Aliens found on Mars!

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Re: Aliens found on Mars!

Post by pErvinalia » Sun Jun 25, 2017 2:34 pm

Galaxian wrote:
pErvin wrote:
Galaxian wrote:
Hermit wrote:
Galaxian wrote:...your support of a fraud, using my signature, is proof that...
...Galaxian is seeing things that are not there. For instance, nowhere did I use your signature.
No one said that you did. The reference is to the fraud who used my signature.
No one used your signature. Are you seeing fairies at the bottom of your garden?
Call it "User Name" then. Same difference.
No it's not. Not surprised you'd make such a simple error given the intellectual rigour you apply to the media you imbibe.
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Re: Aliens found on Mars!

Post by Rum » Sun Jun 25, 2017 3:57 pm

I wonder if Galaxian finds Calaxian as entertaining as Rum finds Galaxian.

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Re: Aliens found on Mars!

Post by JimC » Sun Jun 25, 2017 10:35 pm

Rum wrote:I wonder if Galaxian finds Calaxian as entertaining as Rum finds Galaxian.

There's no fool like a deluded fool
The best fool is Gooseberry Fool! :soup:
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Re: Aliens found on Mars!

Post by Brian Peacock » Mon Jun 26, 2017 1:45 am

Galaxian wrote:
Brian Peacock wrote:Oh I see: A True Skeptic would just accept the evidence presented at face value. Got it.
No. A true skeptic shows general curiosity regarding their environment, and when the preponderance of evidence makes a conclusion likely, they accept it and don't procrastinate, pretending to be an intellectual fact finding skeptic, when infact they are merely a poseur, an imposter skeptic, a camp following groupie.

If there is someone who does not show a general curiosity regarding their environment they are not, and can not be, a skeptic; they are a clod of earth, unworthy of the title "sentient". The Limits to Growth book put it well in the following diagram:
https://lauren515.files.wordpress.com/2 ... ective.gif
Image

On the bottom-left, almost at the origin, you have worms... or people who glory in or are content in having the (lack of) sentience of worms. Some of them may claim to be skeptics. Galaxian scoffs at such claims... :prof:
Oh my dear Galaxian. How muddled you are.

Brain Peacock will now give you a short revision on the epistemological necessity of scepticism and how, in a very real and fundamental sense, the security of all knowledge claims rest upon the sceptical practice of honest, dispassionate enquirers. But fear not dear Galaxian, this will take naught but a minute or two of your time.

It is fair to say, and in this I shit you not (as the frivolous are want to say), that sceptical practices define epistemology. Epistemology's overriding concerns are to identify and explain the conditions which, when satisfied, entitle us to declare, on the surety of good and proportionate grounds, that we actually can and do know this-or-that about something-or-other. The most central and crucial of these conditions is the obligation upon claimants to provide justification.

Claims to knowledge may be declared willy-nilly as it were -- I am sexually irresistible to cattle; water is highly flammable; the president has a nine-foot dong, etc -- but the security of such claims resides entirely within their justification.

In this important regard sceptical practices address themselves entirely to the justification of claims -- and here one should note that the realm and context in which scepticism operates is one created entirely in response to claims to knowledge; which is to say that scepticism has neither a responsibility for, nor remit, nor a role in making claims (a common misapprehension, and sadly one all too often made). The claims of a declared sceptic are, in themselves, no more secure than the claims of anyone else. We must also note that to be sceptical in the epistemological sense is not the same as being sceptical in the everyday sense - the epistemological sceptic is not a doubter of claims but a tester of justifications.

The goal of scepticism is also often misunderstood, that being that sceptical practices are actually endeavours focused on securing a claim, and thus by extension on securing knowledge, and not endeavours focused on debunking claims, and it is only in the failure of that aim that claims are unavoidably rendered unjustified and/or unjustifiable. As mentioned, and I think it bears repeating, the methods of securing a claim to knowledge rest entirely on the claim meeting all proportionate challenges to its justification.

