Bullseye on the etiological myths. A pattern readily observable in folk stories throughout history and across cultures. _______ On the OP’s point: The...
Easy. In theologese the "actual thing" referenced, though not a physical thing like a chair, is a mysterious spiritual thing, like choirs of angels an...
People demonstrably can and do assign truth values to moral statements, just as we routinely assign truth values to claims ranging from "the cat is on...
Surely if scientists found philosophy useful for achieving their scientific goals and purposes, they would embrace it. Thus, anyone whose opinion it i...
Whether a given endeavor or claim is scientific or not is a judgment call. if the criteria centrally includes very rigorously designed theoretical and...
Hello everyone. Some thoughts: Perhaps if we differentiate understanding and meaning, we can clarify our conceptualization and use of the word ‘meanin...
Religious and political ideologies are so readily able to inspire violence against non-adherents because the human animal is evolved to profoundly ide...
Two questions arise: (1) Doesn't the very notion of "testing" for something presuppose the very regularities at issue in the problem of induction? (2)...
As I said earlier, I think history reveals that the problem lies essentially in intransigent subscription to any ideology, whether religious or politi...
I don't understand what you mean here. Can't tell if you're agreeing or challenging. My point is that relationships (of any kind) cannot meaningfully ...
I agree, opportunity lost. I've heard it said that the establishment of the theocracy in Iran was a reactionary response to too radically abrupt a soc...
Indeed. But the individuals and societies they were interacting with were not evidencing or demanding the widely established liberal values that inter...
Isn't causation a conceptual relationship--a mental construct, an explanatory model, a way of thinking about the world that has no actual independent ...
Muslim societies have not had anywhere near the external interrelationships and pressures that are currently in play. It is these that can and do prov...
Seems to me that the lesson we might take from the problem of induction is that our ability to construct rational grounds for our behavior has hit a l...
Yes. Indeed, Christian theocracy is no longer tolerated--it is constrained by the larger society in which those with such a goal are a subgroup withou...
Confidence, except when stipulated as in statistics, is psychological, a state of mind not necessarily consistent with the logic or even the facts of ...
Muslims simply need to become cherry-picking experts tendentiously selecting, ignoring, emphasizing, explaining away, and re-defining the text, like J...
It occurs to me that intransigent adherence to an ideology, whether religious or political, that demonizes non-adherents as mortal enemies is what mot...
Seems to me that even in the last couple of decades, let alone the last century, Christian societies have killed. maimed, and hurt a WHOLE LOT MORE in...
If Smith truthfully asserts "I am certain that P" or "P is certain," what is anyone else to make of such assertions other than (1) Smith's mental or p...
Sure, physics and math can demonstrate more progress and more promise, but this does not imply that philosophy is harder. Perhaps philosophy can't dem...
Jesus. My first post in months, and the first response is a complete non seq. Which, I might note, supports my assertion that rational thought is very...
Much philosophy is the record of the human predelection for posing engaging questions, speculations, arguments, and counterarguments that seem to be i...
Yes, categories have fuzzy bounfaries. (I don't think imaginary nymbers is anywhere near such a boundary, btw.) A major indicator of the categorical d...
What Trump will run into, though, that he's never had to deal with previously, is that he needs Congress to do what he wants, and can't fire then when...
The conventions by which we judge the truth or falsity of established math, logic, and science claims are universally agreed upon and once established...
If there's not a difference between two things, then there are not two things. But whether the differences are significant or insignificant, relevant ...
This is a false equivalency. Saying that some math principles persist through time sidesteps the fact that the vast majority of established math princ...
Moral conventions demonstrably are culturally and historically situated. Historically situated means operant in a given culture during a given time sp...
We can readily see though, that we can differentiate two distinct categories of conventions relevant to this discussion: (1) conventions that are esta...
To insist pedantically that the paramount issue is the technical invalidity of the conclusion that Bannon is a racist is to ignore the evidence consis...
Sorry, not interested in developing the analogy. The Bannon issue is a pragmatic political judgment, and as I noted, the distinction between whether h...
Well, they're your kids. What I should have asked, more analogously to the Bannon situation, is do you think it would be prudent to hire the child por...
The distinction between a racist and a paid, professional who knowingly enabled racism and gave no evidence of disapproval is a distinction without a ...
The political fact of the matter is that the public cares little about the difference between whether a high official was a racist or just a paid, pro...
Laws are typically pragmatic formalized applications of societal mores. And such mores typically are those considered to have the greatest moral signi...
What exactly is the relevant difference between managing and promoting an organization noted as a platform for racist, (as well as sexist, and xenopho...
Seems to me that if you can't demonstrate, either logically or empirically, that the unobserved factors are real things rather than ideas of things, t...
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