A priest who has abandoned his sexuality under the false doctrine of the church and who has given up a family and the meaningful relationships that flow from embracing that sexuality is a lesser person than a person actually engaging in the world and occasionally (gasp) having casual sex.

Suppose you're terribly wrong here and that the need for sex and the satisfaction of that need is a more mature response than a person who has successfully repressed that need. Suppose your premise is utter nonsense, that elimination of or simply lacking sexual urge is unrelated entirely to virtue, morality, maturity or any superior power? That does seem to be your underlying unsupportable premise.

It strikes me that those who go without are either (1) misled religiously, (2) asexually constructed, or (3) socially incapable. Advocating chastity therefore arises because you either (1) wish to convert others to your religion, (2) are incapable of understanding sexuality due to your own asexuality, or (3) are trying to justify your own social limitations.

It strikes me that a culture that drapes their women in heavy clothes to hide their sexuality and that enforces gender specific roles suffers from far greater sexual obsession than mine.

The rest of what you say is unpersuasive pseudo-wisdom, reciting the terms under which you've found meaning in your life, like anyone finds it important. Tiring evangelism of sorts really. Has your prosthelsyzing brought you any converts?

If our paper and the markings on it had no depth and were truly only 2 dimensional (as in a theoretical plane), we, as 3 dimensional creatures couldn't see it. Hold your paper sideways and you'll see what I mean. It's real thin, sure, but it's still 3 dimensions.

Your examples don't change the fact that it is logically incorrect. In the case of Manson, it shouldn't follow logically from the fact that he's untrustworthy but because we have statements from witnesses that better match the facts. If his statement would match the facts and not contradict other statements, then regardless of his trustworthiness, we would have to acquit him due to reasonable doubt. If the statements of witnesses cannot be corroborated by facts, they should not be used no matter the presumed trustworthiness of the witnesses as opposed to those of Manson. — Benkei

If you assert an epistemological standard as high as "beyond a reasonable doubt," then I suppose we'll be forced to deny the existence of all sorts of generally accepted facts. For example: What time will Benkei be in today? Well, for the past 10 years, he's shown up at 8:30 to 9:00, so I'd say 8:30 to 9:00. Fair enough, although I can't say that beyond a reasonable doubt.

That is to say, you've inserted a non-common sense legalistic principle in here. I will say pretty unequivocally, though, that if you asked me whether I believe beyond a reasonable doubt that the waters will rise in the Netherlands in the next 100 years to the point of making it uninhabitable, I'd say no. I'd also say that I couldn't assert the opposite either to that level of proof: that the waters won't rise to that point.

To be sure, though, if Manson told me anything that seemed at all incredible, I'd be justifiably less likely to believe him than if a close friend told me the same thing. Why? Well, because Manson is a known psychopath who values truth and his reputation very little. That tidbit does matter.

A juror will be struck for legal cause if he or she indicates a financial interest or a leaning or bias for or against either party. I seriously doubt you'd find it ok to have your wife preside over your divorce proceedings (not that it shall ever to come to that), for example. Per your reasoning, we should not object to any holding by the biased judge or juror because credibility of the decision maker (whether it be a judge, juror, scientist, witness, or whoever) is an irrational criterion to consider when evaluating the decision.

That's what lawyers keep telling themselves but it really isn't. Even someone who isn't credible could still be telling the truth. Logically, this doesn't hold any water. — Benkei

Of course. If Hitler says the blue sky is blue, it's still blue, despite his somewhat sullied reputation. However, in many instances (like climate change), we can't just look up at the sky and confirm the veracity of a statement ourselves, so we are left to rely upon the credibility of the speaker to some extent. It's for that reason, for example, if Charles Manson and his band of merry men and women deny having murdered anyone, yet a group of disinterested witnesses tell us otherwise, we tend to believe the disinterested witnesses, mostly because we understand why Manson may be inclined to lie, but we don't understand why the witnesses would.

And we all do this very thing on this forum all the time. For example, once I cited to a website for the proposition that most Palestinians wanted the elimination of Israel, and you ruthlessly ridiculed me over the reference, claiming that I was a patent fool for relying on such a biased poll, damaging my pristine reputation and making me less believable than I previously was.

"Oh, can't trust what he says because he's a Republican/Democrat". Rational discourse doesn't work that way. And your bare assumption that "a liberal worldview [is] consistent with anti-corporate and anti-business interests" is very telling. It's not even true for most leftists but that requires you to take others that don't agree with you a bit more seriously to absorb. — Benkei

I agree that both sides tend to ignore the nuances of the other, which is why Republicans are often summarized as racist rednecks, but I can recognize that the right does the same to the left as well.

