As the subject, this is my tendency to be capable of reporting -- but not just on any mental activity, on my mental activity. I'm wondering if there a...
I think that's a nice question, but not necessarily one that has an answer, and thinking it has to be answerable is probably a mistake. Philosophy is ...
This is the sort of thing I think is ripe for philosophical analysis, though "analysis" is a lousy word there. I even started a thread on a related ph...
The presuppositions of moral claims, viz. the existence of human beings interacting with each other. Maybe that you state it as if the two are unrelat...
You might be assuming that but I'm not. I thought your idea of their being two different rates of change was spot on, and very close to what others ha...
No, I'm just saying a prescriptive claim that would, if followed, lead to the presuppositions of moral claims being unfulfilled and unfulfillable cann...
Morality is premised on people existing, presupposes them as the cards to be sorted are presupposed in asking for them to be sorted. There are no mora...
But you don't end up with a sorted deck, which was the whole point. You've redefined the goal, and maybe the way you redefined it almost works, maybe ...
Suppose you're supposed to figure out how to sort a bunch of playing cards; the answer you come up with is throwing all the cards away, on the grounds...
Yeah. That is not a possible result for a "moral argument" if there is such a thing. Morality is for people dealing with each other; if you've got an ...
Are you under the impression I'm defending the existence of the abstract object "set of all persons" rather than the existence of the individual membe...
The paradox is immediate: the only way to make sure others are treated as they should be is to make sure there are no people at all. (As I said a very...
Many of us believe there is a pretty straightforward story that starts at kinship, which natural selection takes an interest in, to the great variety ...
And I claim that the substance of morality is how we must treat each other if we're going to live together in social groups, and nothing else. I don't...
How are we to understand this? If it's an element of the social contract, then other parties to the contract have a corresponding duty not to harm you...
I can't say I really understood your suggestion, maybe because this mostly isn't my thing. I could understand what the confusion you describe would me...
Well, watching public hearings where elected officials clearly have no idea what the tech people they're talking to are really up to -- not encouragin...
But I am very far from dismissing your worries. Oppenheimer is heroic precisely because he was rare. But after Oppenheimer, it's pretty hard to hide b...
Hrmmmm. That doesn't seem like a particularly good analogy here. I mean, almost everyone seems to think they have something like a direct experience o...
WTF? Is that anything like what I said in the post as a whole? I thought you brought up a really interesting issue; I pointed out that others have not...
Well I can say that your paradox had the sort of result I always hope for: gave me an opportunity to think through my ethical intuitions and understan...
Not alien, no, and not unheard of, but I still think the Kantian approach is wrongheaded. But to me this is clearly a mistake -- it's just a case of t...
Oppenheimer. For AI: Yudkowsky and Bostrom spring to mind. For genetic engineering: like, everyone, it's been part of the discussion all along. This i...
Well spotted -- but I wouldn't say he was confused, just wrongheaded. He had the example of Hume right in front of him, but was unable to follow it be...
Insofar as a club or a voluntary association relies on morality to be possible, that's indirect: to be a member of the club, you have to be a member o...
This is my argument all stripped down: Morality is social. Always has been. The whole point of morality is to make social groups sustainable. An idea ...
I don't think Dennett is defending something rather like "we think we're thinking but we're not". It would appear to be the philosophical theory that'...
This is fascinating. You do leave out exactly what's in your post, and which could show up in more restricted domains, which is precisely the knowledg...
Science, if it's going to offer explanations, needs something to explain. Our everyday understanding of things is a starting point; our sophisticated ...
I thought I was answering a version of "no", but mainly pointing out that his question was based on a misunderstanding of the difference between "I br...
In a sense, actually, yes, but not in the sense you think, because you're also confused about philosophy. Are there genuine moral questions? Questions...
This is actually your problem, right here. Anti-natalism is not a moral position at all. It is, as I said before, a logical paradox. It might also wor...
See there you go. Your post is a mix of cognitive psychology (Chomsky) and evolution and Kant and empiricism. And it's a bad mix. "Kant because that's...
Suppose while I was at the store you finished building a model of the Eiffel Tower out of popsicle sticks, and left it sitting on the kitchen table so...
It's pretty clear I don't believe it drifted anywhere. I know. I quoted you. What is your claim anyway? You must consider parents responsible for some...
I'm afraid my comment is not based in Kant, but what if this is just false? Or, rather, what if it is false given a disambiguation of the word "percep...
Less than a day. I thought of pointing out to him that this is not a social media platform and that responding with a meme is not a good idea here, bu...
I'm not sure there's any grounds for making "facts" the exclusive province of rationalization. Even if the reasons we give for a decision are generall...
I'll take this as a synecdoche for the whole post. This is not a problem I can solve but I'll tell you roughly why I think you're wrong. This is the w...
It's actually a very curious experience going over things like fractions and exponents with someone who has a very rich conceptual apparatus -- he's a...
If you thought Ray was only holding up the VGPS to ridicule, you could not have more totally missed the point of that record. I take umbrage, sir! On ...
The only classrooms my children have ever been in were part of "co-op" programs -- homeschooling parents who form groups to have something like school...
Yes thanks but I already know who Richard Dawkins is. What I didn't know, and am frankly gobsmacked to learn, is that Mary Midgley attacked Dawkins ba...
That all sounds fine, and pretty typical for how science, ahem, evolves, particularly the Portin quote: What I don't see is 1. Any evidence that Dawki...
Completely agree! My youngest son even learned how to read with no formal instruction at all. Meaning, we never worked on reading as a separate thing ...
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