Pfhorrest

Sounds to me like you’ve got some kind of defensive denial going on where it makes you really uncomfortable that people are even talking about this su...

Swan, you seem to be getting kind of upset, and also talking past me, saying some of the same things I'm saying back at me. I think you didn't read th...

and it does seem to me like you are both trying to dive into talking about the unimportance of the sociological stuff, while missing that half the poi...

As a general response to everything you wrote, I just want to point out two things from my OP: the last line, "of course all three may have strong inf...

Native American civilizations frequently had nonbinary gender categories such as Berdache and "two-spirit". Third genders are widespread throughout th...

It's probably useful to point out that the reason Money originally coined the concept of "gender" distinct from "sex" was to be able to talk about the...

This is just Plantinga's free will theodicy, and it depends entirely upon an incompatibilist conception of free will. On a compatibilist conception of...

There is extensive philosophical debate about whether moral knowledge, if such is possible, is necessarily motivating, especially at that connects to ...

Christians should treat animals the same way everyone should treat animals.

Choosing is just a mechanical function. You could build a machine that chooses things, that functions according to ordinary physical causality. Evolut...

I just took a walk around Krotona today.

I'm not referring to myself as an authority, just pointing to an already-written argument elsewhere so as not to fill this thread with off-topic argum...

I'm not making that case. I just saw an exchange that looked like someone else stating that opinion and admitting that they don't have sufficient evid...

You're confusing one's epistemic liberty to hold an opinion with others' epistemic obligation to agree to it. You need evidence to oblige others to ch...

Critical rationalists beg to differ, because the contrary entails that nobody should ever believe anything.

The burden of proof is not "hold no positions until there is sufficient evidence of them" but "hold no positions that there is sufficient evidence aga...

You have a point about checking the soundness of ability testing, but again, I am not talking about measuring opportunity directly, just checking if i...

Distribution of various kinds of ability is measured in many varied scientific studies, straightforwardly. I don’t know what more to say about that. A...

In support of that: if outcome is the product of opportunity and ability, and ability has a normal (gaussian) distribution as most statistics about hu...

If I may make an observation without reading the entire thread first: Any system that helps people in proportion to their disadvantages without regard...

I'm sorry your autism gives you difficulty with this. I've long suspected I might be somewhere on the spectrum too so you have my sympathies in that r...

It's a different matter when we're talking about political officials who should know better as part of their job, but I have a first-hand anecdote abo...

That is the premise I think I would disagree with, for the same (or at least an analogous) reason that I disagree with Berkeley's principle that "to b...

Thanks so much, works like a charm!

I understand that that there's a tense argument that's been going on here for a while but please don't act like I'm attacking you by talking about cha...

If we are a bit charitable about how those "necessarily"s are meant to apply, that looks valid to me. (That is, if we take it as meaning "It is necess...

I agree vehemently with the idea that free will is more related to moral issues than to metaphysical ones, but it sounds like you're also making a met...

and everyone (but in response to this particular post; I'm still not clear how to quote-reply), If I may make a quick observation before bed: Bartrick...

I'm not sure that that's really a problem. Compare for example commercial value. Something is commercially valuable, in an intransitive way, if there ...

That is a good point, but if I may be charitable to Bartricks again, I think perhaps what they're aiming for is something along the lines of "if and o...

Not to detract from your generally good post, but to add one small point: I think it's important to quantify the terms in the arguments there. When yo...

If I may interrupt this argument to extend the principle of charity to the OP, I think they are aiming to espouse essentially the core of philosophies...

I feel like I might be missing some background context between you and uncanni or something, but I think "I" statements are an essential part of not c...

Free will theodicies depend entirely upon an incompatibilist conception of free will. On a compatibilist conception of free will, it's entirely possib...

Thanks for clarifying. I wasn't accusing you of chiding me or anything, just taking the opportunity to ask about a norm I had been wondering about any...

Thanks for pointing that out. I'm new here (that was my first post besides in the introduction thread) so I'm a little unclear on what the norms here ...

It's not really the standard usage of the term, so I wouldn't offer it as a descriptive definition, but I've been thinking recently that it could be u...

Hi everyone. My name's Forrest and I'm looking for a place to discuss philosophical topics since my usual source for such discussion, the xkcd forums,...