When it comes to addressing that brand of claims to knowledge which pertain to the world around us (claims which we might poetically regard as claims as to the constituents and operation of reality) the commonly understood principle of evidential support -- that is, demonstrable, corroborative support from the world around us -- acts as the central, essential and necessary element of justification.

It is my earnest hope that this brief prologue will merely enliven the context of that which will shortly follow, the meat in the sandwich as it were, to wit; a concise description of scepticism.

Scepticism might best be described as the epistemological practice of the issuing challenges to the justification of knowledge claims, to such an extent that the claimant is motivated to accept those challenges, and where it is the meeting of these challenges which will (where possible) certify the justification of a claims to knowledge, and thus grant us good and firm grounds on which to proportion assent (acceptance, agreement, or endorsement etc) to those claims.

And now, to the bearing this has upon your quoted remarks above.

A so-called 'True Sceptic' does not proportion assent to knowledge claims on the basis of the quantity of the evidences brought in support - or the 'preponderance of evidence' as you put it. That is merely a matter of distribution, and when relied upon it can, and regrettably often does, swiftly lead to fallacious reasoning.

No, the 'True Sceptic' is concerned with the quality of the evidence, not the quantity, and also in a determination as to whether the evidence is proportionate and relevant to domain in which the claim resides. And just as the preponderance of evidence carries no rational burden to accept a given claim, neither does a reasonable (in all senses) determination of a claim's failure in justification amount to a synonym for, or a symptom of, the kind of procrastinatory group-think you seem so quick to accuse. In fact, to berate, belittle, and/or disparage the sceptical challenger for not accepting a claim, on no other basis than their non-acceptance of the claim, is to make a mockery of rational discourse, is to erect a double-standard, and is to forfeit one's own role as a reasonable (in all senses) agent undertaking a dispassionate enquiry.

When proffering a claim to knowledge the honest agent engrossed in dispassionate enquiry endeavours to meet the sceptical challenges made to their justification, and in this the discursive principle of charitability, that is; the practice of meeting those challenges by the terms and within the context in which they were issued, is paramount. Again, personally criticising a challenger for challenging the justification of a claim not only bankrupts the discourse, it also belies a fundamental ignorance of the necessary intellectual and material obligations to support claims to knowledge regarding the constituents and operations of the world around us - hence I place before you this encapsulated rejoinder on the matter at hand.

Added to that, even in presenting a chart to support the intellectually dishonest berating of your detractor you make a fundamental error of reasoning, with the chart lacking, as it does, a proper context and by confusing an item concerned with the frequency distribution of particular -- and I may add irrelevant -- datasets (Meadows et al, 1972) for something which defines basic personal characteristics and intellectual endowments. It neither supports your claim nor authorises--let alone justifies--your lamentable lambastications of those who would seek to honestly oblige you to support your claims evidentially, rather than just by declaration and unsupported appeals to evidential propensity.

Other than that, I think Galaxian is doing a pretty good job of debunking Galaxian every time Galaxian claims to know the 'real' truth about whatever has got Galaxian's goat this week.

And with that Brian Peacock bids Galaxian adeiu. :tea:
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Re: Aliens found on Mars!

Post by JimC » Mon Jun 26, 2017 2:04 am

And if I know Galaxian, he will accept this towering intellectual rebuke of his entire world view with abject humility, promise sincerely to change his ways, and embark on a year long retreat to meditate on his failings. :tea:
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Re: Aliens found on Mars!

Post by pErvinalia » Mon Jun 26, 2017 4:01 am

Brian Peacock wrote:
Galaxian wrote:
Brian Peacock wrote:Oh I see: A True Skeptic would just accept the evidence presented at face value. Got it.
No. A true skeptic shows general curiosity regarding their environment, and when the preponderance of evidence makes a conclusion likely, they accept it and don't procrastinate, pretending to be an intellectual fact finding skeptic, when infact they are merely a poseur, an imposter skeptic, a camp following groupie.

