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not necessarily.

When I went to Iraq I was given a very clear explanation for why more Islamic terrorists are college-educated than not:

Arabs as a culture do not teach their children about the relationship between cause and effect...

Classical (ie. "western") university educations teach things like cause-and-effect, ordered sequencing of events, and Logic in the Greek traditions.

The Arab culture simply is not equipped to discuss their goals with us in terms of the Logic we embrace because they don't teach it or learn it among themselves.

Well then. Congratulations on having been so easily hoodwinked by a racist ideology. Congratulations on having swallowed the propaganda hook, line and sinker, and for having demonstrated yourself to be the kind of mindless, gullible, twat who uncritically parrots whatever he is told, and so makes the world a much more miserable and difficult place in which to live.

The arabs have an uninterrupted tradition of philosophy--including Aristotelean logic--that's more than a thousand years old. The only way that the European world had any access to most of Aristotle and much other Greek philosophy during the medieval period was via the Islamic world. For heaven's sake, Avicenna--also a major western philosophical figure in the Aristotelan tradition--is still regularly studied today in the middle east.

So before you lecture me on treating consciousness like some "transcendental mystical metaphysical drug hallucination," you might consider that I know what I'm talking about, because I've read much on the subject of consciousness and the philosophy of mind, and tailor your responses accordingly.

The only "ideology" of science, if you want to call it that, is to go where the evidence leads you, no matter how unsettling, disruptive or embarrasing the truth may turn out to be.

Nope.

Science is a tool, a methodology. And a tool per se is clearly not an ideology. But this is a red herring. No one can use a tool without bringing their ideology with them.

The ideologies of scientific practice are so intertwined with science itself that they often aren't even noticed, much less questioned. Examples include the belief that progress is both inevitable and beneficial (utopianism), or the belief that atheism is automatically more rational than theism.

But my favorite ideology is positivism, which claims that nonscientific statements cannot be true. This might sound plausible, even compelling. But it is not science. A silly example: (1) science cannot establish that humans have unalienable rights, (2) therefore human rights are a mere social fiction. Proposition #1 is empirically valid. Proposition #2 cannot logically follow without first assuming positivism -- it is a thoroughly ideological conclusion, yet often represented as "science" anyway.

It is equally valid to say, (2) human rights do exist (perhaps they are incorrigible, for instance), therefore positivism is a mere social fiction. In fact, this is extraordinarily plausible since all of us believe plenty of nonscientific claims -- such as the reliability of logic and the existence of the universe (rather than the Matrix) -- and we do not consider ourselves irrational for doing so. And Godel, of course, showed us that some of these unprovable beliefs will in fact be true.

The kicker is that philosophers abandoned positivism decades ago after discovering a slight problem: the statement "nonscientific statements cannot be true" is a nonscientific statement. It cannot be established by science. Therefore it is not true. =) Unfortunately, the notion remains firmly entrenched in both academic and popular culture, and I am skeptical that SEFORA will take pains to separate illegitimate ideological conclusions from their very legitimate anti-censorship activities. Pot, kettle, black.

The failure of positivism is an unsettling, disruptive, embarrassing truth that its adherents are frequently unwilling to admit. As Harvard biologist Richard Lewontin famously wrote, "We cannot let a divine foot in the door." And no, I am not defending ID. But it is terribly amusing to see how many objections to ID turn out to be ideological.

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Dum de dum.

When it comes to Linux versus Windows it is almost a matter of philosophy.

"The unexamined [code] is not worth [coding]." -- Socrates (Apology 38a)

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Elephant Essays - Custom-created essays and research papers.

You are making the classic error of saying that there can't be morals/ethics without religion.

Funny, I thought I was explicitly addressing the classic error of saying that there can be morals/ethics without religion. ;-)

It is perfectly possible to come up with a set of moral guidelines regarding for example behaviours with your fellow humans without involving any deity whatsoever.

I certainly never said that agreements aren't possible; quite the opposite, I was pointing out that agreements are a rather rickety basis for the moral concepts that we tend to consider important. You speak of guidelines, but (unless I misunderstand) that's putting words in my mouth; I spoke initially of principles, like dignity, freedom, and inalienable human rights. As I address at length in a following post, how sensible is it for something to be inalienable by consensus? Anything agreed upon by humans can be dissolved by humans at any time.

But let's move from principles down to specific ethics:

Kant and Hume were amongst the first to propose atheist ethics. They are mostly based on the idea that one should help one's fellow man, because this is in everyone's best interest, in other words do unto others what you would like others done unto you.

Come now. Even though it's been a good decade since I've seriously studied Hume and Kant... I know at least that Kant was a deontologist! The very concept of deontology is strongly identified with Kant, given his landmark contributions to the concept.

