I feel conflicted about this. In the past, I have given feedback, especially on papers, but now I am feeling the pull of just providing the scores, and letting the students know I am available to discuss the assignments in greater depth if they like. My concern is, first, that it is highly time-consuming to provide substantial feedback on a large number of essays, and, second, that I'm not sure more than a handful of students would take the comments as a learning exercise, rather than simply a justification for the score. Maybe I'm rationalizing, but I think it may actually be the students' interest for me to give more feedback during the semester itself, and at the end of the semester, to prioritize getting through things efficiently and fairly with respect to the scores themselves. I know this will vary greatly based on any number of factors, especially the subject matter (which is why I am specifying humanities or social science classes with essays that involve at least some normative issues), but I'd be really interested in hearing other people's perspectives. (I don't really talk too much about this with other people in my department, in part because I sense it is a somewhat sensitive topic as people in the conversation might feel judged one way or the other.)

I am an economics undergrad student and this is the extract from Ben Fine's book, Microeconomics: A critical companion, which talks about this:

>As is at least implicit in what has gone before, microeconomics adopts a stance on certain methodological issues. It chooses methodological individualism (of a special type, utility maximisation as opposed to broader behavioural or motivational determinants – as in psychology for example) over methodological holism (the study of the system as a whole prior to the study of its individual components); deduction (and especially mathematical technique) over induction; an intradisciplinary over an interdisciplinary approach; and an ahistorical or universal methodology (applicable at all times, places and circumstances without regard to history and context) over theory attuned to the specific nature of the object under study (such as capitalism as opposed to slavery). In addition, previously explicitly if less so more recently, microeconomics presumes a separation between positive and normative theory, between what is and what ought to be, presuming that its principles are ethically neutral, or value-free, whether right or wrong.
>
>This separation is acknowledged by some philosophers to be unobtainable, not least because how we express things inevitably incorporates some ethical content – compare the notion of production as a relationship between inputs and outputs with its being understood as a class relationship of exploitation. By the same token, the presumption that evidence can be given independently from theory as the basis on which to test theories is also false – we need at least a conceptual framework to determine how we construct evidence: what does or does not count as a component part of GDP or the unemployed for example.

The thing is I have always thought about the Marxian theory of exploitation as value-neutral itself as it is just describing what is going on in capitalism, without morally condemning exploitation per se though it does condemn capitalism for failing to fulfil the need of freedom -as defined by Marx in his Paris manuscripts of 1844- for most people. Moreover, the strength of Marxian cirque according to me lies in its scientific nature wherein it exposes the irrationality of the capitalist mode of organising production leading to periodic crises, structural unemployment, huge inequality, alienation, etc. Michael Heinrich:

>**“Exploitation—contrary to a widespread

preferably papers/articles, and not books, as I read few in parallel already.

A common argument against evolution is that it supposedly supports eugenics. This is a bad argument because evolution is not an ethical theory and therefore cannot support eugenics. This makes sense to me, and is an example of the is-ought gap.

However, we can seemingly use science to deduce normative statements such as "we should reduce carbon emissions", or "obesity is bad for human health". These are statements about how things should be, or what people should do. This makes sense as well.

What's the difference between those two statements? Are there different "types" of normative statements, and science can deduce some types but not others?

A thought experiment: suppose we want to deduce murder is wrong. We can make people watch videos or read news articles of people being murdered. We will see that brain regions associated to anger and sadness are activated. Does this scientifically prove that murder is wrong?

Daily discussion question.

For those that don't know the terminology, "A DESCRIPTIVE claim is a claim that asserts that such-and-such IS the case. A NORMATIVE claim, on the other hand, is a claim that asserts that such-and-such OUGHT to be the case."

My background on AP is small, I read Sellars's "EMPIRICISM AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND" and Quine's article "Two Dogmas of Empiricism". It isn't huge...

But I started my self learning process in philosophy with continental philosophers and they usually worry about history (specially since Hegel and Marx) and Ethics (since always).

If knowledge and science is based on myths and dogmas (Sellars and Quine) and normative statements only have meaning inside their logical space doesn't that make impossible any evolution of common and scientific knowledge? How AP explains the movements of history in science and ethics if truth for them is just a matter of justification of normative concepts, therefor science is just a justification (or is positive in her relation with the logical space of reason)?

Moreover how they explain the beginning of language and normative conceptualization by humans? Because if normative statements are refereed on within language and his logical space, never from experience (inference), doesn't it makes impossible for science and intelligence ever have started?

