Most of politics since Thatcher and Reagan. Trumpism. Neoliberal economics. The failure to invest in social capital, such as education and health, let...
I'd go a step further and say that they are unanswerable; that they are non-questions. There simply are things that are taken as granted. But much of ...
On a quick reading, That seems to meet be what Taurek was denying; his point, in part, is that the ceretis paribus clause never applies in the real wo...
Indeed. There are folk who suppose that there can be an answer to this question, as if we could step outside of logic in order to examine it logically...
What motivates panpsychism? An old paper by Russell, which came up in a recent thread on causation, offers an explanation. An excessive reliance not t...
There's a logical difficulty that appears insurmountable in your question. Given any answer, you wold be quite justified in asking why that answer, ra...
Reliance tends to be mutual. A web of interdependence that permits us to collectively do far more than we could individually. Your recluse would be do...
While this or that thing might come to exist, existence itself doesn't. Existence is predicated of things, not of predicates. SO we can write "chiknsl...
Well, he asked for them, apparently by name, so happy to oblige - gratis. But I've some concerns about transitioning a vehicle made for Australian bus...
Causation as a criteria for demarcating science from non-science. That's something I hadn't come across before. Would you mind explaining how it works...
Yes; if it is anything it is a part of the background against which we perform. But the background, in this case, is not a part of the performance, wh...
To the first sentence, yes, scientific facts are held only tentatively. It would be an error - the error of scientism - to extend this view outside of...
That's pretty much what Hume said. Since then much ink has been spilled in trying to show otherwise, then in claiming that it don't matter anyway. The...
I pretty much agree with your account. If there is something to be found in religion, it is in the practice, and not in the analysis, in the doing and...
Logical, no conjunction of observations leads to the truth of a general rule; no finite sequence f(a) & f(b) & f(c) implies U(x)f(x)... That's clear e...
Indeed. Yep. Ethics is hard.Much harder than just consequences and duty. It requires working on oneself so that one is better placed to make the right...
Well, then sure, religion is done; but is it a thing? So questions about the concept of religion might, if you like, be considered questions as to the...
Concepts refer? What sort of thing is a concept? I think the notion quite problematic. Think I mentioned that before. I don't; understand what sort of...
Well, yes, I did. But it was not an answer to your liking. The scientist can use causal language just as you and I can. But does not use it in setting...
Anyway, what I found most interesting was the distinction between monothetic and polythetic approaches to definitions. Monothetic definitions are the ...
Well, thank you for the example, and the opportunity it offers. You see, Newton's laws do not make mention of cause. That's the point made by Russell,...
And yet induction is logical invalid, since no series of instances is sufficient to imply the general case. It is evident that the problem of inductio...
Of course scientists talk of causes, in just the same way as non-scientists. But "cause" plays little if any part in their explanations. As your own e...
Spock was interesting precisely because the writers could never quite make his total dedication to logic functional. The needs of the many outweigh th...
Liberal senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells labels Scott Morrison 'a bully with no moral compass' Nothing new here for us, just further evidence that t...
Sure, there is clearly a habit of explanation in terms of setting out sequences of events, the earlier in the sequence being named the "cause". At iss...
Ah, good call - . Here it is. I find the essay is also in "A free man's worship", which was my bible while in my late teens, so doubtless I've stolen ...
Yes, indeed. Science, and most other forms of explanation, simply do not make use of cause in the way some folk dogmatically suppose. Which is as well...
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