Hm, your question is so deep yet so brief that one wonders what is motivating it. But perhaps a brief question initially warrants just a brief answer. I imagine that racism is a position that holds (1) that (physical) race is a meaningful/legitimate category or way of classifying human beings and that (2) different qualities tend to be found in people of different races and that (3) some of these qualities are more valuable than others. Having stated it so baldly and so roughly it is NOT obvious why it is wrong; in fact it may well be correct (although actually proposition (1) is definitely a hard one to defend empirically, and proposition (2) is so statistical in nature, admitting of so many individual exceptions, that it is probably useful as a practical guide to behavior, if that is how people who endorse (10-(3) probably want to use it.) But of course what makes it "wrong" to most people is that it is (a) factually wrong (ie either one or more of those three propositions are false, or perhaps...

Hm, you'd first have to specify who you mean by the proponents of "extreme versions" of anti-realism etc, and then ask them directly! (I'm not an expert here but I wonder if some very respectable philosophers (such as Goodman, Putnam, Quine etc) can often get reprsented in ways more extreme than are accurate ...) ... Even a classic idealist of the Berkeleyan variety (ie Berkeley himself), though claiming that all reality is mind-dependent perceptions (and the perceivers of those perceptions) does NOT hold that reality is arbitrary, up to us, constructed by us -- that it's in any sense 'up to us' whether a volcano erupts or whether arsenic kills us-- he holds (at least) that something external to our minds, namely God, controls all that good stuff. So, too, I imagine, contemporary anti-realists (don't know if anyone endorses Berkeleyan idealism/anti-realism any more) would hold that while everything we say about the world, everythign we think about the world, every proposition we utter, etc. is ...

Interesting question! Would be nice to look at specific examples of people making such claims, and then analyzing them; one suspects that such phrases are mostly rhetorical, ie dramatic ways of saying 'we communicate a LOT non-verbally', but it's not impossible that some might intend something more empirical, precise, quantifiable by them. After all, we say things like "a picture's worth a thousand words", because we realize that we must often utter many, many propositions to describe everything that is contained in, or communicated by, some image -- so why shouldn't something similar be true re "non-verbal communication", which would include everything from facial expressions to tone of voice to body language to general behavior etc .... Perhaps you could (perhaps some have!) actually studied (say) actual conversations between people and then (roughly) measured what was communicated strictly verbally (ie just which/how many propositions were uttered by the people speaking) and then studied how much...

I think the better question might be whether scientists accept it, and while I can't provide a genuinely empirical answer, my suspicion is YES -- otherwise there would be little motivation to pursue theories and explanations about the world ... It's precisely because we seek to explain "where" things/events come from and "how" they occur that we pursue science, and that seems to presuppose your principle -- and indeed my (shallow) understanding of contemporary physics suggests (a) on the surface they reject that principle, in holding (say) that empty space can spontaneously give rise to matter but (b) in fact they support the principle because empty space ends up being conceived to be or express a quantity of energy, which is not "nothing" -- so in fact there IS no such thing as purely "empty" space .... Now there probably are philosophers who reject the principle -- if you're the sort who rejects the fundamental intelligiblity of the world (and there are those) then you probably are not attracted to...

Hm. Technically I'd ahve to side with your friend. The relation "is like" strikes me as a perfectly reflexive one, as the logicians might say: everything is like itself. If "being like" is a matter of "being similar", then why wouldn't "identity" simply be the hghest degree of similarity? Everything definitely IS identical with itself, ie maximally similar to itself ... If so, then a genius definitely could walk like a genius .... (Now your debate might have other things going on: you might be relying, say, on ordinary English usage,a ccording to which it sounds a little strained to say something is like itself; but then we should distinguish between the logical status of the relation "is like" and the ordinary usage of the phrase "is like", and you can both be right!) hope that's useful... ap

If so, then we are all mad -- for much empirical research demonstrates the endless ways in which all of us behave irrationally practically all the time ... (see best-selling work by Dan Arielly, for example!) ... And anyway, surely we are familiar with at least the literary/cinematic stereotype of the absolutely even-keeled, coldly rational/logical/calculating supervillain who is simply MAD in his desire to conquer the world etc.... I don't know if there ever have been individuals fitting that description but the sheer fact that it's conceivable suggests that we conceive of "madness" in terms other than "irrationality" .... And finally, perhaps, "irrationality" is a matter of how well the means we pursue are apt to obtain the ends we pursue -- but madness (at least in that stereotype case) is a function only of the status of the ends themselves .... so a mad "end" might be pursued very rationally, or a sane "end" might be pursued very irrationally .... hope that's useful! ap

This is a great question! I would be inclined, however, to probe it a few different ways. First, there are many who are skeptical of the idea that there are true "natural kinds" ("discreet categories") in nature -- rather, species are themselves notoriously difficult to define, and even "within" some given species there is always tremendous variation across individuals, suggesting "fuzzier" categories rather than strict ones. In fact, if anything you might say we're almost more justified in providing definitions for the "human constructs" than for the natural things, because then we can clearly all agree that it's "up to us" how to define the things and dispense with the idea that we're trying to map our terms onto a pre-existing object or world. And further, I might ask why we need to "decide" what true love is etc; what's wrong with (say) realizing and accepting that many people use these words differently, as long as we strive continuously to be clear about our meanings, to recognize (and...

Great question! ... Several terms could use more careful specification/definition, esp. the notion of "sufficient" evidence, not to mention "evidence" itself for that matter ... One route might be to explore "comparative confidence" -- eg Descartes claimed via his ontological argument (Med. 5) that he could be as certain of God's existence as he is of mathematical truths -- pretty 'sufficient' evidence (or argument) there! ... More realistically we might explore whether our confidence in God's existence is comparable to our confidence in the dictates of science, or of common sense about the physical world, or even of belief in the existence of a physical world, or the general reliability of our senses -- the latter three in particular have often been challenged by philosophers, and it may well be an open question whether there is "sufficient evidence" to accept any of of those three, so we might compare the degree of evidence in God's belief with degree of evidence there .... (When confronted with...

Not just "indoctrinated" -- many these days will argue that much about our cognitive/mental lives is shaped by evolution, and surely "desires" would be prime candidates for such. If (say) having a certain set of desires or certain modes of desiring is ultimately "selected for" by evolution, would that make them more or less "authentic"? In fact presumably we can always, in principle, trace a causal chain explaining the origin either of individual desires or dispositions towards desiring -- so I'd guess that if you want to construct anything like a notion of "authentic" desires you'll have to decide whether simply being caused removes authenticity; or if not, which sorts of causes are consistent with being authentic and which not. (Actually a similar issue arises in free will discussions, where the concern is whether the fact that many/most/all of our thoughts and/or choices are caused is consistent with their remaining 'free' ....) hope that's useful. ap

well, SOME thoughts are 'inner monologues," it seems; especially the most articulated, clearest thoughts we have; so it seems reasonable to treat that as a significant category of "thoughts". Or at least they SEEM to be articulated verbally, even if not out loud; your point that they are not literally 'heard' is a very good one, but the similarity to what is or can be heard is striking enough that it doesn't seem misplaced to imagine these thoughts quite literally expressed verbally, even if silently. But just the same you are surely right that not ALL 'thought' can fit this model (if any at all can) -- so to me a related question might be why it is, exactly, that some thinking seems so closely affiliated with language while other thinking does not .... Julian Jaynes has a great book from the 1970s: "Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" in which he suggests (amongst other things) that schizophrenia results in people being unable to distinguish their inner monologue from ...