If there is someone who does not show a general curiosity regarding their environment they are not, and can not be, a skeptic; they are a clod of earth, unworthy of the title "sentient". The Limits to Growth book put it well in the following diagram:
https://lauren515.files.wordpress.com/2 ... ective.gif
Image

On the bottom-left, almost at the origin, you have worms... or people who glory in or are content in having the (lack of) sentience of worms. Some of them may claim to be skeptics. Galaxian scoffs at such claims... :prof:
Oh my dear Galaxian. How muddled you are.

Brain Peacock will now give you a short revision on the epistemological necessity of scepticism and how, in a very real and fundamental sense, the security of all knowledge claims rest upon the sceptical practice of honest, dispassionate enquirers. But fear not dear Galaxian, this will take naught but a minute or two of your time.

It is fair to say, and in this I shit you not (as the frivolous are want to say), that sceptical practices define epistemology. Epistemology's overriding concerns are to identify and explain the conditions which, when satisfied, entitle us to declare, on the surety of good and proportionate grounds, that we actually can and do know this-or-that about something-or-other. The most central and crucial of these conditions is the obligation upon claimants to provide justification.

Claims to knowledge may be declared willy-nilly as it were -- I am sexually irresistible to cattle; water is highly flammable; the president has a nine-foot dong, etc -- but the security of such claims resides entirely within their justification.

In this important regard sceptical practices address themselves entirely to the justification of claims -- and here one should note that the realm and context in which scepticism operates is one created entirely in response to claims to knowledge; which is to say that scepticism has neither a responsibility for, nor remit, nor a role in making claims (a common misapprehension, and sadly one all too often made). The claims of a declared sceptic are, in themselves, no more secure than the claims of anyone else. We must also note that to be sceptical in the epistemological sense is not the same as being sceptical in the everyday sense - the epistemological sceptic is not a doubter of claims but a tester of justifications.

The goal of scepticism is also often misunderstood, that being that sceptical practices are actually endeavours focused on securing a claim, and thus by extension on securing knowledge, and not endeavours focused on debunking claims, and it is only in the failure of that aim that claims are unavoidably rendered unjustified and/or unjustifiable. As mentioned, and I think it bears repeating, the methods of securing a claim to knowledge rest entirely on the claim meeting all proportionate challenges to its justification.

When it comes to addressing that brand of claims to knowledge which pertain to the world around us (claims which we might poetically regard as claims as to the constituents and operation of reality) the commonly understood principle of evidential support -- that is, demonstrable, corroborative support from the world around us -- acts as the central, essential and necessary element of justification.

It is my earnest hope that this brief prologue will merely enliven the context of that which will shortly follow, the meat in the sandwich as it were, to wit; a concise description of scepticism.

Scepticism might best be described as the epistemological practice of the issuing challenges to the justification of knowledge claims, to such an extent that the claimant is motivated to accept those challenges, and where it is the meeting of these challenges which will (where possible) certify the justification of a claims to knowledge, and thus grant us good and firm grounds on which to proportion assent (acceptance, agreement, or endorsement etc) to those claims.

And now, to the bearing this has upon your quoted remarks above.

A so-called 'True Sceptic' does not proportion assent to knowledge claims on the basis of the quantity of the evidences brought in support - or the 'preponderance of evidence' as you put it. That is merely a matter of distribution, and when relied upon it can, and regrettably often does, swiftly lead to fallacious reasoning.

No, the 'True Sceptic' is concerned with the quality of the evidence, not the quantity, and also in a determination as to whether the evidence is proportionate and relevant to domain in which the claim resides. And just as the preponderance of evidence carries no rational burden to accept a given claim, neither does a reasonable (in all senses) determination of a claim's failure in justification amount to synonym for, or symptom of, the kind of procrastinatory group-think you seem so quick to accuse. In fact, to berate, belittle, and/or disparage the sceptical challenger for not accepting a claim, on no other basis than their non-acceptance of the claim, is to make a mockery of rational discourse, is to erect a double-standard, and is to forfeit one's own role as a reasonable (in all senses) agent undertaking a dispassionate enquiry.

