When something is subjective, it is based on personal opinion*. We are saying that there is no real external truth value, just opinions. *The term subjective can mean different things, though they are mostly akin to this definition, and this is how it is being used in the article. Preferences and Standards We can see this reflected in music taste. Our personal preference is something that is true for us, and it wouldn’t make sense to say someone is wrong…
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Do you feel justified in your position? How can you tell if that justification is actually enough to be considered rational? Is there some sort of measuring stick? When do we have to justify ourselves to others? Do we have to justify every action? These are all questions that perhaps we should care about a little bit more, and apply them introspectively. What is Justification? We hold beliefs about the past, the present, and the future. Do we have a…
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I’ve said language is descriptive and people are free to identify how they like a number of times, but when discussing definitions I speak of the normative or most logical. This can be met with some hostility, with people often telling me I am the one being illogical or that I don’t understand what normative means, with some rejecting how normative is used in philosophy with a preference to a colloquial use. Some go so far as to say I…
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I figured I would write some notes in response to a video I watched of ‘Caffeine Corner’ with Steve and Chesh and found I ended up writing almost 11 pages of notes – I figured may as well sort it out and post it as an article. Before I get accused of bias, I will let you know before I start this article that I am of a similar opinion to Steve and Chesh, and I quite like them both….
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Introduction Imagine that someone presents us with a box. That box weighs three pounds. The person presenting us with the box says that there is a rabbit in the box, and the fact that it weighs three pounds proves that there is a rabbit in the box. This is not the case of course, just because a box weighs three pounds does not prove that there is a rabbit in the box. There could be some other explanation for why…
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I so often see my fellow atheists saying things like ‘I don’t believe x I accept the evidence for x’ and I can’t help but facedesk. I tried to address the problem in articles like I Don’t Believe, Dirty Words: Belief, Faith and Evidence, Beliefs and Logic but so far have not got anywhere. Perhaps the approach I took was providing too much information in one go, and instead I should have kept it simple and to the point, allowing…
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I was invited on Cheshire’s live stream ‘A Goblin Reads’ with Dave as she had seen my discussion with Aron about his belief that ‘Rocks are atheist!’ who then wrote a post called ‘What is Atheism?‘ In planning for this, I started reading Aron’s article where he argues why his definition of atheism is the ‘correct’ one and how SEP got things ‘wrong’ and his definition is the ‘original’. Whilst his article has had a lot of effort put into…
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When getting involved with discussions, especially on twitter, I keep hearing the phrase ‘The McRae Virus’ – often when discussing definitions or logic. I find this a strange way to dismiss a logical argument that doesn’t fit one’s narrative. Before entering the world of internet debates and things, I thought that an atheist was someone who believed or claimed gods do not exist. When I joined the debating world on Facebook many years ago, I was ‘corrected’ by many fellow…
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Introduction A discussion involving Aron Ra, centered around the definition of atheism, blew up on Twitter the other day. Generally, it is not a discussion I tend to get involved in. That is not to say that I have not got into discussions about how it is defined, it is just to say that for the most part I will avoid getting into the discussion. There are several reasons for this, some of which will be covered in this series…
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Introduction When the word testimony is brought up most people’s minds will immediately be brought to a court room scene, or to someone bearing witness to some religious experience. A witness in the box stands in front of the court and gives their eyewitness testimony as part of the evidence for either the prosecution or defence. Testimony is more than that though, testimony is the act of one agent passing on information to another agent through a speech act alone. …
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