Comments

  • Is introspection a valid type of knowledge
    Yeah, Mother Nature has deemed it good to imbue us with a sensory overload protection mechanism on the one hand, and an internal trash collecting mechanism on the other. — Mww

    Or Mother Nature has deemed it good to make us sensory gluttons with limited attention (spans).
  • Why is so much rambling theological verbiage given space on 'The Philosophy Forum' ?
    I only said the onus is on others in cases where they make extraordinary claims. You mention physicalism: I think when analyzed it is an extraordinary claim, at least in its stronger versions, because it cannot account for abstraction, generality, real possibility and even logic and semantics. The other point regarding physicalism is that being a metaphysical position, there can be no empirical evidence for or against it, and the evidence against it is its incoherence — Janus
    Love what you say here. Peachy. May the physicalists meet us both in a dark alley.

    But then it seems you are not a physicalist, so that's not a good example for you.

    Whatever your beliefs happen to be, it shouldn't matter what other people's positions are if you are following....
    ... the scientific attitude which consists in attempting to find counter-evidence that refutes one's own theories should be used as an antidote to bias confirmation. — Janus

    your own theories. If your theory/belief is that X is true, then you seek out counterevidence. It doesn't matter if the people who say X is false are making an extraordinary claim. That quote just says that the
    attitude entails seeking evidence against one's own position. Perhaps there is a third position. Perhaps you are both wrong.

    That's what I like about that sentence of yours. The implication that regardless of what 'the other team is saying', if there are opposing teams, one should oneselff seek out counterevidence related to one's own claims.

    This seems to fit what you say here....
    Taking again your example of the supernatural and the paranormal, if someone wants to positively claim there are no such phenomena, and it matters to them (which presumably it would if they made such a positive claim), then of course they should try to find evidence that refutes their belief, just as scientists do (or should). — Janus
  • What's so ethically special about sexual relations?
    ↪Bartricks
    I think you are right, in general. I think it has to do with physicality and intimacy. Touching another person, especially with any force, ups the ante radically over, for example, speaking to them. The sense of touch is prioritized ethically over other senses. We can make pucker faces at other people, but kissing them raised the stakes immensely. Pucker faces at a funeral might be consider unethical but kissing other mourners without consent and the ante is raised radically. Placing your penis in their lap and you have a crime. Sex is extremely intimate touch. Violence is touch with a great deal of force. Screaming can be considered unethical in many situations. Bright lights shined into someone's house. But the sense of touch is a whole nother ball game. There are many reasons for this, I would guess: touch involved potential life threat, pregnancy, harm. Another key thing is the word I used above: intimacy. Pucker faces, however annoying, do not approach the feeling of intimacy that a kiss does. Even getting up real close and makign the biggest lips possible.

    Of course some of the charge around sex goes back in time to tribal times without birth control, where women were seen as property of men, where fatherhood had to be monitored carefully in ways it need not be now, where religions had sway everywhere, and religions were pulling morality out of tribal needs and biases.

    But even black boxing all that, touch without consent is much more intimate and potentially dangerous and/or more painful than intrusions via other senses.

    And there is emotional pain in unwanted intimacy. Or unpleasance at least.

    But then it is very hard to cross measure a financial crime and a sexual crime. What are the units of measurement whereby we can say sex is more than money?
  • Is introspection a valid type of knowledge
    ↪Mww
    But we barely notice a lot of our thoughts, at least if other minds are anything like mine, and after interrogating a lot of people - at least, I think many would have wanted to use that verb to describe my approach - I also think that many other minds are like mine.

    IOW it's not like a ticker tape - god, I feel old - but more like voices in a diner while you're focused on eating.

    So, introspection is metaphorically, a bit like rather than simply getting tense about the growing tensions between the man and woman in the next booth, focusing in on that conversation, tuning out the others even more, and noticing the effects of that conversation, for example on one's own feelings. Oh, jeez this is like Mom and Dad were like. No wonder I want to barf.

    I think most people, yes, sure, notice some thoughts more clearly, that that a great mass of their thoughts are like other conversations in the diner. They notice the effects. An occasional conclusion comes into focus, like some phrase or sentence at another booth, is clearly heard, before that discussion falls back into the fog of noise again.

