IS Forum
Forum Index Register Members List Events Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read Help

Go Back   International Skeptics Forum » General Topics » Religion and Philosophy
 


Welcome to the International Skeptics Forum, where we discuss skepticism, critical thinking, the paranormal and science in a friendly but lively way. You are currently viewing the forum as a guest, which means you are missing out on discussing matters that are of interest to you. Please consider registering so you can gain full use of the forum features and interact with other Members. Registration is simple, fast and free! Click here to register today.
Reply
Old 30th November 2012, 02:01 PM   #361
BNRT
Muse
 
BNRT's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2009
Posts: 713
Originally Posted by tsig View Post
Sounds like you're talking religion not philosophy.
Why? Is it only in religion that there are people who say (or write) things that make you change your mind about something?
BNRT is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 30th November 2012, 02:12 PM   #362
dafydd
Banned
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Posts: 35,398
Originally Posted by BNRT View Post
Why? Is it only in religion that there are people who say (or write) things that make you change your mind about something?
What? The last place I would go to get a rational viewpoint that may change my mind about something is religion.
dafydd is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 30th November 2012, 02:45 PM   #363
Acleron
Master Poster
 
Acleron's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2007
Posts: 2,290
Originally Posted by marplots View Post
Anything that is either non-repeatable or has dimensions beyond what can be captured in experiments. But this is a huge topic, one that philosophy deals with.

Here is a good critique, but the abstract has a good summary.

Quote:
http://inform.nu/Articles/Vol8/v8p189-210Mende.pdf
"The main reason is that a discipline only qualifies for the status of a science after it has progressed beyond empirical generalisations to explanatory theories; but although empirical methods are useful for discovering the former, they are inherently useless for creating the latter. So the empiricist doctrine retards scientific progress. Researchers should be aware of this danger, and research methodologists should attempt to counter it. "

As I mentioned previously, academic philosophy and academic science have the same metric of 'truth' -- the peer review process.
Another example of why the pursuit of philosophy has nothing to offer to scientists.

The author starts of by comparing manufacturing to research:
Quote:
All productive processes require productive knowledge. For example:
· in order to produce cars, people need knowledge of car production;
· in order to produce computers, they need knowledge of computer production;
· in order to produce software, they need knowledge of software production.
Then the assertion is made that 'Productive knowledge' consists of 'Process Knowledge' and 'Product Knowledge'. No proof is given for this assertion and I can think of a few more bits of knowledge that are required to run such a business.

Quote:
Similarly, when researchers embark on a research project, they have to decide what knowledge
product to produce and how to produce it.
Similarly? To take this misbegotten analogy to its logical conclusion then they also need 'Process Knowledge'.

The point that the author has glaringly missed is that research is done because we don't know the result. We don't decide what knowledge process to produce and the process changes according to what we find.

At this point I nearly gave up but as one of the complaints in this thread has been that us ignorant scientists don't know what these philosophers do so we are unable to comment, I continued...

His main gripe appears to be that there is bad thing called empiricism in science. To reach this conclusion he had to define empiricism as:
Quote:
Empiricism (or inductivism) is the logical consequence of positivism for research processes. In the same way as positivism dismisses theory, the doctrine of empiricism dismisses deductive theoretical methods, and demands that researchers should restrict themselves to inductive empirical methods.
So he sets up a straw man (seems a common tactic) and then attacks it.

As proof of this nonsense he calls on authority:
Quote:
This proposition is easy to confirm from cases in the History of Science. For instance, Newton
made no observations or experiments, and analysed no data in devising the theory of Mechanics;
neither did Dalton in devising the atomic theory of Chemistry, nor Darwin in devising the biological theory of evolution, nor Einstein in devising the relativity theory.
So these august characters had no previous knowledge, education or training in their various disciplines and just sat down one day and from the pure power of reason obtained their theories. Well I never, I'll have to throw out my history books which show the life histories of these people and those books don't say anything like this.

So having produced some perverted view of how research is done, accused scientists of spending too much time collecting data and rewriting history we get:

Quote:
The positivist and empiricist doctrines now fail to a simple reductio ad absurdum.
This time I did give up.

The pro-philosophers have several times told us that philosophy is useful to science, that we do philosophy every time we think and that we don't understand how wonderful is the world of philosophy.

Will they now understand why we don't buy it?
Acleron is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 30th November 2012, 02:51 PM   #364
dafydd
Banned
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Posts: 35,398
Originally Posted by Acleron View Post
Will they now understand why we don't buy it?
No.
dafydd is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 30th November 2012, 04:18 PM   #365
Walter Ego
Illuminator
 
Walter Ego's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Dixie
Posts: 3,377
Quote:
Originally Posted by Walter Ego

Aside from the general anti-intellectualism of the philosophy bashers I noted earlier...
Originally Posted by PixyMisa View Post
No.
No there is no anti-intellectualism in the anti-philosophy position or no I didn't note it earlier?

But seriously, can I throw out another word here? (An insult if some wish to see it that way though the terms I've been using like anti-intellectual, scientism and village atheist are, to my mind, merely descriptive.) Ressentiment.

Last edited by Walter Ego; 30th November 2012 at 05:18 PM.
Walter Ego is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 30th November 2012, 04:28 PM   #366
dafydd
Banned
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Posts: 35,398
Originally Posted by Walter Ego View Post
No there is no anti-intellectualism in the anti-philosophy position or no I didn't note it earlier?
You're the philosopher, you work it out. At the moment I'm far to weak, inferior and frustrated.

