The measles outbreak in Pennsylvania is making the Amish more open to vaccines  and the Jehovah’s Witness rules on blood transfusions have changed, but it’s too late for ma…[Read more]

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/378138739_Moral_universals_A_machine-reading_analysis_of_256_societies

TheEncogitationer wrote:
True, but do they get scientific grants from labs, either corporate or governmental, for their speculations, however interesting they may be?

I knew of someone who got a grant from Toyota to do evolutionary ethics.

TheEncogitationer wrote:
Even the most generous bankroller of Science has to have priorities.

If the Thomas Nagels of the world want to be a Furrie, a Smoothie, a Scaleie, an Exoskelie, or a Membraneie and then navel-gaze over it, that’s their own business, but that may have to be on their own time and Dime.

There are people who are paid to do t…[Read more]

TheEncogitationer wrote:
Being a bee while being a bee, being a bat while being a bat, and being a flying squirrel while being a flying squirrel do not fit in the budget.🐝🦇🐿️💲

I disagree, you never know when something might turn out to be valuable.  There’s a whole picture of reality to be painted, and it needs all the pieces in…

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
The most important thing a scientific institution can fund is the freedom to investigate a question whose importance nobody yet understands.

Trump seems to want to stuff “free enquiry” into some kind of box, but I can’t work out what kind.  I think he wants to make science come up with more answers.  I don’t think t…[Read more]

The son of a friend of mine took on the role of playing “very camp Jesus” a few years ago. He wore a white silk bed sheet as a toga, with a rainbow-colored crown of thorns made from birthday cake candles and pink roman sandals. (He ruined a pair of crocs to make them). The cross was…[Read more]

If atheism is a religion, which of its doctrines do you disagree with? 

– RTFF

Religious freedom versus publicly funded discrimination in Colorado.

If you would object to the State imposing atheism on your children, on what grounds do you support the State facilitating the imposition of religion on somebody else’s?

American Atheists sue Trump…[Read more]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
Humans are debating the possible moral status of AI while using AI systems to help formulate their arguments.

“I’m sorry Dave, I can’t do that.”  To give AI rights is the most frightening idea I’ve ever heard.  It’s already sociopathic, or psychopathic, in that it has no morality whatsoever, it’s entirely i…[Read more]

Congress’ only humanist sounds the alarm on Christian nationalism. If only there were more “common-sense Republican focused on solving problems, not creating more division”.

The ‘Pray to Play’ policies infesti…[Read more]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
can philosophy become more scientific without confusing logical certainty with empirical truth?

I would not go near AI to help me with philosophy, beyond a Google search result.  But if people do want to use it, I can see uses for it – checking reasoning, for example.

I think there should be two tasks, done by…[Read more]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
can philosophy become more scientific without confusing logical certainty with empirical truth?

That’s an interesting way of looking at it.  Michael Tomasello, for example, is someone who does a lot of philosophy referring to a lot of experimental results.  That’s why I trust his ideas enough to give them the time o…[Read more]

Atheism, n. The refusal to surrender one’s sense of humor to an imaginary audience.

Canada’s religious revival that never came to be. The study shows that cultural religious identity can persist long after active religious participation declines.

Does secularization represent increasing rationality, or can it simply involve replacing…[Read more]

I will now be deleting the files from my web space.

So, the same files are available at DropBox:

The third man syndrome

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0032s9x

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
What do you mean by “thorough and satisfactorily.” How do you determine it is satisfactory. What makes your interpretation of human behavior better than another? Those questions involve reasoning about evidence, explanatory adequacy and competing hypotheses.

A good example is conceptions of fairness, how it evo…[Read more]

Philosophy is an inte…[Read more]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
Will artificial intelligence change how philosophy is conducted?

I don’t believe that AI could ever do moral philosophy.  The moral philosophy that I do is descriptive (the only valid kind) and to do that, a person needs to know what it’s like to be a human being.

On top of that, why would we ever want AI to do our…[Read more]

Should public funding be available for religious instruction, and…[Read more]

I can confirm that AronRa is “woke” in t…[Read more]

Enco, that’s interesting.  I think you’re right.  It sometimes doesn’t take much to start hallucinating.

Left-click – play.  Right-click – download.

Here’s a BBC Radio 4 programme that was on yesterday, on the subject.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0032f9