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How does the fact that it happened a century before they were born prevent it from having a detrimental effect on their reality today? Are you suggest...

So how do you differentiate brain effects to decide which one is the 'meaning'? If you say the word 'tree' to me all sorts of things happen in my brai...

So this leads to what I consider to be the most interesting question raised by your approach. What's wrong with all the people who disagree about the ...

I think if you'd have started the OP with this, the discussion would have been very different. Anyway, to analyse this particular exchange; Firstly, t...

This is why I do not personally find Scientism compelling, but I do find it's diametric opposite offensive, hence my preference that it remain a valid...

So your proposition is now just that some people are quite rude?

So you're claiming that those who respond to your argument by demanding proof are being disingenuous, but your own technique appears to be to simply w...

I think you can safely assume that all parties are using the term 'proof' in the wider sense in which it is used in discourse rather than the narrower...

I'm having great trouble understanding what it is you're saying. As far as I can gather from your recent post, your argument is that some philosophica...

Whereas arguing that "... it is a red herring and you know it" is a much more reasonable example of a counter argument?

You have said that you are always pained when you see a philosophical position met with a demand for proof. You have entreated us to "not demand proof...

So, if I understand this correctly, you're saying that some calls for proof may be less valid in philosophy than they would be in science. I think tha...

I'm not sure what my countering with the majority parts of your statements as opposed to the entirety has to do with the argument. As I understand it,...

Are you suggesting that you hold no positions to be valid yet not persuasive to you personally? That every position you hear must be categorised in th...

I'm not a proponent of Scientism, but I am a passionate defender of it's right to be considered just as valid a philosophical position as any other, s...

Interesting. If your argument is that questions with yes/no answers are of little philosophical meaning and are rarely perused by philosophers (a posi...

That's essentially the distinction I'm suggesting is confused. I can't really conceive of 'intellugence' as a latent ability to deal with complexity. ...

Not necessarily. This would require a presumption that the intention of the language user is to accurately communicate some fact. Given what we know o...

Should have tagged you in to the above response. It's aimed at your comment too.

To be honest, I'm inclined to agree. I think intelligence, in the way we use the word, must mean something like 'the ability to successfully (and perh...

I think maybe the issue here is one of scale. I'm not sure what conclusions to draw from it, but the difference in ability between even a mediocre mat...

And you see that happening do you...ever? Have you read much philosophy? As a little experiment, have a look through the last ten threads on this foru...

Still not seeing how this is a problem. Surely it's just one of the available options. Aren't metaphysical conclusions drawn from the purported intent...

Yes, whatever conclusion we might reach about intelligence, I think we can agree that mensa membership isn't it. So this is where I start to have prob...

I'm not sure quite what examples might suffice. I suppose to support my argument I'd need quotes from the less mathematical/scientific community sayin...

I suspect that the bias you mention is the main reason why people resist intelligence testing. They wish to retain their authority to determine people...

I appreciate the links. You seem, as in a lot of your posts, to be confusing "David Deutch says..." with "it is the case that...". All I read in the p...

OK, so I think the first question to answer here would be whether you think we generally consider someone who can solve complex maths puzzles and play...

The thing is the types of question in an IQ test are clearly not arbitrary. They are all of an immediately recognisable 'sort', vaguely - patter-recog...

I don't think it is. I think most scientists consider themselves in the business of making testable theories. It's in the business of predicting, not ...

Well, I think we can agree on that (who wouldn't), but I think if you and I came up with a list of people who were 'aiming for truth' and a list of pe...

Yes, I understood that to be the case, I only tagged you in for the tangential link. Yes, I was really referring to the Strong Anthropic Principle of ...

I believe we already have a ban on racist posts, but obviously no-one wants to be too heavy-handed so some sail a little close to the wind but remain....

I get that bit, what I don't get is what's wrong with "it just happened". The inconceivability of things 'just happening' seems to be based on a misco...

I'm not sure the anthropic principle applies even with multiverses, let alone our universe. If I observe a fair die land on a 1 a thousand times in a ...

Yes, this touches on much of what I think philosophy of language is (or should be) focussed on. We could make our language more efficient, express mor...

That should be on the front of every political science textbook... And then all the other pages blank.

No. My only involvement in that thread was to counter @"gurugeorge"'s usual self-martyring racist bullshit, I'm not sure it had any relation to voting...

I agree, but language can also be beguiling. It can deceive us into believing we are thinking something of unique meaning solely on the grounds that w...

No, I mean how mechanistically. How does the anti-intellectualism cause the poor quality of leader. Is it that well-educated people vote for idiots be...

I'm not sure if you're supporting the theory or opposing it. Are you suggesting that the quality of our leaders has risen because they are well-educat...

How so?

I think the answer to that question depends on what you understand by 'true'. I'm happy to believe that there is an existent reality outside of our ow...

Yes, that's the question I'm asking, how does one objectively measure the amount of harm done? Is having an arm cut off more or less harmful than a li...

But morality is prescriptive is it not, otherwise it's just relativism? So it's not enough to say you can see that cutting someone's arm off without g...

How are you measuring harm?

The number of college educated people has been consistently rising over the past few decades, I'm not sure the same can be said for the quality of our...

So producing responses without reading through the whole post is an entitlement unique to you? Or is it your uniquely accurate judgement of the qualit...

I understood the OP to be about theories, so which drug definitively worked would not enter into it. The point, in the real world, is that we never ha...

Then you have a much more grandiose view of human nature than I do. Placebos work even when people are told they're placebos.