Note: I am not talking about queer theory being a scientific discipline or not. I am not arguing it’s methods are not scientific. I am instead talking that queer theory has a hostility towards science and it’s methodology and seeks to deconstruct it.

Queer theory, and it’s lack of a fixed definition (as doing so would be anti-queer) surrounds itself with queer identity, which is “relational, in reference to the normative” (Letts, 2002, p. 123) and seems preoccupied with deconstructing binaries to undo hierarchies and fight against social inequality.

With the scientific method being the normative view of how “knowledge” in society is discovered and accepted, by construction (and my understanding) queer theory and methods exclude the scientific method and reason itself as a methodology.

Furthermore, as science is historically (as in non-queered history) discovered by and performed by primarily heterosexual white males, the methodologies of science and its authority for truth are suspect from a queer theory lens because they contain the irreversible bias of this group.

As seen here, https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C44&q=queering+scientific+method&btnG=#d=gs_qabs&u=%23p%3DwwD50AI5mkgJ in Queer Methods: “A focus on methods, which direct techniques for gathering data, and methodologies, which pertain to the logics of research design, would have risked a confrontation with queer claims to interdisciplinarity, if not an antidisciplinary irreverence”

As Queer Theory borrows heavily from postmodernism, which itself features “opposition to epistemic certainty and the stability of meaning” it undermines the ability of scientific knowledge to have any explanatory or epistemic power about the “real” world, and thus for an objective reality to exist entirely.

Science, on the other hand, builds and organizes knowledge based on testable explanations and predictions about the universe. It therefore assumes a universe and objective reality exists, although it is subject to the problem of induction.

To add context, there has been a general dislike of the Chibnall era; there are good reasons to this. However, despite how many videos essays and online opinions. There’s something that never gets touched upon, that it’s so reminiscent of the poor condition Doctor Who is nowadays, it’s literally driving me crazy like there’s a drumming in my head and no one can hear. A fan in 1976 named Jan Vincent Rudzki wrote an article criticising how deeply flawed, ‘The Deadly Assassin’ was. ‘What happened to the magic of Doctor who?’, can be seen as the first official Whovian essay/critical analysis. The criticisms seem very similar of criticisms of Chibnall’s era- music, clothes & setting, discontinuity…

Archive Television Musings “What has happened to the magic of Doctor Who?”

archivetvmusings archivetvmusings 2 years ago

dead1.jpg

I’ve recently been re-reading Licence Denied, Paul Cornell’s 1997 anthology of Doctor Who fanzine articles. The first entry in the book was Jan Vincent-Rudzki’s 1976 demolition of The Deadly Assassin. Reproduced in full below, it’s an absolutely fascinating read.

Few Who stories go very much against what has been done before, but recently this has changed. First, there was “Genesis of The Daleks,” then “Revenge,” “Morbius,” and now “Deadly Assassin,” or rather “Deadly Continuity.” But first let us look at the programme as someone who hardly ever watches. The costumes and sets are quite effective, but a little too Flash Gordon. It has a good cast and was well acted. The story was fair but did not hold together too well.

Now let’s look at the story as Doctor Who viewers. The following is not only my view, but that of many people (including people who aren’t avid fans). First, congratulations to Dudley Simpson for using Organ Music for the Time Lords, but thumbs down for not using his excellent Master theme. Then there’s the more than usually daft title. Have you ever heard of an assassin that isn’t deadly?

On to the ‘story’. Before we even started we heard the same boring cliche: ‘the Time Lords face their most dangerous crisis’. I suppose Omega was a minor nuisance! The next blunder was the guards. Why were there any? The Time Lords were supposed to be very powerful, so much so that anyone strong enough to invade would swat the guards with ease, and Time Lord technology should be able to deal with minor intrus

Pretty simple idea, really. I'm looking for readings on normativity in science and scientific justification. I'm also open to suggested readings on parallels between moral justification and scientific or epistemic justification.

For example, while Sharon Street's paper

> “Evolution and the Normativity of Epistemic Reasons,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 35, supplemental volume on Belief and Agency, ed. David Hunter, 2011, pp. 213-248.

appears to be a little bit more pure epistemology than I'm looking for, anything in that vague direction is great, since it will give me a foothold to find more stuff.

A recent post has brought up a question of how to refer to people and whether or not people who are trans actually are the gender that they identify as. That post seems to be focused on what is allowable in terms of the rules of the subreddit, so I thought it would be a better idea to make a post about the principles at play beyond individual subreddit drama.