I don't agree though that the polarization we have in US society isn't very real and very deep, which lends itself to a reasonable distrust of anyone who arrives at a conclusion opposed to one side's political position. Using a legal analogy (because that's all I can apparently do), it's reasonable for a jury to have a healthy distrust for both parties because the jury expects that both lawyers are going to present their cases in the best possible light, leaving the jury as the objective body to ferret out the truth. That is, in the legal context, polarization is expected, but an objective body is inserted in to resolve the truth of the issue. I'm not sure, though, that in US society that there's any mainstream objective body waiting to hear both sides and ferret out the truth. The press has openly abdicated it's role as an objective bastion of truth, and the courts are openly questioned by both sides depending upon their ruling.

I do fancy me a kosher egg served by wonk who attended a predominantly Jewish university. Right now all I've got is a redneck chick who serves me fried pork rinds who attended DUI school.

It isn't rational because it's a logical fallacy to reject an argument based on the perceived authority of those making its case - especially on something as flimsy as political affiliation. Moreover, the consensus is over 97%. What happened to those 40% Republican scientists? Third, it's not just US scientists that say this so the political affiliation discussion only goes so far and really is only a US discussion. — Benkei

Credibility of the person is critical when you have a distrust of their data gathering and computations. Obviously, if you were accused of murdering your neighbor, your mother's credibility in asserting you were with her and could not have done it would be suspect (as she does dote on her little Benkei) as would any physical evidence she might present to prove your whereabouts.

With regard to political affiliation bias, it goes beyond that to the point of being a liberal worldview consistent with anti-corporate and anti-business interests. Anyway, I'm not arguing as forcefully against climate change as it might appear, but am only pointing out that there is nothing irrational per se in climate change deniers looking skeptically at the backgrounds of those presenting the climate change conclusions.

It also appears that you're inconsistently arguing both sides of this, on the one hand criticizing those who reject arguments based upon the perceived authority of those making the case, but then appealing to authority based upon the perceived authority of those who make the case by suggesting I should be concerned with the number of bona fide scientists who have concluded a particular way.

So for us, there are no benefits. It's nice though that there's a few more trees and less deaths from cold winters. — Benkei

The OP asks what the positives of climate change might be, and whether the loss of the Netherlands is or isn't a positive is a matter of opinion.

Neither and course would have been a better way to say it.

If those in charge are so dishonorable, why sully yourself interacting with them?

You could do as we did when faced with this very dilemma and start your own site, or you could just keep whining.

If for the last 25 years had you regularly read general science articles in papers like the New York Times, Washington Post, Scientific American, and so on; had you been watching the Lehrer News Hour on PBS, had you been listening to news on National Public Radio, had you watched NOVA and Nature on PBS, you wouldn't be in this slough of deficient information. You would have heard many explanations about what data had been gathered, how they got it, how the analyzed it, and what the upshots were. — Bitter Crank

Damn! All I've watched was Foxnews.

For those looking for a philosophy forum with substantially less moderation and administration, I'd recommend PF.

Nils,

I'd suggest you rewrite the post, save it, and then delete it. That way you'll have your own record of your deleted posts.

Hope this was helpful. Not sure why I'm not a moderator.

Either the scientific work done by the majority of scientists can be trusted but if you're arguing it cannot then doing so by referring to other scientific work is then completely arbitrary. If you're going to choose one scientist's results over another, you're going to have to go into the scientific methods used, the theories tested and the data collected. Anything else is just trying to find justifications of beliefs that don't seem to be currently supported by the majority of climate change scientists. — Benkei

The position of the anti-climate change folks is one of both intentional and unintentional worldview bias on the part of the scientists. Their belief is that the there is either an intentional anti-business effort on the part of the scientists or that the scientists are so indoctrinated to a liberal point of view that they will inevitably produce results supportive of their position. The vast majority of scientists do not consider themselves Republican (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/10/only-six-percent-of-scien_n_229382.html).

Since climate change deniers believe there is inherent bias running throughout the supposedly objective scientific process, and the climate change deniers lack the expertise to conduct the experiments themselves, they either reject or are very skeptical of the climate change conclusions.

My point here is that it is rational and not at all arbitrary to reject the conclusions of someone you find lacking credibility. What would be irrational would be to fully accept the credibility of the scientists but to simply refuse to accept their inconvenient conclusions. I don't think that is at all what is happening. I think what is really happening is that the general public (myself included) has no idea what sort of experiments have been conducted or what sort of data has been collected, but we are all asked to accept the conclusions because most scientists say it's valid. If tomorrow they report they were wrong, I suspect you'd change your mind. Whether placing trust in the consensus of the experts is reasonable and rational is debatable because polling scientists is a not a scientific act. It's a political one.

