There is some truth in that(main)

Teddy asked: Does Socrates believe that in order to be a human being one must reason and question? Where does he state this if this is true? Phil asked: If the behaviourist theory is accurate, if you lose the ability to speak, or express yourself in any other physical way, does the mind cease to exist?

Peter asked: What is meaning? Moustapha asked: What should we change in our today'society in order to live a good life?

Stephanie asked: Which of the following types of arguments are evaluated with the terms strong and weak? A) Deductive B) Inductive Which of the following types of arguments are evaluated with the terms valid and invalid A) Inductive B) Deductive

Tobias asked: How did Kennedy's assassination affect the American Psyche? Jade asked: If you have said something about your boyfriend and then he breaks up with you but you still like him and you think he might just might still like what do you do? Especially when you think you might love him.

But by giving new legal status to a fetus, it "will clearly place into federal law a definition of life that will chip away at the right to choose as outlined in Roe v. Wade," the 1973 Supreme Court decision that established a woman's constitutional right to an abortion, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said.

• German violinists are asking for a pay raise, since they play more notes than other musicians do.
• Noam Chomsky has a blog. That's kind of exciting -- big name. Link chain: John via Brian via Nico Pitney.
• How much link-crediting is appropriate/required? I think going all the way back to Pitney was probably a bit excessive... I'm tentatively suggesting that (1) referencing the blog where I got the tip is sufficient, unless (2) that blog credits another blog I already know. So in this case, I could reasonably have stopped the chain at Brian.
• The Georgia House has banned female genital piercing by a no-debate 160-0 vote in an attempt to prevent genital mutilation. I quote: Amendment sponsor Rep. Bill Heath, R-Bremen, was slack-jawed when told after the vote that some adults seek the piercings. "What? I've never seen such a thing," Heath said. "I, uh, I wouldn't approve of anyone doing it. I don't think that's an appropriate thing to be doing." I'm dead serious.
• Zach has a website! And Derek knows him! How cool is that?

Its leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr., drew sustenance from a prophetic religious tradition, and took a much darker view of human nature. King wrote an important essay on Jeremiah, the "rebel prophet" who saw that his nation was in moral decline. ... Because the experiences of the Hebrew prophets had taught them to be pessimistic about humanity, the civil rights leaders knew they had to be spiritually aggressive if they wanted to get anything done. Chappell argues that the civil rights movement was not a political movement with a religious element. It was a religious movement with a political element. If you believe that the separation of church and state means that people should not bring their religious values into politics, then, if Chappell is right, you have to say goodbye to the civil rights movement. It would not have succeeded as a secular force.

Whether you believe in God or not, the Bible and commentaries on the Bible can be read as instructions about what human beings are like and how they are likely to behave. Moreover, this biblical wisdom is deeper and more accurate than the wisdom offered by the secular social sciences, which often treat human beings as soulless utility-maximizers, or as members of this or that demographic group or class. Whether the topic is welfare, education, the regulation of biotechnology or even the war on terrorism, biblical wisdom may offer something that secular thinking does not -- not pat answers, but a way to think about things. ... The lesson I draw from all this is that ... maybe theology should be mandatory [in public schools]. Students should be introduced to the prophets, to the Old and New Testaments, to the Koran, to a few of the commentators who argue about these texts.

• Ethics
• Metaethics
• Epistemology
• Science
• Decision Theory
• Rationality
• Agency
• Social & Political

• Metaphysics
• Language
• Logic
• Mind
• Perception

[West Virginia Governor Bob] Wise said the T-shirt depicts "an unfounded, negative stereotype of West Virginia." "I write to you today to demand that you immediately remove this item from your stores and your print and online catalogues," Wise wrote. "In addition, these shirts must be destroyed at once to avoid any possibility of resale and proof be given thereof."

I'm ashamed to discover that I'm not even among the top 100 google hits for brown philosophy student blog. I feel like I'm entitled to that search, since this a blog of a Brown philosophy student. I hope to appear there soon.