The big question to be answered is: "Are trans people the gender that they identify as". People who are against recognizing transwomen as women and transmen are men bring up a number of arguments for why it would be wrong to do so. I think most of them are deeply flawed. For this post I want to focus on one that I find particularly flawed.

It's an argument from authoritative definition, usually from science or scientists, that goes something like this: "Science defines male and female as having certain sequences of chromesomes, therefore all humans are either one or the other and that can't be changed". When it is pointed out that not all people have chromosomes that fit cleanly into this binary, it is sometimes said that those who are outside of this binary aren't normal and therefore should not be considered when crafting a normative definition. This argument also covers other biological points of separation such as hormone levels, genitals, sex assigned at birth, etc.

This argument asserts that the only thing that ultimately matters in the distinction between what is a man or a woman is a certain biological trait. This assertion is obviously false, because it is undoubtedly true that everyone reading this has called more women "she" than seen their DNA under a microscope and men "he" than have seen their penises. This isn't a simple majority either. The vast majority of the people you interact with you refer to by their gender presentation and not the hard facts of their biology. You may have observed physiological markers that lead you to associate that person with a certain gender, but you're necessarily assuming that the hard biological markers follow from your subjective observations. This proves that gender presentation and performance are important aspects for understanding someone's gender, and that neither of these necessarily have anything to do with biology.

I don't want to step on anybody's toes here, but the amount of non-dad jokes here in this subreddit really annoys me. First of all, dad jokes CAN be NSFW, it clearly says so in the sub rules. Secondly, it doesn't automatically make it a dad joke if it's from a conversation between you and your child. Most importantly, the jokes that your CHILDREN tell YOU are not dad jokes. The point of a dad joke is that it's so cheesy only a dad who's trying to be funny would make such a joke. That's it. They are stupid plays on words, lame puns and so on. There has to be a clever pun or wordplay for it to be considered a dad joke.

Again, to all the fellow dads, I apologise if I'm sounding too harsh. But I just needed to get it off my chest.

I have come across this article by Andy Blunden and it articulated some thoughts that were on my mind for a long time concerning the relationship between Psychology and Critical Theory (including critcal theories in the broader sense). Here are some passages which summarize my concerns quite well:

"Critical theorists such as Horkheimer (Horkheimer, 1932), Habermas (McCarthy, 1978) and Honneth (Honneth, 1996) have agreed on the need to appropriate a theory of psychology to underpin their social-theoretical analysis of capitalist society, in particular, a social psychology and a developmental psychology. But as Nancy Fraser remarked:

“When claims for recognition are premised on a psychological theory of ‘the intersubjective conditions for undistorted identity-formation’, as in Honneth's model, they are made vulnerable to the vicissitudes of that theory; their moral bindingness evaporates in case the theory turns out to be false.” (Fraser, 2003)

The danger of falsification from outside its own domain of research threatens not only a theory of justice, but a critical social theory as well. In choosing such thinkers as Freud, Piaget, Kohlberg, Hartmann, Winnicott and Mead, and then sticking to these thinkers despite decades of progress in psychological research, this is exactly what has happened. The situation is the more serious because some of the thinkers who have been used in the past have not reciprocally appropriated the political and philosophical sources of critical theory, especially Marx or Hegel. Critical theory is therefore doubly disabled in that it contains elements which escape critique due to inaccessible empirical content, as well as unexamined ideological premises."

"Critical Theory today lacks an adequate conception of the subject. In particular it lacks an empirical psychology adequate to its tasks. [...] As a result of lacking an adequate conception of the Subject, the appropriation of Hegel falls short of what Hegel has to offer, as the subject falls into a dualism of society and individual. Failure to resolve this deficit by means of metaphor, “natural philosophy” and abstract generalisation leaves Critical Theory in a position of making unjustified leaps between the domains of individual and social consciousness. **An appropriation of Cultural Psychology, a body of science with a substantial base in empirical research

The following post revolves around the Fundamental analysis of GME. It is based on GME’s former Q2 financial statement and its different methods of valuing GME's share price compared to its current price 180$.

>"Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago."
>
>"Buy a stock the way you would buy a house. Understand and like it such that you'd be content to own it in the absence of any market."