    (there's an added complication, in that one identifies, in some flitting way, with various patrons of the diner, at various times. You are sort of all of them, but find yourself as one patron at one time and then another soon after, several patrons babbling at the same time, in the background as you flit and you often don't remember much of this)
  • Is introspection a valid type of knowledge
    And I will admit that people are liable to have blind spots in their understandings. — Mww
    Certainly about themselves and other people. The motivations for bias are so strong.
  • Why is so much rambling theological verbiage given space on 'The Philosophy Forum' ?
    ↪Janus
    If we go back to the original statement, the focus is on what YOU believe, not on what others believe. That's what piqued my interest. It presented it as from your own beliefs. I gave the example of a physicalist. This is a positive belief or set of beliefs, and it seemed like you were saying that the scientific attitude entailed looking for counterevidence. Rather than as you have been framing it now...other people who have beliefs that do not fit with mine have to onus to present me with evidence and until I see some evidence I consider significant, I will not spend time on that.

    And hey, you worded it in a way that I liked, and actually it is pretty much how I live, with provisos on time and resources. But I have explored looking for phenomena that went against views I've had, including engaging in practices and experiments I often thought were pointless. Sometimes they turned out not to be and my beliefs changed. You may not quite have meant that original statement as I think, given how it is worded, it should be interpreted. But that's what I was reacting to. I see that your interpretation is not the same, now. I wish there were more people with the attitude presented in that orginal quote.
    ... the scientific attitude which consists in attempting to find counter-evidence that refutes one's own theories should be used as an antidote to bias confirmation. — Janus

    Here it is not...let's see if they have justified their theories. It is let me actively try to find evidence that counters mine.

    This is more rare. Of course scientists do this all the time when they perform experiments, takign their own hypotheses, including those they think are likely to be true, and set up experiments to see if they can find counter-evidence. This is generally piecemeal as it should be.

    I love the idea of people, and there are a number, who actually try to challenge things on a paradigmatic level, perhaps,.for example, engaging in the activities people they think are deluded engage in, that those people have said led to evidence.

    That's all.
  • Why is so much rambling theological verbiage given space on 'The Philosophy Forum' ?
    How can you find counterevidence if there is no plausible evidence to begin with; there would be nothing there to counter. — Janus
    You would try to find counterevidence to your own theories, whatever they are. This could take many forms. But it sounded active in your description. I don't think reading texts from within one's paradigm that said there was no counterevidence would count, for example. Your description sounded like you would treat your own beliefs as hypothesis and then set up some kind of testing to see if they hold.
  • Why is so much rambling theological verbiage given space on 'The Philosophy Forum' ?
    ↪PoeticUniverse
    Yes, Randi has done a version of what Janus described. Though one has to be something of a celebrity to apply to the challenge. I'm interested in general what people should do to show their scientific attitude, given Janus' description. Randi does pass the criteria.
  • Why is so much rambling theological verbiage given space on 'The Philosophy Forum' ?
    If no convincing evidence is provided for a claim, and it appears as though no definitive evidence either way is possible, then suspension of judgement would seem to be the most intellectually honest way to go. A physicalist, or anyone, could simply say that there seems to be no reason to believe in the paranormal or supernatural. — Janus
    That's a little different from....

