frank

Last I looked Social Security is ok for now, but thanks for worrying about your dear friends over here.

We can only see the future through a glass darkly. Even if we never had to act while tired or in pain and always had hours to flowchart outcomes, ther...

We tend to assume that there were no utterances prior to the advent of humanity, so no "P"'s. Or we could look at propositions as eternal content dist...

Medicare will fall short on funds in 2026, earlier than previously forecast due to the recent Republican tax cut. The damage is already done. But a lo...

Right, so not harming anyone isn't necessarily virtuous, but a lot of virtue appears to be in what you're not doing: "Love is kind; love does not envy...

How do we determine the essence of a bad act?

Do they still do it that way in Malaysia?

Do you support universal healthcare?

I think it's because they believe the 7th Century Arabic contains some flavor that's important to understanding. Maybe we could get @"alcontali" to ex...

I think alcontali was justifying it by pointing to scholars. That's appropriate. Is alcontali trying to convert us all to Islam?

You were asking for scripture. You have to be a Muslim scholar to propose to interpret the Quran or other sacred scriptures. It involves learning the ...

Cool.

What are you doing? Helping people who arent registered to get that status? Reaching out to people who don't have cars and facilitating early voting f...

Does the definition of "irony" have a "probably" in it?

"Irrational" is commonly used to mean "without reason" whether it's modifying an action or the way a belief is held.

No, look up "agnostic." One of the meanings is the view that the existence of divinity is unknowable. There's an agnostic in the corner gnashing her t...

Because chocolate stains your tie? I suppose you might prefer it for no reason at all, like a person might prefer being a Catholic for no reason at al...

To hold a belief without any reason is to hold it irrationally. Surely there's some reason you prefer vanilla?

It can be argued that it's unknowable. That's what some people mean by "agnostic." If the speaker doesn't make it clear, you have to ask.

It's irrational (like believing in God).

When you say "agnostic" do you mean the view that we don't know now, but we might someday? Or do you mean that this knowledge is forever beyond us?

You're just jealous because you can't write prose. All you can do is bold every other word and punctuate with emojis. :snicker:

I'd like to discuss the bigger picture for a second. Educated people are more likely to be atheists. I suggest the reason for this is that educated pe...

There is no all-purpose definition. When the desire to communicate is strong enough, people will become flexible and work out definitions acceptable t...

Eh. If US was attacked, we'd all fall in like we've always been best friends willing to die for whatever. In the meantime, it looks like we're about t...

He's accusing you of homophobia.

But since the "ought" is downplayed, can't we think of happiness as goal we learn about through experience? The price of that wisdom is the experience...

Yep. Although in Asian horror movies justice is like a force of nature. It's the reason the gang rapers hammer a nail into the back of the dead girl's...

Makes sense.

I'm not sure what you mean.

When it comes to wrong-doing, there are people who mainly think of it in terms of condemnation and punishment. They need law-bound morality as a sprin...

But why should you read? It has to do with respect, of which there is mutually little in this situation. But that's unfortunate. Wasted potential. The...

No, actually. You should read. You did exactly the same thing in a recent discussion about Quine. You fed back to me exactly what I had just said.

We both pointed out that A rejects using norms. You didnt read what I wrote. That would be an interesting topic. I'll see if I can find someone to dis...

You just repeated what I said. I was going through the ways we could approach moral philosophy starting from analysis of what we do.

As A points out, social norms obviously aren't the basis of morality (considering what those norms are apt to be.) Law-bound morality is attractive be...

@"Banno" Is your ethical outlook law-bound? Do you accept that this is problematic for an atheist? Or do you suspend worrying about it since it works ...

Reddit has a q&a about the 2019 novel-corona virus on r/askscience.

Ted Cruz won the Iowa caucuses in 2016. Iowa doesn't mean what it used to.

Cool! Surrealism is also a kind of literature. I've been reading Leonora Carrington's surrealist stories and I have a picture of one of her sculptures...

We can distinguish between intrinsically unjust and circumstantially unjust (page 13)? Really? The example she gives is of a person being convicted fo...

did you say you're in the hospital? Hope you feel better soon.

They'll pull it together eventually. Lots of higher math probably.

I didn't get into surrealism until recently. Have you ever painted that way? Like Dali?

Did you know that Quentin Tarantino made up the scripture Samuel Jackson quotes in Pulp Fiction? Fumes of the Bible: Ezekiel 25:17.“The path of the ri...

I'll check him out. May as well go through all the Eno's. :)

"The ordinary (and quite indispensable) terms "should," "needs," "ought," "must" --acquired this special sense by being equated in the relevant contex...

Um, what do you mean?

Yea, it's a play. What were you doing, a documentary? Although, while reading about a guy who was supposed to have been swallowed by a sperm whale in ...

Could we have the whole thing spoken by Jonah while he's sitting inside the whale? Maybe he's explaining all this to Pinocchio.