Cuthbert

Erik: "But who knows, maybe he's doing democracy a service by questioning some of our most cherished democratic assumptions in the hopes of reinvigora...

Also: cui bono? Ten days after Skripal, £48m magically appeared for a new facility to combat chemical weapons. https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-brita...

I'm more inclined to go with Pseudonym and deny the premiss that it's right to exclude minors from voting whilst hanging on to the view that everyone ...

"Someone does not automatically get more votes under an epistocracy." I'm attacking Brennan and Estlund who argue for that exact policy. "Brennan sugg...

Precisely so. I was giving a not too charitable summary of the position I am attacking. The epistocratic assumption is that the uneducated lack the wi...

OK let's give it a whirl. Before we go ahead, how do I explain to my next door neighbour that he gets only one vote and I get three when he is as good...

Nozick's ok if you can agree a starting position in the past. But since we all derive our means from a sequence of transfers that probably started wit...

Certainly not a hi-jack as far as I'm concerned. Curiously, yesterday BBC Radio 4 broadcast a couple of interviews with 10 - 11 year olds about Brexit...

"If the majority of uneducated people are voting in favor of racists and those who would intentionally harm certain populations, then their individual...

Yes, that's a good point, Pseudonym. Why am I not in favour of 8 year olds having a vote? Their interests matter as much as anyone's and a bright and ...

Freud, I guess. https://www.communicationtheory.org/psychoanalytic-theory-of-communication/

"Regarding argument one: while knowledge does not necessarily make you wiser, it does make it more likely that you are." To test this hypothesis - "Hi...

When the dog barks up the unoccupied tree where it saw a squirrel run yesterday I imagine that it's thinking about squirrels. I can tell you that I im...

Ok, point granted, if we agree to turn a blind eye to harvesting organs from the Falun Gong and believe all the Chinese say and all that we would like...

Is there a difference between epistocracy and voter qualification by a test of intellectual capacity? I thought they were the same thing. The more you...

Yes, and I'm anti-Plato 101. I think Plato held that wisdom was a higher kind of knowledge. When you truly know what are goodness and justice then you...

The suffragettes - like the serfs in Russia and Black people in South Africa - used undemocratic means simply because they had no access to democratic...

The views I mean are just those we express by voting - 'Yes' to this candidate and 'No' to the others. Yes, it matters whether views are justified. An...

Yes, assuming the masses cannot decide for themselves what are their sincere beliefs and what is mere brainwashing of people who are easily misled. Bu...

The practised and trained surgeon, of course, Socrates. And if I need a government I'd prefer one that has the consent (at least) of the population ra...

I see that. Now, when we ask ourselves - 'What are those undoubtable statements - specifically?' - and we find that one by one we can reject plausible...

Statements which cannot coherently be doubted in one world view can come to be doubted in another. There is no absolute 'beyond doubt' set of statemen...

Yes. you're right, he does. I meant to go exploring the reasons one might have for choosing a performative utterance rather than a mere statement or p...

Yes, some propositions are true and some are false. Moore does not answer the skeptic and does not claim to. He puts the skeptic on the back foot, how...

Yes, I agree with that. But I think Moore's use of performative utterances in the argument - not 'I know this is my hand' but 'Here is a hand', i.e. h...

Thank you, Sam. I think your interpretation of W is spot on. But I don't think W's interpretation of Moore is quite on target.

The chess bishop is a bishop just because we say it is. We can stipulate rules for a game such as chess. The question 'How do you know it's a bishop' ...

You mean the people who control the way information goes round the internet have come to an agreement not to promote an initiative called Sw***ika G**...

If you can doubt whether you are thinking, then you are thinking. Doubt is a kind of thinking. That's why the argument is said to be based on 'Cartesi...

There is a PhD waiting to be written about moral panic and snow. Every time it snows in winter in the UK there is a minor moral panic in the press inv...

Only problem being that one of us would have to assassinate the other. Hmm. Perhaps there's something to be said for one-person-one-vote after all.

Oops, my mistake..! Irony blindness is only one step short of a sense of humour bypass and I don't want one of those.

But since the Government governs us all then it is presumed we each and all care about it for ourselves, even if not for others. If you still can't be...

"But whatever be their degree of talent it is no measure of their rights. Because Sir Isaac Newton was superior to others in understanding, he was not...

But I did refer to my own (future, fortunately) expiry and the reference works. I think what you're getting at is that being dead will be the state my...

I passed out once for ten minutes. When I came round, I had no idea how long I'd been out. Another time I passed out for twenty minutes, same result. ...

Thank you, Rene. I see my role here as providing occasional relief from T***p and am glad it is appreciated.

One problem with Steven Pinker's conclusion is that he does not account for spiritual well-being. Knowledge, material wealth, decline in deaths from w...

It's your topic, Rene! Subsection 6). Did anyone hear the brilliant adaptation of Margaret Atwood's 'The Robber Bride' on BBC R4? I'm looking forward ...

"6) Whateve else you want to do even though it has nothing to do with Trump." I think some people who claim Bowie or the Sex Pistols changed their liv...

Welcome, because the most important questions are: What kind of stuff did Shelley write? What makes you able to laugh? What did Dorothy's lion lack?

I think words get into the Oxford Eng dictionary only by being current and not by being promoted. It's not Google or Twitter. It's odd that the word i...

"Basically, the problem is money." The problem is not money in itself. Money is a great invention because it can be used to mediate exchange between g...

Ndoki: A man in a pub told me that Zeus is a dead cert at 25:1.

We can evaluate beliefs not only in terms of whether a person has a belief or not but also, if he has a belief, how sincerely he holds it. E.g. I beli...

We do not know whether there are infinitely many twin primes. We can imagine the set of twin primes to be infinite. But if the set turns out to be fin...

"It seems likely to me that political squabbles would cease as people began to digest the notion that human civilization is essentially at an end, ......

I don't think Kant would oblige you to reject the award. He would merely not characterise the motivation for the act (and therefore the act itself) as...

A traditional solution is to hold more than one competition. One for the effortless geniuses. That prize will always be won by the girl, unless anothe...

L is equivalent to L' because both are ill-formed. All ill-formed (non-propositional) statements are materially equivalent, because they are all devoi...