Cuthbert

I was delighted to read his account of Eratosthenes's calculation of the earth's circumference and compare it with a twenty-first century version: htt...

But only in the same dismal way as whistling in the dark.

I'll have a stab at it. We have an idea of what the proper functioning of various body parts and organs should be. Disease is, roughly, when there is ...

Fascinating, thank you. J S E is linked with Platonism and I am struck also with the echoes of some pre-Socratic philosophy. The title Periphyseon - '...

Not quite. I used exactly the words I needed to say what I meant. So it's an 'OK, I can take it' to being called 'bourgeois' (qui, moi?) but a 'no' to...

I can grant that writer and others included in that first person plural cannot imagine it. But others have existed who can so imagine. And if we call ...

Refusing to sit next to J K Rowling reminds me of Harry Enfield's refusal to let Whitney Houston touch his garden railings. https://www.youtube.com/wa...

Anti-natalist? Or did I miss the antenatal thread?

I apologise. I appreciated everything else you said and agree with much of it. I was throwing away a riposte to a throwaway comment. Especially that. ...

You can find lots of people who will say anything and don't mean what they say almost anywhere else on the internet. If you've found an exception here...

Yes. They will always die and a new lot will always be waiting in the queue. It's worked so far.

Some of the conclusions here could lead to odd conversations. Not so much "Congratulations on your pregnancy" as "Since you couldn't ask the poor mite...

I have always relied upon the kindness of rangers.

Ok, but I'm getting a bit lost in the debate. I think your fury and contempt may be getting in the way of you making the point. Of course when the sec...

The distinction I am making is between people who beat down your door to make you disappear and people who prefer dealing in civil discourse. It's a p...

Finding excuses to deprive others of rights is another favoured strategy of tyrants. . My point is that these things are very tempting. We can all be ...

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/dfwstrawson1.htm For Strawson, the recognition of freedom is the cause and basis of resentment (roughly blame in the se...

Indeed. If we understand 'leadership' to mean a position of power then most of us hold power to some degree, for example as a parent. Should we be pre...

Watts 1965, Detroit 1966, M L King 1968..... I think the polarisation of the past can look less serious just because it is in the past.

I do believe that shaming and hounding are favoured strategies of fascism (examples - passim). I do believe that using these strategies can degrade a ...

I can't help noticing that leaving people 'shamed, hounded and made permanently miserable' is also a favoured strategy of fascism. Perhaps civil disco...

So much for the persuasiveness of violence. And so wittily put.

But how much better than the alternative. Very true. There was no other way. But we are not slaves and not being treated as slaves. So we don't need t...

OK, but doesn't that run up against Moore's objection? If God prohibits actions because they are evil then we can work out we ought not to do those th...

I have been left alone. So far. I am reminded of a wrestler belittling his opponents and announcing victory before, during and after the fight, regard...

And not only new research: I don't wholly agree with that quote but sentiment (emotion) certainly has some part to play. It's not all about commands. ...

All good. I share the irritation. In addition, I think there are two traps. The first is to assume that those who reach contradictory conclusions have...

I did wonder why omniscience and some other omni's and also God appeared in your conclusion, @"Bartricks" . I looked for them and Him in the premisses...

'Wear a mask' notice was removed at the supermarket so I didn't mask. I never felt so naked except in that dream about giving a lecture in the.... oh,...

I agree. We need reality and activity in order to experience many kinds of pleasure. Virtual reality and passive experience cannot be enough.

Doesn't it amount to saying that our knowledge develops but (some of) the stuff we know about does not change? So knowledge changes, whereas (some) fa...

I am often pleasantly hungry and pleasantly sleepy. One of my greatest pleasures is to be pleasantly thirsty from hard work and then enjoy a beer. So ...

True enough, but education isn't everything. "I love you." "What exactly do you mean by 'love'? And how do you know when you love someone?" So, perhap...

I think there is some difficulty with the idea of 'probability' and 'likelihood' in the opening post. In what sense is it not likely that "fine-tuning...

If it's the Vacuumed and not the Unvacuumed then I am doomed.

Please, goodness, not him again. I think @"spirit-salamander" 's idea is that there are lots of minds, some of which (at least) are capable of using t...

Agreement on this point seems to be breaking out! I would only add that a true half is equally impossible to create (physically) - or, if created, imp...

All moral imperatives come from the single source of reason. Only a mind issues imperatives. But it does not follow that there is a single reasoning m...

I would say we can know what pi is because we learn what it is - the ratio between circumference and diameter of a circle. That's all we need to know ...

Perhaps the puzzle was a psychology experiment given to unsuspecting students in 1956 to determine whether they were undercover communists. I can thin...

Even the right answers are wrong for no reason and for all I know the wrong answers are right. This puzzle is too much like real life.

That's interesting. Are they edible or was it culling or sport?

Nope, wrong again. They are apparently Egyptian. They look hieroglyphic because any goose called 'Egyptian' will set off associations which in a brain...

Also, Egyptian geese are not Egyptian. They just look a bit hieroglyphic.

I explained one unideal sense, which is 'having one and no more than one value.' Pi is an exact number in that sense. What is the ideal sense that you...

I think we do it easily a lot of the time. Did I feel nervous about the exam? Quite the opposite. I was very confident and not nervous at all It is a ...

"Having one value and no more than one value" So the number "gazillions" is not exact: there are gazillions of people in America and gazillions of peo...