Last edited by dafydd; 30th November 2012 at 04:31 PM.
dafydd is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 30th November 2012, 05:06 PM   #367
OMGturt1es
Graduate Poster
 
OMGturt1es's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Elk Grove, California.
Posts: 1,028
Originally Posted by dafydd View Post
You're the philosopher, you work it out. At the moment I'm far to weak, inferior and frustrated.
If you don't want to answer further questions, don't dismiss entire posts with one word. If you aren't willing to write more than one word, don't post at all. If you aren't willing to refrain from posting, and you aren't willing to write more than one word, don't whine when others ask further questions.
__________________
“Science is an integral part of culture. It's not this foreign thing, done by an arcane priesthood. It's one of the glories of the human intellectual tradition.” - Stephen Jay Gould
OMGturt1es is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 30th November 2012, 05:17 PM   #368
marplots
Penultimate Amazing
 
Join Date: Feb 2006
Posts: 29,167
Originally Posted by Acleron View Post
(good analysis snipped)

The pro-philosophers have several times told us that philosophy is useful to science, that we do philosophy every time we think and that we don't understand how wonderful is the world of philosophy.

Will they now understand why we don't buy it?
To answer the question, yes, I understand why you don't buy it. If you did buy it, you'd probably have pursued a philosophy degree instead.

As to the "useful to science" part, I want to point out that use to science isn't the goal of philosophy, no more than it is the goal of mathematics. And that makes for a strong analogy.

In the hard sciences I studied, mathematics was sometimes taught, but only to serve a direct purpose. It was never taught primarily to explore mathematics. Further, the kind of mathematics we found useful (statistics, algebra, calculus and so on) were very basic. I can hardly think that anything I ever did math-wise in science would have gotten more than the most miniscule shrug from a "real" mathematician. At most, we might ask if there were a mathematical tool available or for help with some difficult (to us) calculation.

So too with the intersection of philosophy and science. Everything science needs from philosophy has already been adopted in the practice of science. They already accept that falsification adds strength to methodology. They already use Occam's razor (William of Occam, a philosopher) and parsimony -- principles from philosophy science finds useful.

But just as mathematics has moved far beyond what science needs to function and explores surreal topologies and attempts to prove theorems the non-mathematician cannot parse, so too do philosophers talk among themselves about ideas interesting to them and specific to their field.

This should surprise no one. Shock none. And if someone turns out to be allergic to philosophy, so be it. As long as they can adopt the rudimentary concepts (just as they might need to do algebra on occasion), there's no harm done.

We can't all be interested in all things. I am not fond of history or linguistics. But I know enough grammar to get by and have some idea of how the Constitution was written. Most importantly though, I could no more disparage those who pursue the themes of history than I would accept their criticisms of my interests.

What about pragmatic matters? Shouldn't we bow to science and empirical testing? Sure, where available. Just as I might look to a mathematician to decide how secure my password is, I would look to one of the scientific fields when I want to know something factual about the world. But this leave huge swaths of human enterprise still to be addressed. Law is a good example. What principles should govern our relationships with others? Who should win the case and why? And while we are at it, which area of scientific pursuit should I fund and which let fall by the wayside?

The poisonous thing is to think that any single approach should address everything we are interested in. I think science fanboys demand too much when they want a world where only testable truth holds any merit. They want every meal to be their favorite meal and worse, everything that is not a meal as well. I think there's a result from philosophy, although I'm not sure where it appears: it is impossible to simultaneously model the universe and exist in the universe. In other words, to work, science must accept something less than the whole picture. Fanboys probably don't like that very much.

Last edited by marplots; 30th November 2012 at 05:25 PM.
marplots is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 30th November 2012, 05:18 PM   #369
dafydd
Banned
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Posts: 35,398
Originally Posted by OMGturt1es View Post
If you don't want to answer further questions, don't dismiss entire posts with one word. If you aren't willing to write more than one word, don't post at all. If you aren't willing to refrain from posting, and you aren't willing to write more than one word, don't whine when others ask further questions.
Yes boss.
dafydd is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 30th November 2012, 05:31 PM   #370
marplots
Penultimate Amazing
 
Join Date: Feb 2006
Posts: 29,167
Originally Posted by Walter Ego View Post
No there is no anti-intellectualism in the anti-philosophy position or no I didn't note it earlier?

But seriously, can I throw out another word here? (An insult if some wish to see it that way though the terms I've been using like anti-intellectual, scientism and village atheist are, to my mind, merely descriptive.) Ressentiment.
I think this is mistaken. Contrary to the implication here, someone who argues their position this long and this well has thought about the topic rather more than someone who merely rejects it out of hand. There is a good argument to be made that philosophy has become a sterile endeavor. I'll wager there are philosophers who would do so. (But then again, they'll argue about anything.)
marplots is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 30th November 2012, 05:32 PM   #371
Kevin_Lowe
Guest
 
Kevin_Lowe's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2003
Posts: 12,221
Originally Posted by mijopaalmc View Post
Actually, Gabriel Stolzenberg has done a fairly thorough job of demonstrating that, like the anti-philosophy posters in this thread, Sokal and Birchmont and the various other scientists who advocated their position on the vapidity of post-modernism were responding to straw men. He is quite clear that Sokal, Birchmont, and their supporter do not have to agree with the post-modernists; however, he insists that such disagreement should not arise from facile (mis)readings.
Having read both Sokal and Bricmont and their detractors, I think the accusation that they were attacking straw men is a mendacious defence mechanism from the skewered Continentals. Sokal and Bricmont were very specific that they refrained from passing any philosophical judgments in Intellectual Impostures and were strictly documenting the structuralists' hilarious and embarrassing failure to understand the science they were pretending to explore.

Similarly Transgressing the Boundaries solely demonstrated that pomos couldn't tell the difference between "real" pomo writing and a collection of the most incredibly inane pomo quotations available linked by text which was deliberately written to have no intelligent content whatsoever. It did not attempt to demonstrate anything beyond this point.

