James' notepad

The claim is sometimes made that it is impossible for black people to be racist, because racism is an exercise of power, and white people ha...

The claim is sometimes made that men should not be allowed to speak about women's issues. Only a woman can truly know what it is like to...

When resolving a dispute, one should not give much weight to someone's expressed emotions. One can pretend to be upset as a way to getti...

Manners are about not making other people feel uncomfortable. The rules of manners are voluntary and negotiated -- maybe you want to make so...

A naive definition of knowledge is "justified true belief". To have knowledge, you must believe something. That belief must be tru...

Laplace's rule of succession is only a rule of thumb. The idea is that since probabilities cannot be zero or one, if one has seen a hund...

Popper thought he could turn inductive science into a deductive process. We only see white swans, so we form a theory that all swans are whi...