Playing games with “truth”
January 26, 2010 by Chris Hallquist
Filed under language, metaphysics, philosophy, stupidity
PZ Myers highlights a quote from Irving Kristol, a big fan of Leo Strauss’ political philosophy:
“There are different kinds of truths for different kinds of people,” he says in an interview. “There are truths appropriate for children; truths that are appropriate for students; truths that are appropriate for educated adults; and truths that are appropriate [...]
“God,” real meanings, and useful meanings
September 29, 2009 by Chris Hallquist
Filed under language, philosophy, social and literary criticism, stupidity
Yesterday, Jerry Coyne spotted yet another exampleof something that I see quite a bit: accusations that prominent atheists believe that literalism is the true form of religion. Though talk of literalism is misleading, there’s also an issue of whether leading atheists have made any claims at all about the “real” form of religion. Jerry Coyne [...]
Continue Reading »Refusing to believe (anything at all)
August 23, 2009 by Chris Hallquist
Filed under history, language, religion, science, social and literary criticism, stupidity
When did people get the idea that tolerance means not having any strong opinions on anything? I occasionally made fun of this at my old blog, but I recently stumbled across a more extreme example: one of the things that struck me about Karen Armstrong’s The Case for God (aside from the butchering of Aquinas [...]
Continue Reading »Random links
May 19, 2009 by Chris Hallquist
Filed under elsewhere, epistemology, ethics, language, philosophy, religion, social and literary criticism, stupidity
It’s been too long since I’ve done this…
Continue Reading »Pinker is wrong, Orwell was right, Pinker is right
April 21, 2009 by Chris Hallquist
Filed under language, philosophy, politics
Does language influence how we think? This looks like a psychological question, in many ways it hasn’t left the domain of philosophy: the psychological research is unclear, leaving us with largely logic and common sense; it involves issues of what consciousness is, “what is it like to be a thinker?”; and it raises core questions [...]
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