andrewk

OK, but can you tell us what it is that you were trying to say? For instance, are you saying that there should be more formally recognised human right...

What does that mean? One is skeptical about a proposition. For instance, some people are skeptical about the proposition 'Neil Armstrong walked on the...

Yes. That's why we are best of discarding notions of 'causality' in history and instead looking for enabling conditions - of which there will be many.

Yes, because it is possible that on the way to accomplish your goal you will be confronted by somebody that refuses to allow you to pass unless you ca...

While, as usual, I think your idea for a thread is great and your thoughts on the topic deserving of attention, I can't help but take issue with this ...

Yes. I have already said so in this thread several times. I've already answered that too. See first sentence of my previous reply. I can't help but ob...

It is based in my values. If you regard that as baseless then I am not disposed to argue. I would simply observe that, as far as I can tell, every pos...

I don't know how it is formed. It is just there, and that is enough for me. Haven't we been here before? I have explained that I don't think the word ...

I'm afraid I don't understand that question. I wasn't saying that. But I do have that direct access. No I am not saying that. I'm afraid I don't under...

I don't have a position on Khashoggi. I know almost nothing about him, so I'm afraid I can't help with your inquiries about him. I can answer some of ...

That's a constructive direction to take it, because it leads to an important distinction, which is between damages lawsuits and injunctions. I see the...

Saying to the would-be mugger: 'Hey you, stop that', and then (courage permitting) physically restraining them while asking bystanders to call the pol...

That statement you quote is about making a judgement of somebody after the actions have occurred. If the actions have already occurred, I cannot preve...

I agree. If we have a difference, perhaps it is one of emphasis. I think of it as seeking common ground with others as to what constitutes a harm. Tha...

Contradicts how? Denying how? False why? What inaction? Nothing I have said implies that I would not take action to prevent harms committed by someone...

That doesn't follow.

You seem to be under the impression that those quotes contradict each other. Yet if you follow each one back and look at the statement to which it was...

Tossing a coin is neither rational nor irrational - it's just an action. The decision to toss a coin is rational in some situations, of which we've ha...

Yes.

I thought both men came out of the exchange with dignity and credibility. None of that dignity or credibility finds its way to Trump though.

We've already covered this - maybe more than once! The ass did make a rational choice, and that choice was to go in the direction indicated by the coi...

No, I am not. That is the classic moral absolutist mis-step, to conflate denial of absolute right and wrong with denial of personal morality. I believ...

It is subjective. I am not a moral absolutist. I see morality as personal - and hence subjective. In the eyes of a moral absolutist, that may seem too...

I'd need to understand the scenario better before commenting. Do you have in mind something like a war situation, where one has to kill enemy soldiers...

Rational, because it prevents her from starving and she doesn't want to starve.

This was already covered in this post. The ass rationally decides to base its decision of which way to go on the occurrence of some future event, such...

As indeed it is, if it depends just on the will of only one person. The history of any dictatorship is testament to that. Those of us that have the pr...

It's a really weird phenomenon. I must have looked it up at least ten times over the last forty years, understood the definition, realised its usefuln...

Yes. The assessment of whether it is harmful is made by me, according to my values, and then subjected to my ethical deliberation process to determine...

We describe something as random when we don't know all the rules. By the way, 'chaos' is different from 'random', although the two are often confused,...

The Kolmogorov framework for probability theory.

It is not ethical for me to do so, if I believe the aggressor's actions are harmful. What the aggressor thinks about it has no significance in my mora...

Elicit is the verb needed here. Illicit is an adjective that means illegal or at least socially disapproved of. I hope you don't mind this suggestion....

For me there is no first vs second order distinction. An ethical decision is one that (1) affects other people's feelings in some way and (2) I have c...

That's where you're getting into difficulty. Randomness is not breaking rules. It's just a different set of rules from non-randomness. If you study pr...

Sure. What exactly is it that you do not understand?

Yes, the two are definitely not synonyms. 'Irrational' applies to a voluntary action by a conscious agent, while 'random' applies to a process that ty...

I think of a word as a tool. The skill of the user of a word could be divided into - Knowledge that - the word exists in one's language - Knowledge ho...

It is rational in such a situation to decide to act upon the outcome of a random or pseudo-random phenomenon, because it will break the deadlock and p...

I'd be very careful not to equate voting against an 'anti-terrorist bill' with not being 'anti-terrorist'. That something gets called an 'anti-terrori...

I don't think it's a case of expecting something beyond the limit, but rather observing that there are phenomena that cannot be adequately analysed us...

I love Hume. I love him for: his clear, entertaining writing style his innovative thinking, finding things to question that nobody had ever thought to...

Some people think that - although I think they'd use a term like 'evolutionary process' rather than the somewhat loaded term 'manufacturer' (cf watchm...

I don't see it that way. One could believe that God had created a set of laws that are the universe's Autopilot, but that very rarely he switches the ...

It's a fair question. I think the answer is that they are different levels of evidence. To see the laws of nature as evidence of divine design require...

In the standard set-theoretic construction of the rational numbers, each number is represented by an equivalence class of ordered pairs (p,q) where th...

The fairness is based on deducing that Africans are as human as Europeans, a fact that had been denied by pro-Slavery lobbyists.

Why do you think that? It was rationality applied to the question of whether it is ethical to own another human that ended the slave trade. Surely tha...

Yes. And thanks for the explanation. I know about Rayleigh scattering courtesy of a project I did on Monte Carlo simulation of photon diffusion throug...

Darn, I was hoping nobody would ask about the 'why is the sky blue?' one. The embarrassing fact of the matter is that, although it has been explained ...