• Baden
    15.6k
    Hi all,

    As you know, since we started TPF a little over a year ago, we've made impressive progress up the search engine rankings to become the top philosophy forum on the net (disregarding the defunct old PF). What's helped Google and others to love us so much is our focus on quality content in a non-commercial - i.e. ad-free - environment. We want to keep it that way, but we have bills to pay, so, to make a long story short, give us some money, please, so that we may live long and prosper.

    You can subscribe or just send a Paypal donation to . We need $150 / quarter to keep the place afloat. We'll keep you posted and guilt-ridden with updates on how we're doing.

    Cheers!
  • Hanover
    12k
    You can subscribe or just send a Paypal donation to Baden

    How do you make a paypal donation when you click on ? That link just lets you leave an email.
  • jute
    4
    Just log into paypal, navigate to send money, then enter that email as a recipient.

    I just signed up for a quarterly donation. I'm a lurker carried over from the old forum (posted a little there as "bemoosed" but doubt I'll post here besides this one). I enjoy reading the discussions here, thanks to the admins and to all of you that post to make it work.
  • Mongrel
    3k
    What would you like to see more of on this forum, Jute?
  • Baden
    15.6k
    Thanks @jute and @Hanover 8-)
  • Hanover
    12k
    Buy yourself a little something special with the money.
  • Baden
    15.6k


    Can we discuss our corrupt arrangements by PM in future? Cheers :-*
  • jute
    4
    Thanks for asking, Mongrel. Just don't ban TGW and I'll be happy. :)

    Besides that, I first discovered the old forum by chance when Chalmers was a guest there, and I joined in order to ask him a few questions. At the time I thought that was a great feature of the forum. It fell by the wayside; I don't know why, but in retrospect it didn't seem that successful anyway. Maybe because no one posting had a deep familiarity with the guests' work, maybe the format wasn't conducive to a larger discussion. I'd like to see something like that, but only if it could be done well, and I for sure don't know how to do that.

    Personally, my primary (completely lay) interest is in relatively current analytical philosophy of mind, then metaphysics more generally. Some of the threads I enjoy the most are those started to examine a paper or some aspect of a paper of someone well known in the field. Examples would be the thread on Sellars that csalisbury started here, or the wonderful thread Aaron R started and maintained on Sellars in the old forum.

    Until joining TPF yesterday, I also would have said that the forum's format is a little hard to make sense of, particularly in that there were no times associated with posts; but I see now that the times are visible upon logging in.
  • Mongrel
    3k
    Cool! If you had an opportunity to ask a living philosopher something... what do you think it would be and to whom?
  • Agustino
    11.2k
    I sent the money from a Swiss bank account. When do I get my moderator status now?! >:)
  • jute
    4
    Nothing earthshaking. My inclination, given advance notice, would be to try to familiarize myself with the guest philosopher's work and ask about something I found interesting. For example, I asked Chalmers about a couple of variations of his neural-silicon-replacement thought experiments. I'd still ask him about one; he proposes replacing a person's neurons with functionally equivalent chips one-by-one, and if by the end of the process the person still reports no change, this would make a strong case for organizational invariance. I'm not convinced that this would establish what he thinks it would.

    Dennett would be a thrill for me too. If I had the opportunity to ask him something right now off the top of my head, I'd ask him why he equivocates on the word "seems" in his "Quining Qualia" paper, or so it seems to me at least. :) Given time, though, I'd try to familiarize myself with more recent work of his.

    But I'd love the opportunity to ask questions of many others too, if I had time to prepare -- Strawson, Searle, Nagel, Bostrom, McGinn, Max Tegmark (not really a philosopher per se) come to mind, others escape me at the moment.
  • Mongrel
    3k
    Wow. All great ideas. I asked because I was listening to an NPR article about Facebook's efforts to increase interest. I thought.. "How would the philosophy forum do that?" Really all the stuff you mentioned would be interesting to me. I'd definitely read Dennett's thoughts on his tendency to equivocate. I agree with you though... on the old forum we just ended up abusing people who were good enough to take the time.

    Would you be interested in talking a little more about it? Maybe formulate a plan?
  • jute
    4
    Sure, I'd be happy to! Though I'm not equipped to head it up. What are you thinking of? Would you like to start a thread on it?
  • Mongrel
    3k
    Yes, I'll start a thread.
  • Baden
    15.6k
    I sent the money from a Swiss bank account. When do I get my moderator status now?! >:)Agustino

    If this is just half a joke and you really sent a donation (from wherever), thanks (I don't know as I don't have direct access to the TPF kitty, i.e. the paypal account set up to pay the bills).
  • Agustino
    11.2k
    I did send the dough, but it is in pounds. So do your indirect checking please, and then I expect my mod status to be delivered ASAP >:O :P
  • Michael
    14k
    I did send the dough, but it is in pounds. So do your indirect checking please, and then I expect my mod status to be delivered ASAPAgustino

    It was sent but we were told it was lost in transit. Unfortunately we don't have a spare.

    Such is life.
  • Agustino
    11.2k
    Yes, no wonder, in your Great country of Britain, my mail was always delivered to other people... >:O
  • Michael
    14k
    Yes, no wonder, in your Great country of Britain, my mail was always delivered to other people...Agustino

    That's what we get for letting those damn immigrants work for Royal Mail. Someone should kick the lot of them out and let Great Britain be great and British again.
  • Agustino
    11.2k
    Someone should kick the lot of them out and let Great Britain be great and British again.Michael
    Who, Farage?! >:O
  • ernestm
    1k
    Thank you for making a nice forum, and I will save some money for you.
  • jkop
    660
    I assume that the site is managed in the USA, so I sent some US $ (via PayPal).

    Another thing which can help keep the site going is a secure connection for the login page, as explained here:
    https://support.mozilla.org/t5/Protect-your-privacy/Insecure-password-warning-in-Firefox/ta-p/27861
    https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Security/Insecure_passwords
  • Baden
    15.6k


    Many thanks for the donation and the suggestion, jkop.
  • Michael
    14k
    I assume that the site is managed in the USAjkop

    England, actually (if you're referring to the hosting company).
  • jkop
    660
    England, actually (if you're referring to the hosting company).Michael

    No, in PayPal one is asked to choose the currency, and at the forum's subscription page it says $, hence I assumed that this is managed in the USA, or at least that donations should be made in $.
  • Baden
    15.6k


    Don't worry about the currency. It's all good.
  • ArguingWAristotleTiff
    5k
    Wait can you nominate someone to be moderator and pay for that to happen?
    ~wicked grins
  • Baden
    15.6k


    Yes, but then it won't happen and we'll keep the money anyway. ;) Anyone can of course nominate someone to be moderator at any time by sending a PM to one of the staff with reasons for their choice. We don't have a vacancy at the moment, but we'll take that into consideration the next time we do.
  • Jamal
    9.1k
    Thanks for the heads-up. Chrome only just recently started showing the warnings. It's all secure now.

    And thanks for the donation. :)
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