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WJM on Arguing with Subjectivists

Zeroseven said:  “Hi Vivid, I’m not much of a logician. Just give your practical example and we can explore it.” If you are not going to explore a practical example logically, what use is exploring it at all? To share your personal feelings? Here’s the problem in for those that wish to interact with Aleta, Zeroseven and Clown Fish: it is utterly unimportant to them that their worldview, statements and behavior be logically consistent. This is why it simply doesn’t bother them to admit that they are hypocrites – insisting on one thing (that morality is subjective) while behaving the opposite way (like morality is objective), and why they keep raising objections that have already been thoroughly refuted (like morality Read More ›

How human language has (not) evolved

From Mark Pagel at New Scientist: If H. sapiens has always had language, could other extinct human species have had it too? Some believe that Neanderthals did – which would imply we both inherited it from our common ancestor some 500,000 or more years ago. This theory is consistent with the discovery that FOXP2, a gene that is essential to speech, is identical at two key positions in humans and Neanderthals but different in chimpanzees. But a single gene is not enough to explain language. And recent genetic evidence shows that the Neanderthal brain regulated its version of FOXP2 differently.What’s more, language is inherently symbolic – sounds stand for words that stand for real objects and actions. But there is Read More ›

FYI-FTR: CF and Mark Victor Tushne on “victory” in the culture wars

In WJM’s still very active Subjectivism privilege thread — and in response to my citing Plato’s warning on radical relativist amorality, factionalism and nihilism in The Laws Bk X, CF has recently gloated (cf 417): “Frankly, I am glad that the type of prurient, judgemental morality that you worship [–> yes, we catch the implicit, Lewontin-style a priori,  self-referentially incoherent and amoral evo mat scientism based atheism and/or fellow traveller ideologies] is dying out.” This tellingly echoes a recent blog post by Harvard Law professor Victor Mark Tushnet** on the legal exploitation of claimed victory in the culture wars: >>The culture wars are over; they lost, we won. Remember, they [= conservatives] were the ones who characterized constitutional disputes as Read More ›