Someone I loathe just agreed with me, and I'm trying not to freak.

Ooh, I hate that with a squirmy unproud hate.

Very bad on Netscape.

Though not quite a tautology, quite often also true. The sad part with a site like that is, they can't exactly issue a retraction. I suppose they could make one of their pop-up bullet-points tomorrow "Netscape painfully and stupidly misstates theologian's argument!" but the odds against are... well. There aren't any odds for it.

Philosophy is like math, only it uses ideas isntead of numbers. So you try to prove or disprove ideas because the mental act of wrestling with those ideas is interesting in and of itself--and also because you might stumble on something useful for non-Philosophy along the way.

What's not to like? You might not want o to engage in it yourself, but it's a cool thing.

It might be too late.

I, for one, resent the implication that Spuffy turned me into a pervert. I was a pervert long before Spuffy! I wave my perv flag with dysfunctional pride.

Someone I loathe just agreed with me, and I'm trying not to freak.

Pretend it was a monkey typing Hamlet?

Ita wrote,

How do you define a conclusion as being interesting?

Well, there are lots of ways to define it--e.g., "a conclusion is interesting if someone somewhere finds it interesting or would so find it were she exposed to it." But I imagine that's not what you have in mind.

Sad to say, philosophers are very parochial about interesting conclusions. All they're concerned about, most of the time, is whether the conclusion is interesting to them. But surely the conclusion, "there exists an all-powerful being who knows everything and loves everyone more than anyone else loves them. Moreover, this being created the world and interacts with us" is pretty interesting to people besides philosophers.

Aw, Bob is here. That's so cute!

Of course the philosophy stuff is over my head. Which is why I am not taking the Philosophy of Death class I thought I would take and instead am taking Crime, Violence and Fear in America.

I'm home! I have soup, and pudding, and smoothies, and ice cream, and vicadin, and Photoshop elements, and I'm home.

Thank dog (that came out "god" so many times that I might have to cave and admit the existence of at least one deity, male) that Bob Bob chose capitals.

I told him to!

Confidential to Bob Bob: although I think it should be okay to start sentences with upper case "Ita", she hates it when you don't type it in lower-case.

Philosophy is like math, only it uses ideas isntead of numbers.

By the time I got to the interesting bits of math, there were precious few numbers. It was all about the symbols, and that's why the philosophy and math departments finally had to make it so you couldn't get credit for taking certain courses in both departments. Luckily they didn't notice this until after I had done so.

However, a mathematician will tell you that certain proofs are just pencil marks on paper, and others make your co-workers sit up and nod appreciatively.

I outlined my criteria for an interesting wrestling match -- I was wondering what the philosphical wisdom on "interesting" was. Also, if it includes a racquetball court.

Which reminds me -- Nutty -- you need to learn how to get the cheetah to come to you.

It'd be more interesting, to me, to prove that an all-powerful and all-loving god would make faith a test, the losing side of which gets eternal damnation.

But not interesting enough to study the physics of space-time, I'm afraid.

All they're concerned about, most of the time, is whether the conclusion is interesting to them.

So it's only about the conclusion? Not about the axioms or the process of getting there? Because you could just pick a good conclusion, rig the argument, and booyah!