Brainglitch

Exactly. Latent variables are inferred, a mental construct, part of a mental model. Thus, consistent with an anti-realist metaphysics.

Just as the sleep-inducing properties of opium stem from its "virtus dormitiva".

Non seq. Not to mention that you don't know that nobody has said it about him. Your feeling about what Christian and Muslims would say hardly constitu...

So you're OK with his substantive content, you just don't like his style and attitude.

It's something Harris has said should be anyone's goal when challenging someone's argument. He did not originate the idea, but has promoted it. It's t...

If you're going to savage what Harris has actually argued and the way he's argued it, you might consider: (1) reading the books the arguments are pres...

Well, it seems to me that a charge such as "he uses a vacuous definition of science" without demonstrating what his definition is and how it is vacupu...

You're right, I've been careless. Apologies. I'll be more attentive BTW, thanks for the editorial effort you do for the forum.

Why not give one or two of your ideas a test run in a thread? Indeed, each of the New Atheists has said things that can be analyzed and challenged wit...

Without actually reading the books, it's certainly possible to learn much about what an author proposes from competent reviews. But if one ia out to s...

The context here is not that somebody simply mentioned in passing that they'd read reviews they judged to be insightful and wouldn't be expending any ...

OMG, this borders on actually addressing substantive content. Everything else, just fog.

Yes, nut-jpbs do it all the time. The point is, though, if your purpose is to persuade rational others to acceot your arguments, then you need to argu...

Dodge. This is an inapt analogy that somebody should've called you on long ago. Harris's arguments are about areas of discourse that you accept as leg...

Sure. But if you're going to jump up on a soapbox and publicly rail against a particular author, and make blanket charges that are little more than na...

Ah, his reviewers. So now your contribution to philosophical discussion is to spread the good news that some reviewers with whom you agree criticized ...

So are you going to actually address the substantive content?

What's nice about reasoned argument--in philosophy or elsewhere--is that it actually addresses the substantive content--the specific propositions, log...

Well, just how united we ever were, from the earliest settlements on, is debateable.

It is a well-known fact that tiny banana Republicans are the ones who compensate by buying the biggest guns.

Actually, I think science, philosophy, language, concepts, life, and, of course, forum discussions ... are quite messy.

Well, I think there is not literally unanimous agreement, but surely is virtually universal agreement about the vast majority of claims about factual ...

Ha! There ya go.

Q.E.D.

OF course the dead have citizensjip. They even vote in some places.

P1: Banno be dead. P2: Banno be Australian. P3: The evidence here shows that he refuses to stop talking. C: Dead Australians can talk

P1: Banno is dead. P2: Banno was Australian. P3: The evidence here shows that he refuses to stop talking. C: Dead Australians can talk Q.E.D.

If the truth or falsity of a claim can be determined objectively, I think this means that it'ds available for indpendent inspection and judgement. The...

What if we construe "cause" as an event(s) or set of contingencies, without which, a subsequent event we call the "effect" would not have occured, and...

What would these reasons possibly be, other than speculative hypotheses unencumbered by empirical evidence?

If logically coherent hypotheses for both is presented, how, in principle, can dispute about whether experience is caused by interaction with an alleg...

They want what they believe would be radical change. This doesn't imply that their belief was well thought out. As I read somewhere yesterday, Clinton...

I think perhaps, that what motivated a lot of people's vote for what they believed would be radical change is their underlying recognition that insani...

The difference is that scientific "judgments" are based on clearly defined, universally agreed upon criteria, and are publicly observable. This includ...

But a moral realist is not just declaring that you believe a given behavior to be moral or immoral. A moral relativist does this too. (As for that mat...

By and large, religious beliefs presuppose moral realism, but moral realism does not entail religious belief. So, It is certainly possible to be a mor...

Even when there's an agreed moral framework, there is still much disagreement about whether given behaviors are moral or immoral, as well-knowm divide...

In science, there most typically are universally agreed upon, clearly defined criteria that the judgments are based on. Everybody understands how much...

I agree that objective refers to the external vs. internal, and this is consistent with what I said about the scientific argument and data being put o...

ob·jec·tive adjective 1. (of a person or their judgment) not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts. "histo...

I disagree that any cause is, by definition, a part of nature, a state of the world which results in another. So-called supernatural causes are outsid...

For a proposition, hypothesis, etc. to be demonstrated scientifically typically means something along the lines of presenting logically rigorous argum...

I have very distinctly said that the reasoning is logically fallacious and explained this in detail. And I explained that my belief or unbelief in the...

The defining distinction that differentiates naturalistic from supernatural explanations is that supernatural explanations posit a supernatural agent ...

What seems to have entirely escaped your understanding is that we can analyse the logic of an argument independently of what we may believe about the ...

My view is that I may well be mistaken about virtually anything I say. And I am eager to hear reasoned analyses of, and counter-arguments to, the subs...

I am saying that the conclusion is not logically entailed by the premise. That is, just because we don't have a naturalistic explanation for something...

Each time the devil's advocate concluded that since there is no known naturalistic explanation for the healing, then the healing was a confirmed mirac...

It us a fallacious argument because it violates the rules of logic. It does not logically follow that if we don't have a naruralistic explanation for ...

Blatant non seq. The fact that a naturalistic explanation is not known does not entail that therefore Goddidit. And the claim that Goddidit is a blata...