When proffering a claim to knowledge the honest agent engrossed in dispassionate enquiry endeavours to meet the sceptical challenges made to their justification, and in this the discursive principle of charitability, that is; the practice of meeting those challenges by the terms and within the context in which they were issued, is paramount. Again, personally criticising a challenger for challenging the justification of a claim not only bankrupts the discourse, it also belies a fundamental ignorance of the necessary intellectual and material obligations to support claims to knowledge regarding the constituents and operations of the world around us - hence I place before you this encapsulated rejoinder on the matter at hand.

Added to that, even in presenting a chart to support the intellectually dishonest berating of your detractor you make a fundamental error of reasoning, with the chart lacking, as it does, a proper context and by confusing an item concerned with the frequency distribution of particular -- and I may add irrelevant -- datasets (Meadows et al, 1972) for something which defines basic personal characteristics and intellectual endowments. It neither supports your claim nor authorises--let alone justifies--your lamentable lambastications of those who would seek to honestly oblige you to support your claims evidentially, rather than just by declaration and unsupported appeals to evidential propensity.

Other than that, I think Galaxian is doing a pretty good job of debunking Galaxian every time Galaxian claims to know the 'real' truth about whatever has got Galaxian's goat this week.

And with that Brian Peacock bids Galaxian adeiu. :tea:
You're so sexy when you do this! :FIO:
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Re: Aliens found on Mars!

Post by Galaxian » Mon Jun 26, 2017 6:42 am

:tea:
Brian Peacock wrote:
Galaxian wrote:
Brian Peacock wrote:Oh I see: A True Skeptic would just accept the evidence presented at face value. Got it.
No. A true skeptic shows general curiosity regarding their environment, and when the preponderance of evidence makes a conclusion likely, they accept it and don't procrastinate, pretending to be an intellectual fact finding skeptic, when infact they are merely a poseur, an imposter skeptic, a camp following groupie.

If there is someone who does not show a general curiosity regarding their environment they are not, and can not be, a skeptic; they are a clod of earth, unworthy of the title "sentient". The Limits to Growth book put it well in the following diagram:
https://lauren515.files.wordpress.com/2 ... ective.gif
Image

On the bottom-left, almost at the origin, you have worms... or people who glory in or are content in having the (lack of) sentience of worms. Some of them may claim to be skeptics. Galaxian scoffs at such claims... :prof:
Oh my dear Galaxian. How muddled you are.

Brain Peacock will now give you a short revision on the epistemological necessity of scepticism and how, in a very real and fundamental sense, the security of all knowledge claims rest upon the sceptical practice of honest, dispassionate enquirers. But fear not dear Galaxian, this will take naught but a minute or two of your time......
Here you go, a short extract from Dawkins: http://www.physics.nyu.edu/sokal/dawkins.html
Postmodernism disrobed
by Richard Dawkins
[Published in Nature, 9 July 1998, vol. 394, pp. 141-143.]

"Suppose you are an intellectual impostor with nothing to say, but with strong ambitions to succeed in academic life, collect a coterie of reverent disciples and have students around the world anoint your pages with respectful yellow highlighter. What kind of literary style would you cultivate? Not a lucid one, surely, for clarity would expose your lack of content. The chances are that you would produce something like the following:

"We can clearly see that there is no bi-univocal correspondence between linear signifying links or archi-writing, depending on the author, and this multireferential, multi-dimensional machinic catalysis. The symmetry of scale, the transversality, the pathic non-discursive character of their expansion: all these dimensions remove us from the logic of the excluded middle and reinforce us in our dismissal of the ontological binarism we criticised previously.

