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Barry Etheridge

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But again you are using a definition of perfect which is effectively 'not like this Universe' when it is entirely possible that this Universe is as in...
September 17, 2016 at 12:09
Quis costodies custodiet? Who gets to decide what is perfect and by what authority? It is a huge assumption that suffering and pain form no part of a ...
September 16, 2016 at 23:34
I'm suspicious that this is a circular argument dependent on your initial definition of 'eternal' which of course will be the definition that most sui...
September 16, 2016 at 23:10
All you're describing here is an undecidable proposition which means that, by definition there is no such thing as wrong and right from the point of v...
September 16, 2016 at 22:50
Fellow feeling, of the "I understand where you're coming from" variety. The trap, as he indicates, is that understanding, getting yourself into the mi...
September 12, 2016 at 23:09
It has always seemed to me to be a huge mistake to believe that law has anything whatsoever to do with morality. There many acts that are considered i...
September 12, 2016 at 23:00
So Plato's Republic isn't an excoriating critique of 'power to the people' (democracy)? It seems to me that your argument is subject to death by a tho...
September 12, 2016 at 12:22
Isn't Aristotle pre-1800 then? Doesn't Plato have a book entirely concerned with the structure of society and the nature of rule? Isn't Augustine's Ci...
September 12, 2016 at 11:25
Clearly that's what he means when he says 'transcendent'! :D
September 11, 2016 at 23:06
What? What do you imagine the Catholic Church was doing from 325 until the Reformation? What's the burning of heretics if not a concern to maintain po...
September 11, 2016 at 21:15
Except that it doesn't. Even the most arrogant scientist would not pretend that science gives us a complete understanding of the totality of the Unive...
September 11, 2016 at 20:59
I find it odd having finally dismissed the notion of a proof of God's existence that anybody should be replacing it with an argument towards proving t...
September 10, 2016 at 21:51
It's not a whole lot of differences. It's a list of examples of why pretty much everybody in neuroscience agrees that computers are not an imperfect a...
September 09, 2016 at 16:29
Oh, it's far more complicated and weird than that!
September 09, 2016 at 15:39
That isn't (though your previous expression of it was). It's just wrong. A list of properties of the human brain bears almost no points of similarity ...
September 09, 2016 at 15:33
It's a very scratched, dull, and cracked mirror then!
September 09, 2016 at 10:37
Is that even possible? Surely belief cannot ever be separated from action. At the very least, belief must moderate behaviour or it's not a genuine bel...
September 09, 2016 at 10:31
I think you may need another option .. don't know! This is one very big can of worms you've opened setting all kinds of questions pinging round my bra...
September 08, 2016 at 23:12
We already do in England. It's called rain!
September 08, 2016 at 22:47
I sincerely hope that that is not the case. There is no advantage to having AIs that are wrong as much as they're right, prone to abandoning logic and...
September 08, 2016 at 19:29
There is a common misconception that one is entitled to one's opinion: a misconception that has seen so many internet 'discussion' facilities turn int...
September 08, 2016 at 19:26
Well, I suppose one is 'a number' but I was kinda expecting more! ;)
September 08, 2016 at 19:12
You do realise that you've just presented an entirely circular argument? Computers are the best analogue of human brains so we figure that human brain...
September 07, 2016 at 21:49
Yes, well, Corsica! Any excuse to poke a finger in France's eye!
September 07, 2016 at 18:36
Post-revolution France Post-revoultion Russia Post-war Zionism Nazi-hunters The Reformation, the Counter Reformation, the Counter Counter Reformation ...
September 07, 2016 at 18:30
Not if your host country actively seeks to prevent you from doing so while espousing a 'charter' of human rights and religious freedom which as an EU ...
September 07, 2016 at 16:57
But that's already a generalisation that is neither true nor useful. It is arguable whether there was ever even a majority of Germans that could reaso...
September 07, 2016 at 16:47
I'm really not sure how computers doing what computers are good at validates any observations on human thinking and communication. Of course there are...
September 07, 2016 at 16:33
Huh? The same way that they have come to most other conclusions; by setting up their studies and reading the results in such a way as to confirm whate...
September 07, 2016 at 16:23
Yes, no and other. For starters you've got to decide what you mean by faith. If faith is voluntary then it proves the existence of some degree of free...
September 06, 2016 at 19:24
So let's look at it from the other way round. I have a new ethical system X which has as its sole purpose an increase in pleasure and happiness. How m...
September 06, 2016 at 11:35
I really don't see this as at all puzzling. If it ain't broke you don't fix it. If you're in a boat you don't need instructions on floating but on how...
September 05, 2016 at 23:21
This is clearly something that you need to believe for reasons no doubt far beyond my understanding but it simply isn't supported by any rational inve...
September 05, 2016 at 22:50
Ultimately determinism merely states that things are as they are because they could not be other than as they are. So, in a very real sense, the whole...
September 04, 2016 at 22:57
Under the current system each individual is registered as a voter for all elections and referendums. The proposed system would require that they be se...
September 04, 2016 at 14:27
Impractical because the politically inactive will always be politically inactive. They'll have no more interest in or make any more effort towards app...
September 03, 2016 at 22:17
What suggest to you that it is necessary that he does any such thing? It is the Platonic position, given its fullest expression by Neo-Platonist Chris...
September 03, 2016 at 22:01
I would simply challenge the very idea of an irrelevant issue. Whilst it might be possible to divide knowledge into discrete packages bounded by logic...
September 03, 2016 at 20:42
In: Words  — view comment
I would counter with the observation that there exists no human society that does not use spoken language which suggests that variations are in fact f...
September 03, 2016 at 20:29
Not according to Plato, the Neo-Platonist school (on which our forms of government and systems of justice are, after all, largely based), Augustine an...
September 03, 2016 at 20:15
Apart from it being completely impractical, unworkable, and utterly corruptible, you mean?
September 03, 2016 at 20:09
On the contrary, I find the Greek concept just as open to the same criticisms. Being content with the way things are 'meant to be' and being the perso...
September 01, 2016 at 22:43
It seems a tad convenient that God apparently doesn't mind in the slightest ceding the decision on what is evil (if indeed such a thing even exists) a...
September 01, 2016 at 22:33
You exclude the very real possibility that happiness and dedication to its attainment is itself a mental illness, then? You certainly seem to be claim...
September 01, 2016 at 22:15
The problem here is that the effect you seek is demonstrably weak at best and non-existent in most cases. There is no historical evidence at all that ...
September 01, 2016 at 21:56
I think you need to be clear that placebo's do not cure mental illnesses which have physiological bases. But then nor do most (if not all) drugs used ...
September 01, 2016 at 15:21
The infinite universe may be theorised endlessly but it simply falls apart in science. If the Universe is infinite then there is no entropy. Barring a...
September 01, 2016 at 14:54
How can such an existence contain the logical possibility that there is no existence or that the instantiation of one logical possibility excludes the...
September 01, 2016 at 14:46