recent Post
*Recent Post
*Recent Post
*Recent Post
*Recent Post
Philosophy
-Praxeology
-Natural Rights
-General Inquiry
-Questions
*Recent Post
*Recent Post
*Recent Post
*Recent Post
*Recent Post
Miscellaneous
-General History (for post not specifically relating to politics, economics, or philosophy)
-Current Events
-Newbies
*Recent Post
*Recent Post
*Recent Post
*Recent Post
*Recent Post
When the poster sets it as a question. Sounds vague, but something that’s more of a discussion compared to someone looking for an exact answer on a topic.
Do we really need a religion section? Its not exactly a building block for austrian economics. Where its relevant, it can be discussed with the economic, political, or philosophy sections.
A religion section sounds like a bad idea to me too. Just put it under philosophy. I’d say merge politics and current events, then have one dedicated to law/libertarian theory. If you are going to keep a newbies section keep newbie/repeated topics out of all the other forums IMO.
I also thought of having it under the philosophy section, given that if people want an actual intelligent discussion on religion they would have to also discuss (or attack depending on who it is) the philosophical foundations of various religions.
Do we need it? Probably. It will also confine all the misinformed atheist (or anyone else) attacks on religion to one section
Can you cite 3 intelligent religous conversations on this site? They usually break down into heated “pop” meta arguments. To be honest, I think It is too tertiary and passionate a subject to expect much else from this website. I unfortunatly just don’t think the Mises.org is meant to handle religion.
No, it generally breaks down into “Lets rid ourselves of this irrational thing called religion, who wants to join!?” and “Religion is as bogus as Keynesian economics, its mumbo-jumbo”.
Not to pile on, but I have never seen a religious debate with so many atheists around go well. You have the religious atheists and the religious creationists (fanatics of both stripes) smashing each other over the head, on topics that neither party can prove one way or the other.