Pomos will try to pretend that anyone who disagrees with them is engaging in a "facile misreading" or some such. However I think it's been objectively demonstrated that many of their leading lights were engaging in an intellectual imposture, and that writings which they were trying to pass off as intellectually significant were in fact indistinguishable (even by acolytes) from deliberate nonsense.

Last edited by Kevin_Lowe; 30th November 2012 at 05:51 PM.
Kevin_Lowe is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 30th November 2012, 05:38 PM   #372
dafydd
Banned
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Posts: 35,398
Originally Posted by Kevin_Lowe View Post
Having read both Sokal and Bricmont and their detractors, I think the accusation that they were attacking straw men is a mendacious defence mechanism from the skewered Continentals. Sokal and Bricmont were very specific that they refrained from passing any philosophical judgments in Intellectual Impostures and were strictly documenting the structuralists' hilarious and embarrassing failure to understand the science they were pretending to explore.

Similarly Transgressing the Boundaries solely demonstrated that pomos couldn't tell the difference between "real" pomo writing and a collection of the most incredibly inane pomo quotations available linked by text which was deliberately written to have no intelligent content whatsoever. It did not attempt do demonstrate anything beyond this point.

Pomos will try to pretend that anyone who disagrees with them is engaging in a "facile misreading" or some such. However I think it's been objectively demonstrated that many of their leading lights were engaging in an intellectual imposture, and that writings which they were trying to pass off as intellectually significant were in fact indistinguishable (even by acolytes) from deliberate nonsense.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010...ri-levy-hoaxes
dafydd is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 30th November 2012, 06:01 PM   #373
Walter Ego
Illuminator
 
Walter Ego's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Dixie
Posts: 3,377
Originally Posted by marplots View Post
I think this is mistaken. Contrary to the implication here, someone who argues their position this long and this well has thought about the topic rather more than someone who merely rejects it out of hand. There is a good argument to be made that philosophy has become a sterile endeavor. I'll wager there are philosophers who would do so. (But then again, they'll argue about anything.)
Fair enough and the point about the sterile nature of academic philosophy (post existentialism) is well taken. But to reject all philosophy from the beginning and the idea of philosophical inquiry itself as "worthless" is to my mind bizarre.
Walter Ego is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 30th November 2012, 06:22 PM   #374
Acleron
Master Poster
 
Acleron's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2007
Posts: 2,290
Originally Posted by marplots View Post
To answer the question, yes, I understand why you don't buy it. If you did buy it, you'd probably have pursued a philosophy degree instead.
Not quite, but if it was of utility I would use it.

Quote:
As to the "useful to science" part, I want to point out that use to science isn't the goal of philosophy, no more than it is the goal of mathematics. And that makes for a strong analogy.

In the hard sciences I studied, mathematics was sometimes taught, but only to serve a direct purpose. It was never taught primarily to explore mathematics. Further, the kind of mathematics we found useful (statistics, algebra, calculus and so on) were very basic. I can hardly think that anything I ever did math-wise in science would have gotten more than the most miniscule shrug from a "real" mathematician. At most, we might ask if there were a mathematical tool available or for help with some difficult (to us) calculation.
And again, this is correct. But mathematicians don't tell us their discipline is telling us anything about the practise of science. But mathematics is much more interesting than just being of use. A large debate has been happening for some time as to whether mathematics is a shorthand for theories or indeed if the universe is mathematical.

Quote:
So too with the intersection of philosophy and science. Everything science needs from philosophy has already been adopted in the practice of science. They already accept that falsification adds strength to methodology. They already use Occam's razor (William of Occam, a philosopher) and parsimony -- principles from philosophy science finds useful.
And this is agreed with as well, a point that was made earlier.

Quote:
But just as mathematics has moved far beyond what science needs to function and explores surreal topologies and attempts to prove theorems the non-mathematician cannot parse, so too do philosophers talk among themselves about ideas interesting to them and specific to their field.
Nobody has an issue with this. But there is a subtle difference between the efforts in mathematics and philosophy. Explorations in mathematics has a pesky habit of becoming useful. Riemann's geometries were essential for Einstein's theories, number theory, considered by mathematicians themselves to never have a use, has and is essential in cryptology. Can the same be said of philosophy?

Quote:
This should surprise no one. Shock none. And if someone turns out to be allergic to philosophy, so be it. As long as they can adopt the rudimentary concepts (just as they might need to do algebra on occasion), there's no harm done.

We can't all be interested in all things. I am not fond of history or linguistics. But I know enough grammar to get by and have some idea of how the Constitution was written. Most importantly though, I could no more disparage those who pursue the themes of history than I would accept their criticisms of my interests.
All very reasonable.

Quote:
What about pragmatic matters? Shouldn't we bow to science and empirical testing? Sure, where available. Just as I might look to a mathematician to decide how secure my password is, I would look to one of the scientific fields when I want to know something factual about the world. But this leave huge swaths of human enterprise still to be addressed. Law is a good example. What principles should govern our relationships with others? Who should win the case and why? And while we are at it, which area of scientific pursuit should I fund and which let fall by the wayside?
If you can find any areas that we shouldn't approach scientifically, I'd be interested in knowing them. I don't think law is one of them. The practice of law can be examined evidentially, the making of law must be approached with an evidence based system and the application of law must definitely be evidence based.

