He didn't paint the roses red enough. Off with his head? Fast and loose are our reactions, and atonal rage is our rhythm. The Kafka trap springs again...
We can philosophize about "everything", which includes nothing. OR If you can't philosophize about it, it's ineffable, or inaccessible in the first pl...
Isn't it fantastically obvious? The good lawyer focuses on persuasive power while the good philosopher focuses on predictive power. Under the adversar...
Square one is logic, reason, and evidence in pursuit of truth above persuasiveness. That's the authority it appeals to by definition (or at least unde...
People are saying things in an attempt to persuade the other to change their positions (moral suasion), right? (the intent of persuasion itself matter...
I would say that intent is actually irrelevant entirely. Authorial intent (intended meaning) can be important, but the intended ramifications of state...
Yes there's still a problem, because the undefined middle will be subjectively warped according to how we each conceive of the poles (either end of th...
Categorical labels of all kinds are just short hand meant to make communication easier, but in the context of "philosophy" where precise meaning makes...
The police didn't want to let it go, so it must have come from one of the higher-ups. The trial would have been expensive and retarded, and likely gon...
Almost nobody is saying that, especially pastors (tax purposes). Why would anyone say it? Because they wan't to frame it as factual truth probably. It...
Some of us will have conflicting values, but because we've all sought out this forum, it's likely that we all share the value of wanting to learn. Spe...
I think he is reacting to a particular choice of language: "inferior". The thrust of the OP is an inquiry into why there are disparities between gende...
Is being tall a deformity? Being tested out in the real world (to find out what deformity works (i.e: to find out who can more successfully reproduce)...
You only appeared to object to a particular sub-point involving height, which wasn't actually about sexual dimorphism. That women exhibit a smaller va...
Eyeballs have evolved separately dozens of times in the grand history of life on earth. We might say that evolution has a tendency to innovate and ref...
"Plausible" has any number of connotations. One of them being possible. The context of my explanation made it clear that I was taking up a narrow focu...
I'm not rendering a full explanation of height, (nor criminal deviance), but i AM providing an important piece of the explanatory puzzle. Presumably t...
They're not my explanations, I'm just relaying the fruits of applying an evolutionary perspective to human behavior. Sexual dimorphism and changing fr...
I should temper the above by pointing out that we absolutely must consider environment in addition to genetics. Genes do absolutely nothing without an...
There are so many factors that warrant discussion to fully answer the question of why there are fewer female prisoners than men, but I can at least st...
Isn't it fascinating though? Perhaps it's because I've spent so long observing the contemporary rituals from the safety of wild blinds, but the overal...
Relative to our agreement on those starting values, we can and should use science to assist our decision making, but it will only hold "true" relative...
Ah! Ye olde "sex negative feminism". What an anti-gem! According to wiki, Andrea Dworkin died in 2005, but the bloated corpse of her ideas oft drift a...
And we're very greedy bastards indeed! We might not realize it, but cooperating instead of competing can lead individual success that is many orders o...
Descriptive theories, not normative theories. They may have indirect normative implications, but they cannot arbitrate human values. (we can describe ...
Very well. But for the record I'm still optimistic that we can both get something useful out of this exchange. Despite the mutual rib-shots (I do enjo...
Religion in practice covers intellectual territory that science can never tread upon, such as determining the starting moral values that individual hu...
Behaviorism is not the assertion that the mind is a fiction, it is that we can understand behavior by treating people as black-boxes with inputs and o...
Behaviorism seeks to gain predictive power about human behavior, not to comment on the existence or non-existence of minds. It's an approach to predic...
I think defeatism must have been rife during the 80's, probably for more reasons than I can fathom (Born in '88 myself), but I can say with confidence...
Science doesn't deny the existence of minds though, nor does it deny the existence of god. It actually makes no statement about the existence or non-e...
I can prove to you that the brain is the mind; there's no escaping that conclusion, but that's another discussion. But just take a look at how @"Janus...
Let me try using different language: Our ability to do science, to some extent, rests on there being consistent relationships between observable pheno...
What about "ostensibly ostensibly presumes an external objective universe of noumena"? I'm saying we need to use bias-free measurement for the hardene...
Ostensibly man! Ostensibly! "Ostensibly": adverb: apparently or purportedly, but perhaps not actually. My point here was that some kinds of measuremen...
I just haven't really encountered this kind of "scientism". I'm aware there are a few zealots in every camp, but they hardly define the set. "The only...
Promoting irreligion is only as useful as religion is harmful; there's a practical limit, and at some point you would just be upsetting and confusing ...
Science makes presumptions about how to do science itself, not about what kind of values-decisions we should make. The "values" of science are just to...
"Logical contradiction"... Yes but then they'll just start questioning whatever axioms of logic are within reach. The point is that we should not alwa...
When someone brings up a specific god, which is invariably a requirement for any coherent existence-debate, yes, we can falsify their claims in so far...
You're missing the distinction. Science presumes an external objective universe of noumena (ostensibly), and seeks to model/approximate it. Science is...
Well I never said there is no overlap, but aren't you missing Gould's point? There's a world of facts and there's also a world of emotions; science ap...
Crazy in what sense? That's such a loaded term. Crazy from an empirical standpoint? Sure, most religions are downright nuts (though "spirituality" in ...
It counts toward non-subjective world-modeling (which might fairly be labeled its own broad category of knowledge and intelligence). It's only "meanin...
If you're talking about "meaning" as in "interpreting the way the world is", then yes, observation and reason are the best tools we have. But you're c...
SR and GR should be able to predict how time dilates in very strong gravity wells. If you don't have any equations, calculations, or plausible models ...
My points was just to stress that even given a specific subjective feeling (pertaining to the inherent virtue of a given action, for instance) reason ...
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