Today’s Q&A livestream at thinkspot (January 18, 2020)

The livestream is free to my followers at thinkspot. Here are the questions posted so far:

1. How would you say a proper judicial system should handle the testimony of a firm believer in a postmodern-based ideology that is required to swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?
Solver

2. I presume you have heard of The Grievance Studies Project? I would be interested in your thoughts on their Project and also on your thoughts regarding a key propositions in James Lindsay’s essay “Postmodern Religion and the Faith of Social Justice”, namely that Social Justice is linked with postmodernist thought and that Social Justice is “religion-like”?
Michael2whanganui66

3. Re: Madison Avenue, the advertising industry and commercial television; I see the overemphasis of “Inclusivity/diversity” of actors in commercials, and increasing left leaning “social justice” content. Where is this coming from and what are your thoughts?
FLOATINGCANVAS

4. Is there any way to counter postmodernism in the workplace?
JBPFanfromHamOnt

5. I would like to hear your comments on the the extent to which human beings are born tabula rasa. I realize that whether the mind is a ‘blank slate’ at birth or when brain activity begins in utero depends greatly on how one defines ‘the mind’, since if the feeling of hunger, for example is considered to be part of a person’s mental content, then, since hunger is built into all animals, surely we’re not born tabula rasa. On the other hand, if the only mental contents that count are a person’s experiences and mental acts, those do not exist prior to brain activity, and we are necessarily tabula rasa. But human mental life includes mental qualities, such as one’s ‘personality’ that seem to underlie and ‘color’ our experiences and mental action without having been created by them. Personality appears to be mostly genetic, including both individual and group personality differences between, e.g., male and female. Most of us on TS are aware of Jordan Peterson and his Jungian orientation, which posits a ‘collective unconscious’ that, when made explicit as various archetypes and myths seems to me to go way beyond the evidence. But if what is unconscious is simply the (large) genetic component of personality, then we still have to generate all the mental contents that either work with – or possibly against – our genetic and preconsious or unconscious ‘type’. So we are tabula rasa after all, except that I am obviously simplifying. This may be more of a psychology question than a philosophical one, but of course Aristotle addressed the issue in On the Soul (429b30) over two millennia ago (Joe Sachs translation): “As for a thing’s being acted upon in virtue of something common, the distinction was made earlier, that the intellect is in a certain way the intelligible things in potency, but is actively none of them before it thinks them; it is in potency in the same way a tablet is, when nothing written is present in it actively – this is exactly what happens with the intellect.”
RalphBlanchette

6. I’d like to offer a constructive criticism if I may. You appear to be very dismissive of religious thinkers. Each to their own, fair enough. However, do you not think that some of these people at least are intelligent and insightful and may have something to contribute to solving the world’s many complex problems. Excluding so many of the world’s thinkers from public debate, as you would appear inclined to do, seems likely to be counterproductive to me, no matter one’s views on theology. Is my assessment of your views fair and how would you respond to my observations?
mkonstas2

7. Good afternoon, Dr. Hicks. I would love to hear your thoughts on the “Racial Bias in Hate Speech and Abusive Language Detection Datasets” journal article that you posted a while ago. I have read it and did a podcast discussion on the topic, but would love to hear your thoughts. Thank you.
Kennicon

8. Do philosophers consider ad hominem necessarily unreasonable? if i referred to the campus climate and insinuated that the ‘scholar’ is constrained by that atmosphere, eg motivated by promotion etc., isn’t that reasonable? isn’t it incumbent on us to explore such motives when evaluating a proposition? yet people are keen to declare: “that’s ad hominem!”
skewed

9. On his podcast (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjELREOrtDc around 30mins), Bret Weinstein said recently: “I’m constantly frustrated by the absence of philosophers of science in our science debates, because in some ways we’ve paid to train them to navigate some issues that are very important but almost none of us understand”. He’s speaking about climate change modelling and says “they’re not actually good for testing anything, the system is too complex …”. He also speaks about the so-called reproducibility crisis which pervaded the science literature last year. Do you have a take on this?
skewed

10. What are some of the excesses of capitalism and how can we make the current system more effective?
CodeMerchant

11. More and more people are judging and punishing individuals based on the color of their skin and not the content of their character. What are the latest justifications for this push against the dream of MLK?
Solver