Now I do believe that some of you are dedicated philosophers, which seek to learn things and read texts. But this does not seem to greatly elevate your mind. What I mean is that allot of our IQ is genetic. It’s a hardware issue more-so than a software issue. Every so often an elite philosopher is born. But thanks to the very popular idea of free birth, these genetic wonders are rarely reproduced. Despite this, sometimes an elite philosopher decides to write a series of books, and sometimes an elite philosopher becomes famous. The sad thing is that a foolish person will probably either miss-understand a elite philosopher or genius, instead of becoming as smart as him from reading his text. The internet makes philosophy much easier. This alone is not enough, though, as I have shown in a few examples. So we are left with the human existential crisis of foolishness. I think it could only be undone by great genetic improvement, or possibly nano bots augmenting the brain.
Excatly what purpose would nano robots have on neurological matters?
If we could bridge the gap between organic and machine structure, we could do allot of things.
For example, organ replacement. Or we could add to our brain system.
This is the second example recently of you taking a superior position by making a generalised attack on person, or persons unknown. Such straw man arguments are not “elite philosophy”.
I’m not elite. But I know some elites do exist.
Again, it cannot be a straw man argument. He is not falsely representing the position of an opponent as a way to (seemingly) win an argument. He is attacking persons unknown or one could describe it as describing a phenomenon, here with an argument that genetics are factor in the weakness of some philosophers.
I don’t think you really understand the breadth of the use of the idea of a straw man. It does not have to be a specific person.
I’ve seen this sort of thing in history texts , where the historian builds up a case of a historical interpretation only to burn it down. In reality the caricature is nothing more than a common misunderstanding attributable to no other historian in particular.
In this particular case the poster is setting up a caricature somewhere between a straw man ad hominem, and what is known as a straw man proposal. He is making a generalised attack against imaginary foes, to demonstrate apparent superiority.
But his caricature like the previous one, is bogus.
Call it what you like, his aim is based on a fallacy of one kind or another- what would you call it?
Right, it’s about a specific position. But, he is not arguing against a specific position in the OP here or in the other thread. He is not misrepresenting a position - which is what a straw man argument is doing. He is describing people. He is saying there is a pattern in some people.
Either this pattern exists or it does not. You could demand evidence that it exists. But there is no philosophical position in the OP that he is misrepresenting and thus there is no straw man.
And given that he makes it clear, especially in the other thread, that there is a subset of skeptics, who he calls fake scientists - note the implication that there are scientists out there who are not fake and in the OP that there are skeptics who have a valid form of skepticism, he CANNOT POSSIBLY be coming near a straw man since he is not saying all skeptical positions/persons are like this.
He simply is not doing this.
I think you may be confusing straw man with ad hom. Not that that fits either since he is not saying ’ becasue all skeptics are like this skeptical arguments are wrong’.
1 May I refer you to the answer I made above.
- We can argue about what class of fallacy it is, but it does not change the fact that he has built up an Aunt Sally, making a claim of false generalisation.
Hobbes Choice, my philosophy is mostly descriptive philosophy. Here is am example:
[1]A purely moral sentence would come out something like this:
People are bad, because they do bad things.
[2]Now, if we were to limit ourselves only to description, it would be like this:
Some people are seen as bad by some other people, because they do things which other people may dislike or suffer from. Therefor, it appears that some people are bad, because of how people think, and how they judge and define.
^In [2], I am not suggesting the person is good are bad. I’m only describing a phenomenon. That is allot like perspectivism. It’s all about accurate observation of perspectives. That is the limit to the truth, and how one works with that type of truth. Personal observational ‘truth’.
Now you are suggesting, it seems, that you know better than me, and that you are right where I am wrong, because I am making one fallacy after another. What you say I am doing is I am describing ‘inferior’ men and their qualities, or an inferior class. And in me doing this, I am wrong, and also I am assuming I am superior. Therefor you come to correct me, by saying what I type out in the threads is a fallacy.
Now, to your benifite, people have come up and explained things to you, yet you don’t seem to profit from that.
Also I have responded to you. I have tried to clarify myself.
I am not saying I am the right skeptic, and many are the wrong type of skeptic.
Also I am not saying I am elite, or that the non-elite are less valuable people.
I am just describing a phenomenon as I see it.
This is like taking notes in a book.
In perspectivism, we try to remember perspectives, understand perspectives, and even use perspectives. But, we don’t call those perspectives truth, we just call them perspectives.
I now read your edited previous post.
