Reason cannot be absolutely trusted, but that's one reason we use more empirical criteria in the sciences for coming to (tentative) conclusions.
No, that's not why we use empirical criteria. We use empirical criteria because reason is incomplete, not because it can't be trusted. Making anything of empirical observations still requires reason, so if reason can't be trusted then adding empirical criteria doesn't help.
I don't see how this at all refutes or poses a problem for physicalism. It only shows that that all beliefs must be tentative and that our understandings of things may be inherently flawed, and that absolute knowledge is out of the question.
It's perhaps a strength of physicalism that it poses the problem. Yes, it leads to the conclusion that "all beliefs must be tentative and that our understandings of things may be inherently flawed", which is all I wanted to claim. Other metaphysical assumptions (for example "God told me so!") may not lead to the same conclusion, but that's because they're weaker, not stronger than physicalism. They don't have the substance to allow such clear (if undesirable) conclusions.
It's tough to pin down such a large group of people..
Reject network DVRs -> Group A says: "Government in the MPAA/RIAA's pocket!"
Defend network DVRs -> Group B says: "Government in the cable companies/ISP's pocket!"
Wonder what group C thinks of this.
Group C is only interested in how big the weathergirl's boobs are.
Dualism doesn't seem to me to gain anything -- it just pushes the problems into whatever reality the "ghost in the machine" inhabits. It doesn't solve any of the problems, it just moves them and makes them harder to analyse.
I'm not sure it is, either. Nor am I sure it isn't. In my experience, the religious concept of "soul" isn't well enough defined to answer that question. Not consistently, anyway -- it's always a bit shaky lumping "religious people" all together, as there is quite a bit of diversity.
Journalists/Bloggers *generally* have no training in the sciences (or often any field outside "Media") and so are not the ideal people to explain any ideas in a specialist field, since they do not understand them
I have training in science, engineering, linguistics and philosophy -- I just don't have time to blog!
Indeed. But a rarely mentioned problem of physicalism is that it's hard to see how reason (as opposed to qualia in general) emerges from physicalism, and it seems to me to be impossible to justify why what we perceive as reason can actually be trusted. So under physicalism, if we assume that reason can be trusted we come to the contradiction that it cannot. If we assume that reason cannot be trusted then we cannot come to any conclusion (because to do so we would have to trust reason). I don't have a viable alternative to physicalism, and it's this argument that has led me to believe (not "know", obviously!) that nothing can be known.
Religious people don't want to sound like complete bumpkins by not acknowledging a biological reality.
You don't think it possible that they actually accept the biological reality?
"Oh, but then there's the soul," they go on.
Which is in no way contrary to the belief that the brain is a collection of cells. Try to get hold of a copy of Daniel Dennett's lecture "Where Am I" for an materialist atheist view of how the existence of a soul can be consistent with the brain as a collection of cells.
I meant that religious people have a problem identifying mind and brain, and I meant to say that those two are pretty much identical.
Ok, that's very different to what you wrote. I still don't think that's a specifically religious issue, though -- most notions of free-will seem to depend on some separation of mind and brain, and although I'm blowed if I can see how it could work, free-will is hardly an exclusively religious issue.
Functionalism is central to contemporary philosophy of mind among analytic philosophers.
But surely analytic philosophy has been in retreat since Popper?
Most anthologies on philosophy of mind, such as this one, are certainly concerned about the relationship between mind and brain.
Quite. Which is why I was surprised you didn't mention it, but only addressed "brain"!
Cutting through the needless walls of text by both Sanchez and Brady, let me summarize the current state of the philosophy of mind:
1) We are little closer to reading off "beliefs" from human brains than we were 30 years ago.
In what sense is that "philosophy of mind"?
2) Media often overgeneralizes the results of neuroscientists.
You could have stopped at "2) Media often overgeneralizes"
3) The brain is still nothing more than a mass of cells.
True. Again, what's that got to do with the philosophy of mind?
4) Religious people have a problem with (3).
Which religious people? I don't know of any who have a problem with that. I know of some who have a problem with the identification of "mind" with "brain", but then I know lots of non-religious people who have the same problem so I'm not sure what you're getting at.
5) Philosophers base their careers trying to argue for or against (3).
