Samantha

Unseen wrote:
C.S. Peirce brilliantly realized that people don’t reason with propositional deduction or even with induction most of the time

Yes, but something can be logical without being true.  A clever speaker uses sophistry and emotion to sway their credulous audience.

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
– **Balance Between Reason and Imagination**: Blake did not reject reason entirely but advocated for a balance between reason and imagination. He saw the two as complementary forces

I think it’s possible to reason creatively: to come up with new ideas.

Blake sees reason not as a liberating force, but as one that c…

[Read more]

_Robert_ wrote:
Is it reasonable to bend or ignore facts?

Do Republicans ever tell the truth these days?

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
you’re using reason to make your case

I think reason is the problem half the time.  There is something in propositional logic, that states that a set of propositions can have internal validity – they are logical – they follow reason – without being true overall.

The real issue is facts.  People can reason or rat…[Read more]

Unseen wrote:
That story expressed a belief in fate.

According to the 4-dimensional shape theory of the universe, all events and the space-time paths between them exist at one “time”, if “time” was dimension no. 5.

So, fate would describe that situation very well.  It’s all hard wired in, but most of us can’t see what is going to happen until it does.

@strega – that way lies madness.  There are all kinds of things we could do recursively, but we don’t, because it’s too much effort.  To Babs, 12 hours and 2 miles away was like standing on top of a hill and looking around over the countryside.  Maybe the story was centred around me because I was there.

_Robert_ wrote:
I am skeptical. The multiverse is as elusive as god is so far.

I’m not talking about the multiverse.  I’m talking about the idea that the entire history of the universe, a 4-dimensional shape, was created simultaneously, in the Big Bang.  It’s not so far-fetched.  Subjectively, we experience a 3-dimensional world as we travel fo…[Read more]

Simon Paynton wrote:
all played out to the letter.

If Babs really was able to see twelve hours into the future, what would that tell us about the nature of space-time?  That from the point of view of the present, the future already exists.  After all, the future is a place as well as a time.

_Robert_ wrote:
A “friend of a friend” might know some things.

That’s true.  But this was before mobile phones, and none of us could confirm the prediction until I went home, when it had all played out to the letter.

Unseen wrote:
You’ve got it backward, Simon. Photons go into the eyes. They don’t shoot out of them.

Lol, the photons have to come out of a light source, bounce off something and go into your eyes.

Unseen wrote:
the mere act of observing some events (simply knowing about them, in other words) has some way of modifying them.

Surely observing requires photons to knock into and bounce off something, therefore, potentially modifying it.

Unseen wrote:
If I ever had an astrological reading telling me that I would set aside my teenage leaning toward being an Episcopal clergyman in favor of becoming an atheist philosopher whose main interests were linguistic philosophy and the questions surrounding free will consciousness, I’d be impressed on one level,

Well, any given medium is o…[Read more]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
I made up a few generic paragraphs that sounded profound but very vague.

Yes, but being vague and general doesn’t prove anything.  Those things apply equally to everybody.

My college friend’s chart didn’t say “analytical scientist”, and mine didn’t say “totally unsuited to your occupation”.  They are very specific.

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
accurate.

I find Randi’s debunking unconvincing.  He’s chosen traits that everyone has or wants, and everyone wants to be Bluebeard the pirate.

Unseen wrote:
This is as good as any place to pass along a meme I made yesterday:

That’s a good meme.  I heard on World Service that Trump is trying to distance himself from it, maybe because it looks sinister.

The “conservative” (i.e., corrupt) commentator they had on said it was a success for them to politicise the judiciary as they have done.

I find that those newspaper astrology columns say things that are generically true for everyone, that’s why people think they’re accurate.  You could read any one of the twelve signs, and think it applies to you.

However, and I don’t know why, the professional birth charts that people can draw up seem to be very accurate.  Mine has a Grand T…[Read more]

The Christian idea of heaven and hell never made sense to me.  Is there some kind of binary division between good people and bad people?  No, there isn’t.  So, apparently you only get in to heaven if you believe in Jesus.  Anything else is “hating God”.  If God exists, he has the morals of a toddler.

I think heaven or hell makes sense in the cont…[Read more]

_Robert_ wrote:
There is no cosmic karma, the only consequences are relatively immediate or null.

Yes, a Christian said to me that heaven and hell must exist, otherwise there is no ultimate justice.

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
DEBATE: Is Morality Objective? – Alex O’Connor vs. Craig Biddle.

The usual complete load of old tosh that you get whenever moral philosophers have discussions.  I think that no two of them agree on anything.  Their ideas are bollocks.

However, they do raise some excellent questions, and if I am going to make asser…[Read more]