Terrapin Station

Right. Whose? The challenge would be getting me to care what you'd believe, especially when you won't clarify the question.

So you don't agree with S that you were only saying what most people considered a benefit? I figured as much, but I wanted to give S the benefit of th...

Not unless you clarify in whose judgment we're saying whether it's reasonable. Why you won't clarify that, I don't know.

So then, no, I'm not going to bother if you're not going to bother yourself.

"Reasonable" is always to someone. So I'm clarifying who needs to think the answer is reasonable.

Yes. But first I'm clarifying the requirement. Does it have to be something that you consider reasonable?

Sure. So what would the purpose be of it rhetorically? That was the question.

It has to be something that you consider reasonable?

If one were to write, "Most people think there is no benefit to hate speech, and they don't care that you think otherwise," that would certainly be tr...

Won't matter to most people. Okay, and what about it? What would the purpose of that be rhetorically? Is it just an exercise in pointing out the obvio...

and What bearing on anything does the fact that most people consider it to have no benefit have?

Which has what to do with whether something is a benefit? That's no different--for rhetorical purposes--from simply saying "Joe Smith doesn't consider...

You know that there aren't any facts as to whether something is a benefit or not, right? This is very odd to say because it suggests that the problem ...

On my view, nothing counts as morally (or legally) unacceptable thought, belief or speech.

They're not literally thought or belief. As long as we're saying that they're correlated to thought or belief, or we're just speaking very loosely/rat...

We can talk about the Feldman paper, although it's a lot to go into, and I don't agree with much of it, including that I think the premise is rather i...

I explained this already. They're knowledge claims. Knowledge doesn't imply certainty or proof. Why do you think that claims "need to (ultimately) jus...

Again, the question is about what you understand scientific claims to be. The ultimate aim of this is to explain why certainty/proof or nothing is a f...

Being "mean" to people is honest, if that's what someone is thinking. I like people who are honest and expressive.

Right. Of course I return the favor. ;-)

You need some new friends. Definitely some people you know are going to think you're an idiot sometimes. If they don't tell you that, they're not bein...

Since this is a thread about lying/honesty, I see people not expressing just what they're thinking, including when they try to "tactfully" temper or s...

You don't hang out with people who say "You're being an idiot" if they feel you're being an idiot?

Probably not, right? Or I wouldn't do things that way I do them. I probably do things the way that I do them because I think it's a good way to do the...

If you're not claiming at least one of those three things, you could clarify just what your justification would be for accusing someone of lying when ...

I'm actually exactly the same way in person as I am online . . . which I'd be happy to demonstrate to anyone via a telephone conversation or an in-per...

Re this by the way, you're claiming that when we say we have scientific knowledge of something, we're not making an epistemological claim? So science ...

I don't want to move away from what I was asking you yet. Could you answer the question I ask you here first (bolded in the copy-pasted text below): S...

You know that I'm not a realist on mathematics, right? (Or physical laws for that matter.) Re probability, Bayesian probability is complete garbage in...

So just to clarify, in this thread, people are actually claiming at least one of the following: (1) If people typically believe that P (or maybe iff t...

I can just imagine you making sure you have 2.3 kids.

What does the number of people with a specific belief have to do with anything? Why do you keep going back to what most people do for every single thi...

So scientific statements like those (1) are not asserting certainty or proof, and (2) are not saying "we know nothing about this." But they're knowled...

Again, empirically, "folks believe all sorts of wacky crap"

Sure, first re alternatives, how have you parsed scientific claims to this point? For example, take claims like "Feldspars are a group of rock-forming...

Whereas I'd say that claiming that any arbitrary person couldn't believe any arbitrary thing is not at all justifiable (and suggests little experience...

Think about it this way: why worry about/focus on certainty or proof? Also, isn't "P, a proposition about x, is certain or has been proved, otherwise ...

If you say you believe those things, sure. You're the type of person who believes that (we can show that) speech is causal to others' actions, for exa...

How is this not simply a matter of you having the misplaced concern--focusing on proof/certainty? (I would have responded sooner if you'd tagged me in...

People very often say that they believe things that I think are patently absurd, with philosophy being one of the primary milieu culprits. So it's not...

If someone says, "I believe I'm on the moon with Chevy Chase," and you go, "Really? You believe that?" And they say, "Yes, I do," etc. then how would ...

Aside from the nonsense of "Trump gave the KKK his support" (lol), what empirical studies are you using for "regular, 'supportive' coverage of racist ...

You didn't ask me, but of course I'd have no objection to that.

That wouldn't work even, because mental content is only observable to the bearer, because it's what it's like to BE the brain in question. We can know...

It seems like that should be obvious. To know that someone is saying something different than they believe, we have to be able to compare what they sa...

The bearing it has here is that lying is a matter of someone saying something that's contrary to what they actually believe.

?? When do we get to the part where we're observing their beliefs?

Insofar as empirical claims go, the above is one of the cores of science methodology. We can't prove empirical claims. Any empirical claim must be ope...

I hadn't bothered with the Trump thread much, as I don't like the typical opinions of either side--either the pro or anti-Trump folks. I'll have to lo...

Meaning/purpose is intrinsic to persons. That doesn't need an argument. There's zero evidence of purpose or meaning in this sense occurring external t...