I had another short discussion with someone on Reddit, who was claiming that philosophical concepts that are true can be defensible with science. His example, of course, was morality and he was trying to use Sam Harris’ Moral Landscape as his defense.
Sorry, I disagree entirely with Harris. We got into it. As is no surprise, after a dozen or so exchanges, he just ran away. What else is new? Continue reading Someone Else Who Doesn’t Understand Morality
I was just having a conversation with someone who is convinced that the Dunning-Kruger effect does not accurately describe how things work in the real world. He went back and pointed out the original paper, written by David Dunning and Justin Kruger, which showed that while poor performers on tests did overestimate their own performance, it wasn’t the standard graph that we see all the time.
That is true, although David Dunning later published another study which got a lot closer to the common graph. So is the classical graph really accurate? Let’s talk about it. Continue reading Understanding the Dunning-Kruger Effect
I see so many people getting this wrong that I thought I’d write a quick post on it. Lots of people misunderstand what the burden of proof is and when they actually have to trot their proof out. It’s really not that hard, but I’ve seen lots of people giving bad information, or at least suggesting bad information.
So here’s how it works. Continue reading The Problem of the Burden of Proof
I was thinking about this lately and it seems to me, especially when it comes to religion, but that’s not the only place it occurs, that far too many people completely misunderstand how logical syllogisms work. They seem to think that if you can put a three-line argument together, you’ve automatically won the debate.
Sorry, that’s not how it works at all. Therefore, I’m going to give a high-level overview of syllogisms and why so many people are using them completely wrong. Hope it helps. Continue reading Why Do People Misunderstand Philosophy?
This came up recently in a couple of other posts where I and a philosopher have been having a long, rambling discussion that’s had trouble sticking to a single point. That can be fun on occasion so I don’t mind a bit of meandering but one thing that I’ve noticed, and this isn’t meant to belittle my opponent, but they seem to be reacting in much the same way that I see with a lot of theists. “You just don’t understand!” Yet they seem incapable of just pointing out what I don’t understand, even though I’ve asked on several occasions, but more important than that, they don’t seem to be able to explain, in detail, *WHY* I’m supposedly wrong. Present your evidence and that doesn’t seem to be happening.
So I wanted to take a couple of minutes to talk about it, not in terms of that discussion, but about philosophy as a whole. Continue reading Is Philosophy Pointless?
I’ve been having a couple of different conversations of late but two in particular seem to dovetail nicely. First, there was one with a theist who insisted that we had to take things like the laws of logic on blind faith and secondly, one going on over on my YouTube channel right now with a philosopher who seems very self-satisfied that philosophy is the end-all-be-all of human intellect.
Come on people, it’s not difficult to figure out what’s actually going on! Continue reading It Can’t Be That Hard!
So let’s finish this up. It’s been a long road but we’re finally at the last section in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on atheism and agnosticism. This time is an argument against agnosticism and it will come as no surprise that they still don’t understand what the word means.
What else is new, right? Continue reading Let’s Look at Philosophical Atheism Part 7
We’re getting close to the end of our look at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on atheism and agnosticism. This time, we’re on the last part of the supposed arguments for “local atheism“.
So far, I haven’t been remotely impressed but let’s continue on and see if it improves. Continue reading Let’s Look at Philosophical Atheism Part 6c
Now we’re into supposed arguments for local atheism and I don’t really expect to be excited by what they come up with, but you never know. We’re getting close to the end of the look at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on atheism and agnosticism. Is this going to go anywhere? Let’s plunge in and see. Continue reading Let’s Look at Philosophical Atheism Part 6b
I was thinking about this over the last couple of days, but maybe you can relate to this. Have you ever watched two theists debate? It doesn’t matter what kind of theist they are, they can share the same faith or they can be completely different, but it’s really not very impressive if you approach it from the outside.
Why is that? Here’s my explanation and why I think playing those games is ultimately pointless. Continue reading It’s Hard to be Impressed