• Take your time to pick a good plant, give it time, and let it grow.
• Don't rush into buying a stock. Take care in researching the company for your portfolio, understand its business, consider the risks and valuation, then hold on

TL;DR: Consensus EPS estimate Vs actual EPS (or an earnings beat or miss) is what actually move our beloved ticker. But it is not the only force. Current share price Vs real share Value also moves it. Consensus/Estimations vs Factual. And always has been. Consensus is indeed the Earnings Whisperer. However, somehow, GME ends up losing ground despite an earnings beat. What are the real causes? GameStop last issued its quarterly earnings results on September 7th, 2021. The reported EPS ($0.76) for the Q2 (earnings per share, btw), missed the consensus estimate of ($0.67) by $0.09. GME earned $1.18 billion during Q2, compared to the consensus estimate of $1.12 billion, that's why we saw red the day after Q2. Its revenue was up 25.6% compared to the same quarter last year, but it does not bother the market at all, because Consensus and Overvalued-share-price-sentiment dictated the price. GameStop has generated ($0.96) earnings per share over the last year. Earnings for GameStop are expected to grow in the coming year, from ($0.27) to $1.25 per share.

However, GME doesn’t actually need to have a positive EPS for issuing a dividend. RETAINED EARNINGS are the key words in here. Remember the ATM offerings? Good. Positive Free Cash Flow (FCF) would suffice too. GME may use its cash hoard throughout the latest ATM offering not only for investing in assets for the business, but to fund its dividend as earnings have been down. Just take as look to the current Balance Sheet (i.e. Total stockholders’ equity equals to 1,852,000,000$). Many well-known Fortune 500 companies have paid dividends in years where they posted negative EPS.

TA;DR: Q3 Earnings is around the corner. Q3 earnings will show the actu

*Same with trans men being men, just didn’t want the title to be too long

“‘Oh but you are a woman!’ Okay then, define what a woman is without circular logic/definition or stereotypes.” –Some Stupid Post I Just Downvoted in another Trans Sub

So, I’ve seen a few times people on trans subs criticizing transmedicalism or things like gendered brains by calling them “essentialist,” which apparently is a bad thing. A while back I also saw a post someone made linking to and commenting on a video of philosopher Slavoj Zizek’s thoughts on transgenderism, in which he reflects on how trans people he’s met have spoken of their identity in essentialist terms. He remarks on how it’s so common for trans people to say that they are now “in the body that they should have been born into,” as if they were predetermined before birth to be this way. He says that that’s, of course, false (he suggests it’s obviously false by framing the concept as believing that we exist as souls with preset attributes before birth… as if that’s the only interpretation). It’s kind of hard to understand exactly what point he’s trying to make in the video, but after rewatching it recently along with some other videos where he discussed the same topic, it seems to be the same assertion that many anti-transmed people repeat when the social construct debate comes up: gender is a social construct but that doesn’t make it not real, and being trans still isn’t a choice despite being a product of social environment and your experiences.

That’s… incorrect. I think we all here recognize that to be untrue, and we all gather here to beat that dead horse every single day. Anyways, I wanna talk about that while focusing on the “essentialism” part.

So, after hearing this term thrown around I decided to look up what essentialism (and specifically gender essentialism) actually is. Essentialism is the philosophical argument that everything has some essential qualities that make it what it is. There are things that make a rabbit a rabbit and if you take those things away it’s no longer a rabbit. Gender essentialism applies this thinking to the concept of gender and asserts that men and women are fundamentally different, purportedly due to key brain differences, and that results in naturally-endowed essential qualities like all women being nurturing, supportive, and non-competitive. Of course that’s not true. Men and women can and do behave in any sort of way as long as they have the freedom to do so. Biolo

Do your worst!

I'm surprised it hasn't decade.

(this is a new!! redux version I like better)

New year, actually new me. Its time for you guys to know.

I believe I am trans-gender, a trans-woman. This is not a joke.

Around March of this year I started questioning my gender and what it meant to be transgender. I started dressing feminine at home and eventually went out to a party that way and told people it was ok if they she/her'ed me so I could see how it felt. It was exhilarating, like the biggest of weights lifted off of my conscious. Thinking I could be trans scared the living shit out of me(society's great huh) but being a woman also made me so freaking happy which is as confusing as it sounds so I started seeing a therapist around that time.

Turns out I've been living my life as a man because I thought I had to be. For some trans people these thoughts start later in life but for me the gender envy and wish to be a woman has been in the back of my mind since I was a child. I just repressed the hell out of it because of societal pressure to be "normal". I started medically transitioning ( hormones) in late September, and have since paused because I was scared of being outed at my new job and to family members I hadn't told yet. To put it shortly though, I felt amazingly at peace on hormones and will likely start them again very soon.