Care to name any who do that? I don't know of any; (3) just isn't seen as a philosophical question.
6) More specifically, philosophers think too highly of functionalism
Again, any philosophers in particular? Did you say something earlier about overgeneralisation?
I say this as a philosopher and not a scientist, but having studied these topics for a while, I have more respect for the scientists than the philosophers.
Since you've pretty much only cited science, and called it philosophy (except in (6) where you've overgeneralised) I think it's clear that you have more respect for the "scientists" than for the "philosophers", but what do you think "science" and "philosophy" actually are, and what do you think is their relationship? You seem to see them as rivals, which is odd...
I haven't read the patent, but TFA makes it sound like it applies to any kind of "WYSIWYG" editing of a document that gets saved in a structured format, not only XML ("separating the manipulation of content from the architecture of the document").
Not just WYSIWYG. There are TeX and laTeX templates that aim to separate content from structure, and have been for a long time. There are even elements of it in roff. Just how old was that patent?
If it's something worthwhile or absolutely necessary, then sure. If it's going to be a fucking McDonald's, then it shouldn't, there are enough of those.
The site is in the middle of a housing estate with not enough passing trade for a McDonalds, and there are lots of malls & shopping centres not far away, so it would most likely be houses that they'd build.
There may well be good reasons for the differences -- there's plenty of scope for updating laTeX. But would Word really have been easier for entering Z Schemas? Look at the second page of that manual, and think what would have been needed to do that -- and get a consistent look -- using Word. Oh, and did I mention that laTeX also syntax-highlighted my code samples? I don't think Word and laTeX even do the same job, and although MS are expanding into laTeX territory they still have a long way to go.
It might be -- I can't afford the thousand dollar price tag, so I'll stay with the slightly cheaper laTeX. For what it's worth, does framemaker let me do all of the editing, including easy editing of math, from the keyboard, without having to use the mouse? If it doesn't it's a non-starter, because constant switching between keyboard and mouse is one of the biggest irritations and time drains when using word processors for math.
You mean you either weren't bright or motivated enough to understand it? The fact that so many people produce so many documents in it proves it is far from unusable. I did my postgrad dissertation and I don't know of any other software yet available that I could have used and still delivered on time. Certainly not MS Office or OpenOffice.org. It's old, but it's not obsolete until something better comes along, and for complex, math-heavy documents with a lot of cross-references and citations, nothing better has come along yet. Even though the new equation editor in Word 2007 is supposed to accept laTeX, it renders it incorrectly (eg, \sum_{x=1}^n leaves those ugly braces in), and it doesn't seem to let you correct a mistake you made earlier without switching to mouse input. Maybe they'll fix that in Office 2010 -- but I'm not holding my breath.
To be fair, most of the systems I have seen that have secret question type security don't let you in on the basis of the secret question, they email a replacement password to you, and only use the secret question to reduce DOS attacks and minimise the sending of plain-text passwords. Surely in that case it's only an issue if the cracker has already compromised your email account?
Even the Daily Mail version admits that "Greater Manchester Police denied Codie had been kept in a cell". As I say, the facts of the case were disputed at the time, and nobody seems to have seen fit to report the outcome of the school's own investigation. The BBC is far better than the Daily Mail, but it still rather prone to sensationalism.
But did it happen as described? There was dispute over what she actually said, there was dispute about her being held in a cell, and so on. Whether police involvement was appropriate or not depends on what actually happened, and you won't get that from a source with a business model that pretty much depends on making its readers angry. And everything else I can find links back directly or indirectly to the Daily Mail article; there seems to be no independent source for the story.
Slashdot Mirror
Reason cannot be absolutely trusted, but that's one reason we use more empirical criteria in the sciences for coming to (tentative) conclusions.
No, that's not why we use empirical criteria. We use empirical criteria because reason is incomplete, not because it can't be trusted. Making anything of empirical observations still requires reason, so if reason can't be trusted then adding empirical criteria doesn't help.
I don't see how this at all refutes or poses a problem for physicalism. It only shows that that all beliefs must be tentative and that our understandings of things may be inherently flawed, and that absolute knowledge is out of the question.
