30 MAY 2015 by ideonexus

 Scientific Reasoning Explains Increases in IQ

The bombshell is that the Flynn Effect is almost certainly environmental. Natural selection has a speed limit measured in generations, but the Flynn Effect is measurable on the scale of decades and years. Flynn was also able to rule out increases in nutrition, overall health, and outbreeding (marrying outside one’s local community) as explanations for his eponymous effect.241 Whatever propels the Flynn Effect, then, is likely to be in people’s cognitive environments, not in their genes, d...
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21 JUN 2014 by ideonexus

 Commit Metaphysics to the Fire

If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, 'Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number?' No. 'Does it contain any experimental reasoning Duceming matter of fact and existence?' No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.
Folksonomies: pseudoscience
Folksonomies: pseudoscience
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30 JAN 2012 by ideonexus

 Reevaluating our Libraries

When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.
Folksonomies: empiricism
Folksonomies: empiricism
  1  notes

Hume argues that any work that does not contain abstract mathematical reasoning or experimental research is nothing but "sophistry and illusion."