TheEgoist

If I linked you to all the atrocities perpetrated by government and non-governmental agencies, our military would be stretched across the globe, from Mexico to China. Horrible things that happen to people in foreign countries does not justify a war. Not even a genocide justifies an intervention by the U.S. Were it not for Pearl Harbor, we would not have had justification to enter into WWII.

Just an attempt at humor . It looks like the same exact stuff 300 did. I liked 300, but I hate seeing carbon copy films

Nice review of 300, Th3Ranger.

I assume an Objectivist would explain this the same way they do any religious group who gains enlightenment. Islam is not different. It's not a special case.

Science doesn't give a damn what sounds simpler. It's often counter intuitive.

Thanks, Tensorman. Another fella whose works in the field of biology I've been reading today is Ernst Mayr, an influential biologist who is credited with popularizing philosophy of biology. He opposed categorical reductionism and supports organism-based evolution, as opposed to the gene based evolution supported by folks like Richard Dawkins.

One thing I've had trouble with lately is the idea of corporate personhood and the practice of limited liability. While in a free society I can possibly see this emerging naturally, having it implemented as a matter of law seems Corporatist, not Capitalist. This is an area I confess a great deal of ignorance in, though. Schiff seems to think it's fine, as I expect he would. I didn't hear a concise reason for his conviction, though.

Sam Harris was an example I've been planning on using, since he seems to think there is no hard distinction between philosophy and science. He has said he thinks questions of metaethics are legitimate and answerable by scientific means. That is a more explicit case of something I'm considering in the paper, if and how scientists approach the problems of philosophy. As far as his credentials, I know he has been involved in research in neuroscience before, but I've never seen an academic paper of his either. William James is probably a better example than Peirce from the Pragmatist school., though psychology at that point was in its infancy and still tied to philosophy pretty tightly. From the little I've studied from James, he was about approaching the problems of psychology from a much more theoretical standpoint than is accepted nowadays.

My personal opinions on climate changer are irrelevant, quite frankly. THe issue at hand is the censoring of scientifically collected data by the state. Comparing the mainstream opinion in climate science about the warming of the Earth's temperature to Nazism is ludicrous. This is not pseudoscience. You may disagree with their results, but you cannot simply attack them because some have suggested political implications to the results. That is what is pseudoscientific: allowing your personal political beliefs to get in the way of the truth of the matter.

Interesting, I didn't know Peirce was involved in the sciences directly.

No, for a paper I'm writing on the relationship between science and philosophy historically and how scientific minds operate in and how they succeed or fail in their philosophic undertakings. Who did I mention in the humanities? Chomsky? His work is much more scientific than that which is required in the humanities. Do you consider all science outside of natural science to be just the humanities? As to the rationality or irrationality of their ideas, it's not my purpose to discriminate on those who I do and do not like. I cringe at logical positivism, but there were scientists that took it seriously.

Bunge is one of my favorites. Thanks for reminding me.

Chomsky's a good example. I use a conservative point of 200 years or so break off because I want to start in a time where the two disciplines began to become more distinct, since even into the 1700s the line between philosopher and scientist was blurred. I won't completely rule them out, but as a rule I am interested in the post-natural philosophy age. I don't want to refer simply to the natural sciences, since I am using James Gibson as a very prominent example of what I mean, and he was a psychologist. To your point of folks like Feynman and others who make philosophic points: that's a good example of what I am not looking for. Scientists can make points that are philosophically based, but I wouldn't classify them as philosophers. I am looking for scientists who have made significant contributions in philosophy, not those who have commented on philosophy or made points in lectures or papers that have philosophic bearing. The line is always going to be blurry, though. So I'm not being too strict.

http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2011/10/texas-sized-scientific-revolt This is absolutely disgusting behavior by Perry. Never has the term "anti-science" been more applicable.

This will be a reiterating of a post I made on Reddit (I know there are a couple of you here that occupy that place). So I'm working on a paper discussing the effect science has had on philosophy and vice versa, in the past 200 years. I've been trying to research scientists who became or contributed some major work to philosophy. There are some obvious candidates. The earliest I can think of are William Whewell and Ernst Mach. Members of the Vienna circle come to mind such as Phillipp Frank. One of my favorites is James Gibson, who started ecological perception movement and defended direct realism from a highly researched perspective. Brian Ellis is one of my favorite contemporaries. He does work within the philosophy of causal powers. I've heard Einstein had works in philosophy, but I've never been able to find them. I have a few more candidates in mind to write about, but I'd be especially interested in those that actually affected their fields to some extent, both in science and philosophy. On the vice versa matter, I've never really known of any philosophers who went on to contribute to science in the past 2 centuries. I'm very interested in hearing about them though, if there are any. I'll go ahead and eliminate a couple fields for purposes of my interest here. I am not interested in pure mathematicians, since I think often times that overlaps heavily with logic. I am also not interested in economists.

This guy is a bad ass, plain and simple.

I've been friends with several anarchists of varying stripes, including anarcho-communists/syndicalists. I find these people are very often concerned with individual autonomy and have misconceptions of what property rights entail. Two of these friends were also thorough-going egoists. Their view was that communism was the best way to achieve productive efficiency. There are quibbles with these people, but their misinformed political beliefs do not necessarily lead to them being bad people.

I'm not an economist, so I really couldn't come up with the most effective way of releasing the money to those that deserve it, but I do think that people who are 40-60 shouldn't just get a complete raw deal.

Why aren't people criticizing Wikileaks in this thread?

Let's take a program like social security. Not only is there the issue of completely shutting down this program tomorrow leading to mass poverty, many people have a rightful expectation of receiving this money. They have paid into the system. They should be allowed to draw out. It's an issue of justice. Simply wiping the slate clean screws over a lot of people.

I've provided a source. Would you please cite your counter example(s)?

The first recorded acts of circumcision are in fact religious rituals. It began with the Egyptians as a rite of passage One thing we do know for certain is that it was not, as you proposed, for medical purposes. (http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/178_04_170203/dar10676_fm.html). And let us assume it were: that does not justify the practice.

I really don't see how this changes the rightness or wrongness. And as far as we know, it started as a religious ritual. If you have evidence otherwise, it'd be appreciated.

Sorry, but Jumped The Shark refers to a show that has dome something utterly ridiculous in order to maintain viewership, not just a show that has sucked for a alot of years.