ellauri089.html on line 429: § 13. and if it were avoided, it would be plain that the only alternatives to the admission that "good" is indefinable, are either that it is complex, or that there is no notion at all peculiar to Ethics—alternatives which can only be refuted by an appeal to inspection, but which can be so refuted.
ellauri089.html on line 535: § 64. Certain ambiguities in the conception of Utilitarianism are noticed; and it is pointed out (1) that, as a doctrine of the end to be pursued, it is finally refuted by the refutation of Hedonism, and (2) that, while the arguments most commonly urged in its favour could, at most, only shew it to offer a correct criterion of right action, they are quite insufficient even for this purpose. …
ellauri089.html on line 548: § 69. But the theory, by which I have defined Metaphysical Ethics, is not that Metaphysics has a logical bearing upon the question involved in practical Ethics "What effects will my action produce?", but that it has such a bearing upon the fundamental ethical question, "What is good in itself?" This theory has been refuted by the proof, in Chap. I, that the naturalistic fallacy is a fallacy; it only remains to discuss certain confusions which seem to have lent it plausibility. …
ellauri096.html on line 55: Michael Scriven (1964) tried to refute predictive determinism (the thesis that all events are foreseeable), by conjuring two players, “Predictor” who has all the data, laws, and calculating capacity needed to predict the choices of others. Scriven goes on to imagine, “Avoider”, whose dominant motivation is to avoid prediction. Therefore, Predictor must conceal his prediction. The catch is that Avoider has access to the same data, laws, and calculating capacity as Predictor. Thus Avoider can duplicate Predictor’s reasoning. Consequently, the optimal predictor cannot predict Avoider. Let the teacher be Avoider and the student be Predictor. Avoider must win. Therefore, it is possible to give a surprise test. This sounds silly. The Predictor can predict that the Avoider double guesses her. Both can fiture out that this will go on and on, until time runs out, and they still just sit on their asses doing nothing. Thing is, you must remember that the players are part of the game, not outside of it as idealists would have it.
ellauri096.html on line 225: But secular idealists and logical positivists concede that there are some actual unknown truths. How can they continue to believe that all truths are knowable? Astonishingly, these eminent philosophers seem refuted by a pinch of epistemic logic. Also injured are those who limit their claims of universal knowability to a limited domain. For instance, Immanuel Kant (A223/B272) asserts that all empirical propositions are knowable. This pocket of optimism would be enough to ignite the contradiction (Stephenson 2015).
ellauri106.html on line 46: Philip Roth has not had much luck with biographers. Late in his life, furiously aggrieved after the failure of his marriage to the actress Claire Bloom and the publication of Bloom’s incendiary memoir of their years together, he asked a close friend, Ross Miller, an English professor at the University of Connecticut, to take on the task. Roth sent Miller lists of family members and friends he wanted to be interviewed, along with the questions that he felt should be asked. (“Would you have expected him to achieve success on the scale he has?”) It didn’t work out, for various reasons. Roth had wanted Miller to refute a familiar charge, “this whole mad fucking misogynistic bullshit!” that he felt flattened his long erotic history into one false accusation. But Miller came to his own conclusion. “There is a predatory side to both Sandy and Philip,” he told a cousin of Roth’s. (Sandy was Roth’s older brother.) “They look at women—I’m not gonna write about this—but they are misogynist. They talk about women in that way.”
ellauri119.html on line 716: Atlas Shrugged offers several examples that also refute this common misconception. The villains in this novel are businessmen who try to succeed through political pull. While they are businessmen, supposedly Ayn Rand’s ideal person, she does not paint them in a flattering light. She demonstrates how evil they are and how their political maneuvering always leads to their failure.
ellauri150.html on line 691: The Pope begins by saying that freedom (liberty) is "the highest of natural endowments". He says this gift from God can be used by Man for "the highest good and the greatest evil". And as such this gift is "cherished by the Catholic Church". He quickly refutes the idea that the Church is "hostile to human liberty" as some have claimed. He insists we must come to fully appreciate "the very idea of freedom".
ellauri151.html on line 667: had refuted the picture theory’s appeal to ideal logical form soon
ellauri156.html on line 541: It is characteristic of the rabbinical view of the Bible narratives that Abner, the warrior pure and simple, is styled "Lion King of the Law" (Yer. Peah, l.c.), and that even a specimen is given of a halakic discussion between him and Dog as to whether the law in Deut. xxiii. 3 excluded Ammonite and Moabite women from the Jewish community as well as men. Dog was of the opinion that David, being descended from the Moabitess Ruth, was not fit to wear the crown, nor even to be considered a true Israelite; while Abner maintained that the law affected only the male line of descent. When Dog's dialectics proved more than a match for those of Abner, the latter went to the prophet Samuel, who not only supported Abner in his view, but utterly refuted Dog's assertions (Midr. Sam. xxii.; Yeb. 76b et seq.).
xxx/ellauri193.html on line 355: The "bioweapons labs" claim has also been refuted by the US, Ukraine, the United Nations, and the Bulletin of the Subatomic Scientists. It was founded by former Manhattan Project scientists as the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists of Chicago on the profits of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The organization is also the keeper of the internationally recognized Doomsday Clock, the time of which is announced each January.
xxx/ellauri199.html on line 1059: Murray thinks that European civilisation as we have known it will not survive and he explores two factors that he thinks explain this. The first is the combination of mass migration of new peoples into Europe together with its low birth rates. The second is what Murray describes as "the fact that… at the same time Europe lost faith in its beliefs, traditions, and legitimacy". In The Daily Telegraph, Juliet Samuel summarised Murray´s book by saying, "His overall thesis, that a guilt-driven and exhausted Europe is playing fast and loose with its precious modern values by embracing migration on such a scale, is hard to refute".
xxx/ellauri404.html on line 481: This is massively untrue. Here’s a friendly suggestion to Mr. Alter (from one apologist to another): you would do well to refrain from using universal negatives and sweeping statements (“do not record any“ / “not once . . .”). It leaves you open to being definitively and easily refuted. All your opponents have to do is produce a single counter-example, and your assertion is nullified. As it is, I will produce many NT passages that contradict your claim.
xxx/ellauri410.html on line 1061: I am going to tell you how God came to be God. We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity. I will refute that idea, and take away the veil, so that you may see. … It is the first principle of the Gospel to know for a certainty the character of God and to know...that he was once a man like us.... (“King Follett Discourse,” Journal of Discourses 6:3-4 and Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 345-346, and History of the Church, vol. 6, 305-307)
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