Before I started questioning, I thought I wasn't "trans" enough. A common misconception is that trans people are supposed to "feel like they were born in the wrong body". Or I thought it was just normal guy things to often fantasize what being a woman would be like...lol. Since then I sometimes still gaslight myself wondering if I'm doing it for attention, or if I'm only doing this because I've been single for a while, or if I'll wake up someday and just feel differently. Its pretty clear to me now that the only regret I'll have is if I don't transition. Also I'm pretty god damn sure a cis, hetero-normative man wouldn't get euphoria from taking woman's hormones, becoming infertile and being gendered as a woman. Since "coming to terms" with my transness I do feel much happier, that much is certain. Also I've realized there isn't one "way" to be trans, it like many things in life isn't black or white, its a spectrum and everything is valid.

For the time being, I'd like to keep my name though I'd prefer to be called Jordie now. My pronouns are she/her and I will probably start appearing to look more feminine. But that's the neat part. Women can look masculine, have f

Similarly to substance dualism within the philosophy of science debate, moral realism seems to invoke a sort of dualism.

There are normative ("Killing is wrong") and non-normative properties and utterances ("Jim kills Tom") which are both real, and normative properties seem to affect non-normative ones in particular ways. After all, assuming moral realism to be true, we don't banish normative properties to an isolationist existence within the normative realm never to affect anything non-normative, e.g. whether Jim actually kills Tom or not, as in whether his neurons are fired in such a way or not that he actually does kill Tom or not.

As moral realists, we want "Killing is wrong" to affect "Jim kills Tom" (preferably, in a way for the latter to be wrong as Jim refrains from killing) and we don't want "Killing is wrong" to be purely subjective or even non-normative, e.g. as in "My neurons are arranged in such a way that I dislike killing".

However, there is no "ought" value of neurons or the such. It either fires or it doesn't. How do normative properties affect non-normative ones? How do they determine or increase the likelihood of neurons to be fired in such a way that Jim kills Tom or not? Or even more importantly: How do we even know that "Killing is wrong" in the first place if our whole capacity of knowing is based on a very much non-normative instrument, the brain, consisting of very much non-normative entities, neurons, who either fire or not, but surely don't "ought" to fire or not. How can normativity arise from such non-normativity?

Hi folks,

There are certain groups of people that are still recommended to specifically reduce their consumption of fat as a macronutrient. From personal experience, I'm familiar with post-cholecystectomy patients (not all of them, but commonly). Also I believe people with pancreatic issues. And finally I've heard of many people with fatty liver who have been advised to cut down on fat.

What I find interesting is how much low fat eating has fallen out of favor among the general population. As somebody prescribed such a diet, it's difficult to find recipes or information about it online without encountering a slew of articles talking about how science has reversed course and we now know that certain fats are considered healthy.

At 32, I'm not old enough to remember a time when low fat diets were in vogue. But I understand that it wasn't all that long ago that they were considered the normative "healthy eating" advice irrespective of any specific health problems. Ie, they were what was recommended for more or less everybody.

My question is when, approximately, did that shift in thinking occur? Are there still any reputable bodies that advocate for this way of eating? Or has the tide truly shifted against low fat?

While not all explicitly from anarchists but anarchist, here is a collection of ones I like:

Errico Malatesta

>Anarchy is a word that comes from the Greek, and signifies, strictly speaking, "without government": the state of a people without any constituted authority. Before such an organization had begun to be considered possible and desirable by a whole class of thinkers, so as to be taken as the aim of a movement (which has now become one of the most important factors in modern social warfare), the word "anarchy" was used universally in the sense of disorder and confusion, and it is still adopted in that sense by the ignorant and by adversaries interested in distorting the truth. The common interpretation of the word does not misconceive its true etymological signification, but is derived from it, owing to the prejudice that government must be a necessity of the organization of social life, and that consequently a society without government must be given up to disorder, and oscillate between the unbridled dominion of some and the blind vengeance of others. (Anarchy)

>Man, like all living beings, adapts himself to the conditions in which he lives, and transmits by inheritance his acquired habits. Thus, being born and having lived in bondage, being the descendant of a long line of slaves, man, when he began to think, believed that slavery was an essential condition of life, and liberty seemed to him impossible. In like manner, the workman, forced for centuries to depend upon the goodwill of his employer for work, that is, for bread, and accustomed to see his own life at the disposal of those who possess the land and capital, has ended in believing that it is his master who gives him food, and asks ingenuously how it would be possible to live, if there were no master over him? (Anarchy)