Gibson to film Jewish 'Western'

"The bad news is I won't be back with the Bucs," Sapp said by telephone from Miami. "The good news is I'm a Raider."

"The good news is that I'm not in debt. The bad news is I'm bankrupt."

A [Wisconsin] state agency is accusing a pharmacist of blocking a woman's attempts to refill her birth control prescription because of his religious beliefs. ... Christopher Klein, spokesman for the Department of Regulation and Licensing, said pharmacists have the right to refuse to fill birth control prescriptions, as long as they transfer the prescriptions to another pharmacy if the patient asks. ...Mr. Noesen was the only pharmacist on duty on the weekend when a woman came in to refill her birth control prescription. He had told the managing pharmacist that he would not fill contraceptive prescriptions because he considered them in violation of his religious beliefs. The woman later went to another pharmacy, but Mr. Noesen allegedly refused to transfer the prescription when that pharmacy called. The woman even returned to the Kmart with two police officers, but Mr. Noesen still refused, and police took no action, authorities said. Finally, she got the prescription refilled when the managing pharmacist returned to work that Monday.

• One might think that these pharmacists would have learned their lessons by now.
• The woman was just asking for her regular contraceptive -- not a morning-after emergency pill.
• He wouldn't even transfer the prescription!
• Someone official-sounding suggests that pharmacists have a right to refuse to fill prescriptions that they don't want to fill. That's ridiculous, if true.

And as publicity about "The Passion" grew in the weeks before its release, NBC ordered a pilot of an apocalyptic show called "Revelations," partly based on the Book of Revelation. One of its producers, Gavin Polone, described it as being along the lines of "The X-Files," but about a nun and a skeptical scientist who begin to believe in the Bible as the events of Armageddon begin to happen.

In his pitch to the networks, he said, he cited polls in which 78 percent of Americans said they believed that the events of Revelation would occur and 39 percent said they believed that those events would happen in their lifetime.

Bubba's IQ is 95. Bubba is confronted with the choice of whether or not to press the big red button. The big red button, if pressed, would have the following result: God will empty the bank account of every person whose IQ is higher than 100, and give the money to those whose IQ is lower than 100.

1. A single grain of wheat is not a heap. 2. For any number n, if n grains of wheat are not a heap, then neither are n+1 grains. 3. Therefore, there is no number n such that n grains is enough to make a heap.

1. A single grain of wheat is not a heap. 2.1. If 1 grain of wheat is not a heap, then neither is 2 grains. 2.2. If 2 grains of wheat are not a heap, then neither are 3 grains. ... 2.999999. If 999,999 grains of wheat are not a heap, then neither are 1,000,000. 3. Therefore, by a million applications of modus ponens, 1,000,000 grains are not a heap.

An argument is soritical if and only if it meets all of the following conditions:

• it is of this form, where F is the soritical predicate (‘is not a heap’, for instance):

  Fa1 If Fa1 then Fa2 If Fa2 then Fa3 … If Fai-1 then Fai Therefore, Fai (where i can be arbitrarily large)

• {a1, ... ai} is initially ordered, with each adjacent pair indiscriminable with respect to F.
• Fa1 is intuitively true.
• Fai is intuitively false.

An extremely reliable predictor of human behavior places two boxes -- a clear one and a black one -- on the table. He's going to give you the choice between taking (1) just the black one, or (2) both of them. But he's already predicted which choice you'll take. And if he predicted that you'll take just the black one, then he put a million dollars under it. If he predicted that you'll take both of them, then he put nothing under it. Either way, he also puts $1000 under the clear one. Which choice do you take?

P1: There is a strong probabilistic connection between taking one box and getting a million dollars (i.e. 99% of people who take one box get a million dollars). P2: There is a strong probabilistic connection between taking two boxes and getting a thousand dollars (i.e. 99% of people who take two boxes get a thousand dollars). C: I should take one box (if I want more money).

• There is a strong probabilistic connection between taking one box and being the kind of person who takes one box.
• There is a strong probabilistic connection between being the kind of person who takes one box and being predicted by the predictor to take one box.
• There is a (perfectly) strong probabilistic connection between being predicted by the predictor to take one box and getting more money.

