Terrapin Station

Yeah, I'd agree with your example, too. If you're being selective to be misleading, but you're not actually saying anything that you don't believe to ...

I would say, by the way, that there would be a way that we could maybe make sense of out "lying but tell the truth," although it wouldn't be via your ...

I thought you were asking "How do we make a leap to purpose in evolution"--in other words, so that there's a purpose to evolution in some manner, at s...

There's no purpose to anything in evolution. That's why I had written "There is no purpose to evolution " Purposes are ways that individuals think abo...

It's good enough, sure. Nothing there about purpose.

There is no purpose to evolution.

That's fine. But I'm not saying something about those particular traits yet. I'm saying something about evolution in general first, without talking ab...

?? I'm saying something general about evolution. Not something about any particular trait.

So first, about this idea re evolution, do you understand that I'm not talking about any specific trait?

I explained this already--how something can exist even though it's neutral or even disadvantageous for survival (not that I'm claiming this about anyt...

That's not contradicting them. And I'd not be saying that they're wrong. I would just be telling them that I use the term differently than they're usi...

By the way, I was reading "faith in a non-existent God" as saying, "Faith in the non-existence of God." Is that not what you meant by that?

It was a question regarding whether you were paying attention to what I was typing, with respect to something I had already explained, but you brought...

I didn't say anything about contradictions. If you were to say that you have faith in a god that doesn't exist, though, I'd be curious just what you w...

I wasn't saying "different people use every single term different ways." You were saying that it's "meaningless" for us to use "faith" in different wa...

Yes. You do not?

Different people use the same term in different ways, no?

Well, people can have really intense fears of trees, and that fear is probably going to be persistent, but what needs to be worked on there is what's ...

I'm not sure what you mean by "making a questioning response," but in any event, I'd have no problem with someone saying that I have "faith in a non-e...

Re harm being a basis for morality, I don't think that everything that any arbitrary person considers harm is something we should support in the sense...

:rofl: Atheism isn't an ideology or a school of thought or system of rationality or approach to discourse or anything like that. And it's not at all t...

He's asking if he should join the military, where he's having some doubts about it, because he doesn't necessarily agree with the way military utilize...

Before we go on, why are you quoting me saying, "Yeah, that won't fly. You need to answer the question I asked," without at all addressing the questio...

I don't know why you were reading my comments that way.

I'm taking time away from something I need to be doing. So if you want to have a serious, good faith discussion where you're actually paying some atte...

Haha--right. So it probably ended up not being that great of an example for "assuming a standard," since in practice, that one's actually a bit of a m...

Yeah, that won't fly. You need to answer the question I asked.

If I'm going to be spending time on this, I need you to pay attention to what I'm typing, otherwise I'm wasting my time while you're playing a game or...

It's a term for a wide range of mental (brain) states, states that involve affection, caring, devotion, etc. You could just look this up in a dictiona...

Sigh. No. I said that "Love" isn't a proposition, and "Love is true" is nonsense, because that analyzes to saying that "Love" is a proposition that we...

No, that's not what I said.

I already addressed this (and more than once). What did I say?

"Everyone blow really hard and maybe we'll change the Earth's orbit just enough"?

Here's the thing. I refuse to do explanation discussions unless we first set out our criteria for explanations. That's because what always happens in ...

It would depend on what we're talking about. What's falling, what the context is, etc. If we're talking about something like a large asteroid headed t...

(1) and (2) are nonsensical because Love isn't a proposition. (3) is a proposition, but semantically it's also basically nonsense because logic doesn'...

One part at a time: why would you be asking all of a sudden about explaining love in terms of propositional logic? Where is that coming from? It seems...

What sort of thing you're looking for, your criteria for a satisfactory "why" response, can't be a question. It would need to be a set of statements r...

Ignoring the "explain" issue (which is similar to what I just asked you re "why" above), the reason that all of a sudden we're asking about love being...

If I haven't answered that, then you're not being clear on what sort of thing you're looking for as a "why" response. So what sort of thing are you lo...

"Subjective" doesn't mean or imply anything like, "Only some" or "this varies." It refers to the fact that it's a brain-functioning-as-mind phenomenon...

Mathematics is based on observing relations in the world, and then extrapolating more complex relations, based on the way we think about relations, in...

The phenomena are subjective. It's just not "true" because only propositions are true.

No. I don't at all buy the "accidental"/"essential" distinction. Further, I didn't at all say that consciousness or reasoning weren't advantageous for...

Actually, wait, "Love is a subjective truth" isn't true in my view. "Love" isn't a proposition. It would need to be a proposition for that sentence to...

'Sound" is a term that applies to arguments. That's not an argument. At any rate, yes, that's true in my view.

Say what? You asked what the evolutionary advantage of x is. (It could be anything, hence why I'm using a variable.) It's a misconception that only th...

Propositions are what are true or false. "Love" isn't a proposition. (A proposition is a statement about something.) On my view truth is subjective, b...

First, something doesn't have to be an evolutionary advantage to persist. It only has to not be enough of an evolutionary disadvantage that it gets "b...

Different sense of the term. So we'd be equivocating a la "If I value freedom, then I can't charge anything for the hot dogs I'm selling??"