Kant's ethics are absolute and universal; he does not endorse any normative concept of consensus or agreement, but uses consensus only to illustrate his central idea -- that true, absolute, universal morality can be identified using Reason alone, and so all correct reasoning should arrive at the same conclusions. But Kant's position -- simplifying tremendously here! -- that morality is simultaneously real yet immaterial requires some basis that allows Reason to identify the rightness or wrongness of an ethic. "[I]n other words, [we] must postulate the existence of God... We proceed to exhibit this connection in a convincing manner." (Critique of Practical Reason, Abbott translation, section V, "The Existence of God as a Postulate of Pure Practical Reason")

Now, Kant is certainly not a Christian, but he is unarguably a theist, in that God is the guarantor and trustee of morality. Note that Kant takes moral freedom as a given (I think he believes it is incorrigible) and argues that this is nonsense without the existence of God.

Now, perhaps your misapprehension of Kant stems from his reputation as a fierce defender of naturalism. He certainly was! In fact, he wrote mostly on science; he took little interest in philosophy until this bloke named Hume began teaching a radical skepticism that seemed to undermine even Newtonian physics. But Kant was also a fierce defender of free will (which he calls freedom or autonomy) -- and he admitted that naturalism and freedom are contradictory concepts that he was never able to reconcile (an "antimony"). He settles instead for one of his most famous conclusions: that to live by any rational ethic, we must behave as if we have free will, whether it exists or not.

Oh, hey, this sounds a lot like the guys I quoted in my original post, eh?

[Section break :-)]

Now, as for Hume, it is entirely unsurprising to me that -- at the end of his writings -- he encountered the very same obstacle. The radical skeptic, Hume spends a lot of time establishing that reason is capable only of understanding facts, and no valid reasoning can deduce what is from what should be. Yet he finds that this obstructs any concept of morality. In his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, he allo

Hint: any time you find yourself inferring or rephrasing someone else's argument, you're most likely just creating a strawman

Interesting! That's a good rule of thumb, I'll keep it in mind. Although, in this case I wasn't rephrasing the argument, but an ambiguously-stated parenthesis. It was really more of a lame attempt to find a segue. :-)

it's disingenuous to suggest that because nothing can be absolutely proven, all things are at equal levels of non-proof

This wasn't my intention, though I apologize if my tendency to oversimplify on Slashdot made it unclear. I am certainly not arguing for Humean skepticism!

Formally restated, a rationalist generally accepts only propositions that are either (1) axiomatic to reasoning or knowledge, (2) incorrigible, or (3) established to one's satisfaction by evidence in accordance with (1) and (2).

Being pedantic, as you say, means that we have to consider (1), (3), and perhaps (2) to be suspect. But pragmatically, we do not. We are, in a nutshell, talking about beliefs -- they might be untrue assumptions, but how many of us really think so?

So if I believe (3) to be true, then it easily establishes the rising of the Sun, and disqualifies the non-rising of the Sun. Even Hume did not walk around all day questioning the existence of everything.

However, my point was that there are propositions that most of us also accept as true, but are not rationally justified by the model above. And Godel showed us that some of these propositions will in fact be true. The existence of a real universe is the obvious example; we should consider that it might be an illusion, but how many of us really think so?

The existence of God is arguably another example. Thus, I did intend to suggest that the specific axioms of God and non-God are indeed at equal, or at least comparable, levels of non-proof.

So no, I do not expect a rational person to refute gods because they cannot be absolutely proven to be true. I expect a rational person to refute gods because their existence would be contrary to a larger and more consistent set of evidence about the cosmos.

This approach is entirely reasonable, if indeed you have made a considered decision that the evidence for God is similar to the evidence for werewolves. My complaint is firmly with those who think the assumption of non-God is automatically rational, mature, and intelligent while the assumption of God is somehow automatically irrational, ignorant, and unintelligent.

I will quibble, though, that the axiom of God is hardly contrary to any physical evidence. (Maybe you meant "unsupported?") At one extreme, the Deist God can't contradict anything since it never touches the physical universe (so then we cue Occam's Razor =). But the Christian model includes both the axioms of rationality, applied wherever appropriate, as well as the axiom of an active God, who might physically intervene every so often, but whose real interest is almost totally on the human condition; more specifically, on fixing individual souls; more specifically, on yours and mine.

Anyway, thus I reiterate (obTopic) that the axiom of God is absolutely not supported by vacuous statements about "science can't explain X, so there!" (And for TFA to trot this out is a strawman.) But I could argue that by accurately encompassing both science and humanity, the Christian model presents an even "larger and more consistent set of evidence." That is definitely a topic for another time, however.

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Dum de dum.

That is raising the question. Just remember, 99.98% of the time you want to use "beg the question", you probably need to use "raise the question". Thank you.

Then how come you make such a blatant logical error?

His argument was that highly trained / experience professionals would lead to less likelihood of errors happening or something to that extent.