It's really easy to make a Sorites paradox out of 'is better than', although you have to use fictional objects. Here's how I'd do it. Start with some things that are relatively close in quality, say Joe Montana and Steve Young. (I'm assuming in the context 'better than' means 'better quarterback than over their careers'. And I'll assume Joe is better than Steve. That last assumption can obviously be amended depending on your view of recent history.) Now consider a string of quarterbacks each of them mostly like Joe Montana, but each one a teensy bit worse than the one before. For each n>0, Joen completed one fewer pass in some regular season game, or completed one pass for slightly fewer yards, than did Joen-1. I take for large enough n, Joen is not better than actual Steve. But it's vague where the crossover occurs.

Patrick Greenough, "Vagueness: A Minimal Theory", Mind, Vol. 112, 446, April 2003, pp. 236-281.

There's no ethical obligation to be "honest" in argumentation in this sense. Arguments exist in the abstract; people are just argument delivery devices. If there exists an argument that shows that my philosophy is inconsistent so that I have to adjust the philosophy or change a position or even consciously choose to live with an inconsistency, I should deal with that argument, regardless of whether the guy presenting the argument is self-serving or a creep or Hitler.

Suppose A. [Reasoning from A to B] Therefore, if A then B.

There's the nigger serenader and the others of his race... I'm sure he won't be missed!

It was not until 1947 that any form of criticism was leveled at the use of this word, yet the D'Oyly Carte had played in the United States many times from 1934 on. However, serious objections were expressed in 1947. Rupert D'Oyly Carte approached Sir Alan P. Herbert, a contemporary lyricist, to provide alternatives to the word, both in this song and in the Mikado's song. There was no difficulty over this one -- the word was simply changed to "banjo player," basing the change on Gilbert's meaning of the word when he wrote it, viz., the itinerant street singer who, in imitation of the Negro minstrel, a craze that had come over from the United States, was using burnt cork and twanging away on a banjo at virtually every street corner.

"It is an overdue day, but a good day," said State Senator William J. Knight, a Palmdale Republican who was the author of a successful ballot measure in 2000 opposing same-sex marriages. "Finally the courts have taken action to put an end to the anarchy in San Francisco."

1. Save Person-1.
2. Save Person-2.
3. Flip a coin to determine whom to save.
4. Don't save either one.

What's more, being carved into bits and chunks and shipped to a dozen different universities and institutions seems no more distasteful than decomposing in the dark underground or being burned to char in a crematory retort. There's nothing wrong with a post-mortem adventure. (I'm told that if you donate your brain to the Harvard Brain Bank, for instance, it rides up front in the cockpit on the plane to Boston.) I'm happy to donate my body to science as long as no one profits off my parts.

“Heaps v. Headaches and Human Lives” Abstract: Alastair Norcross has argued for a principle of aggregation of harms. On his view, relatively minor harms to a number of individuals 'add up' and can in principle outweigh much greater individual harms. So, for instance, there is some finite number n of mild headaches such that n mild headaches would be worse than one person being tortured to death. I will present Norcross’s argument and defend it from the objection that it is merely an instance of the sorites paradox. In so doing, I offer a kind of response to a potentially broad range of attempts assimilate arguments to the sorites paradox.

Howdy all! I'll be directing the Rice Light Opera Society in their production of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance, March 18-27, at Will Rice College, Rice University. Shows are Thursday-Saturday at 8pm (except Friday 3/26, which is at 10pm). Tickets are $5 for Rice students, $10 others. For reservations, directions, and more info, please go to http://HailPoetry.com/ Hope you can make it! Joe

• Joe can be directing a show when rehearsals are not taking place -- say, at noon, when everyone is doing something un-show-related.
• There must be a starting and ending point, since directing is tensed -- I will direct next year, I am directing, I directed last year. These are mutually exclusive.
• One would think that the earliest point at which we could describe the director as having directed the show is significant.
• Auditions sometimes happen considerably before the first rehearsals.