It's perhaps a strength of physicalism that it poses the problem. Yes, it leads to the conclusion that "all beliefs must be tentative and that our understandings of things may be inherently flawed", which is all I wanted to claim. Other metaphysical assumptions (for example "God told me so!") may not lead to the same conclusion, but that's because they're weaker, not stronger than physicalism. They don't have the substance to allow such clear (if undesirable) conclusions.
It's tough to pin down such a large group of people..
Reject network DVRs -> Group A says: "Government in the MPAA/RIAA's pocket!" Defend network DVRs -> Group B says: "Government in the cable companies/ISP's pocket!"
Wonder what group C thinks of this.
Group C is only interested in how big the weathergirl's boobs are.
Dualism doesn't seem to me to gain anything -- it just pushes the problems into whatever reality the "ghost in the machine" inhabits. It doesn't solve any of the problems, it just moves them and makes them harder to analyse.
I'm not sure it is, either. Nor am I sure it isn't. In my experience, the religious concept of "soul" isn't well enough defined to answer that question. Not consistently, anyway -- it's always a bit shaky lumping "religious people" all together, as there is quite a bit of diversity.
The two real problems are
Journalists/Bloggers *generally* have no training in the sciences (or often any field outside "Media") and so are not the ideal people to explain any ideas in a specialist field, since they do not understand them
I have training in science, engineering, linguistics and philosophy -- I just don't have time to blog!
I did say "in retreat", not "annihilated" :-) Popper did rather lay into them, but I doubt he was alone.
Indeed. But a rarely mentioned problem of physicalism is that it's hard to see how reason (as opposed to qualia in general) emerges from physicalism, and it seems to me to be impossible to justify why what we perceive as reason can actually be trusted. So under physicalism, if we assume that reason can be trusted we come to the contradiction that it cannot. If we assume that reason cannot be trusted then we cannot come to any conclusion (because to do so we would have to trust reason). I don't have a viable alternative to physicalism, and it's this argument that has led me to believe (not "know", obviously!) that nothing can be known.
You don't know any religious people.
I know lots.
Religious people don't want to sound like complete bumpkins by not acknowledging a biological reality.
You don't think it possible that they actually accept the biological reality?
"Oh, but then there's the soul," they go on.
Which is in no way contrary to the belief that the brain is a collection of cells. Try to get hold of a copy of Daniel Dennett's lecture "Where Am I" for an materialist atheist view of how the existence of a soul can be consistent with the brain as a collection of cells.
I meant that religious people have a problem identifying mind and brain, and I meant to say that those two are pretty much identical.
Ok, that's very different to what you wrote. I still don't think that's a specifically religious issue, though -- most notions of free-will seem to depend on some separation of mind and brain, and although I'm blowed if I can see how it could work, free-will is hardly an exclusively religious issue.
Functionalism is central to contemporary philosophy of mind among analytic philosophers.
But surely analytic philosophy has been in retreat since Popper?
Most anthologies on philosophy of mind, such as this one, are certainly concerned about the relationship between mind and brain.
Quite. Which is why I was surprised you didn't mention it, but only addressed "brain"!
Cutting through the needless walls of text by both Sanchez and Brady, let me summarize the current state of the philosophy of mind:
1) We are little closer to reading off "beliefs" from human brains than we were 30 years ago.
In what sense is that "philosophy of mind"?
2) Media often overgeneralizes the results of neuroscientists.
You could have stopped at "2) Media often overgeneralizes"
3) The brain is still nothing more than a mass of cells.
True. Again, what's that got to do with the philosophy of mind?
4) Religious people have a problem with (3).
Which religious people? I don't know of any who have a problem with that. I know of some who have a problem with the identification of "mind" with "brain", but then I know lots of non-religious people who have the same problem so I'm not sure what you're getting at.
5) Philosophers base their careers trying to argue for or against (3).
Care to name any who do that? I don't know of any; (3) just isn't seen as a philosophical question.
6) More specifically, philosophers think too highly of functionalism
Again, any philosophers in particular? Did you say something earlier about overgeneralisation?
I say this as a philosopher and not a scientist, but having studied these topics for a while, I have more respect for the scientists than the philosophers.