    ... the scientific attitude which consists in attempting to find counter-evidence that refutes one's own theories should be used as an antidote to bias confirmation. — Janus
    Attempting to find counterevidence sounds active to me, not simply reacting to a perceived lack of evidence. IOW doing active research, or perhaps engaging in certain practices to seek counter-evidence.
  • Is introspection a valid type of knowledge
    I reject the idea of introspection as the most obvious, most readily available, most commonly accessed, means for self-observation. — Mww
    OK, I don't think I've asserted that - not that you said I did, as far as I've noticed. It leaves room for it to be a means of self-observation (and is nearly synonymous). But this matches my sense that people have a lot of blind spots in introspection. That it is a skill, and it takes a willingness, amongst other things, to be unpleasantly surprised, at a very gut level. Other forms of self-observation also require skill and some need to be able to face unpleasance, but not on such a gut level. To find, for example, contempt for someone one loves, it quite different from noticing that one tends not to clean up after dinner when your wife didn't have sex with you the evening before. To feel that smack of the 'wrong' emotion takes more than a little bravery to explore.
  • Rant on "Belief"
    ↪Gnostic Christian Bishop
    The lie is first you present historians' works as based on fact, religious works as based on made up stuff in a binary presentation. I point out how it is not so binary, that historians lie, historians can be confused, historians publish books that disagree with other historian's books, and so on. At no point can you admit that your first presentation of the issue was not correct. This happens with regularity. You are a polemicist. I think you're polemics are damaging because they do not present things as they are. You often present false dilemmas. You do move on and modify your statements, but only as if you have not contradicted yourself. Perhaps, I say perhaps, you were confused when you first presented the issue in binary terms. But now you know it is not binary, that just because a historian wrote something it need not be based on facts. Still the original falsehood still stands, sitting there earlier in the thread. Even if it was not a lie at first, now it is a lie, since you cannot qualify it, concede anything. This has happened repeatedly. You appeal to authority quoting ancients on how to read scripture. When it is pointed out that at least some of these same ancients believed in supernatural entities, you still go on and use them when responding to others. The appeal to authority is a lie, because you are arguing that the ancients believed in your take on supernatural entities, and use as examples people who I have shown you actually did believe in them. This is a lie because now you know that while they said something that fit your interpretation of scripture as metaphorical, they actually also believed in supernatural entities. You cannot seem to admit mistakes, even, and have elsewhere referred to your apotheosis. This, it seems to me, has led to a functional narcissism online. I have no idea how you behave in face to face contexts, but online. And what's the problem with this? well, your presentation of things in binary terms, even when something is easily demonstrated to be more nuanced means that you add to an aggressive split. An us/them unnuanced splitting of people. And then of course it is the presentation of falsehoods. I think that is damaging and anti-gnostic. And those who you might learn with the most all see this pattern. What you see in the religious, you live out.
  • Is introspection a valid type of knowledge
    ↪Mww
    I'm still confused. What is the idea you reject? If you could put it in a full sentence.
    I deny that the idea of introspection does what you say it does.
    And what it is he says it does?
  • Is introspection a valid type of knowledge
    ↪Mww
    You'd be rejecting people's interpretation and reporting of their experiences, or?
  • Metaphysics - what is it?
    Do you know anyone who's actually tried to explain the natural world without recourse to metaphysics? — Metaphysician Undercover
    No, there's not way to explain it without implicit or explicit metaphysics? Physicalism? well, it's right there. Natural laws? again right there
  • Why is so much rambling theological verbiage given space on 'The Philosophy Forum' ?
    ↪Isaac
    Though that's quite different from Deleuze or Derrida, say. You could give an example of a philosopher who you have not read but feel you can dismiss. Hitler's ideas radiated out of his books and informed his policies and actions. It's not a particularly dense type of text that needs work to tease out its meanings, at least not for someone like you seem to be.
  • Is there a logic that undermines "belief" in a god?
    Can "knowing" not be the opposite of "belief" in that knowing what not to "believe"? — A Gnostic Agnostic
    I think that leads to all sorts of confusions. Knowing what not to belief would still require a belief. Which is why in philosophy, knowledge is considered those beliefs that are supported by strong justification. If you have strong justification for not believing X, then you believe and know that X is not false or not justified.

    It would mean you have evaluated evidence and reached a conclusion. And the process you went through to do this is considered well justified.

    On the street people often use 'belief' to mean things that are not supported by enough evidence, something like faith. But this leads to absurd things like one does not believe what one knows. One knows it. And since we re fallible what we know today may turn out to have actually been merely a belief. Evidence may come in to change our minds.
  • Is introspection a valid type of knowledge
    ↪Mww
    But the analogy would be someting like thinking he doesn't know he is a fan of that team. If one does not believe in introspection, the odds would be just as good that it was some other team he actually liked, or any other team, or even did not like the sport.
  • Is introspection a valid type of knowledge
    It would take repeated 'introspective experiments' to see how you really feel or think about something. — aporiap
    Which many people carry out.
    People can be fallible with reasoning also.
    Some people are terrible at reading other poker players, some are good. We would consider the ability to read people a facility, even though some are bad at it.
  • Is introspection a valid type of knowledge
    ↪Mww
    Oh. If you've explained this somewhere above, could you say where. Otherwise, why do you reject it?

    And then also: how do you know you do?
  • Is introspection a valid type of knowledge
    the very idea of it. — Mww
    'it'?

    The very idea of introspection? That one should believe in introspection as a source of knowledge? I love the idea that you are rejecting my belief in introspection, that you might know I don't have it, [laughing now] but I doubt that's what the ambigous 'it' represents.
  • Why? Why? Morality
    ↪TheMadFool
    Thanks, that made things a lot clearer to me. Perhaps they thought it was complicated. Of course this could be me projecting. Money as source is simple. Benthem might say that so many other things can cause pleasure, and the loss of these pain, and we are so diverse, that there is no single cause. And evil or Lucifer don't really give us much to work with.
  • Is introspection a valid type of knowledge
    ↪Mww
    lol, I haven't the slightest idea, despite rigorous ongoing introspection and other cognitive processes, where you post lies on the spectrum of partly agreeing to mocking the heck out of what I wrote.
  • Is introspection a valid type of knowledge
    ↪Galuchat
    If this was a response, in part, to me, let me clarify. I don't think from introspection alone one can get knowledge of others. I think it can be used with other cognitive processes to get information. Certainly one could have a more purely outwardly focused study of one's neighbor and get information about him. He picks up his newpaper at 12 I note after observation. The time is exactly the same each day. And so on observing more facets of this person's life.