Quote:
The poisonous thing is to think that any single approach should address everything we are interested in. I think science fanboys demand too much when they want a world where only testable truth holds any merit. They want every meal to be their favorite meal and worse, everything that is not a meal as well. I think there's a result from philosophy, although I'm not sure where it appears: it is impossible to simultaneously model the universe and exist in the universe. In other words, to work, science must accept something less than the whole picture. Fanboys probably don't like that very much.
Unfortunately, the scientific method appears to be the only method for progression. Religion and philosophy are just not suitable for finding things out, formulating theories and applying those theories to technology. You may call that scientism, although the value of the word has been debased by its pejorative use. The problem with accepting the ascendancy of science over all other methods of increasing knowledge is quite simple, nobody can think of a better method and that sticks in the craw of some people..

But be assured, if a better method was found, present day scientists would be the first to jump on the bandwagon.

I've not seen your point about the universe but would think it was a mathematical proof. That doesn't stop us modelling it on a coarse resolution and of course that has been done several times.
Acleron is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 30th November 2012, 06:36 PM   #375
dafydd
Banned
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Posts: 35,398
Surely at the heart of this is confusing morality and ethics with philosophy? I know of the term ''moral philosophy'' but I'll wager the that the term was invented by a philosopher.

Last edited by dafydd; 30th November 2012 at 06:38 PM.
dafydd is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 30th November 2012, 06:43 PM   #376
dafydd
Banned
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Posts: 35,398
Am I the only one here who finds this gibberish amusing? If not, perhaps somebody would care to elucidate.


Last edited by dafydd; 30th November 2012 at 06:45 PM.
dafydd is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 30th November 2012, 06:58 PM   #377
Frank Newgent
Philosopher
 
Frank Newgent's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2002
Posts: 7,146
Originally Posted by PixyMisa View Post
Popper certainly clarified what makes a scientific hypothesis scientific.

Originally Posted by Kevin_Lowe
Originally Posted by mijopaalmc View Post
Actually, Gabriel Stolzenberg has done a fairly thorough job of demonstrating that, like the anti-philosophy posters in this thread, Sokal and Birchmont and the various other scientists who advocated their position on the vapidity of post-modernism were responding to straw men. He is quite clear that Sokal, Birchmont, and their supporter do not have to agree with the post-modernists; however, he insists that such disagreement should not arise from facile (mis)readings.
Having read both Sokal and Bricmont and their detractors, I think the accusation that they were attacking straw men is a mendacious defence mechanism from the skewered Continentals. Sokal and Bricmont were very specific that they refrained from passing any philosophical judgments in Intellectual Impostures and were strictly documenting the structuralists' hilarious and embarrassing failure to understand the science they were pretending to explore.

Similarly Transgressing the Boundaries solely demonstrated that pomos couldn't tell the difference between "real" pomo writing and a collection of the most incredibly inane pomo quotations available linked by text which was deliberately written to have no intelligent content whatsoever. It did not attempt to demonstrate anything beyond this point.

Pomos will try to pretend that anyone who disagrees with them is engaging in a "facile misreading" or some such. However I think it's been objectively demonstrated that many of their leading lights were engaging in an intellectual imposture, and that writings which they were trying to pass off as intellectually significant were in fact indistinguishable (even by acolytes) from deliberate nonsense.

Sokal and Bricmont on the vapidity of Karl Popper's postmodern idea of empirical falsification.

Quote:
In their book Fashionable Nonsense (published in the UK as Intellectual Impostures) the physicists Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont criticized falsifiability on the grounds that it does not accurately describe the way science really works. They argue that theories are used because of their successes, not because of the failures of other theories. Their discussion of Popper, falsifiability and the philosophy of science comes in a chapter entitled "Intermezzo," which contains an attempt to make clear their own views of what constitutes truth, in contrast with the extreme epistemological relativism of postmodernism.

Sokal and Bricmont write, "When a theory successfully withstands an attempt at falsification, a scientist will, quite naturally, consider the theory to be partially confirmed and will accord it a greater likelihood or a higher subjective probability. ... But Popper will have none of this: throughout his life he was a stubborn opponent of any idea of 'confirmation' of a theory, or even of its 'probability'. ... [but] the history of science teaches us that scientific theories come to be accepted above all because of their successes." (Sokal and Bricmont 1997, 62f)

They further argue that falsifiability cannot distinguish between astrology and astronomy, as both make technical predictions that are sometimes incorrect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability
__________________
Disturbances of the semantic reactions in connection with faulty education and ignorance must be considered as sub-microscopic colloidal lesions - Alfred O. Korzybski
Frank Newgent is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 30th November 2012, 07:00 PM   #378
dafydd
Banned
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Posts: 35,398
Originally Posted by Frank Newgent View Post
Sokal and Bricmont on the vapidity of Karl Popper's postmodern idea of empirical falsification.
You do know that Sokal was a hoaxer?
http://www.physics.nyu.edu/sokal/weinberg.html
dafydd is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 30th November 2012, 07:05 PM   #379
Frank Newgent
Philosopher
 
Frank Newgent's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2002
Posts: 7,146
Originally Posted by dafydd View Post
Surely at the heart of this is confusing morality and ethics with philosophy? I know of the term ''moral philosophy'' but I'll wager the that the term was invented by a philosopher.