>And even if there existed men of infinite goodness and knowledge, even if we assume what has never happened in history and what we believe could never happen, namely, that the government might devolve upon the ablest and best, would the possession of government power add anything to their beneficent influence? Would they not rather paralyze or destroy it? For those who govern find it necessary to occupy themselves with things which they do not understand, and, above all, to waste the greater part of their energy in keeping themselves in power, striving to satisfy their friends, holding the discontented in check, and mastering the rebellious. (Anarchy)

For context I'm a Refuse Driver (Garbage man) & today I was on food waste. After I'd tipped I was checking the wagon for any defects when I spotted a lone pea balanced on the lifts.

I said "hey look, an escaPEA"

No one near me but it didn't half make me laugh for a good hour or so!

Edit: I can't believe how much this has blown up. Thank you everyone I've had a blast reading through the replies 😂

My first exposure to what is now commonly referred to as a near-death experience (NDE) came many years ago at a conference when a leading Muslim religious authority was asked by an audience member to comment on the phenomenon: Was it real? And if so, what might Islam have to say about it? The scholar, an erudite, thoughtful, and well-read man, went on to describe some of the features associated with the experience but concluded that because death is by definition the point of no return, near-death testimonials are almost certainly hallucinatory in origin and therefore can have no real bearing on Islamic conceptualizations of the posthumous states of the soul and life after death. The answer seemed to satisfy the intellectual curiosities of the questioner, a believing Muslim.

Some years later, I stumbled across an account by an American woman of a gripping NDE that purportedly occurred in the short duration she was clinically dead at a hospital and that completely changed her life. What struck me about her richly detailed testimony was its similarity to what we read about in premodern otherworld journeys of holy men and women—sages, seers, and Sufis—particularly with respect to the topography of the afterlife. It was as if we were dealing with a similar genre of literature, grounded in what seemed to be for all intents and purposes a very similar kind of experience.1 What stood out was the woman’s claim that the key to unlocking the nature of our relationship with the fantastic, mind-boggling world she encountered lay in understanding the power and scope of imagination. But the American woman’s account, and others I would go on to read in subsequent years, also raised some serious questions that could not be easily answered by mainstream science or the prevailing orthodoxies of the major religions. The theological challenges in particular presented by NDEs were significant enough, it appeared, to warrant further inquiry.

Researching the Near-Death Experience

The NDE entered our cultural lexicon and gained currency shortly after Raymond Moody published Life After Life in the mid-1970s. The first systematic attempt to describe the phenomenon of seemingly returning from death (or at least its brink), his work quickly became a bestseller.[2](https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/science-religion-and-the-challenge-of-near-death-experiences#foot

It really does, I swear!

What actually is positivist criminology? Is it just the idea that crime is caused by factors outside the control of the offender, rather than them having free will over their actions?

Is this a theory of criminology in and of itself, because it seems to encompass a range of other criminological theories. Thanks

The process of elimination argument for moral realism:

Premise 1. Moral realism is one of four logically exhaustive alternatives. Either at least some moral claims refer to a property or nothing does, and either the property depends on observers or it does not.

Premise 2. The logically exhaustive alternatives to moral realism are false. At least some moral claims refer to a property, and the property does not depend on observers.

Conclusion 3. Therefore, moral realism is true.

Premise 1 is trivially obvious. If we say moral statements don’t purport to refer to a property at all, then we have ethical non-cognitivism (NC). If we say moral statements purport to refer to a property, but nothing has that property, then we have nihilism. If we say moral statements purport to refer to a property, some things have that property, but the property depends on observers, then we have subjectivism. Finally, if we say moral statements purport to refer to a property, some things have that property, and that property doesn’t depend on observers, then we have moral realism. Those are all of the possibilities.

I recommend breaking the question up into its discrete stages and evaluating each claim on its own in order to decide on your meta theory of morals. That is, first try to decide whether you think moral statements refer to something, then try to determine whether anything has the property in question, then whether it is observer-dependent.

Ethical Non-Cognitivism

i. Ethical statements do not purport to refer to a property/attribute/characteristic. Ethical statements are neither true nor false. Eg., to say "Murder is wrong" is really to say "boo murder" or "ewe! Murder!" (Ethical Non-cognitivism)

The Problem With Non-Cognitivism:

Pleasure is good.

