mcdoodle

I asked a reasonable question. I await a reasonable response. I don't answer surveys out of nowhere.

Did it occur to you that posting this might affect the credibility of anything else you wrote?

No. Have you another word for the medium of such adult-infant communication? Or would you just say it's 'gesture' which is not 'language'?

Did anyone yet explain how their objections amounted to a shortening of this list?

I'm late to this party, I was out enjoying myself. One thing that happened earlier today was, I was watching a bunch of children and their carers play...

I'm just back from Hull, City of Culture this year in the UK. You may know Spencer Tunick's most recent work was there, I occasionally meet people who...

I agree it's not much to do with Judeo-Christian beliefs, though Acts is quite communist. I don't know about variables like 'population density'. It's...

The evidence is ambiguous and causal claims are unprovable. Still, History is largely a discipline. There are many facts, some interpretations. It tur...

Argument and emotional appeal are, together, rhetoric. The judicious combination of each element is what's required. You will need to understand both ...

I do think mutuality is natural. I find 'altruism' as a virtue a modern annoyance; it seems to accompany a belief in natural egoism that I don't follo...

I have both 'instincts' too. If you want something doing, ask a busy person, for instance: they will have stepped forward when everyone else responded...

I agree with andrewk, that the modern nation-state is half the child of Weberism, of a 'centrist' or 'liberal' belief in benevolent management by the ...

Perhaps Uncle Fred is right even though such a view seems to lead to a cult of heroic individual leadership. What am I to do, though, with my positive...

Tiff, the moment he climbed into G W Bush's pocket, armed only with a dodgy dossier, was the moment his posthumous reputation was assured. The man who...

Magnets create much more orderly order than conscious beings, who in my experience are always leaving random stuff in the sink and putting unflushable...

Ample make this bed. Make this bed with awe; In it wait till judgment break Excellent and fair...

I agree with John that it's a pervasive orientation. One has to go to Heidegger or social psychology because analytic philosophy mostly assumes we are...

We do however make judgments of others in formulating policies, for instance. An industry should not imply child labour except under certain stringent...

Yes, the thing with feathers :)

Just being wry.

Here we have a dangerous consensus emerging. Writing a novel, for instance, which I've done in a few times in my life: it's like climbing an awesomely...

HI Fafner, nice to see you here.

I love big bold concrete buildings that insist on their concreteness, which I suppose is some sort of modernism in me! Big Green Things I would like t...

Being costly and unproductive is definitely a utilitarian perspective, so I don't see how you claim it's a meta-ethical one.

I think I have to grant you that. There would be a question to me about whether Hamlet deliberates or prevaricates. He comes to know what act he would...

Here I think you're going back on your own original impulse about 'use', though, and I admire the original impulse more. We find ourselves saying word...

I'm 68 and my life hasn't been the way you're talking about I am deeply pessimisitic about all sorts of things but I've lived a fairly adventurous lif...

I agree. Analytic philosophy tends to argue that one can somehow choose one's brute beliefs, or they're random. But they are historically-situated, an...

It is dissatisfying, but sometimes some old bugger says 'I refute it thus!' and then you're stuck for an answer, and have to wander off to find questi...

That's an interesting question in itself though not the one you're initially posing. To my mind our likely shared language would be gesture. On this r...

Aren't you being circular though? Brute facts don't have explanations. But you want there to be an explanation for what makes a brute fact. I don't th...

The right-wing papers are describing May as 'in office but not in power', which makes you feel maybe her time is up. I feel alarmed at the idea of the...

I find *some* people are here *some* of the time, and that's all right if it stays civilised and sometimes it sharpens one's thinking process. If it w...

Your body and your habits implicitly remember, they embody memories, or you wouldn't have learnt to do stuff, surely? Then the question is, should I j...

I do of course talk to myself in deliberation. At the moment of decision-making, I'm not so sure. For some reason I imagine people who are still think...

Thanks, that's the perspective I seem to have found myself looking from. The Aristotelian formulation would be that you train yourself, or are trained...

That interests me too. Among the UK Tories, for instance, there's a lot of anti-renewables rhetoric. No windfarms here, sort of thing. And yet in thei...

I don't know quite why 'identity politics' is regarded as Green, but one general thing is that if you think about the implications of 'environmental' ...

Thanks for the thread :) Last night I sang at a gig where the guest of our choir (the hosts) sang five of his agreed four numbers, so I suppose it's f...

I've been writing a piece for Academe about 'the familiar' so I've been thinking about this too. It does seem to me that in developing our first langu...

Jamalrob, I can't cope with the shoutbox like this, it moves on so fast while I'm rehearsing for a choir gig, kind of thing...you wrote stuff a couple...

Hey, thanks for that. I didn't know the Waits song (which I think is co-written by Kathleen Brennan). Maybe one of them half-remembered the Randy Newm...

I like Lomborg although I'm part of the Green movement. Provocateurs like him force Greens to sharpen up their act. The phrases you quote are by Sharo...

Well, I believe you've used this phrase 'would imply' before. It seems to me unsatisfactory in an explanation. I remain, as you say, a broken record. ...

You said 'We all instinctively seek to eliminate our subjective view in favour of an objective one...' I don't accept this. What is the scientufic, an...

I wonder if poets might be a better guide.

I do admire Bjorn Lomborg, if only because he is the only cool statistician on the planet. Can there even be such a thing? Still, an Accord in Paris i...

I think of Chomsky (going back several pages) with great fondness. I agree with Mongrel, he did a fine thing in opposing behaviourism, and his breakth...

I think Rawls and virtue ethics are two very different tracks and I don't go down the Rawls track for many reasons which would take another thread. Bu...

I'm the opposite, though. I like virtue ethics, because that seems to be how people are: we value clusters of attributes or characteristics - virtues ...