Category: Truth
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Consensus and Truth
Consensus is no guarantee of truth. If all or most of the experts in some subject area agree that p, it does not follow that p is true. But that is not to say, or imply, that consensus has no bearing on truth. A consensus of unbiased and uncoerced experts in a field is a…
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Consciousness is an Illusion . . .
. . . but truth is not? An inconsistency in Dennett. Over at the Stack.
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Relativism and Dogmatism
Substack latest My Substack snowball is getting bigger and bigger. Time to monetize? Well, it's a labor of love and I've got enough loot to last me my sublunary tenure, assuming the Dementocrat destruction of the economy is kept within certain bounds. I believe that Enough is Enough when it comes to material stuff. Whatever…
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Einstein, Relativity, and Relativism
Substack latest.
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Tulsi Gabbard Defends Objective Truth . . .
. . . at a rally to end child mutilation. Gabbard's three-minute address begins at 19:30 and runs until 22:42. "Without recognition that there is such a thing as truth, there are no boundaries in our society, which why we are where we are." That something so obvious needs to be stated explicitly shows how…
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Wife and Life, Truth and Practice
My wife is easy-going, tolerant, forgiving, good-hearted, and unselfish. Hungry, she bought herself a Costco hot dog and then, without my asking, gave me the lion's share,* concerned that I was hungry! I chose well in matters marital. Human nature leaves a lot to be desired. And yet there is goodness and nobility in some…
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Truth is not a Leftist Value
Posted today on my Facebook page. I could not resist making some additions for the present venue. ……………………….. My title is a Dennis Prager riff. But it needs a bit of nuancing, a job for a philosopher, not a talk show host. Truth is a value for leftists in an instrumental sense: they will tell…
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E. J. Lowe’s Presentism and the Reality of the Past
We lost the brilliant E. J. Lowe (1950-2014) at an early age. We best honor a philosopher by thinking his thoughts, sympathetically, but critically. Lowe writes, When we say that Caesar has ceased to exist, what we really should mean is that he is no longer a part of reality at all, any more than…
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Stalin the Bookman
Here is a review of Geoffrey Roberts, Stalin's Library: A Dictator and his Books. Excerpts: He was also an avid reader. Roberts’s book begins as an analysis of the personal library Stalin left behind, scattered around his various dachas and offices. It comprised some 25,000 volumes, covering a wide range of subjects including Marxism, political…
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Truth and Power
'Speaking truth to power' is a phrase leftists love when they are out of power; in power, they exercise it, and truth be damned. They imbibed mendacity with their mothers' milk.
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Truthmaker Maximalism Questioned
0) What David Armstrong calls truthmaker maximalism is the thesis that every truth has a truthmaker. Although I find the basic truthmaker intuition well-nigh irresistible, I have difficulty with the notion that every truth has a truthmaker. Thus I question truthmaker maximalism (TM). Alan Rhoda has recently come out in favor of TM in a…
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A Foolish Notion
Foolish is the notion that the truth must not be spoken if it could possibly be used to harm someone or hurt his feelings.
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I Walk the Line
Over at Facebook. The line between saying what needs to be said and being de-platformed. I don't much cotton to book burners and their latter-day equivalents. Free speech and open inquiry! Not for their own sakes, but in pursuit of the truth. Not 'my truth' or 'your truth,' but the truth.
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Speaking Truth to Power
When a leftist speaks truth to power, it is not out of respect for truth, but out of respect for the power that he hopes to achieve by using truth-telling as a means to his end.
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True For and True
There are expressions that should be avoided by those who aim to think clearly and to promote clear thinking in others. Expressions of the form, ‘true for X’ are prime examples. In a logically sanitized world, the following would be verboten: ‘true for me,’ ‘true for you,’ ‘true for Jews,’ ‘true for Arabs,’ ‘true for…