That use of the word 'revelation' is completely different from how I have ever seen it used. You are free to define the word however you want, but wit...
It's a crucial distinction. Sometimes the word 'policy' (policy discussion, policy debate) is used to encompass the second kind and distinguish it fro...
No, I verify them for myself, and if they survive the verification process, I (provisionally, being a sceptic) believe them. Admittedly, that does mak...
Yes, of course it is my position that the former can be revelation and the latter cannot. There's no 'seems' about it. I stated that position already,...
So you claim. Like I (or rather, Mr Paine) said, hearsay. This sounds similar to the claims in the preface of my Quran, which say that the numerologic...
I suspect you are the only person in the world to use that definition. For the rest of us, circular reasoning is where the conclusion is used as a pre...
"the Biblical text is revelatory - its aim is to reveal many things that are hidden." As Thomas Paine (not an atheist) pointed out, if any text is rev...
This is not consistent with my understanding. But perhaps the apparent conflict lies in words like 'usual interpretation'. If I have a null hypothesis...
I'm afraid don't know what you mean by typical method. If I were to use binomial distributions to calculate a level of confidence (a p-value) that the...
Except that the mathematical concept of 'random' doesn't apply to strings of symbols. The concept normal can be used instead, but the expansion of pi ...
Can you elaborate a little please? Are you suggesting that hypothesis tests are always invalid under a strict Bayesian approach, or only that the vast...
By the way, you're not alone in struggling with the notion of randomness. Most statements by philosophers that invoke the concept are pure nonsense, a...
I wouldn't like to say. That way leads a discussion about the meaning of Omnipotence, involving questions such as 'Can God make a stone so heavy that ...
I'm not sure that God could play dice. Because for me an essential feature of playing dice is not knowing what the outcome will be. Perhaps that's wha...
I would guess that Jorn means 'if all attainable evidence is consistent with both, then further knowledge is unattainable'. In that case, we have no e...
I find it a useful way to think of things. It enables one to work out what controversies there is no point in discussing. I find ontological debates o...
Science doesn't think of time as being anything. Science doesn't do ontology. All science does with time is develop equations that use time to help us...
I remember thinking about Bostrom's argument while puzzling over the Sleeping Beauty Problem, which grew into a massive thread on PhysicsForums before...
I agree. In fact, like this one, nearly all sentences that anybody ever utters are as meaningful to idealists as to materialists. It is only when one ...
I would say that, for an idealist, an event is imaginary if it was invented and narrated by somebody that had no good reason to suppose that it ever h...
The question is though, given Korzybski's concerns about the use of 'is' in the 'identity' sense (concerns that presumably arose later in his life, su...
The imaginary vs real distinction doesn't relate to the question of Idealism vs Materialism. Both Idealists and Materialists make the imaginary vs rea...
I was talking to an Indonesian the other day, who told me that in the Indonesian language there is no verb 'to be'. That appears to make it a real-lif...
None of those questions make any difference to the only relevant question, which is whether more human suffering can be alleviated by giving locally t...
Yes he did: Your only defence was: which is simply incorrect. Saving a life in sub-Saharan Africa costs far, far less than saving a life in an OECD co...
I think that most people that think of themselves as irreductionists would answer Yes to that question. I would answer yes. I think maybe @"Wayfarer" ...
has anybody mentioned Romain Rolland's Oceanic Feeling yet? For me, that's as good an attempt as I've seen to capture what spirituality is about. It a...
I don't think that's an accurate characterisation of the Irreductionist view. It implies that the irreductionist believes that everything is explained...
The usual colloquial meaning of 'buying' a politician is not to appoint them by voting them, but to induce them to campaign and vote in parliament for...
How can we say it is well-formed when natural language is informal, and hence does not have a notion of well-formed statement? Do you just mean it is ...
Using the Godel function we can create a statement that is analogous in some sense to the unary predicate S with the properties you describe. But I do...
I doubt that many would accept this premise. What about fines for breaking the law such as dangerous driving? What about using the money of somebody i...
I'm making the distinction between Trump supporters and Republicans. My impression is that most Republicans detest Trump. The Evangelical Republicans ...
My impression from afar is that Trump supporters have very little overlap with small-Government Republicans. The biggest economic desire of Trump supp...
I think a possible Pro is that his election may have demonstrated that the electoral influence of people of lower socio-economic status has been great...
The situation is easier to understand in terms of momentum rather than kinetic energy. The key equation is that the Impulse delivered over a period of...
This seems to rest on an unstated premise that, if a phenomenon X is warranted, then activity to prevent X is unwarranted. How does this explain socce...
I agree with the last bit, but not with the 'Anyone can do that'. Both are difficult, and both are important. Few have the courage to go to jail, be b...
It depends what sort of negative thought. 'I feel miserable' is a negative thought and it can be valid, but CBT teaches us how we can change our think...
Your question is one that has troubled me on and off over the past few years. On quite a few occasions in discussion I have wanted to pick an example ...
Fishfry and, I expect most of the others that have responded to your thread, is/are perfectly familiar with Hilbert's Hotel, and why it is not an argu...
What do you have in mind with the term 'genuine normativity'? Is it the phenomenon of somebody making normative claims - that X is true, or that peopl...
It seems to me that convention-following does explain normativity, but that nevertheless we cannot escape it, because language can only be understood ...
No, I was musing about why most other people are interested in those subjects. My primary reason for loving those topics is neither instrumental nor a...
You don't mind if they harm you unintentionally? You would be happy to have as a friend a knife-wielding psychotic that believes he's surrounded by or...
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