Not sure if I am reminded more of Igor or Grichka
__________________
Disturbances of the semantic reactions in connection with faulty education and ignorance must be considered as sub-microscopic colloidal lesions - Alfred O. Korzybski
Frank Newgent is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 30th November 2012, 07:06 PM   #380
Frank Newgent
Philosopher
 
Frank Newgent's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2002
Posts: 7,146
Originally Posted by dafydd
Originally Posted by Frank Newgent View Post
Sokal and Bricmont on the vapidity of Karl Popper's postmodern idea of empirical falsification.
You do know that Sokal was a hoaxer?
http://www.physics.nyu.edu/sokal/weinberg.html

Are you suggesting their critique of Popper was a hoax?
__________________
Disturbances of the semantic reactions in connection with faulty education and ignorance must be considered as sub-microscopic colloidal lesions - Alfred O. Korzybski
Frank Newgent is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 30th November 2012, 07:23 PM   #381
mijopaalmc
Philosopher
 
Join Date: Mar 2007
Posts: 7,172
Originally Posted by Kevin_Lowe View Post
Having read both Sokal and Bricmont and their detractors, I think the accusation that they were attacking straw men is a mendacious defence mechanism from the skewered Continentals.<snip boring repetition of falsehoods>
Stolzenberg is a mathematician, so, if he can understand the examples that Sokal and Bircmont present as non-sense, perhaps post-modernism isn't as obscurantist as the know-nothings insist it is.
mijopaalmc is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 30th November 2012, 07:59 PM   #382
Kevin_Lowe
Guest
 
Kevin_Lowe's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2003
Posts: 12,221
Originally Posted by dafydd View Post
Am I the only one here who finds this gibberish amusing? If not, perhaps somebody would care to elucidate.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com...960ababc20.jpg
Now before we move on, please note that I've been busily attacking writing which is genuinely obscurantist nonsense (structuralism and post-structuralism). The passage you've found is actually perfectly coherent to a moral philosopher, and if you find it to be amusing gibberish that reflects a lack of background knowledge on your part more than anything else.

By the way, you're engaging in blatant special pleading and goalpost-moving by trying to carve away ethics and moral philosophy from the rest of philosophy so you can maintain that all of philosophy is rubbish. I suggest instead owning your mistake and adopting a more nuanced position where you admit that some of philosophy is in fact important or even necessary, and some of it is rubbish.

Anyway, since you wanted an explanation: The author is saying they've got an idea for a new take on Kantian ethics, which they call "discourse ethics", and they're going to explain what that means later.

Then in the second paragraph they're saying that Hegel made a bunch of criticisms of Kantian ethics, and they are going to talk about whether those criticisms of Hegel's still apply to their new version. One of those is some kind of argument that Kantian moral prescriptions are tautological - they don't explain how the argument works, they're just letting us know he will explain that later. Another is that Kantian prescriptions are universal not context-specific, and Hegel had some kind of problem with that, but exactly what is was we can't tell because the text cuts off.

I'm not much of a fan of Hegel and I'm automatically suspicious of anyone who uses the word "discourse" since it's a buzzword of Continental philosophy which is a genre I do not care for. So I don't think I'd get a great deal out of reading the work that passage comes from. However I understand perfectly well what they are talking about.

As I alluded to earlier, most people (including nearly all self-proclaimed skeptics) think that they are just about as smart as anyone needs to be. So when they encounter text they just can't parse they tend to assume that the problem is with the text, not with them. They also tend to assume that reading comprehension is a skill which they have raised the ultimate plateau, so that if someone claims to have superior reading comprehension that means they are calling you a moron.

So I realise that by saying that I can read this stuff the way I read a newspaper and keep track of exactly what is being argued and on what basis, I'm saying something you will probably perceive as an attack. However the fact is I can do that, whether or not you believe it and whether or not it threatens you.

Some philosophy is definitely obscurantist nonsense. Some philosophy is in fact saying something coherent (perhaps wrong, but that's a different issue) but laypeople can't parse it. Those laypeople just don't have the background knowledge and cognitive skills to 100% reliably tell which is which.
Kevin_Lowe is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 30th November 2012, 08:44 PM   #383
marplots
Penultimate Amazing
 
Join Date: Feb 2006
Posts: 29,167
Originally Posted by Acleron View Post
(extracted one point for a response)

If you can find any areas that we shouldn't approach scientifically, I'd be interested in knowing them. I don't think law is one of them. The practice of law can be examined evidentially, the making of law must be approached with an evidence based system and the application of law must definitely be evidence based.
I think law is a good example to discuss as well, mainly for two reasons. The first is that, while determining facts is an important part, quite often disputes arise as to the meaning of those facts as well as the importance. We adopt a "reasonable man" standard, rather than one of experiment and reproducibility.

The second reason concerns the goal of the law. Justice is a concept that exists outside of the view of science. One can establish certain equities mathematically, but these serve the overarching goal of obtaining a just outcome, they do not define it.

My claim is that while evidence is one of the foundations for the law, it serves the philosophical purpose of producing justice as embodied in the critical decision makers -- judges and juries. Interestingly, we also rely on juries to be finders of fact, instead of relying on what you might expect in an evidence based system: expert witnesses.
marplots is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 1st December 2012, 05:40 AM   #384
Kevin_Lowe
Guest
 
Kevin_Lowe's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2003
Posts: 12,221
Originally Posted by mijopaalmc View Post
Stolzenberg is a mathematician, so, if he can understand the examples that Sokal and Bircmont present as non-sense, perhaps post-modernism isn't as obscurantist as the know-nothings insist it is.
I have followed your link and made a good faith attempt to see where Stolzenberg has said anything whatsoever about Sokal and Bricmont's thorough destruction of constructionist nonsense in Intellectual Impostures, or about their demonstration of the intellectual bankruptcy of postmodernism in Social Text.

All I can find is a relatively subtle epistemological disagreement about the bases of scientific knowledge.

Can you please point to the exact place where Stolzenberg addresses Intellectual Impostures or the Social Text hoax? Because currently I suspect that your claim that Stolzenberg shows that Sokal and Bricmonst were attacking straw men in Intellectual Impostures is simply false, and your implied attack on debunkers of Continental rubbish as "know-nothings" is both false and insulting.
Kevin_Lowe is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 1st December 2012, 05:46 AM   #385
Last of the Fraggles
Illuminator
 
Join Date: Nov 2006
Posts: 3,986
Originally Posted by marplots View Post
And here we have the basis for a fundamental mischaracterization of philosophy. The implication is that philosophy consists only of introspection, argument and eclectic ruminations -- necessarily removed and ignoring input from the outside world. However, it's exactly this outside world that generates all the discussion.