I am in Georgia, and during a brief period in the mid 1800s, we were not part of the US, but were part of a controversial break away nation that didn't end so well. I haven't looked up the date that TPF began, but if it were during the confederacy period, it's possible we're under the jurisdiction of a now defunct nation. I will follow up on this issue and let sweetie pie and snookums know.

I agree with that, but that's not a climate issue. If what you're saying is that fossil fuels should continue to be used at will as long as there's some plan for a future solution when they run out, then I don't think you're siding with the climate change folks.

The reason that neither side presents a tempered response to the climate issue is because neither side is terribly concerned with the truth (we live in a post-truth world after all). Each side is more interested in pushing forth their political agenda (which tends to break down into pro-corporate big business vs. anti-corporate big business) than in simply arriving at the academic truth. That is to say, if I am an oil company executive, I want there to be more drilling and higher profits, and if I can achieve that goal by making arguments that there is no climate change, then I'm likely going to make that argument. The other side, of course, will make more cataclysmic arguments in order to shut big oil down.

Your suggestion that what big oil ought to do is to concede certain points to the climate control group in order to gain credibility, but then to argue that a certain amount of global warming is tolerable in order to protect big oil's ability to continue drilling is a strategy decision that may or may not work. Sure, your approach shows a fidelity to truth, but the oil company isn't looking for integrity (and I'd submit that the other side to this debate isn't either); it's looking for an advancement of its interests however that might be best achieved.

Consider the used car lot scenario. The car's worth $10,000. The sticker says $15,000. I offer $5,000. If we're both equally good negotiators, we end up at $10,000. Sometimes the better negotiator gets a better deal. Regardless, when they said $15,000, they didn't think it was really worth that, and I didn't really think it was worth $5,000. Whether I should have just said $10,000 take it or leave it from the get go is a strategy question. Maybe it've worked, or maybe I'd have ended up paying $12,500.

Your friend has zero reasons to be confident in his economic predictions for 60-100 years hence. I know nothing about your friend; he might be a genius, but he still doesn't know what is going to happen economically in 100 years. Nobody else does either. I personally would not bank on such advice — Bitter Crank

If it's futile to try to predict the future and all we really can know is what will happen right now, then it seems the proper decision would be to ignore the possible negative distant future consequences of global warming and simply do what will right now result in positive consequences. That is, maybe ignoring global warming will result in a thriving 2116 economy, but, then again, maybe it will result in its collapse. We just don't know. On the other hand, we do know that a continuation of use of fossil fuels will continue to lead us to a predictably thriving economy in the near future, so let's do that.

I think the other part never mentioned is the damage to the economy brought about by increased regulation in an effort to save the environment. That is, I think it's perfectly acceptable to do a cost/ benefit analysis to determine how many people will suffer in exchange for the loss of X number of polar bears, for example.

Hidden in this dispute is the right's bias toward promoting humans above all else. I, for example, see value in a pristine forest, but only to the extent humans benefit from it. If, however, I were to find that pristine forest as having inherent value worth protecting regardless of human benefit, then I'd be inclined to ignore your article and do whatever were necessary to save it. That's where a dispute lies.

I guess the losers need to convince themselves they're smarter. Sure guys, your vote for Clinton was fucking brilliant. She was just what we all needed but we'll never know how great America could have been.

Oh, and where did you arrive at a correlation between education and critical reasoning skills? Maybe there's a correlation between formal education and liberal indoctrination. I certainly noticed that screamingly obvious fact while being schooled.

Descartes was at least important enough for Kant et al to respond to, wheras they wouldn't notice you even as you tried to pleasure them.

Meh. I'd say all of Western metaphysics is in trying to explain how Descartes must have gotten it wrong.

Sure, and you shouldn't take migraine meds but should just accept your headache and move on, and please don't be a judgmental prick while having a migraine. Just deal with it. Nature gave you this migraine for a good reason. Embrace it.

Depression seems to be a natural state that the body embraces when afflicted with continual stress. — Question

Maybe. Some people under great stress don't get depressed and some people seem to be depressed for no good reason. All things considered, I would think that not being depressed is better than being depressed even if it were caused by stress. For that reason, if we could flip the depression off, we should.

What's wrong with being depressed? — Question

What's wrong with a backache? It's just your body telling you that you're old and not smart enough to not lift boxes. It would seem, though, that if I could wake up without really bad back pain, I'd do that. And better than just stopping the symptoms (which might be protective against my stupidity), shouldn't I embrace a cure to the underlying problem if it were available? It just seems that if a chronically depressed patient could have his underlying basis for his funk erased, he should attempt it, just as a chronic back injured person should accept a bionic back if one were available.

