Search results

Hands down -----> Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason Bright guy, but a terrible writer. I only made it about 20 pages after reading the introduction before I gave up. The ideas are complex enough without having to deal with paragraph length sentences the whole time. His sentences have...

I used to read (fiction) mainly for the pleasure and escapism. In recent years my reading has been dominated by philosophy with bits of neuroscience and pop-physics thrown in for good measure. Why do I read this stuff? It's hard to say. I think I quite enjoy the challenge and stimulation (this...

Re: Moral crusaders strike again It's not simply a moral crusade - people with smoking related diseases are quite expensive to look after later in life. It's not simply a lazy assumption - they do studies to test efficacy. I have attached one of the many studies available on medline:

But what reason do you have to doubt your own meaning? If meaning is simply generated through the act of ascription then you can mean 'whatever the hell you want'. I don't really see why you have a problem here. For example, take a stop sign. There is nothing intrinsic to its structure which...

No, probably because public schools are bitter about the fact that private institutions, with significant incomes on account of their high student fees (and old boy/girl networks), receive so much federal funding (say about 5 times as much per head). Even at a selective school (one of the...

This probably isn't a time to dwell on concrete meanings. :-P

Probably partly for stylistic reasons. Some expressions and figures of speech don't flow as naturally if you use 'they' and it can also make things sound too impersonal. Some books I come across try to alternate between he and she - at first it threw me off a bit but now I don't really notice it.

Exactly.

Zen koan. Logical analysis isn't the be all and end all.

I don't buy a lot of that stuff - it smacks of overanalysis (and this is coming from a phil major). I've heard claims like yours made about language and education with arguments to the tune that university life itself is chauvanistic. What example was given? Seminar <---> Semen I had never...

Though note that there is a difference between a situation in which various people labelled 'feminists' hold different ideals, and one in which individuals are unsure about which ideals they hold. E.g. I think it would be a mistake to take a class like political thinkers or philosophers and say...

I feel that psychological interventions for children and adolescents have a lot of potential. I remember coming across studies looking at therapy for juvenile offenders (in the USA) which suggested that each dollar spent would save $10-12 dollars later on (in court/jail/hospital/etc fees --> and...

The core question, then, is this: Why not promote an attitude which is accepting of deviations from the norm? (i.e. such as would permit women to be hairy and men to wear dresses)

That's a non-answer. Of course it's clear from the media and fashion aisles that shaven armpits are endorsed in popular culture. In other words, it is a trend. Thus I ask: so what? Why can't we promote a counter-attitude which is accepting of deviations from the norm? Also, your clothing...

Yes, but note that you refer to those "who purposely don't act like women", i.e. you have once more snuck in a standard of what it means to be of female gender. My questions are relevant because that kind of comment ceases to be meaningful if gender categories are fluid / socially constructed...

Well yes, times do change. But then it is worth asking why people should move in any given direction. Suppose a woman doesn't want to shave and a man wants to wear skirts and lipstick - why should this be an issue? More to the point, if gender is a fluid thing which permits such variation why...

Generalising makes the mistake of referring to the 'average male' or 'average female' as though it means anything on a personal level. Plenty of men have a high EQ while plenty of women are physically strong. The problem with saying that "both sexes have different skills" is that it promotes...

But reiterating the catch once again, the meaning/information is not intrinsic to the DNA. The structure of DNA on which we hang our meaning is, of course, intrinsic but the meaning we lay upon this is not. Humans are exceptionally skilled at finding isomorphisms in their environment, and this...

Agreed. It is also worth asking whether a god does anything more than provide motivation (reward/punishment etc.). Once again stealing a hypothetical from Plato (with a couple alterations): suppose there were a Lydian shepherd who found a ring that rendered him invisible to the eyes of god (/the...

In a rough sense I agree with this. I discussed earlier (with Kwayera I believe) the issues involved in adhering to a straight out verificationism (/logical positivism) which asserts: (1) "The only meaningful claims are those which are verifiable or falsifiable." A possible corollary of...