10 DEC 2013 by ideonexus

 The Humanities are About "Inwardness"

It is the irreducible reality of inwardness, and its autonomy as a category of understanding, over which Pinker, in his delirium of empirical research, rides roughshod. The humanities are the study of the many expressions of that inwardness. Pinker’s condescension to the humanities is endless. He proposes for the humanities “a consilience with science,” but the only apparent beneficiary of such an arrangement would be the humanities, since they have nothing much to offer the sciences, which o...
 1  1  notes

Argument for why they cannot be reconciled with science.

22 OCT 2013 by ideonexus

 The Steel Man Argument

Sometimes the term "steel man" is used to refer to a position's or argument's improved form. A straw man is a misrepresentation of someone's position or argument that is easy to defeat: a "steel man" is an improvement of someone's position or argument that is harder to defeat than their originally stated position or argument.
Folksonomies: debate
Folksonomies: debate
  1  notes

Contrasts with the straw man, work from an idealized articulation of your opponent's viewpoint and try to improve upon it.