"This is a quotation from the psychoanalyst Félix Guattari, one of many fashionable French 'intellectuals' outed by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont in their splendid book Intellectual Impostures, previously published in French and now released in a completely rewritten and revised English edition. Guattari goes on indefinitely in this vein and offers, in the opinion of Sokal and Bricmont, "the most brilliant mélange of scientific, pseudo-scientific and philosophical jargon that we have ever encountered". Guattari's close collaborator, the late Gilles Deleuze, had a similar talent for writing:

" In the first place, singularities-events correspond to heterogeneous series which are organized into a system which is neither stable nor unstable, but rather 'metastable', endowed with a potential energy wherein the differences between series are distributed... In the second place, singularities possess a process of auto-unification, always mobile and displaced to the extent that a paradoxical element traverses the series and makes them resonate, enveloping the corresponding singular points in a single aleatory point and all the emissions, all dice throws, in a single cast.

"This calls to mind Peter Medawar's earlier characterization of a certain type of French intellectual style (note, in passing, the contrast offered by Medawar's own elegant and clear prose):

" Style has become an object of first importance, and what a style it is! For me it has a prancing, high-stepping quality, full of self-importance; elevated indeed, but in the balletic manner, and stopping from time to time in studied attitudes, as if awaiting an outburst of applause. It has had a deplorable influence on the quality of modern thought...

"Returning to attack the same targets from another angle, Medawar says:

" I could quote evidence of the beginnings of a whispering campaign against the virtues of clarity. A writer on structuralism in the Times Literary Supplement has suggested that thoughts which are confused and tortuous by reason of their profundity are most appropriately expressed in prose that is deliberately unclear. What a preposterously silly idea! I am reminded of an air-raid warden in wartime Oxford who, when bright moonlight seemed to be defeating the spirit of the blackout, exhorted us to wear dark glasses. He, however, was being funny on purpose.

"This is from Medawar's 1968 lecture on "Science and Literature", reprinted in Pluto's Republic (Oxford University Press, 1982). Since Medawar's time, the whispering campaign has raised its voice.

"Deleuze and Guattari have written and collaborated on books described by the celebrated Michel Foucault as "among the greatest of the great... Some day, perhaps, the century will be Deleuzian." Sokal and Bricmont, however, think otherwise: "These texts contain a handful of intelligible sentences -- sometimes banal, sometimes erroneous -- and we have commented on some of them in the footnotes. For the rest, we leave it to the reader to judge."

"But it's tough on the reader. No doubt there exist thoughts so profound that most of us will not understand the language in which they are expressed. And no doubt there is also language designed to be unintelligible in order to conceal an absence of honest thought. But how are we to tell the difference? What if it really takes an expert eye to detect whether the emperor has clothes? In particular, how shall we know whether the modish French 'philosophy', whose disciples and exponents have all but taken over large sections of American academic life, is genuinely profound or the vacuous rhetoric of mountebanks and charlatans? ......."


Visit a post-modernist generator, such as here: http://www.rationalape.com/2010/12/post ... rator.html where you are regaled with essays approximating yours. All very profound. All very garrulous. All similarly devoid of meaning.
Or try here for similarly abstruse self-indulgance: http://www.ctmu.org/ Don't forget to download his dissertation! :coffee:
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Re: Aliens found on Mars!

Post by JimC » Mon Jun 26, 2017 7:13 am

So, you think Medawar and Dawkins would approve of your absurdist rantings?
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Re: Aliens found on Mars!

Post by pErvinalia » Mon Jun 26, 2017 7:16 am

Suppose you are a paranoid delusional with nothing to say, but with strong ambitions to superficially appear 'out of the ordinary', collect a coterie of inconceivably stupid simpletons around the world who anoint your scratchings with paranoid triangular shapes. What kind of literary style would you cultivate? Not an evidential one, surely, for evidence would expose your dumbfuckery. The chances are that you would produce something spastic like the following:

The World Trade Centre was felled by a shadowy cabal of Joos and the deep state, and despite the fact that there would have to be literally hundreds with some form of knowledge of such an event, no one says a peep to anyone other than ranting American lunatics with youtube channels.

:coffee:
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Re: Aliens found on Mars!