I have already said what I think he is doing. He is describing phenomena. In the other thread, which I think is clearer, he is saying that some people who take on the position of being skeptics/science advocates don’t know much philosophy or even science. He makes it clear this is a subset of potential skeptics/science supporters, but thinks there are enough of these people to warrent pointing out the phenomenon. Personally, I think this is absolutely the case. I think there are a number of posters here who have not read much philosophy, do not really understand some of a basic terms and issues, who dismiss other people’s positions on weak or no grounds, without really understanding the positions the other people have or how they are not really responding to or integrating the arguments of their opponents into their response, and that these people are also, ironically weaker in science, sometimes, then the very people they are dismissing or whose arguments they are dismissing. The reason this phenomenon is important is the very ignorance of philosophy - both terminology (categories) and how one goes about it - damages discussions. The reason it is not a straw man argument, is that it is not focused on specific positions. IOW people can be skeptical and go about the process of arguing from skeptical positions from either a solid intuitive grasp of what an actual discussion is like or because they do have a foundation in philosophy. This can happen and it does happen and it seems to me Dan made it very clear he was referring to some people AND nowhere does he go on to conclude that anyone who holds position X, Y and Z must be wrong because some half assed skeptics or fake scientists or internet philosophers are like this.
If he is correct, that there is this phenomenon or these phenomena, then it is a valid discussion topic, even if the same line, used elsewhere against an opponent - IN THE CONTEXT OF AN ARGUMENT OVER A SPECIFIC ISSUE - would be a kind of ad hom.
If he responded in a thread about, say, determinism, that skeptic C was wrong because he was a half assed skeptic and described this category, then that would be an ad hom argument.
But lo, here he is in threads he has started on the specific topic on these kind of thinkers. It cannot be ad hom and comes nowhere near straw man.
And seriously, do you really think these people do not exist? People whose opinions you may agree with, but who discontribute due to their inability to do philosophy.
I am going to leave it here because this is really a tangent in Dan’s thread. I think you are using both straw man and ad hom inappropriately. You think they fit. I think we have both made our opinions clear, including to Dan.
Just to let you know, Moreno, I think you pretty much understand my recent posts. Also you are not getting pissed off with Hobbes. That is a surprise, but a nice surprise.
And how can you have a perspective about nano-bots or selective breeding in the production of more elites?
And where excatly would the benefit be? So far any implant has been proven only to benefit people with weaken organs and limps, even then they usuall wear down. The metal joint implants leaves small metal fragments that irritates the body with great agony, so i’m afraid it’s just wishful thinking.
When I think about your idea of bred philosopher I think of someone like Rain Man. He may be intellectually superior but at expense of what? If you are breeding a human for a single quality what are you sacrificing? And what quality of philosophy would this man produce? Philosophy is a product of human experience that includes our natural limitations, and our experiences of the world through these.
And there would be problem of super-humans with “upgraded” minds would consider other people (of just those who still will be humans) as inferior.
Hopefully we’ll understand the genes so well eventually that an expense could be avoided or minimalized.
This to me is a matter of hope and imagination. Ideally there would be endless advances in science. Therefor those advances could be carried over to the genes.
On the other hand, we could have it that we nuke each other, or aliens nuke us, or an asteroid nukes us, or a small pink chiwawa explodes suddenly in a melt down which destroys the whole earth. But for the sake of positivity we could instead have hope that science would help us even on a genetic level eventually, with enough time, because people and culture is always changing and who knows where it will go.
Wow, your first post.
Here comes the class struggle. It’s something the democrats want to suppress. Even though sickness is treated, superiority is not. We’re permitted to devolve, but if a human was turned somehow into a super human, I think it would be heavily demonized, as if it were evil, and who knows, maybe it would be. That’s one of the many problems of the democratic paradigm.
Pedantry but you mean intelligence is genetic, IQ is about as accurate measure of intelligence as you mothers opinion of you, is a testament of how great you are or are not. Not just that but you can improve your lot, if like me you were born an idiot, you can at least make the status of adequate. 
And if we can keep this real, philosophers were never so right as when they were wrong, and never so true to philosophy as when they argued for a greater “truth” than theirs.
God people read too much shit and understand so little about it. Stop reading philosophy now, until you can at least take it as just an opinion. Stop it, go on stop, stop seriously. And you can stop wanking over it too. Get a room.
Read to learn, don’t read to become a slave to a man or woman no matter how great you think they were.
Not quite, the step after these rain men with very highly functional areas and at the same time non functional areas, there are actually “super savants” that has no downsides.