The 49ers? They're all set to embrace Tim Rattay, who is 26-years young, cheap and unproven after two solid starts and one hideous breakdown in Green Bay last season.

Garcia: Gone. Terrell Owens: Presumed gone for months, now in trade-grievance limbo, but most assuredly never to play another down for the 49ers despite their crying need for a game-breaking receiver. Garrison Hearst: One-way ticket out of town.

The offensive line: In "transition," a word you'll hear a lot this summer around the 49ers' Santa Clara training facility, after the team declined for financial reasons to retain three-time Pro Bowler Ron Stone and versatile Derrick Deese.

For years, during the fat-cat days of Eddie DeBartolo and his bottomless money pit, San Francisco was the franchise that didn't mind paying for the top two players at every position -- one to start for them, and the other one so he couldn't start for any other NFL team. Steve Young stood on the sideline holding Joe Montana's clipboard for three years. End of story. But that was long ago, long ago. The 49ers of today are the 49ers of John York, who announced he intended to run the club more like a "business" and has gone about doing so, right down to the point of going 7-9 and then stripping away much of the playmaking talent from even that club.

I've always wondered if it were possible for someone to get elected President with a truly secret agenda in the back of their mind. Could a sufficiently determined individual mouth the right platitudes, do the right things, get to know the right people, and then take hold of the greatest office in the land and use it for some strange purpose? Such things are hardly unknown. Our recent history is filled with examples of covert agents how managed to remain under cover for years or even decades. Look at how high the Cambridge Spies rose in Britain before their fall. Or look at Robert Hansen and Aldrich Ames. They managed to pull off their deceptions for years without being detected. And this, I might add, they managed despite the fact that, to do their work, they needed to be known to Soviet (or Russian) intelligence and actively cooperate with them, thereby opening up any number of chances for exposure. But what if someone was a really deep sleeper agent? Or simply a rogue individual with a private agenda? How could they be detected? How could they be stopped?

A Los Angeles Times music critic who wrote that a Richard Strauss opera was "pro-life" -- meaning a celebration of life -- was stunned to pick up the paper and find his review changed by a literal-minded copy editor to read "anti-abortion." Music critic Mark Swed said the copy editor was adhering to a strict Times policy banning the phrase "pro-life" as offensive to people who support abortion, and didn't seem to realize that the epic Strauss opera "Die Frau Ohne Schatten" had nothing to do with that politically charged issue.

It is possible to construct a list of slightly-increasing harms, from 'having a mild headache' to 'being tortured to death'. For any two consecutive items on that list, H1 and H2, where H2 is slightly worse than H1, there is some finite number of instances of H1 such that that number would outweigh one instance of H2. So, for instance, a billion bad headaches is worse than one REALLY bad headache. But, given the transitivity of 'worse than', this means that there is some (astronomical) finite number of headaches that is worse than one instance of being tortured to death.

George W. Bush is not a culture warrior by inclination. And he clearly did not seek this fight over gay marriage. I'd guess that he, like most Americans, wishes it would go away.

More ominously, four Massachusetts judges, looking to bring about radical social change from the bench, decided that their commonwealth must begin performing same-sex marriages this spring.

Whether you favor gay marriage or not, it should be a concern when judges and officials decide to circumvent the democratic process on a core issue.

Marriage, defined as one man and one woman, has been a foundation of our culture for millenniums [sic]. It is society's basic institution for raising children. It expresses the unique relationship between men and women, an ideal based on love and care that is harnessed to the future: the next generation. It is how we protect children from the pain and frequent poverty of fatherlessness and family breakdown. Like private property and the rule of law, marriage is one of a few institution [sic] that hold up democracy.

The virtue of the amendment process is that it requires the consent of the governed. It forces nationwide debate and examination. Why are so many liberals now trying to keep that debate from happening?

1. If the amendment goes through, there will be discussion. 2. Liberals oppose the amendment. 3. Therefore, liberals oppose the discussion.