Post by rainbow » Mon Jun 26, 2017 7:46 am

I call bullshit - Alfred E Einstein
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Re: Aliens found on Mars!

Post by rainbow » Mon Jun 26, 2017 7:47 am

Post-Modernism is all just a matter of perception.
I call bullshit - Alfred E Einstein
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Re: Aliens found on Mars!

Post by pErvinalia » Mon Jun 26, 2017 8:00 am

Tru dat. Oh, wait...
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Re: Aliens found on Mars!

Post by Rum » Mon Jun 26, 2017 8:12 am

From: https://digest.bps.org.uk/2017/04/05/wh ... -theories/

"The more highly educated a participant, the less likely they were to endorse the conspiracy theories. Importantly, several of the other measures were linked to education and contributed to the association between education and less belief in conspiracy: feeling less powerlessness (or more in control), feelings of higher social status, and being sceptical of simple solutions".


..of course they would say that wouldn't they. And if you replace 'psychologist' with 'psi-op' - well there's your evidence!!

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Re: Aliens found on Mars!

Post by mistermack » Mon Jun 26, 2017 11:01 am

That circular feature is interesting.

I would imagine that it's very old, dating to billions of years ago when there were still volcanic features on the surface. But what makes it stand out is that it's the only one found so far.

I would like them to dig around it, and see if it extends down into the rock.
If it's just on the surface, then it probably was put there by little green men.
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Re: Aliens found on Mars!

Post by Brian Peacock » Mon Jun 26, 2017 11:33 am

Galaxian wrote::tea:
Brian Peacock wrote:
Galaxian wrote:
Brian Peacock wrote:Oh I see: A True Skeptic would just accept the evidence presented at face value. Got it.
No. A true skeptic shows general curiosity regarding their environment, and when the preponderance of evidence makes a conclusion likely, they accept it and don't procrastinate, pretending to be an intellectual fact finding skeptic, when infact they are merely a poseur, an imposter skeptic, a camp following groupie.

If there is someone who does not show a general curiosity regarding their environment they are not, and can not be, a skeptic; they are a clod of earth, unworthy of the title "sentient". The Limits to Growth book put it well in the following diagram:
https://lauren515.files.wordpress.com/2 ... ective.gif
Image

On the bottom-left, almost at the origin, you have worms... or people who glory in or are content in having the (lack of) sentience of worms. Some of them may claim to be skeptics. Galaxian scoffs at such claims... :prof:
Oh my dear Galaxian. How muddled you are.

Brain Peacock will now give you a short revision on the epistemological necessity of scepticism and how, in a very real and fundamental sense, the security of all knowledge claims rest upon the sceptical practice of honest, dispassionate enquirers. But fear not dear Galaxian, this will take naught but a minute or two of your time......
Here you go, a short extract from Dawkins: http://www.physics.nyu.edu/sokal/dawkins.html
Postmodernism disrobed
by Richard Dawkins
[Published in Nature, 9 July 1998, vol. 394, pp. 141-143.]

"Suppose you are an intellectual impostor with nothing to say, but with strong ambitions to succeed in academic life, collect a coterie of reverent disciples and have students around the world anoint your pages with respectful yellow highlighter. What kind of literary style would you cultivate? Not a lucid one, surely, for clarity would expose your lack of content. The chances are that you would produce something like the following:

"We can clearly see that there is no bi-univocal correspondence between linear signifying links or archi-writing, depending on the author, and this multireferential, multi-dimensional machinic catalysis. The symmetry of scale, the transversality, the pathic non-discursive character of their expansion: all these dimensions remove us from the logic of the excluded middle and reinforce us in our dismissal of the ontological binarism we criticised previously.

