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6 Comments
Morganthsays...*NSFW
siftbotsays...This video has been flagged as being Not Suitable For Work - declared nsfw by Morganth.
rich_magnetsays...I didn't have to see this ugly mug swearing at me for eight minutes, but he'd make an excellent DVD audio track for Randi's videos.
Confuciussays...Text book case of how you can something interesting barely tolerable.
Trancecoachsays...Epistemological issues seem so central to everything. Within the libertarian devotion to reason that Chomsky has praised, two camps seem to be at odds with one another, in a kind of in-house brawl.
One camp holds the empiricist skeptics who also happen to favor scientific materialism (like Penn Jillette and James Randi and some others you may not have heard about, or maybe you have) and the other camp holds the natural law axiomatic-deductive philosophers who don't outright dismiss homeopathic medicine, for example, and who question flouride in the water.
We can broadly see at least seven different positions. One writer I enjoyed a bit in college, Robert Anton Wilson, seems to have accepted empiricism in conjunction with intuitive-mysticism as valid sources of knowledge but not axiomatic-deductive reasoning. He wrote a short piece on his opposition to natural law in "Natural Law and Don't Put a Rubber on Your Willy." I don't think he developed his opposition thoroughly. He devoted more to his writing to oppose scientism (like double-bind dogmatic empiricism) with a whole book, "The New Inquisition."
Another position is that of Ayn Rand and her Objectivist followers who accepted neither intuitive-mystical knowledge nor much empiricism, but only (or mostly) axiomatic-deductive reasoning.
In my opinion, a stronger view accepts all three and tests theories against all three.
ulysses1904says...I've been a fan of Randi since he was the executioner in the Alice Cooper shows in the early 70s. But I couldn't watch a minute of this crap. The host is a perfect blend of every TV/Internet/video/pop culture cliche. He makes Kathy Griffin seem tolerable.
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