User talk:Aaron McDaid/Archive2006

criticisms of christianity

I'm afraid that the talk page got rather bogged down with details, and I must say that your suggestion was the most sensible thing on that page for ages. Thanks :) --Quadalpha 00:06, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

No problem. After getting into arguments on other pages over the last few days, I've decided that it's best to try to make one good comment and then leave. And to try to limit myself to at most one comment per hour. Otherwise I just get in an edit war! I can't help myself, other people are better at constant discussion than me. I'm signing off now for the night, keep up the good work. Aaron McDaid (talk - contribs) 00:13, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Cartesian materialism

Thank you for your interesting comments on Dennett and qualia. My main interest is to try to explain the ideas of philosophers in a balanced way. If you are interested in Dennett the article on Cartesian materialism needs some input. loxley 16:22, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi loxley, I wonder if you could tell me whether you agree with Dennett or not? I've been following the various contested edits and some of the discussions on talk pages that you have with Alienus, and I think I would find it easier to understand the context of everyone's comments if I knew their POV. I had guessed you disagreed with Dennett (like me) but now I'm not so sure.

As for my own POV: I've known for some time now what I thought about consciousness, basically that it's a really hard problem that just can't be solved. But it is only recently, while reading the consciousness articles on Wikipedia, that I've got a clearer idea of what the various terms mean and a clearer idea of what labels to apply to my beliefs. So I'm going to wear my POV on my sleeve here, which might help understanding if I get involved in editing these articles again. I follow Weak atheism and dualism and New Mysterianism. To clarify the dualism, I mean that as we study the brain more, we will notice inexplicable seemingly magic physics - these effects will be non-random but also non-predictable. I'm not sure whether I'm talking about a duality of worlds or of substances or something else, I think the words probably don't really matter. And as for a soul, I do believe in a soul but I'm not religious. I'm not sure if a soul needs a brain but I'd guess it does. I'm not sure that there isn't a God, but I guess there isn't.

I'm not expecting or even trying to change anyone's mind. I'm only asking because I find the comments on talk pages difficult to interpret when I don't have a clue where people are coming from. Also, do you pretty much agree with McGinn and/or Chalmers as I do? Aaron McDaid (talk - contribs) 21:03, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

On the subject of Dennett I try to keep a philosophical viewpoint (Dennett says.. but Block says..). He has an interesting idea in "Multiple Drafts" and challenges us to prove that he is wrong. I think the neuroscience has undermined Dennett's position; there is very strong evidence now for "filling in" conscious experience with data generated in the brain. This makes the "soul" idea more tenable. How on earth do we experience stuff in our brains? It also makes Multiple Drafts invalid.

Dualism is probably more credible now than it has been for two centuries (ie: Smythies' Cartesian dualism in hyperspace or Chalmers' natural/property dualism). My own feelings? I think it is a mysterious problem which, if it is ever solved, will change our ideas of physics as well as theology. It is interesting that McGinn finds his Mysterianism in the problem of space - for me space and time are the central problems, we do not understand either - unlike McGinn I believe they will be understood. As Plato put it, understanding is geometrical and what are space and time but geometrical entities? On the subject of God, if there is a universal consciousness I think we will find it one day, even though we would be part of it, and who knows, we might become wiser. loxley 15:58, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Every philosophy has been pronounced dead or obsolete at once stage or another, whether it be Multiple Drafts, or Descartes' ideas, or dualism in general. I'm always amused when I see people write of "René Descartes's now-obsolete ideas" or say that some particular philosophy is now 'the consensus'. These ideas are never quite as obsolete or as accepted/popular as they believe. And it doesn't make them any more of less correct, obviously. I like to see every theory given a description as it would be described by the followers, followed by the arguments/evidence they would use, followed by a robust criticism. The pro- and anti- text should be in separate paragraphs or sections, and clearly attributed to the pro- or anti- camp, instead of being intermingled. Aaron McDaid (talk - contribs) 16:32, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject Philosophy of Mind

You are welcome to join the newly-created WikiProject Philosophy of Mind. Porcher 18:11, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

I will thanks. I really should be concentrating on my maths studies, but I do find philosophy of mind fascinating. Aaron McDaid (talk - contribs) 18:34, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Haskell programming language edits

Hi, You edited one of the code examples in this page with the edit summary "fixing examples". Unfortunately, you changed a syntactically correct example that will be accepted by an interpreter such as ghci into an incorrect example that ghci rejects. Please be more careful. Catamorphism 20:30, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

I got the opposite behaviour with runhugs. Also, the example as of 15 minutes ago had braces which you have now accepted as being removed, is this correct? I'll mention this on the article's talk page - runhugs is the only environment I have experience of. Thanks for your quick response. Aaron McDaid (talk - contribs) 20:35, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

I only use ghci rather than hugs, and I thought that they had the same syntax for one-line definitions. If different interpreters have different syntax, that will have to be noted in the article. Catamorphism 20:44, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Re:

Yes, technically to make it a proper disambig page, you need to use one of the tags such as {{disambig}}, not merely just add it to the disambig category. I've gone ahead and changed it. I'll see if I can modify the bot to fix this when it counters it... if nothing else it should ignore it from now on. Thanks. --W.marsh 21:21, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I didn't know that. Maybe you could leave the bot as it is, but change the {{linkless}} text so that it links to how to make a proper disambiguation page if users feel that {{linkless}} is unwarranted? Aaron McDaid (talk - contribs) 21:29, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

I'll consider it... but it couldn't be on the actual template, we try to keep that small and non-intrusive, since it's added to so many articles. If anywhere it would go on the template page, I think. --W.marsh 21:34, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good. Aaron McDaid (talk - contribs) 21:43, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Fadas in 'Sinn Féin'

Hi Aaron. Thanks for the tip. I've made the change in a few of the articles in the list, but there are so many! Is there not some kind of bot that would do it for us? Scolaire 21:25, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Probably. But I don't know where to start. If I have the time, I'll go looking for such a bot. I would guess that somebody already has written a bot for fixing a wide variety of spelling mistakes en-masse such as this. Aaron McDaid (talk - contribs) 10:03, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Belfast WikiProject

As you have contributed to an article relating to Belfast, I hope you could take some time to read this page about our new project: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Belfast.

Thanks. --Mal 01:54, 23 August 2006 (UTC)