kairosfocus

Here: Let’s add a clip: And: Notice the balance of substance vs personalities. END

Origenes is on fire these days, so let’s headline: [Origenes, emergence play thread, 57:] The skeptic wants to criticize, but he doesn’t want to be criticized himself. We all make statements of belief, skeptics included. But the skeptic posits a closed circle in which no beliefs are justified. Yet at the same time, he arrogates to himself a position outside of this circle by which he can judge the beliefs of others, a move he denies to his opponents. Since the raison d’être of his thesis is that there is no outside of the circle, he does not have the epistemic right to assume a position independent of it, and so his belief about the unjustifiability of beliefs or reasoning Read More ›

The stage is in darkness, with sombre mood music, then light rises . . . Origenes, 226 in the Pregnancy thread: <<Two desperate naturalists in a room. A: “I feel completely desperate. There is no way we will ever be able to explain life and consciousness.”B: “I feel the exact same way. The main issue is that we have nothing to work with. All we have is mindless particles in the void obeying mindless regularities. Starting from that, how can we possibly explain life, not to mention personhood, freedom, and rationality? There is simply no way forward.”A: “Exactly right. Sometimes I feel like such a loser. The other day I heard that current science cannot even explain liquidity.”B: “What did Read More ›

Dawkins’ barbed blanket dismissiveness comes up far too often in discussions of the design inference and related themes. Rarely, explicitly, most often by implication of a far too commonly seen no concessions, selectively hyperskeptical policy that objectors to design too often manifest. It is time to set this straight. First, we need to highlight fallacious, crooked yardstick thinking (as exposed by naturally straight and upright plumb-lines). And yes, that classical era work, the Bible, is telling: Notice, a pivotal point here, is self-evident truths. Things, similar to 2 + 3 = 5: Notoriously, Winston Smith in 1984 is put on the rack to break his mind to conform to The Party’s double-think. He is expected to think 2 + 2 Read More ›

Yes, they had to know the fire they were playing with — notice, testimony to congress: Now, you try to tell me that this time and place it’s different. All you will do is raise the question whether you are an empty headed talking point parrot or something worse. Much worse. END PS, here is my basic political analysis, for those willing to learn from hard bought history: F/N Oct 26: In for a penny, in for a pound. Here — for reference — is my 2020 analysis of dirty, McFaul style colour revolutions vs the SOCOM insurgency escalator: Where, here is the Russian Chief of General Staff’s view on dirty colour revolution games as 4th gen war operations: Also, Read More ›

Here, it is helpful to headline an update to L&FP, 62, as we need to return to a rich vein of thought that allows us to approach science in light of systems engineering perspectives: [[We may add a chart on a key subset of SE, reverse engineering, RE: One of the most significant Reverse Engineering-Forward Engineering exercises was the clean room duplication of the IBM PC’s operating framework that allowed lawsuit-proof clones to be built that then led to the explosion of PC-compatible machines. By the time this was over, IBM sold out to Lenovo and went back to its core competency, Mainframes. Where, now, a mainframe today is in effect a high end packaged server farm; the microprocessor now Read More ›

Our frame going forward, is knowledge reformation driven by application of the adapted JoHari Window, given obvious, fallacy-riddled ideological captivity of the intellectual high ground of our civilisation: Ideological captivity of the high ground also calls forth the perspective that we need to map the high ground: If you want some context on validity: So, we are now looking at ideologically driven captivity of the intellectual high ground and related institutions of our civilisation, leading to compromising the integrity of the knowledge commons through fallacy riddled evolutionary materialistic scientism and related ideologies. Not a happy thought but that is what we have to deal with and find a better way forward. We already know, knowledge (weak, everyday sense) is warranted, Read More ›

Notoriously, on the evening of October 30, 1938, many people missed the opening remarks for Orson Welles’ radio dramatisation of H G Wells’ War of the Worlds. As History dot com recounts: Millions of Americans, as they were every night, huddled around their radios, but relatively few of them were listening to CBS when it was announced that Welles and his fellow cast members were presenting an original dramatization of the 1898 H.G. Wells science-fiction novel “The War of the Worlds.” Instead, most of the country was tuned in to NBC’s popular “Chase and Sanborn Hour,” which featured ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his dummy, Charlie McCarthy . . . . disoriented listeners who stumbled onto the “Mercury Theatre on the Read More ›

The below is taken from a typical Internet Atheist trollish rhetorical stunt, illustrating all too familiar patterns of fallacious reasoning that are here seen in an attempt to bully and stereotype Christians as ignorant, stupid, insane or wicked. For first level responses see here [Jesus], here [worldviews], here [evil Christians]. This sort of polarising snide stunt is what we need to recognise as a real problem (and no, turnabout projection is not an acceptable response), acknowledging that it is unacceptable bigotry and intellectual irresponsibility, and then set such aside, there are fate of civilisation issues on the table: Now, let us ponder: Where we do not need to go. END U/D, Oct 1, on the real political spectrum by way Read More ›

Here: We need to recognise that Atlantic Hurricanes have a Season June to November, and that in the Pacific, they are a year-round phenomenon. END

It’s not hard to recognise that we are in a hyperskeptical, ideologically polarised warped thinking age at war with objective truth and knowledge. Fundamentally, our academics have betrayed us, starting with putting the inferior substitute, skepticism, in the place of prudence. Once that was done, there is no firewal on skepticism so it spiralled into selective hyperskepticism that promotes favoured narratives while finding any excuse to dismiss the despised other. Inevitably, knowledge has fractured. So, let us again turn to the JoHari window to see how it can help us build a responsible, and often counter-narrative body of knowledge: Now, steps of thought (adapted from an earlier comment): 1: We must properly understand what knowledge is, including its subtleties, limitations Read More ›

The JoHari Window provides a useful context to control speculation or accusation or assumption posing as knowledge: Here, we see a personal focus. This can readily be extended to institutions, movements, interest groups and the public. We can even see, through faction dynamics, how a minority may see while the community at large is innocently or even willfully blind, stuck in an ill advised business as usual. For example: Therefore, we are well advised to heed an adjusted form of Dallas Willard’s observation on knowledge and how it confers legitimate authority: To have knowledge in the dispositional sense—where you know things you are not necessarily thinking about at the time—is to be able to represent something as it is on Read More ›

Live event video: U/D: Sky of the Funeral: May she rest in peace. END

In his posthumous book (completed by colleagues), Willard makes a key observation on knowledge, one that challenges a power-obsessed, agenda driven era that is dismissive of objectivity rooted in good warrant: To have knowledge . . . is to be able to represent something as it is on an adequate basis of thought or experience, not to exclude communications from qualified sources (“authority”) . . . . knowledge authorizes one to act, to direct action, to develop and supervise policy, and to teach. It does so because, as everyone assumes, it enables us to deal more successfully with reality: with what we can count on, have to deal with, or are apt to have bruising encounters with. Knowledge involves assured Read More ›

. . . as a result of which, once there is an issue, complex questions and limitations of the philosophy of knowledge — Epistemology — emerge. Where, in particular, no scientific theory can be even morally certain. (Yes, as Newtonian Dynamics illustrates, they can be highly empirically reliable in a given gamut of circumstances . . . but as Newtonian Dynamics [vs. Modern Physics] also illustrates, so can models and frameworks known to be strictly inaccurate to reality. Empirical reliability is something we can know to responsible certainty.) So, it is important for us to understand the subtleties and limitations of knowledge and of knowledge claims. As we have discussed previously, on balance, a good definition of knowledge (beyond merely Read More ›