You're sort of asking why we should fight our God given natural state because, after all, an all good god wouldn't have given us something for no good reason. End your depression for the same reason you shave down your ugly nose. It makes you happy.

Speaking of evolution, why did we evolve in such a way that we can be 'depressed'? — Bitter Crank

I suppose because the god of evolution was imperfect and some of our attributes are not at all beneficial, whether that be depression, schizophrenia, pancreatic cancer, diabetes, a propensity for ingrown toenails, or general ugliness. Some of us are just more destined to the Darwinian dust bin than others.

Spell check changed it to ruminate from defecate. Same opinion?

Sometimes, when perfectfully good words are assembled into a sentence of bullshit, the sum of the parts is worth less than the individual, seperate parts. That happened to me once.

Stare at the ceiling and ruminate upon those critical lifetime decisions and ask yourself what might have been had you only done otherwise. Finally drift off into a timid slumber of regret and awake to an overcast day of lethargy. Lather, rinse, repeat.

You're referencing show tunes. I'm sure there's a joke in there somewhere.

And then it just dawned to me, why shouldnt someone use such a device for himself and then ask the question: "do I have free will now ? Whose free will is it now ? " — Nicky665

The paradox of free will is its ultimate incoherence, but also its necessity in making the world coherent. It is incoherent because it seems not to be refuted simply by determinism, but by causation more generally, meaning that indeterminism offers no solution. That is, if I choose to shoot Michael in the face (damn, should have said gonads because that's funnier), it seems I bear as little responsibility for my act whether it was determined by the eternal predictable chain of causation or whether it was caused by a sudden spontaneous indeterminate cause.

We generally hold that those who are most responsible are those who are best guided by reason, and those who lack the ability to reason, lack free will. This idea postulates some sort of being who can choose the rational guidance presented to him or who can reject it. That is, the external forces at play might sway our decisions, but they don't control it, leaving the final decision to the supposedly autonomous decision maker. So, in the OP's example, I don't see how abandoning a resort to reason to determine the best course of action somehow would result in an exercise of free will.

I'd also point out that the OP's example is overly confusing in its introduction of a quantum random number generator. It would make no difference whether we used that or whether we used the toss of coin or whether we used the daily average outside temperature to make our decision. In each instance, we're just letting our decision be made by something other than our own reason. That is to say, our decisions are being based on something arbitrary, and it's irrelevant whether that arbitrary event is randomly generated.

Uhh, really? The reason that livers don't decide to give up but people do is because livers lack the ability to decide.

What I just said.

Hanover.

Humans are a part of nature and therefore zoos are natural, which is just my roundabout way of saying we all live in a fucking zoo.

Thank you for the link.

I want a thread about stuff I should read.

Can philosophers at least find the emotion to get successfully trolled? I mean some guy just said we're all a monumental waste of time and all he could elicit was a "Yeah? Prove it."

I don't like the video. What I like is when people write stuff. It's sort of like when I go to a news site and I have to watch the newscaster tell me what's going on instead of being able to read it. I don't like that. That's sort of a comparison, maybe you'd think it an analogy, I don't really know. In any event, if people start posting their stuff in video format, that'll be just one more annoying thing I'll have to deal with.

You ask two questions: (1) Should we always forego all pleasantries and just get down to business, and (2) should you have just kissed her? The answers are (1) no and (2) yes.

Your uncertainty and delay was understandable but ultimately awkward and far less memorable and impressive had you just kissed her. You're feeling that now, and so you're asking your question, seeking some validation that our system is flawed as opposed to owning the error of your hesitation. Had you properly moved in for your kiss without requesting permission and she had not wanted you to, you'd have detected that and would've backed off before stealing your kiss.

Your question is actually endearing in an innocent sort of way.

It doesn't matter how many people can conceive of a thing or how smart they must be. All that matters is that some mind, somewhere, sometime, and somehow can conceive of that thing.

I don't understand your question then. If you're hypothesizing that there can be a mind that has infinite comprehension, then it's logically entailed that such a mind be able to conceive anything that is possible.

If your question is, though, whether the actual most complex event can be comprehended by the actual most complex mind, then the answer is empirical, and it seems to be the answer is no because there are all sorts of things that are not currently comprehended.

Well yes, hence my original question. I am looking for a proof or serious argument that would give me a good reason to believe that "the universe is more strange than we are even able to comprehend". — maplestreet

Since it seems obvious that a five year old cannot comprehend the simplest of things (like how a light bulb works) and many fairly intelligent people cannot comprehend complex things (like how a car engine works) and even other very intelligent people cannot comprehend very complex things (like how quantum mechanics works), it seems finally very obvious that the most intelligent people cannot comprehend the most complicated things.