GENIUS FORUMS

millipodium wrote:In fact, you're proving my point by implying that the accuracy of words and their meanings is subjective.

The meaning of a word depends on how you use it. Where else could meaning reside?

Philosophaster wrote: DQ: What is the deepest, most profound thing that you know to be absolutely certain? Ph: Probably that logic works, by which I basically mean that if I know A and A implies B, then B must be true. Have you discovered anything of eternal interest using this method? - I find log...

Is that the full list?

It's all I can think of right now. That may be the full list.

What is the deepest, most profound thing that you know to be absolutely certain?

Probably that logic works, by which I basically mean that if I know A and A implies B, then B must be true.

David Quinn wrote:What things are you certain of?

That things are identical to themselves, that I perceive things (or that there are perceptions), that logic works. I see no way to coherently doubt those things, so I am certain of them.

Hahaha. But it's so much fun.

Very strange.

Were there really a bunch of poor people going around and having more kids or encouraging the school system to treat their kids as retarded just so that they could get bigger welfare checks? How widespread were those phenomena, assuming they existed?

I am certain about a few things. So I guess I do not belong to the "cult of uncertaintists."

Maybe, but in this case the pseudo-patients were pretending to be insane only for the duration of the interviews that got them admitted to the hospitals. Or were you talking about the hospital staff?

Umm...wow. Damn.

I just read an interesting study about eight "sane" people who got themselves admitted to psychiatric hospitals based on a single "symptom": hearing voices in their heads say words like "dull" and "thud." They were questioned about their family history and pas...

A couple of friends and my brother took some bromo-dragonfly (Bromo-benzodifuranyl-isopropylamine) on the supposition that they were taking acid. Instead of tripping for the expected twelve hours, some of them were totally gone for two days. I guess the moral is to get your stuff from a source you c...

It really baffles me that neither of them even began to understand what was going on, even after the guy gave each of them a clear explanation several times. And if you were to encounter either of those employees on the streets, I doubt that they would strike you immediately as babbling fools; but t...

Basic math is too tough for two Verizon employees.

At one point the manager says, "I'm not a mathematician."

And, "It's obviously a difference of opinion."

Ugh.

Rory wrote: Frankly, people who don't remain in contact with eachother will start to speak differently than one another. It is completely inevitable.

Exactly. Until the racial situation changes, the linguistic one will remain largely the same.

Trying to enforce "standards of spoken English" by using the classroom is a fool's errand. Most of the speaking kids do happens outside the classroom where there is no nagging teacher to get onto them. If this is indeed a "problem," it will not be solved by classroom nagging, but...

Not learning to read is another huge problem. Most books, whatever their faults, use "standard English." People who read enough books will know this form of English just fine.

Spoken language is almost always "non-standard" and disobeys at least a few rules of grammar. There have always been dialects that make their speakers nearly incomprehensible to "outsiders" and words used in ways that only certain groups of people understand, and in that sense &q...

That was a very insightful response, Dan. Thank you. I need to think a while about what you said. I have become much too attached to the "debate" dynamic, but I never suspected that this might have caused my burnout.

Nah, that previous post was about modern philosophy as a whole. This one is about my personal situation.

You are not required to comment, of course.

Lately I have felt kind of burnt out, as though I have already discussed everything important about philosophy and have nothing left to say. I know that this is not even close to being the case, but it is how I have felt. One part may be physical exhaustion, which I have been feeling lately for reas...

A signature I once saw sums up Christian "morality" very well:

"Hitler burned people like Anne Frank for being Jewish. For that, we call him evil.

God burns Anne Frank for being Jewish, forever. For that, theists call him 'good.'"

Yes, it does. I have taken the following paragraph from a paper on the "ontology of literature": "These varying relations in which the different generic entities stand to their elements are also reflected (if, that is, this is another fact) in the degree to which both the generic enti...

And if you want to chat with us at EM, you're more than welcome.

Mooke, please go to bed. TPG banned you because they wanted to encourage you to get some sleep and stop worrying about whatever it is that's worrying you. You should be unbanned tomorrow. Just get some rest, please.