    My point was that introspection offers information that can also lead to knowledge of others, but it would need to be, yes, coupled with cognitive processes that are not introspection.
  • Why? Why? Morality
    ↪TheMadFool
    Couldn't we say that they were realists (not saying they were right) who thought, this stuff makes people do things, so....
    we'd better organize things like X, to make things as good as possible.

    Don't we more or less get what they think the origins are? Or do you mean they lack an entity like lucifer?

    Maybe if you could say an example of what they could have said that would have made it better. Doesn't have to be Kantian or Benthian, just an possible causal X.
  • Neoliberalism, anyone?
    ↪unenlightened
    I'm afraid I am not coming to neoliberalism's defence and ask for forgivement for naughtiness.

    Generally in neoliberalism there is the idea of economic freedom and political freedom going together. However, in practice, at least, this freedom is radically different for individual citizens and corporations and financial institutions each of which are given rights like people (corporate personhood) but powers and freedoms no citizen can have. I cannot lend you 10,000 bucks and then have magically appear in my account the right to invest that many times over. I do not have limited liability. I cannot influence political leaders in the ways corporations and financial organizations can. Yes, one could look at them as groups of citizens, but they actually have more power than that. And since it is their business to improve their business and this means increase their power, I do not see economic freedom leading to political freedom through neoliberalism. There are other issues like the tension between privitization and the commons, that I also think inhibit citizen freedom. But I won't try to go into an essay I am not competent to write. I just wanted to focus on what I think is a couple of the core flaws in what is assumed in neoliberalism, that need not be, for example, in a libertarianism that did indeed try to avoid giving organizations hallucinatory powers.
  • Why? Why? Morality
    Just so you know Coben posted this showing that Kant was indeed seeking a cause for morality. — TheMadFool
    Perhaps anyway. I am not the least a Kant expert.

    I would think that the causes of immoral behavior and what is moral are quite different studies, off the top of my head, especially for consequentialists. But even so I would think most of them must weigh in somewhere in their writings about why people are bad or good, if they think in those terms.
    1. Finding the cause of good and evil was an impossible task since it is probably buried deep in the human psychology and psychology as a field was nonexistent then — TheMadFool

    But there should be folk theories and folk psychologies.
    2. Finding the cause is redundant. KB moral theory is complete even without knowing the origin of morality — TheMadFool

    Just to check, when you are talking about the origin of morality, do you mean why people do good and bad things, or the origin of thinking in moral terms.

    I think it either case one can try to figure out how people should interact without knowing the origins. IOW one can put forward set of rules and why these are good.

    But it does seem to me that if you are thinking of a more complete solution, like how do we get people to follow rules, not hurt each other for no reason - or whatever the breaches are in our system - then it helps to know why they are immoral. Because sharing what is good is likely not enough.
  • Why is so much rambling theological verbiage given space on 'The Philosophy Forum' ?
    I think it is unseemly to justify one's own biases by noting that everyone has them. It is not so much that science should be used for every investigation and inquiry, as that the scientific attitude which consists in attempting to find counter-evidence that refutes one's own theories should be used as an antidote to bias confirmation. — Janus
    So how would or should this play out for a physicalist or someone who thinks that the paranormal or the supernatural - as used as categories, not that they are named well - do not exist? IOW how should they attempt to find counter-evidence?
  • Why? Why? Morality
    ↪TheMadFool
    Obedience to the moral law, of which Kant believes religion should be an example, appears to be an expectation that is neither universally nor willingly practiced. What is notable about the first two chapters of Religion is that he addresses this phenomenon in a manner that his Enlightenment predecessors had not: The failure of human moral agents to observe the moral law is symptomatic of a character or disposition (Gesinnung) that has been corrupted by an innate propensity to evil, which is to subordinate the moral law to self-conceit. Because this propensity corrupts an agent’s character as a whole, and is the innate “source” of every other evil deed, it may be considered “radical.” However, this propensity can be overcome through a single and unalterable “revolution” in the mode of thought (Revolution für die Denkungsart), which is simultaneously the basis for a gradual reform of character in the mode of sense (für die Sinnesart); for without the former, there is no basis for the latter. This reformation of character ultimately serves as the ground for moral agents within an ethical commonwealth, which, when understood eschatologically, is the Kingdom of God on Earth.
  • Is introspection a valid type of knowledge
    Introspection is a source of information that shows.....
    .....how I am, absolutely:
    .....how other people are, I can’t accept. Well, introspection show them how they are, but it won’t show me how they are.     — Mww
    I think you can get information about others via introspection. It can show you the effects others have on you - obviously suceptible to bias. This info could be used later in discussions with others who have had contact with that person. And also, if you have 'worked on yourself' for a long time, you may have a decent handle on your biases, having previously cross-checked with others. You might be able informed by introspection after and during contact with someone begin to analyze their behavior and words given what you notice about the effects of being around them, about what happens when they do or say X. And have some trust in those conclusions. Oh, he plays dominance games, I wondered why I felt defensive around him. The latter felt state - defensive - one you noted via introspection. Of course some people will be better at this than others. But your reactions to the world, which can be explored and the understanding deepened via introspection, can give you information about things outside you.