How should we understand that statement? The most straightforward answer is the cognitivist one. Ethical cognitivism is the view that evaluative statements like 'Pleasure is good' assert propositions, which can be either true or false, just like the statements 'The sky is red' and 'Weasels are mammals.' Given this, the most straightforward account of what the word 'good' is doing in the sentence is this: there is a property, goodness, which the word refers to, and the sentence ascribes that property to pleasure.

Non-cognitivists deny that 'good' denotes a property, and they deny that 'Pleasure is good' asserts anything in the way that 'Weasels are mammals' does. It is thus up to them to give us

Opening author's note: I know at least one person has followed me for another series long dormant. I won't be returning to that for a while.

This small series is for practicing construction and consistency in worldbuilding over multiple shorts within the same universe.

> The Continued Deviation of Terran Space Construction by granularspicedfooditem 45m36s ago
> AutoTranslate time 86ms: indeterminable colloquial usage

This is a somewhat tired topic for some, I know, but even for most aware of the subject in the title the depths to which this subject goes is relatively unknown. So, I will briefly overview the basics, and move from there.

Most polities, on induction to the Council of the Observable Universe, deviate in all forms of construction. However, space-related constructs will eventually fall into line with the norms of the rest of the universe in seven, plus or minus three, of their median technological advancement milestones. There are a great many factors that can affect that value, but the only relevant thing to note is that the Terran Confederation's median should fall almost directly into the average across all Council species. Despite this, their deviation from the norm in terms of space-related construction standards and practices has not notably declined for fifty-five of these lengths and in some places there is valid argument to say it has deviated further.

I am not here to educate on why these deviations continue to exist; that isn't my science, and I would appreciate education on it as much as I would further discussion on the main topic of this thread. What I will do is expand on exactly how vast these deviations are.

The most prominent in all fields of spacecraft is the usage, or lack thereof, of energetic shields. Mind you, Terrans still use shields on larger stations or vessels of war, but even those will feature the sheets of slightly flexible metals commonly encasing triangular beaming structures, only after both of which is the actual functional vessel space. Most species grow out of using armor for pure spacecraft before even their induction, but Terran vessels will sometimes have the outer layers thicker than the rest of the craft, not to mention the fact that all of this armor is normally designed to be removed with ease for a multitude of reasons.

I will not do the disservice of saying the armor is ineffective, but it is inefficient. Shielding systems have dedicated absorption masses for the redirecte

Buenosdillas

They’re on standbi

Pilot on me!!

I handpicked and arranged just a few questions that might be of interest to people here. Full link: https://survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results/all.

The numbers in square brackets represent swing comapred to the 2009 survey (not percentage point change) and they only take into account results from a limited part of the sample to make them comparable (see the longitudinal analysis page).

Spicy issues

Gender

social: 43.0% (exclusively), 63.1% (partially)

biological: 15.1% (exclusively), 29.0% (partially)

psychological: 4.3% (exclusively), 21.5% (partially)

unreal: 1.6% (exclusively), 4.2% (partially)

Gender categories: what to do with them? preserve: 18.9%; revise: 48.0%; eliminate: 14.6%

Race

social: 52.8% (exclusively), 63.4% (partially)

biological: 11.5% (exclusively), 18.7% (partially)

unreal: 11.4% (exclusively), 15.0% (partially)

Race categories: what to do with them? preserve: 7.3%; revise: 30.4%; eliminate: 39.2%

Capitalism or socialism? capitalism: 26.1%; socialism: 48.6%

Eating animals and/or animal products in ordinary circumstances

both permissible: 47.1%

only animal products: 23.9%

both impermissible (veganism): 16.5%

Abortion (first trimester, no special circumstances) permissible: 81.4%; impermissible: 12.8%

Less spicy issues

God theism: 18.6% [-3.5]; atheism: 66.7% [+3.5]

Theism: strongest argument in favor

cosmological: 16.6%

design: 13.9%

pragmatic: 11.6%; ontological: 6.8%; moral: 6.3%

Cosmological fine-tuning: what best explains it?

brute fact: 29.1%

there's no fine-tuning: 19.5%

design: 15.6%; multiverse: 12.4%

Trolley problem I: ought one to turn the switch? yes: 62.5% [-6.3]; no: 12.6% [+6.3]

Trolley problem II: ought one to push a man off bridge to save five? yes: 21.6%; no: 55.8%