There is no such thing as "philosophical thought alone."

Furthermore, it seems odd to think that science somehow "owns" reality when it ignores so much of it in favor of that portion amenable to experimentation. I am curious to find out which area of scientific research will undertake to answer these questions in philosophy?

What is my purpose and reason for being? How do I achieve my purpose?
What is my obligation (if any) to my fellow men?
What is true, moral, just, and beautiful?
Do these apply to all rational persons? What about animals?
Why is there something rather than nothing?
How should I live? What life or ideal should I live or die for?
What are the limits of human knowledge and understanding?
On what can I base my answers to these questions?

I have heard it said that a good question in science is one where there is a clear path to an answer. Philosophy doesn't have that limitation.
I think this post sums up a lot of my issues with religion and philosophy.

First off we define things that science can't address. Questions that have no answers and may not even be legitimate questions.

Then we say 'science can't answer these questions therefore we need religion and/or philosophy' but there's never any evidence that either of these things actually answer these questions any better than science. They merely win by default because they aren't 'scientific questions'

So we define philosophy as the search for answers to questions which have no answers? And we're supposed to use this as an argument for philosophy not being pretty much a waste of time?
Last of the Fraggles is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 1st December 2012, 05:55 AM   #386
PixyMisa
Persnickety Insect
 
PixyMisa's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Sunny Munuvia
Posts: 16,343
Originally Posted by marplots View Post
Furthermore, it seems odd to think that science somehow "owns" reality when it ignores so much of it in favor of that portion amenable to experimentation.
Bollocks.

Quote:
I am curious to find out which area of scientific research will undertake to answer these questions in philosophy?

What is my purpose and reason for being? How do I achieve my purpose?
What is my obligation (if any) to my fellow men?
What is true, moral, just, and beautiful?
Do these apply to all rational persons? What about animals?
Why is there something rather than nothing?
How should I live? What life or ideal should I live or die for?
What are the limits of human knowledge and understanding?
First you need to tell us what those questions mean. If anything. Then we can work on answering them.
__________________
Free blogs for skeptics... And everyone else. mee.nu
What, in the Holy Name of Gzortch, are you people doing?!?!!? - TGHO
PixyMisa is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 1st December 2012, 08:37 AM   #387
Acleron
Master Poster
 
Acleron's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2007
Posts: 2,290
Originally Posted by marplots View Post
I think law is a good example to discuss as well, mainly for two reasons. The first is that, while determining facts is an important part, quite often disputes arise as to the meaning of those facts as well as the importance. We adopt a "reasonable man" standard, rather than one of experiment and reproducibility.
But we can test the 'reasonable man' hypothesis. For example the hypothesis may be that such a man gives reliance on certain types of evidence. For instance, eye witnesses were thought to be reliable, the evidence shows that is not so.

Quote:
The second reason concerns the goal of the law. Justice is a concept that exists outside of the view of science. One can establish certain equities mathematically, but these serve the overarching goal of obtaining a just outcome, they do not define it.
If you can define justice then science can certainly test it. If the purpose is to prevent recidivism we can measure it. Which justice system we want is not otherwise definable. It is merely what people want. There is no algebra that points to the best system.

Quote:
My claim is that while evidence is one of the foundations for the law, it serves the philosophical purpose of producing justice as embodied in the critical decision makers -- judges and juries. Interestingly, we also rely on juries to be finders of fact, instead of relying on what you might expect in an evidence based system: expert witnesses.
Agreed and by applying scientific method we can see the flaws in the system.
Acleron is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 1st December 2012, 12:44 PM   #388
marplots
Penultimate Amazing
 
Join Date: Feb 2006
Posts: 29,167
Is this what makes people so uncomfortable with philosophy? The looseness and the lack of focus on externally valid conclusions?

For me, the recipe of asking questions and getting answers is very limited. The form of the question generates the answer. I prefer the freedom of exploring ideas for the sake of exploring ideas with no preconceived destination in mind. Much like the runner who finishes her daily exercise at the same place she started, I enjoy and find benefit in the process, not the destination.

Perhaps this is a "style of mind" thing. Consider how we are educated in a system where the answers are in the back of the book (or at least the odd-numbered answers). Even when we can't derive some result, we are confident an answer exists, some correct answer is there to find.

Translate this mechanism beyond mere schoolwork and some remain convinced that there are still answers in the back of the book. Only now, the book is nature and the answers take a bit more work to dredge up.

I find little appeal in this. When I was in school, I enjoyed finding other questions, questions where the answers weren't in the book and couldn't be found in the larger library of nature. Why? Because answers are sterile things that kill thinking. And thinking is an enjoyable activity.

Should I then disparage all of science as deficient? Hardly. Because scientists spend a great deal of time searching for useful questions and exploring. At some point, they have to find measurable results and publish, but in-between times, they ruminate and wonder and try to think useful things. That's an exciting part of the enterprise and not the rote empirical testing that mischaracterizes what scientists actually do. In practice, they don't just sit around gathering factoids and putting them into little boxes. There is purpose and intent. They ask more general questions and distill out that small portion that is practical to test. They do something akin to philosophy instead: they seek explanations, not simply answers to questions.

Philosophers and scientists have the same ultimate goal. Everyone wants to understand how reality actually is. The difference comes in when the scientist finds no way forward because they cannot figure out a useful research program. This is why we get hybrid sciences like psychology or sociology -- fields we refer to as "soft" sciences. Rather more opinion and argument comes into play and rather less direct measurement. And at the outside extreme, we have philosophy, where the conceptual can take up entire sub-disciplines. The rules are different. What you can say is different.

