A Seagull

Compared to most Western Democratic countries Bernie is neither radical nor socialist nor even leftist, he would be a centrist moderate.

An interesting article. Not sure why it refers to itself as an epistemology. It highlights the conflation of pure and applied mathematics. (a priori a...

Sweet dreams!

Clearly it isn't.

It is much more interesting when people talk about something they believe in rather than something they don't.

God is a myth, the devil is a fiction.

The significant distinction between these two statements is that one relates to the real world and is ultimately founded on sense data, while the othe...

'Christmas' was originally a pagan festival to celebrate the end of the year.. the winter solstice (in the Northern hemisphere). There were domestic a...

'What I really want is techniques for for how to live and techniques for how to to approach life as it is'. My suggestion: Learn about the world. Focu...

"by applying appropriate tests under appropriate criteria' seem pretty wishy-washy to me. It is just a sort of meaningless hand waving argument that i...

Are you saying that nothing is nothing?

'If truth is a matter of belief/consideration, how do you distinguish it from opinion or a lie?' Well that is a moot question. First, all communicatio...

Well enjoy! :)

I have no idea, I don't follow baseball. What is your point? Are you trying to claim that consensus equals undeniable certainty?

I am not sure what you mean by 'verifiable performative function'. Of course 'similarly situated observers' cannot be compelled to 'assent'. You seem ...

Well , the word 'truth' would seem to have 2 uses: 1. If a person considers something to be 'true', then they would have no need to investigate the da...

Yes people have believed and indeed still do believe things that other people think are not true. And even people have believed things to be true and ...

IMO truth is best viewed as a label for an idea, perhaps expressed as a statement or proposition, that one believes to be an accurate representation o...

I think what InPitzotl is referring to is the rational calculations that take place 'below' the level of language.

The 'lowdown' on the beautiful theory can be found in my book 'The pattern paradigm', but you won't like it. lol.

But the beauty of it is that you could never tell that it was 'false'. Instead one has to rely on a more pragmatic test.. ie does it work? or at least...

You would introduce them to the ideas in a way that they can understand and without telling a lie. eg 'Daddy did a bad thing and has been taken away b...

Well then it follows that the Sunday schools are acting immorally. Children are impressionable, and they are trying to understand the world and how it...

Creationism is a story, the bible tells a story. It is fine to tell children stories, so long as they are not posed as factual or true. You can base m...

Lying to children is always immoral.

What form would your 'education for good moral judgement' take?

If there is no god there is no problem, at least not a philosophical one.

It really depends upon the size of the community. Within a small community people would undoubtedly act in co-operation with other people without any ...

OK perhaps I misunderstood you. Certainly as part of ones model of the world is the idea that there is a real world out there that one can learn about...

You are referring to the common or normative usage of the word 'true', in which case I would agree with you. But it is IMO a naive usage. It works fin...

It is the interpretation of the statement (as opposed to the statement itself) and its correspondence to one's model of the world that enables it to b...

Because if you choose to believe something for which there is no rationality, then you leave the rational world and enter a fantasy world. And there i...

But then you are entering a world of fiction, fantasy.

IMO the only way that it can be logically inferred that a 'cat is on a 'mat' is from a boot strap process of pattern identification from sense data. I...

The only way you can learn 'new facts about how to use language' is through communication, using language.

But that itself is a 'communication'.

Well yes I was thinking that the information about your weight would be of more interest to your doctor than to a fellow philosopher!

Communication is a two-tired process, there is the sender and there is the receiver. Learning is a very complex process and not directly linked to com...

What 'appropriate criteria'?

What 'conceptual schema'? What 'sentiment'?

The rate at which I can communicate data from my mind to yours is limited by the means of the communication ie sounds, or symbols on a piece of paper;...

It is not particularly ambiguous, but it is also over-precise. You do not weigh 196.00000000000000000000 lbs. so what do you estimate are the error ma...

Language has the sole purpose of communication. And of course there are limits to the efficacy of communication, you can think of it as a bandwidth pr...

The problem you refer to lies within language itself. Words inherently have a range of meanings. If I have an image in my mind that I am trying to com...

Why do you want to?

Well I congratulate you! It is good to find fun in the little things, but personally I have had more fun having a root canal. :)

A believes that there is a cup in the cupboard. He/she opens the door and realises that he/she was mistaken. What is so hard about that? Why complicat...

Lol The first thing people need to learn before they can get educated is that there is something they need, or at least want, to learn. PS Does it not...

If the scientific method is not the primary process for discerning facts about the world ( Is that what scientism is?), then what process is?

Absolutely right! If you don't want to contribute then don't. I am quite happy to toss a few extra coins in the hat to cover for you, not because I ex...