Terrapin Station

Yeah, you've got all of that basically right. I'd keep contractual fraud illegal, but that's not just a speech issue--it's a contractual issue. And I'...

You're forwarding an argumentum ad populum.

Logic has nothing whatsoever to do with claims about whether anything exists in the actual world. It follows from all A is B that some A is B. Whether...

Logically, "All cell phones in the room are turned off" has absolutely nothing to do with whether in the actual world there is any room, any cell phon...

No logical claim is a metaphysical claim about the actual world. Logic is simply about formal relationships per se. So whether there are really (in th...

If all A is B, then obviously some A is B.

It does, though. It's the same as "All silver toasters are toasters. All silver toasters are silver. Therefore some toasters are silver."

Surely you're not advocating panic in any situation, no? Correct.

Logically, it's a matter of whether the conclusion follows from the premises, not whether the conclusion is true per our beliefs about the actual worl...

Being pro tolerance, even of the intolerant, doesn't imply that you'll follow suit and be intolerant or that you'll stop promoting tolerance. This wou...

What would the metaphor be?

You're treating the premises in a purely logical manner, but assessing the conclusion with respect to whether it's contingently true in the actual wor...

Yes. People need to learn to not panic, and you don't assume that there is a fire and flip out just because someone yells "Fire"

How in the world would a nonmaterial substrate explain it? We can't even explain what the heck a nonmaterial substrate would be.

Could you explain that with some examples maybe?

I don't use a principle-oriented approach for ethics. It seems to me that principle-oriented approaches always lead to absurd stances. It's the ethics...

Especially since the idea of nonphysical existents is incoherent, the far more logical assumption is that our theories are at least incomplete, if the...

I what I'm going to comment on here isn't what you're focusing on in this thread, but my moral views are not at all based on suffering, harm or happin...

I listen to albums that I don't think are great all the time. I'm listening to one right now, actually--Black Sabbath's Seventh Star. It's solid, and ...

In other words, it's not based solely on particles per se.

As I said in my first post in this thread, "religions massively impact cultural mores, laws, etc. " I didn't mean literally not saying anything. Lol Y...

Did you forget that we're talking about cultural influence? So that, for example, you can only have oranges? We're not talking about something that's ...

Preferences against something, where you don't care for it.

In the sense that all preferences are, sure.

I want people to keep mainstream religious view to themselves and not influence society with them because I don't agree with those views--not most of ...

I don't agree with the majority of the ethical views of the major religions. So yeah, I want to see what I prefer have influence rather than stuff I d...

The latter part I'm not thinking--I would just like (what I consider) better beliefs to be the influence. Re positive influences of Christianity . . ....

The conventional religions have a completely warped view of what is good and what is evil in my view. I agree that religions are very negative. They'd...

So, someone points to a piece of chalk, you can say that it's part of the set of "everything," right? And if someone points to the emotion of love, yo...

No idea what you're talking about there.

In other words, for anything someone points to, literally or figuratively, directly or indirectly, it's part of everything. That shouldn't be difficul...

Anyway, again, the stupid "always there or something came from nothing" problem is not the issue. The B theory fails because time is change or motion,...

I'm not sure why you're thinking of influence rather than a having an impact on others.

You can't get outside of it with because either the block of time always was there or there was nothing and then time suddenly appeared.

Okay, but what does that have to do with someone disapproving action x without them feeling that action x is wrong? If they disapprove action x, they ...

I wasn't disavowing truth or reasonableness or anything like that. I was explaining that I don't agree that science, philosophy, etc. (whatever we're ...

That would be a very unusual definition of "authority" then. That term usually has connotations other than any random thing that someone does counting...

Good/bad are assessments we make, based on our prefences.

In my view logic and mathematics are basically a way that we think about the world. They're a type of language. So it would be saying that the nature ...

I see it more in a manner analogous to artworks. There's some good and bad (and everything in between) in all eras. It's not a progression overall fro...

I don't see either as a progression in the sense of improvement.

Right, there's not going to be a number. It's infinite. You're not being a mathematical realist, by the way, are you? (I'm not a realist on mathematic...

Well, the easy thing to demonstrate is that a lot of these influential folks haven't thought through things very well. A ton of well-respected stuff i...

The problem there would be that you're saying that an infinite series has to be a (definite) number that's greater than any number. There wouldn't be ...

I actually don't at all agree with your first premise. I think social forces have more to do with it.

I'd say that an infinite regress is counterintuitive (and only because of the "always existing" notion), not incoherent. I'd ask you to explain how it...

If that makes intuitive sense to you then there's no problem with infinite regress. And no, it can't be the B theory because the B theory is incoheren...

"Act that way" --whatever way that Sartre finds dubious as a moral action, because of the categorical imperative. He's not specifying the action in qu...

Sacred cows are a bad idea. Really, it's all just people saying stuff. Everyone has reasons for what they say. This doesn't imply that no one is right...

With B time, you still have the problem (for intuition) that it either appeared "out of nowhere" or always existed. You don't have an infinite regress...