Science, as characterized in this thread, leaves out a critical element of what's actually going on-- the scientist herself. It gets touched on in things like: What is the meaning of a probability function in QM? Is that a real thing or just a description of a real thing? And if it is a real thing, what sort of thing is it?

But mostly, these kinds of questions are troubling but not ultimately important when we want to add another answer to the solutions at the back of the book. And this brings up one other critical difference. When a scientist is trained, they learn, by rote, all that has come before. Their job will be to extend this linear script.

When a philosopher is trained, they learn what has come before, but must put themselves into the mix -- their own opinions matter and there is a process of self discovery. Early on, philosophers are asked to add their input to whatever Kant or Hume wrote, to compare and contrast, to offer an opinion and support it.

I can say that I discovered I was an atheist, that something about my composition directs me to that stance. But I could never say I discovered I was a biologist. In some sense, science would like to remove the human element. Not so in philosophy. Without scientists, nature would still be what nature is. Not philosophy. Without philosophers, the enterprise is dead.
marplots is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 1st December 2012, 01:03 PM   #389
tsig
a carbon based life-form
 
Join Date: Nov 2005
Posts: 39,049
Originally Posted by marplots View Post
Is this what makes people so uncomfortable with philosophy? The looseness and the lack of focus on externally valid conclusions?

For me, the recipe of asking questions and getting answers is very limited. The form of the question generates the answer. I prefer the freedom of exploring ideas for the sake of exploring ideas with no preconceived destination in mind. Much like the runner who finishes her daily exercise at the same place she started, I enjoy and find benefit in the process, not the destination.

Perhaps this is a "style of mind" thing. Consider how we are educated in a system where the answers are in the back of the book (or at least the odd-numbered answers). Even when we can't derive some result, we are confident an answer exists, some correct answer is there to find.

Translate this mechanism beyond mere schoolwork and some remain convinced that there are still answers in the back of the book. Only now, the book is nature and the answers take a bit more work to dredge up.

I find little appeal in this. When I was in school, I enjoyed finding other questions, questions where the answers weren't in the book and couldn't be found in the larger library of nature. Why? Because answers are sterile things that kill thinking. And thinking is an enjoyable activity.

Should I then disparage all of science as deficient? Hardly. Because scientists spend a great deal of time searching for useful questions and exploring. At some point, they have to find measurable results and publish, but in-between times, they ruminate and wonder and try to think useful things. That's an exciting part of the enterprise and not the rote empirical testing that mischaracterizes what scientists actually do. In practice, they don't just sit around gathering factoids and putting them into little boxes. There is purpose and intent. They ask more general questions and distill out that small portion that is practical to test. They do something akin to philosophy instead: they seek explanations, not simply answers to questions.

Philosophers and scientists have the same ultimate goal. Everyone wants to understand how reality actually is. The difference comes in when the scientist finds no way forward because they cannot figure out a useful research program. This is why we get hybrid sciences like psychology or sociology -- fields we refer to as "soft" sciences. Rather more opinion and argument comes into play and rather less direct measurement. And at the outside extreme, we have philosophy, where the conceptual can take up entire sub-disciplines. The rules are different. What you can say is different.

Science, as characterized in this thread, leaves out a critical element of what's actually going on-- the scientist herself. It gets touched on in things like: What is the meaning of a probability function in QM? Is that a real thing or just a description of a real thing? And if it is a real thing, what sort of thing is it?

But mostly, these kinds of questions are troubling but not ultimately important when we want to add another answer to the solutions at the back of the book. And this brings up one other critical difference. When a scientist is trained, they learn, by rote, all that has come before. Their job will be to extend this linear script.

When a philosopher is trained, they learn what has come before, but must put themselves into the mix -- their own opinions matter and there is a process of self discovery. Early on, philosophers are asked to add their input to whatever Kant or Hume wrote, to compare and contrast, to offer an opinion and support it.

I can say that I discovered I was an atheist, that something about my composition directs me to that stance. But I could never say I discovered I was a biologist. In some sense, science would like to remove the human element. Not so in philosophy. Without scientists, nature would still be what nature is. Not philosophy. Without philosophers, the enterprise is dead.
Once again we have the strawman scientist, cold, hard, dead to the higher aspects of the world trapped in his dead end view of reality as contrasted with the free thinking philosopher who contemplates the universe and leads the way forward into that brave new word of discovery.
tsig is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 1st December 2012, 01:56 PM   #390
marplots
Penultimate Amazing
 
Join Date: Feb 2006
Posts: 29,167
Originally Posted by tsig View Post
Once again we have the strawman scientist, cold, hard, dead to the higher aspects of the world trapped in his dead end view of reality as contrasted with the free thinking philosopher who contemplates the universe and leads the way forward into that brave new word of discovery.
Don't forget, what is being contrasted in this thread are the cartoon versions of these things, not the actual disciplines. We shouldn't abandon the game mid-play.

Here's the tl;dr version of my previous blatherings:

The philosophical question raised in this thread and the answer--

Q: Of what use is philosophy to science?

A: It can point out the limits of the scientific method.

Last edited by marplots; 1st December 2012 at 01:58 PM.
marplots is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 1st December 2012, 02:14 PM   #391
dafydd
Banned
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Posts: 35,398
Originally Posted by tsig View Post
Once again we have the strawman scientist, cold, hard, dead to the higher aspects of the world trapped in his dead end view of reality as contrasted with the free thinking philosopher who contemplates the universe and leads the way forward into that brave new word of discovery.
Through a polysyllabic maze of semantic nonsense.
dafydd is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 1st December 2012, 03:51 PM   #392
Humes fork
Banned
 
Join Date: Jul 2011
Posts: 3,358
Originally Posted by Ryokan View Post
Hard science can't figure out ethical and moral values, yet I'd claim that those are just as important as hard science. Anyone who just handwaves away the entirety of philosophy is not worth listening to.
I agree with the boldened part. Though while science can't figure out normative morality, neither can philosophy. Except for saying that there is no objective, universal normative morality to be figured out.