"This is a quotation from the psychoanalyst Félix Guattari, one of many fashionable French 'intellectuals' outed by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont in their splendid book Intellectual Impostures, previously published in French and now released in a completely rewritten and revised English edition. Guattari goes on indefinitely in this vein and offers, in the opinion of Sokal and Bricmont, "the most brilliant mélange of scientific, pseudo-scientific and philosophical jargon that we have ever encountered". Guattari's close collaborator, the late Gilles Deleuze, had a similar talent for writing:

" In the first place, singularities-events correspond to heterogeneous series which are organized into a system which is neither stable nor unstable, but rather 'metastable', endowed with a potential energy wherein the differences between series are distributed... In the second place, singularities possess a process of auto-unification, always mobile and displaced to the extent that a paradoxical element traverses the series and makes them resonate, enveloping the corresponding singular points in a single aleatory point and all the emissions, all dice throws, in a single cast.

"This calls to mind Peter Medawar's earlier characterization of a certain type of French intellectual style (note, in passing, the contrast offered by Medawar's own elegant and clear prose):

" Style has become an object of first importance, and what a style it is! For me it has a prancing, high-stepping quality, full of self-importance; elevated indeed, but in the balletic manner, and stopping from time to time in studied attitudes, as if awaiting an outburst of applause. It has had a deplorable influence on the quality of modern thought...

"Returning to attack the same targets from another angle, Medawar says:

" I could quote evidence of the beginnings of a whispering campaign against the virtues of clarity. A writer on structuralism in the Times Literary Supplement has suggested that thoughts which are confused and tortuous by reason of their profundity are most appropriately expressed in prose that is deliberately unclear. What a preposterously silly idea! I am reminded of an air-raid warden in wartime Oxford who, when bright moonlight seemed to be defeating the spirit of the blackout, exhorted us to wear dark glasses. He, however, was being funny on purpose.

"This is from Medawar's 1968 lecture on "Science and Literature", reprinted in Pluto's Republic (Oxford University Press, 1982). Since Medawar's time, the whispering campaign has raised its voice.

"Deleuze and Guattari have written and collaborated on books described by the celebrated Michel Foucault as "among the greatest of the great... Some day, perhaps, the century will be Deleuzian." Sokal and Bricmont, however, think otherwise: "These texts contain a handful of intelligible sentences -- sometimes banal, sometimes erroneous -- and we have commented on some of them in the footnotes. For the rest, we leave it to the reader to judge."

"But it's tough on the reader. No doubt there exist thoughts so profound that most of us will not understand the language in which they are expressed. And no doubt there is also language designed to be unintelligible in order to conceal an absence of honest thought. But how are we to tell the difference? What if it really takes an expert eye to detect whether the emperor has clothes? In particular, how shall we know whether the modish French 'philosophy', whose disciples and exponents have all but taken over large sections of American academic life, is genuinely profound or the vacuous rhetoric of mountebanks and charlatans? ......."
Visit a post-modernist generator, such as here: http://www.rationalape.com/2010/12/post ... rator.html where you are regaled with essays approximating yours. All very profound. All very garrulous. All similarly devoid of meaning.
Or try here for similarly abstruse self-indulgance: http://www.ctmu.org/ Don't forget to download his dissertation! :coffee:
I'll grant that my formalised language owes much to the Victorian era, the style of which, bedecked, as it is, with numerous clauses, sub-clauses, and asides, strikes a somewhat arcane note to many ears - though it is undeniably conversational also - but I challenge you to find fault with the synopsis of the central role of sceptical endeavour in epistemology I have offered. In fact, I positively encourage it.

Again, I issued challenges to your declarations, those being; that you misapprehend the nature and scope of scepticism in the pursuit of knowledge, that the propensity of evidences in support of claims says nothing about tthe proportionality or relevance of the evidences, that sceptical challenges to the justification of a claim are a proper method by which to qualify the security of a claim, and that charitability is essential to honest rational discourse in the service of dispassionate enquiry.

On a side note, to cite Dawkins in support of what is essentially a brand of self-justifying anti-intellectualism, and to do so while ignoring your epistemological obligations as a claimant, carries a certain forlorn irony. :tea:
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"It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice.
There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia."

Frank Zappa

"This is how humanity ends; bickering over the irrelevant."
Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
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