It is true that accusations of "meaninglessness" (as well as some others, such as "incoherency") are often thrown around rather loosely. But, returnin...
Well, no, not unless you believe that metaphysical questions are necessarily as vague and pointless as the one I was criticizing. My most charitable t...
Well, I explained why your question makes no sense, but alas, all you can think of is poisoning the well. Never mind, I think others here make a much ...
That we can directly experience/feel/perceive causation is one of the positions that has been staked and defended by philosophers such as Ducasse, Arm...
See, right away you show me right. What you came up with is a pseudo-question: although it has the grammatical form of a question, it is actually quit...
Why do you assume that neuroscience has to account for things like the "subconscious mind?" The subconscious is not something that is truly and undeni...
The point, I think, is that any good, meaningful question already presupposes, if not a particular answer, then a particular kind of answer. Simply as...
You are not offering a counter-argument, you are denying the premise - two premises in fact: that time is infinite and that infinite time provides suf...
Well, anything we contemplate becomes an abstraction in our mind. This goes for "things" as well as not-"things". Why not? We travel forward in time, ...
I am not sure I understand what tension you see here. So there are "things" that "literally exist" - what are those things? Tangible things that you s...
I want to challenge this presumption that an action can only be given an ethical valuation by sorting it into some preexisting categories - or more ge...
Well, that is what motivates studies (or "demonstrations") like Zimbardo's and Milgrams on the one hand, and serves as the main target for criticism o...
That kind of describes my reaction to your posts here, U. I don't know what to think of your exaggerated slippery-slope appeals. I am afraid there is ...
Yes, I think I understand what you mean. It's hard to say just what Zimbardo aimed to prove - his 'experiment' was a mess and the legacy of his activi...
As a side-note, while reading the SPE article in particular, as well as some of the others, I was struck by the choice of historical examples that jou...
I don't really understand your or Latour's point here. Insufficiency for what? Milgram himself had certain psychological models in mind that he wanted...
Deceptive and manipulative behavior isn't always a sin, and when it is, it isn't necessarily a big deal - that's my point. We do it all the time, even...
Here is another one for you: As for why study this - as if we didn't already know that people can treat each other horribly - the job of a social psyc...
Well, the story told by Zimbardo is that it was a fellow psychologist (and later his wife) who was horrified by what she saw and persuaded Zimbardo to...
Yes, as if the subject of psychology wasn't hellishly complex enough, psychologists' work is further complicated by the difficulty of conducting exper...
Here is an op-ed by a psychologist who did not include the Stanford study in his textbook - and he made that decision while taking Zimbardo's report a...
And here is a critical article about the Milgram experiment: Rethinking One of Psychology's Most Infamous Experiments. From what I have read though, i...
For a broad overview you can't go wrong with the SEP: Free Will And you can drill down from there. You may also want to read some of the articles list...
While I agree with the gist of this - there is a conspicuous philosophical backbone in Einstein's theories - Einstein was not a metaphysician working ...
The thing is, this whole cycle of escalation/deescalation is pretty much entirely driven by NK. They ramp up the tensions, then when things almost see...
So how about if we measure weight with a thermometer? (We'll just call it a "weight-measuring device"... for good measure.) We are measuring something...
The block universe is just one way of conceptualizing the universe; the fact that we can think of the universe this way by itself does not testify in ...
You keep saying this, but when you are asked what that standard is, you demur or insist that the measurement is the standard. No, that won't work eith...
Besides, an IQ test does not merely give a binary answer: is or is not intelligent - it is supposed to measure the amount of intelligence on a unidime...
Yes. But here you have liquid, or liquid volume, and a measurement of that volume, and the two are not necessarily the same. We could say that the rea...
Heh, you don't have to go far for examples - no need for intergalactic travel - just look at us. Kantian or not, that's what we've been doing with eac...
Or they may have been around a little bit longer, or their scientific and technological achievement curve was a little steeper for whatever reason. We...
These are interesting thoughts and observations. One thing I would like to note though is that brain size and even the sheer amount of cognitive activ...
If IQ tests measure intelligence and intelligence is nothing other than what IQ tests measure, then I cannot see how an IQ test can be inaccurate, eve...
No, my point is not that we are unable to find the completely rational understanding due to our own limitations, but that there may not be this comple...
First I must say that, for all the good will that I have towards Ukraine, I have very little trust in their SBU (secret police) and authorities in gen...
Well, if you completely eschew any non-mental aspects of the PSR and treat it idealistically-epistemologically, then you end up with tautologies of th...
My feeling is that the problem is either solved through semantic collapse, i.e. "S knows that P" means exactly the same as "S knows that S knows that ...
No disagreement here, but, as I keep saying, this is too weak to even be called a Principle, and doesn't really sound like the PSR in Leibnitz's or Sc...
Seeing as your responses have degenerated into hostile retorts, I don't know if it is worth continuing this conversation. But I'll give it another try...
Why? Your only stated reason is that it just can't be. Something that is present in some, but not all places can be divisible, presumably. Why not som...
That's what I said, no? I don't really know what sort of an entity an omnipresent consciousness would be - but that's all the more reason for doubting...
To dismiss Trump's argument on the basis of his character would be a fallacy. But since Trump doesn't present arguments, that is rather a moot point. ...
These are all good points, and of course, I agree, there are important differences between in-person communication and other forms. But such differenc...
That is factually incorrect. Dreams are a subject for science - and I don't just mean "objective" measures like REM observations, brain imaging, etc. ...
And this is different from "real life" (or whatever you want to call it)... how? This is such a last-century attitude towards communication on the Int...
Well, in my opinion the PSR is wrong-headed, but specific criticisms need specific examples to which to address them. I don't want to dive into Spinoz...
As I said earlier, this modest observation that we do in fact look for explanations (in the broadest sense of the world) for things is not much of an ...
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