I also agree that it is wrong to reject philosophy in its entirety. Though much of it is rubbish, especially the Continental (as opposed to the Analytic) variety.
Humes fork is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 1st December 2012, 05:10 PM   #393
tsig
a carbon based life-form
 
Join Date: Nov 2005
Posts: 39,049
Originally Posted by Humes fork View Post
I agree with the boldened part. Though while science can't figure out normative morality, neither can philosophy. Except for saying that there is no objective, universal normative morality to be figured out.

I also agree that it is wrong to reject philosophy in its entirety. Though much of it is rubbish, especially the Continental (as opposed to the Analytic) variety.
I guess I believe in one less philosophy than you do.
tsig is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 1st December 2012, 07:17 PM   #394
PixyMisa
Persnickety Insect
 
PixyMisa's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Sunny Munuvia
Posts: 16,343
Originally Posted by marplots View Post
Is this what makes people so uncomfortable with philosophy? The looseness and the lack of focus on externally valid conclusions?
Why do you assume that anyone here is uncomfortable with philosophy?

Dismissive, of most philosophy, certainly, and for absolutely sound and valid reasons.

Quote:
For me, the recipe of asking questions and getting answers is very limited.
Then I submit you're doing it wrong.
__________________
Free blogs for skeptics... And everyone else. mee.nu
What, in the Holy Name of Gzortch, are you people doing?!?!!? - TGHO
PixyMisa is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 1st December 2012, 07:19 PM   #395
dafydd
Banned
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Posts: 35,398
Originally Posted by PixyMisa View Post
Dismissive, of most philosophy, certainly, and for absolutely sound and valid reasons.

^This.
dafydd is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 1st December 2012, 07:20 PM   #396
PixyMisa
Persnickety Insect
 
PixyMisa's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Sunny Munuvia
Posts: 16,343
Originally Posted by marplots View Post
Science, as characterized in this thread, leaves out a critical element of what's actually going on-- the scientist herself. It gets touched on in things like: What is the meaning of a probability function in QM? Is that a real thing or just a description of a real thing? And if it is a real thing, what sort of thing is it?
Again, bollocks. If it makes a difference in the real world, science can study it. If it doesn't - it doesn't.
__________________
Free blogs for skeptics... And everyone else. mee.nu
What, in the Holy Name of Gzortch, are you people doing?!?!!? - TGHO
PixyMisa is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 1st December 2012, 07:21 PM   #397
dafydd
Banned
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Posts: 35,398
Which branch of philosophy really knows the meaning of meaning?
dafydd is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 1st December 2012, 07:34 PM   #398
Jorghnassen
Illuminator
 
Jorghnassen's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2004
Posts: 3,942
Originally Posted by tsig View Post
Scientific reasoning is based on experiments and facts, not assumptions.
It's not my intent to interrupt this meaningless argumentation between deaf people, but this quite literally made me laugh out loud. I wanted to point that out.
__________________
"Help control the local pet population: teach your dog abstinence." -Stephen Colbert
"My dad believed laughter is the best medicine. Which is why several of us died of tuberculosis."- Unknown source, heard from Grey Delisle on Rob Paulsen's podcast
Jorghnassen is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 1st December 2012, 07:41 PM   #399
PixyMisa
Persnickety Insect
 
PixyMisa's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Sunny Munuvia
Posts: 16,343
Originally Posted by marplots View Post
And this brings up one other critical difference. When a scientist is trained, they learn, by rote, all that has come before.
Double and triple bollocks. Either you had a lousy science education (quite possible) and are committing the fallacy of hasty generalisation, or you slept through science class and are just making this up.

That's not how scientists are "trained" at all. Not remotely.

Absolutely key to studying science is how established facts and theories became established - and how wrong ideas were falsified. You spend a lot of time repeating experiments that were done decades, even hundreds of years ago, so that you understand how we got where we are, and how to continue the process.

Quote:
Their job will be to extend this linear script.
This is complete nonsense. Science isn't linear. There's no "script".

There's reality. And there's only one of those. And in science, unlike philosophy, that matters.
__________________
Free blogs for skeptics... And everyone else. mee.nu
What, in the Holy Name of Gzortch, are you people doing?!?!!? - TGHO
PixyMisa is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Old 1st December 2012, 07:42 PM   #400
tsig
a carbon based life-form
 
Join Date: Nov 2005
Posts: 39,049
Originally Posted by Jorghnassen View Post
It's not my intent to interrupt this meaningless argumentation between deaf people, but this quite literally made me laugh out loud. I wanted to point that out.
And you are one of the hearing people who will laugh out loud but never explain anything.

IOW a true philosopher

Last edited by tsig; 1st December 2012 at 07:44 PM.
tsig is offline   Quote this post in a PM   Nominate this post for this month's language award Copy a direct link to this post Reply With Quote Back to Top
Reply

International Skeptics Forum » General Topics » Religion and Philosophy

Thread Tools

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Forum Jump


All times are GMT -7. The time now is 09:31 PM.
Powered by vBulletin. Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.

This forum began as part of the James Randi Education Foundation (JREF). However, the forum now exists as
an independent entity with no affiliation with or endorsement by the JREF, including the section in reference to "JREF" topics.

Disclaimer: Messages posted in the Forum are solely the opinion of their authors.