    r
  • Why? Why? Morality
    ↪DingoJones
    Well, if we look at this for example....

    Moral theory began with religion. In very simple terms, religion prescribed a list of dos and don'ts. The reason (why1?) was that God demanded it and God was the supreme moral authority — TheMadFool

    that sure sounds like monotheism, likely Abrahamist. God in the singular, not god as one of many. The list of dos and don'ts sounds like commandments. Indigenous/shamanistic, pagan, polytheistic, animistic religions may have some of this, but it would be an odd way to talk about it, I think. And these types of religions go back further in time than the Abrahamic type religions do. So it really does seem like he is using one type of religion as a model for religions, and given his argument is regarding out of what came morals, it doesn't make much sense chronologically.
  • The Kantian case against procreation
    The act of procreation has this feature. It seems undeniable that in procreating one significantly affects another person, for one thereby commits someone else to living an entire life. And it also seems undeniable that the person who is affected in this way has not consented to it. — Bartricks
    If one, on the way to procreating, person reads this argument and does not have a child, that will change the lives of future generations in millions of ways we cannot predict. Their child might have been the best friend of someone, the police who shot a serial killer before what turns out to be 10 more torture deaths. And yes, it might be the next Hitler. But regardless you are performing an act of persuasion that will affect a lot of people, most likely, if we look forward in time thousands of years, say. but here you are performing that act without their permission,and without ours.
  • Why is so much rambling theological verbiage given space on 'The Philosophy Forum' ?
    ↪Terrapin Station
    Ah, a conspiracy theorist, who would have known.:razz: I think different forums attract types. I see that in another forum I'm a part of. It's a quite different phenomenon there. I am not quite sure but I think it has to do with how the patterns are received. It feels right. And of course that's true for others, including posters who are not problematic. There is some quality to the forums where they stick that feels right.

    I would also like to add that the concept of troll is generally too limited. It has to be conscious. They have to be intending to trigger people. I think there are people looking for certain reactions and they may not realize it. The Philosophy forum offers a certain kind of long term engagement with anti-natalism, for example. I couldn't put it into words, though perhaps if I read the threads- horrors- a couple of times, I'd get a whiff.