Meaning of life subjective: 28.4%; objective: 27.6%; nonexistent: 14.9%

Consciousness: do some members of the given group have it?

adult humans: yes: 95.2%, no: 0.2%

cats: 88.6%/3.9%

fish: 65.3%/14.7%

flies: 34.5%/38.4%

worms: 24.2%/46.6%

plants: 7.2%/79.7%

particles: 2.0%/89%

newborn babies: 84.3%/4.9%

current AI systems: 3.4%/82.4%

future AI systems: 39.2%/26.8%

Human genetic engineering permissible: 64.2%; impermissible: 19.5%

Capital punishment permissible: 17.7%; _impermi

(this is a redux version that I think I like more)

New year, actually new me. Its time for you guys to know.

I'm transgender, I'm a trans-woman.

Around March of this year I started questioning my gender and what it meant to be transgender. I started dressing feminine at home and eventually went out to a party that way and told people it was ok if they she/her'ed me so I could see how it felt. It was exhilarating, like the biggest of weights lifted off of my conscious. Thinking I could be trans scared the living shit out of me(society's great huh) but being a woman also made me so freaking happy which is as confusing as it sounds so I started seeing a therapist around that time.

Turns out I've been living my life as a man because I thought I had to be. For some trans people these thoughts start later in life but for me the gender envy and wish to be a woman has been in the back of my mind since I was a child. I just repressed the hell out of it because of societal pressure to be "normal". I started medically transitioning (starting hormones) in October, and have since paused because I was scared of being outed at my new job and to family members I hadn't told yet. To put it shortly though, I felt amazingly at peace on hormones and will likely start them again very soon.

Before I started questioning, I thought I wasn't "trans" enough. A common misconception is that trans people are supposed to "feel like they were born in the wrong body". Or I thought it was just normal guy things to often fantasize what being a woman would be like...lol. Since then I sometimes still gaslight myself wondering if I'm doing it for attention, or if I'm only doing this because I've been single for a while, or if I'll wake up someday and just feel differently. Its pretty clear to me now that the only regret I'll have is if I don't transition. Also I'm pretty god damn sure a cis, hetero-normative man wouldn't get euphoria from taking woman's hormones, becoming infertile and being gendered as a woman. Since "coming to terms" with my transness I do feel much happier, that much is certain. Also I've realized there isn't one "way" to be trans, it like many things in life isn't black or white, its a spectrum and everything is valid.

For the time being, I'd like to keep my name though I'd prefer to be called Jordie now. My pronouns are she/her and I will probably start appearing to look more feminine. But that's the neat part. Women can look masculine, have facial hair, be broad

My first exposure to what is now commonly referred to as a near-death experience (NDE) came many years ago at a conference when a leading Muslim religious authority was asked by an audience member to comment on the phenomenon: Was it real? And if so, what might Islam have to say about it? The scholar, an erudite, thoughtful, and well-read man, went on to describe some of the features associated with the experience but concluded that because death is by definition the point of no return, near-death testimonials are almost certainly hallucinatory in origin and therefore can have no real bearing on Islamic conceptualizations of the posthumous states of the soul and life after death. The answer seemed to satisfy the intellectual curiosities of the questioner, a believing Muslim.

Some years later, I stumbled across an account by an American woman of a gripping NDE that purportedly occurred in the short duration she was clinically dead at a hospital and that completely changed her life. What struck me about her richly detailed testimony was its similarity to what we read about in premodern otherworld journeys of holy men and women—sages, seers, and Sufis—particularly with respect to the topography of the afterlife. It was as if we were dealing with a similar genre of literature, grounded in what seemed to be for all intents and purposes a very similar kind of experience.1 What stood out was the woman’s claim that the key to unlocking the nature of our relationship with the fantastic, mind-boggling world she encountered lay in understanding the power and scope of imagination. But the American woman’s account, and others I would go on to read in subsequent years, also raised some serious questions that could not be easily answered by mainstream science or the prevailing orthodoxies of the major religions. The theological challenges in particular presented by NDEs were significant enough, it appeared, to warrant further inquiry.

Researching the Near-Death Experience

The NDE entered our cultural lexicon and gained currency shortly after Raymond Moody published Life After Life in the mid-1970s. The first systematic attempt to describe the phenomenon of seemingly returning from death (or at least its brink), his work quickly became a bestseller.[2](https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/science-religion-and-the-challenge-of-near-death-experiences#footno