My point was that the list counter-evidences this theory, as in that case highly experieced programmers also created catastrophic mistakes - even if we accept your dodgy ("poor oversight and testing", according to you, has nothing to do with the skill/experience of those involved) count of 1 or 2 out of ten, my basic point still stands, since for my point to be valid, i dont have to show that all ten were caused by experienced software people, but rather simply that some were. if you showed me a list of the 100 worst software mistakes of all time and it turns out that 99 were caused by junior programmers, then you might have a point. but as is, you don't.

I am sure you are a smart person, but consider taking a course in basic logic. Try http://www.philosophypages.com/lg/, especially the section marked "Quantification Theory."

Kant's "categorical imperative". Ask yourself "what if everyone did this" before taking an action.

Actually, your logic would be the sophistry, as the burden of "proof" lies as much with the atheists as it does with the theist.

No the theory itself is flawed. It's like me saying:
"I have an undetectable Nerf ball that floats above my head."
It's an obviously bad theory. The logical failure is the statement itself.

You must prove that God does not and can not exist as an atheist.

That's like me demanding that you must prove my Nerf ball does not exist. It's silly.

I'll be able to come up with arguments against any reason you can come up with for my Nerf ball's nonexistence, but that's because the original theory is flawed. The theory itself is sophistry.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

To those of us who believe in logic, science, and reason it is.

No, that person is a solipsist, not an idealist.

Solipsism entails idealism, though.

No, that person is a solipsist, not an idealist.

Solipsism entails idealism, though.

I think Philosophy Pages' definition is pretty much on the mark:

• Complete rejection of the existence of human knowledge and values or denial of the possibility of making any useful distinctions among things.

Seroiusly though criticising moderators is not the way to get karma around here.

I don't know if this was somehow intended to be ironic or wtf you're talking about but a) i don't give a shit and b) I'm capped anyway.

It may be a neater theory to use occam's razor on the mind, but this is not without its problems -- not the least of which is that nobody, **absolutely nobody** pretends to know the necessary and sufficient conditions for consciousness. Our understanding of consciousness has improved radically in the last 20 years, but we are still a long way from being able to give authoritative answers about consciousness, so it's probably premature to say authoritatively that 'the mind is nothing more than a manifestation of electro-chemical brain activity.' At this point, there is evidence for this belief, and it accords very well with the prevalent materialist worldview that underlies science, but to regard the question as already answered must, dare i say it, be an article of faith.

Anyway, just something to think about...

During WWII the Nazis did a grand experiment of sorts. After measuring, probing, researching and prodding hundreds (if not thousands) of "Aryan" soldiers, they were sent to breeding houses. There they'd get it on with hand-picked Fraulines that met the criteria. AFAIK this continued for a few years and the results should be documented somewhere.

What I wonder is, has there been any studies done that correlates post-WWII germany to this 'ubermensch' they were working towards? Was there any broad stroke of improvement, or any measurable good from this experiment? It'd be very interesting to find anything on this subject.

Don't like the Skeptic? Well, then try this, or this, or maybe even that.

• Less than 300 pages: Yes
• 300 to 399 pages: No, but close
• 400 to 499 pages: No
• 500 to 599 pages: Far from it
• 600 or more pages: Hell, no!

Well, not exactly. It is a little bit more complicated than that (I am not a law student and was also puzzled by the wording): However, here is what I understand after looking it up at the Free University Berlin's law department (in case you are fluent in German legal babble; I guess it will not survive the Babel fish :-( ):

1. The wording "moral code" in the English translation is a literal translation of "Sittengesetz" and does not refer to extra-legal moral beliefs. Generally accepted extra-legal moral beliefs are believed to be rare in a pluralistic society. "Sittengesetz" in fact is viewed in relation to the Civil Rights Law's (BGB) definition of decency ( 138 BGB) for example.

2. "These rights may only be encroached upon pursuant to a law." The meaning of this is hard to get (legal babble), I give you that, but it only means that a person's freedom can be limited if in violation of a law, where not otherwise in conflict with the Basic Law. If this article wouldn't have this provision, it would be impossible to sentence anyone to prison.

This is -as all legal systems are- rather complex and I suggest further studies before making statements like "So any law can be passed and it is automatically constitutional. They might as well have not even bothered."

In case you are interested in the philosophical concept of Sittengesetz, try this link .

Cheers

Suppose that [Your Favorite Totalitarian Regime] is perpetrating [some awful atrocity]. Would extremist tactics in order to bring attention to such abuses be justified? What is the difference, then, between the hypothetical situation and this one? Keep in mind that "environmentalist wackos" do in fact believe that an atrocity is being committed here.

Regarding the burning of the dealership, the relatively benign emissions from such a blaze are insignificant compared to the environmental damage caused by supplying those SUVs with enough gas to move them a few hundred miles.

Finally, I think you should brush up on virtue ethics, as it seems to me that this ethical system can justify violent acts of this nature.

"In the best of all possible worlds, all is for the best."