    But I suspect what is happening there is appealing. You would think winning/convincing people would be the goal. But I suspect that isn't it and what is happening there is.
  • Rant on "Belief"
    ↪Gnostic Christian Bishop
    You presented it as simple and binary. It's not. One day you'll learn to concede points, or you won't. It doesn't come off as strong, it comes off as if you admit anything, yout think you'll lose. You wouldn't lose, but you'll never know that as long as you play the narcissism game. The scriptures have all sorts of mismatches, but the mystics and masters between religions, they share a lot. Even the Abrahamic ones. Me, I don't like the Abrahamic traditions, though there are pieces in there that I do. But despite my distaste for those religions, I can still see that there are religious people, who believe in what you are calling the supernatural, who share a lot, despite coming from the different traditions. And then, there people with quite radically different experiences from you, regular ones, some that can be controlled. Not myths. One of the things that was often horrific about the Abrahamic religious was their righteous wrath. If only your version of gnoticism had kept you free of that. Then the binary thinking and oversimplification and lying to us, you could let go. Sometimes the ends don't justify the means.
  • Why is so much rambling theological verbiage given space on 'The Philosophy Forum' ?
    ↪unenlightened
    I blame unborn children for burdening us with the anti-natalist guilt trip. In revenge I am going to have more children.
  • Is introspection a valid type of knowledge
    ↪Mww
    Agreed. I think knowledge makes more sense as a thing than introspection.
  • Why is so much rambling theological verbiage given space on 'The Philosophy Forum' ?
    ↪Pattern-chaser
    I am. I am sad you didn't notice.
  • A simple argument against freewill. Miracle?
    ↪TheMadFool
    Earlier in this thread you defended against the idea that qm effects might interfere with pure determinism by quoting wikipedia that at speeds much slower than the speed of light, hey, things follow the classic laws anyway. But you don't even need to go there. Random does not lead to free will. If I make random choices, I am not active freely. That was one point. The other is the qm type effects actually can shift the way, for example, a bird moves. But that's not really necessary for this argument.
  • Rant on "Belief"
    Yes, but you do not see historians killing each other over their views the way the religious do. — Gnostic Christian Bishop
    The countries who follow different historians send the experts to do the killing, for example. And the experts are not the historians, but the soldiers. Of course, some of the soldiers may be historians, but that's not there are sent to kill. So the lay historians, politicians, working from discordant histories, go to war.
    Historians tend to report what they think are facts and may speak of the conditions they see arising from political systems, but they do not usually debate the various forms.

    I do not see religious bias as the same as the bias historians have. One is based on nothing whie the other is based on facts.     — Gnostic Christian Bishop
    based on purported facts. And since you see religions as false per se, well, of course you don't see them as based on facts, unless they are interpreted in the way you, as the particular kind of gnostic you are think they should be.
    And further are not so important as say scripture.
    — Coben

    Scriptures are not important at all to intelligent people who are not raised outside of a religion. They see them as myths. Some will have a worthy message and some will just be garbage.     — Gnostic Christian Bishop

    I know you think this. But that was not my point. My point was to say that what religious people say in lay exchanges is not as important as scripture. I'm not a fan of the various scriptures, but that's neither here nor there.
    And then you classify the religious writers, it seems, as intentionally justifying what they consider immoral and unethical.
    — Coben

    Sure. They try and fail, as indicated by the shrinking numbers ot theists.     — Gnostic Christian Bishop
    Try and fail is different from intentionally trying to mislead. Further there is not a shrinking number of theists, there is shrinking percentage of theists.
    What I disagree with is religions hiding behind a supernatural shield which kill debate and is like arguing with brain dead children. — Gnostic Christian Bishop
    This slid away from the issue the issue what you quoted from me was focused on.
  • A simple argument against freewill. Miracle?
    ↪TheMadFool
    But you can have qm level effects moving large organisms. But you don't have to worry about this. qm either consider random or statistical - I'd lean towards the latter - doesn't off free will, since if it is, for example, random, well, that ain't you choosing.
  • Why is so much rambling theological verbiage given space on 'The Philosophy Forum' ?
    ↪fresco
    I can imagine that being a factor. That would mean in part that it's the topic that is part of what bothers you and not just the quality of the discourse. I've noticed, over the years, a growing 'philosophy should stay away from anything scientific' (render unto science that which is science's...) and 'metaphysics is all a waste of time and it is all religious woo woo' - when those on that team often don't seem to know much about the philosophy of science, the history of science, what metaphysics at least can include and how science even includes its own metaphysics - and 'all that religious stuff and anything supernatural has been proven, yes, proven, to not exist'. And this is in a situation where people haven't really investigated the ways they themselves actually came to their beliefs and what is going on in their own minds when they think. So, there is a dismissive rage gauntlet one must run through if anything doesn't seem to match common sense. I use that last term quite intentionally, for all the irony around it. I get it. Christianity - which is usually the default religion in both sides minds, despite their being all sorts of theisms - has been part of all sorts of horrors. But this has led to a situation where anything that seems to challenge physicalism, monism, empiricism over rationalism, winds up being sneered at and treated with rancor. Then people line up on their teams, tend not to call out their own team for its mistakes and overreaching, and focus on attack, rarely conceding anything, and always on the look for the good dig. It would be nice if things could breathe and be explored, even if some participants, or even most, think that the issue in question has all been resolved. I don't think most ideas should very rapidly encounter rage, unless the posts themselves contain rage. It's as if it would be civilization's fall if we just explored something. Slippery slope and soon we'll be wearing hair shirts and being placed in stocks for adultery if that post isn't smacked right off.
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