Since you've pretty much only cited science, and called it philosophy (except in (6) where you've overgeneralised) I think it's clear that you have more respect for the "scientists" than for the "philosophers", but what do you think "science" and "philosophy" actually are, and what do you think is their relationship? You seem to see them as rivals, which is odd...
You make it sound like it's a good thing...
I haven't read the patent, but TFA makes it sound like it applies to any kind of "WYSIWYG" editing of a document that gets saved in a structured format, not only XML ("separating the manipulation of content from the architecture of the document").
Not just WYSIWYG. There are TeX and laTeX templates that aim to separate content from structure, and have been for a long time. There are even elements of it in roff. Just how old was that patent?
If it's something worthwhile or absolutely necessary, then sure. If it's going to be a fucking McDonald's, then it shouldn't, there are enough of those.
The site is in the middle of a housing estate with not enough passing trade for a McDonalds, and there are lots of malls & shopping centres not far away, so it would most likely be houses that they'd build.
No, Washington thought there shouldn't be any political parties at all.
Which he probably got from Rousseau, who reckoned that political parties made democracy impossible.
There may well be good reasons for the differences -- there's plenty of scope for updating laTeX. But would Word really have been easier for entering Z Schemas? Look at the second page of that manual, and think what would have been needed to do that -- and get a consistent look -- using Word. Oh, and did I mention that laTeX also syntax-highlighted my code samples? I don't think Word and laTeX even do the same job, and although MS are expanding into laTeX territory they still have a long way to go.
Out of date maps.
overpasses and underpasses (the GPS often gets wrong which road you're on)
such as a war zone from which all non-combatents have already fled, so that anybody who shoots at you is a legitimate target.
You know, on a battlefield I'd be inclined to think that anybody who shot at me was a legitimate target whether non-combatants had fled or not...
It might be -- I can't afford the thousand dollar price tag, so I'll stay with the slightly cheaper laTeX. For what it's worth, does framemaker let me do all of the editing, including easy editing of math, from the keyboard, without having to use the mouse? If it doesn't it's a non-starter, because constant switching between keyboard and mouse is one of the biggest irritations and time drains when using word processors for math.
You mean you either weren't bright or motivated enough to understand it? The fact that so many people produce so many documents in it proves it is far from unusable. I did my postgrad dissertation and I don't know of any other software yet available that I could have used and still delivered on time. Certainly not MS Office or OpenOffice.org. It's old, but it's not obsolete until something better comes along, and for complex, math-heavy documents with a lot of cross-references and citations, nothing better has come along yet. Even though the new equation editor in Word 2007 is supposed to accept laTeX, it renders it incorrectly (eg, \sum_{x=1}^n leaves those ugly braces in), and it doesn't seem to let you correct a mistake you made earlier without switching to mouse input. Maybe they'll fix that in Office 2010 -- but I'm not holding my breath.
Q What is the lowest Sierpinski numer?
22,699. Am I right?
Well, it's 10223, 21181, 22699, 24737, 55459, 67607 or 78557. That looks manageable for a brute-force attack.
To be fair, most of the systems I have seen that have secret question type security don't let you in on the basis of the secret question, they email a replacement password to you, and only use the secret question to reduce DOS attacks and minimise the sending of plain-text passwords. Surely in that case it's only an issue if the cracker has already compromised your email account?
but *IAA will sue you for 9 songs ...
Well, somebody ought to be sued for that awful movie...
Or perhaps you can accept that the stories contradict each other and none of us have a clue about what actually happened?
Even the Daily Mail version admits that "Greater Manchester Police denied Codie had been kept in a cell". As I say, the facts of the case were disputed at the time, and nobody seems to have seen fit to report the outcome of the school's own investigation. The BBC is far better than the Daily Mail, but it still rather prone to sensationalism.
Bogus? Hardly. It happened.
But did it happen as described? There was dispute over what she actually said, there was dispute about her being held in a cell, and so on. Whether police involvement was appropriate or not depends on what actually happened, and you won't get that from a source with a business model that pretty much depends on making its readers angry. And everything else I can find links back directly or indirectly to the Daily Mail article; there seems to be no independent source for the story.
Over time this is going to be a 1:1 census.
In conjunction with e-borders, yes.