Reason/s & Belief

not all liberals or everyone opposed to contemporary American conservative policies is a godless liberal

If you want to know what a godless liberal believes, you have to ask.

It’s one thing if someone’s position is influenced by religious values, but quite another to base a law on those values.

When religious conservatives attack something in society, politics, or law which they don’t like, there’s a good chance that they will attribute the problem to godless liberals.

being a godless liberal is not inherently bad. There is nothing wrong with basing one’s politics on something other than religion

there is nothing wrong with not being religious

Reason is closely identified with the ability to self-consciously change beliefs, attitudes, traditions, and institutions, and therefore with the capacity for freedom and self-determination

You may leave the copyediting to someone else

If someone tagged your contributions with "Citation needed" and you disagree, discuss the matter on the article's discussion page.

Controversial, poorly-sourced claims in biographies of living people should be deleted immediately.

what it is like

recognizable qualitative characters

it is purely subjective

intuited

cannot be communicated, or apprehended by any other means than direct experience

a normally sighted person who sees red would be unable to describe the experience of this perception in such a way that a listener who has never experienced color will be able to know everything there is to know about that experience

color

it is possible to make an analogy

such a description is incapable of providing a complete description of the experience

a perception

taste

it is by definition difficult or impossible to convey qualia verbally

What's it like

consciousness has an essentially subjective character, a what-it-is-like aspect

the subjective aspect of the mind may not ever be sufficiently accounted for by the objective methods of reductionistic science

subjective consciousness

complex arguments can use a series of rules to connect several premises to one conclusion, or to derive a number of conclusions from the original premises which then act as premises for additional conclusions

Think Black people are lazy and violent, but your work isn’t about that? I’ll bet you dollars to donuts it’s in there.

beautiful and damning distinction

Wanting to live in a better world is great. Working for a better world is great. It only becomes a vice when it keeps us from loving the world we’re in—warts and all. My experience is that life is full of strong women and weak ones. Venal ones. Active ones. Passive ones. Complicated ones. Unhealthy ones. Men are just as varied and complicated and screwed-up. Their lives aren’t our societal best self, but they’re who we are

Treating moral issues as if they were craft is asking for a literature of beautiful sermons.