The Philosophy Discussion Forum

To be continued. I've read your response carefully, and can see you're working through the issues with great thoughtfulness. And I realize you're not done, so I don't want to jump the gun. But maybe I can offer a couple of tentative caveats, as you continue. It’s been more than a week since you res...

… But secularism cannot accept such reasoning as the above. There can be no appeal to the Creator allowed, and no Protestant explanations of WHY people have these alleged rights. So we come back to the question: WHY would secularists be telling us to believe that all people have such rights? What's...

If the meaning of "objective" is to be independent of an observer and "subjective" is to be dependent upon an observer, then I think, if Immanuel Kant was right about phenomena and noumena, then it could be arguably fair to say that a conscious being cannot utter a non-subjectiv...

So, is pain an objective property or a subjective property if it is the case that more than one human being would feel pain under circumstance X? Objectivity isn't about feelings. It's about how things really are . If a billion people are deluded, in that they think something unreal is real, or som...

So, for the sake of discussion and clarification, let's take another example: the belief that the earth is flat or round. If I lived in a rural place a thousand years ago, and I never travel farther than, say from Athens to Sparta, then holding the belief that the world if flat works just fine - re...

What you're saying is that you knew because you compared the statement to how things are in the external world. New York really is in the region they call New York State. So the statement was true. And it was true in a way such that not only should you believe it, but that I should, too. It was obj...

I know I'm interjecting and maybe interrupting a good dialogue here but thought I'd offer an alternative way to think of this dichotomy. Please do. Welcome. Thank you, it's good to be here (and to be welcomed!) :) Whether a statement is true or not, or how or whether we can determine the truth of a...

Aesthetics is primarily subjective: anybody can disagree, with no problem. But one cannot disagree with reality and not pay a price for that...and often, a very significant one. Ontology is not "soft" or "forgiving" in the way aesthetics always is. How did we get on the topic of...

Interesting, then, that not one of those "20" you estimate to be present was able to suggest one single moral precept required of all secularists by secularism. Is it the case, then, that "not responding" is all they have left? Not one can respond? So it seems. That is an assump...

Humans and machines both act according to feedback. This is what makes cybernetic AI such a hot item because it can be in many places at once, collecting feedback and processing a definition of reality that is far more accurate than that permitted by the limitations of human senses, or the capacity...

No, no one is responsible for the state of their own psyche at any given moment. I do not wish to engage in speculation about the limitations of other people's imaginary friends. To enforce or embrace the concept of free will is really to give god-like credit to a frail population of naked apes. To...

phyllo wrote: ↑Thu Apr 16, 2026 7:49 pm

That link shows that Trump received less than 50% of the popular vote - so not a majority by my understanding of the terms. I agree he was legally elected, just not by a majority of the voters.

Right.

Trump won by a plurality, not a majority.

Yes, and in 2016 won without either.

Ummm...no. "Unlawful" migrants have no guarantees under the American constitution. Actually, that's not correct. Many of the so-called 'rights' under American law are codified in the constitution as limitations on the powers of government, not as privileges granted to individuals. Yes, bu...

Ummm...no. "Unlawful" migrants have no guarantees under the American constitution. Actually, that's not correct. Many of the so-called 'rights' under American law are codified in the constitution as limitations on the powers of government, not as privileges granted to individuals. Constit...

So far as I can tell 'the dean paradox' is nothing about dean's or paradoxes or even jokes. Or am I missing something? You're about right. Colin Leslie Dean is an internet crank who claims to be Australia's leading erotic poet as well as the greatest mathemetician and philosopher of all time. He pi...