Dumb Philosophy kids are at it again! Rargh!

[Utsanomiko]

Ok, today wasn't as bad as last week, but I've got more info on the Smug Moron girl who kept asking where the process of the process of natural selection 'comes from'. I'll call her 'Cassandra', becasue that's her name, and i'm holding her to it (sad, really. I kinda like that name).

Not much happened in class that was notable at first. Sure, there were some midly dumb things during the first half hour of class:



1) One girl asked what the names of the points made before a conclusion (um, "what are 'premises', Trebeck?" )
2) The TA desribed the point of a priori arguments as "philosophers don't need to go through experiments; they can just kick back in their office and just think about stuff in their head" (true, but sad that he so willingly admitted it)
3) One of the supposed arguments for (or is it against?) dualism is that we should see actual thoughts running inside a person's mind, assuming we can see things that small (that's an argument? Can we bring up invisible unicorns now?)
4) Another dualist argument goes like:
-Physical things are incapable of sensation/thought
-Humans are capable of sensation/thought
Humans are not physical.

Wow, that made no attempt to make sense. the TA didn't really have an explanation for it.



Anywho, that leaves me with what Cassandra came in with about the Duplication Argument. Basically, the argument is that if dualism is true (so that the 'mind' is totally separate from they phyisical body), if somehow you made a machine to make an identical atom-by-atom copy of someone, they'd have no soul, but be 100% physically human. don't how we're supposed to test this one out, but evidently it's considered to go against dualism's idea that a person needs a soul.

Guess what? She brings up 'Multiplicity' as an example of making copies of people (WTF?), and then, I at least could have sworn she said this:

"Well, god is very important to me, so I don't beleive that if we made a clone, it would have a soul."

She didn't seem to like my argument that genetic clones are the same as identical twins, therefore if clones don't have individual souls, neither do twins. At least she was too peeved to respond, anyway.

For fuck's sake, it was bad enough when I thought she just had Pompous Ignorance, now it's possible she's a damn flitty modern pop Christian. Speaking of people asking last time if she was hot: I actually noticed, when class started today and she hadn't spoken yet, that I might have considered her attractive, save for the long hair without any volume to it (just not really my thing, I have to admit), and possibly buck-teeth (or maybe just because the had gum and also that horrid 'gum-chewer grin' that plagued highschoolers who, well, obviously chewed gum all the time), if Smug Stupidity wasn't such a goddamn turn-off. It seems like i'm going to be having a very long rivalry in this class. What a mess.

[Frank Hipper]

Physical things are incapable of sensation/thought
-Humans are capable of sensation/thought
Humans are not physical.

What's the sound of one man screaming in horror?

[AdmiralKanos]

In theory, philosophers should be able to think rationally. In practice, most people who go into philosophy are the exact personality type which eschews rational thought. Small wonder logic is considered merely one branch of philosophy.

[Durandal]

In theory, philosophers should be able to think rationally. In practice, most people who go into philosophy are the exact personality type which eschews rational thought. Small wonder logic is considered merely one branch of philosophy.

I think it has to do with what I've dubbed "Matrix-thinking." This is when people tell you that you think "deep thoughts" whenever you give consideration to otherwise patently absurd ideas, such as "we're all living in a computer simulation in order to serve as power-plants for our robot slave lords and masters." Anyone who seriously entertains these kinds of notions is automatically assumed to be intelligent because he has the aforementioned deep thoughts.

[AdmiralKanos]

Philosophers have marginalized themselves. They often refuse to accept that the physical is any more real than the philosophical, which is why most normal people think of philosophe as a complete waste of time.

Science is the only philosophy which expressly subordinates its conclusions to observation: such a huge distinction between science and most forms of philosophy-wank that most people don't even think of science as a philosophy at all.