Herg

Nope. I know you'd like to nail words like 'real', 'entity' and 'existent' to the world we live in, so that they can't be applied to fictional or imag...

I'd forgotten that there was a real St Nicholas. He can't either be identical to, or work with, three imaginary people, because a real object and an i...

I know you claimed that 'fictional entity' is an oxymoron. I don't agree. It would be an oxymoron if calling something an entity implied that it was r...

Since all of these people are imaginary, they cannot be either really separate or really identical. (Imaginary objects cannot have real properties.) @...

It doesn't differ in any important way. I think the reason Griffin talks about 'contexts of supposition' rather than 'fictions', is that there can be ...

I'm not sure what dichotomy you're setting up here. By 'have a historical background', are you suggesting that they may be based on something that onc...

A fictitious supposed entity is not an oxymoron. We suppose that there is such an entity, when in fact there is not. Apologies, I should have been cle...

Nicholas Griffin, in an essay in 'Russell vs. Meinong: One Hundred Years after ""On Denoting"' https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19960205-russell-vs...

When you say good feelings are not inherently good, I assume you mean something different by the first 'good' and the second 'good'; otherwise your st...

From the article you linked to: 'Libet, however, didn’t see his results as a total refutation of free will. He instead pointed out that during the 500...

This really is no fun. I'm out of here.

*sigh*

I don't assert that God is. 'God is imaginary' means the same as 'there is no God'. So any assertion about an imaginary God is talk about nothing, and...

Another straw man. I don't hold that pain and badness are identical. When I said 'pain is bad', I meant that pain (or, more precisely, the unpleasantn...

I have on my shelves this book (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13624497-ethical-naturalism) which contains essays by thirteen present-day ethical...

It would be so nice if people here would talk about philosophy. Fights between teenage girls I can find down the pub.

For what it's worth, I think the flaw in Anselm's argument is simply this: it relies on the fact that if we say that God is only imaginary and not rea...

Greater in what way? Since you (and Anselm) don't say in what way, should we assume in every way possible? If so, that would include greater in height...

Q; Why do we have anaesthetics? A: Because pain is bad. Everyone knows this, except a handful of subjectivist philosophers.

Nature.

Yes. My argument explains that. I'm not claiming that it does. You're confusing the action of valuing a thing with a thing having value. True. True. F...

Again, I didn't say that. True, but again, not what I said. And again. No, this is your collection of straw men. It's not ambiguous. You are begging t...

No, it doesn't. But that isn't what I said. Please try to answer what I actually write, instead of changing it to something else and than answering th...

If they are controversial, how are you justified in asserting, without supporting reasoning, that they don't exist? Or, conversely, if they don't exis...

The point of my first syllogism is to show that there are values built into nature. It just is the case that, for example, if you have a pain, you wan...

Where exactly do I presuppose a moral truth? Aa I say, it's a thesis about how 'bad' is actually used. I don't think that's helping myself, I think I'...

If the child is expected to have a happy life, then by killing it, since happiness is a good, you're expecting to replace net good with nothing, which...

No, none of that. Making use of empirical observation does not commit one to empiricism. And although I do believe that I "can use language to arrive ...

My moral system starts with two things: an empirical observation, and a thesis about the meaning of words. So yes, there is. I'll explain my moral sys...

Even if our belief that morality is objective was caused by our or our ancestors' belief that objective moral truths came from God, that does not prov...

'Hitler was a bad man' is not a command, divine or otherwise.

'Hitler was a bad man' is a true proposition. (He killed 6 million Jews, remember? This is not about a linguistic accident.) The challenge is to expla...

By definition, nothing lies outside the world. Begging the question. Ditto. Also 'value that does have value' is meaningless. No, most of it is at lea...

Intelligence is irrelevant. The value of a human is calculated in the same way as the value of any object: it's the net increase in total happiness ca...

I'm not cold-blooded. Since in my view a pre-sentient foetus is no more deserving of consideration than a pot plant, it is no more cold-blooded for me...

Yes, that is the Open Question argument. I think it fails because Moore fails to define what we mean by 'good'. He basically just gives up on trying t...

It would help if you would explain why you think that. I've been careful to defend my view against Moore and Hare, so what now is your objection? Or, ...

I'm afraid that if you post an opinion in any philosophy forum, particularly if it's as contentious as some of your opinions, people are not going to ...

Gibberish. Where do you get your ideas from? Who have you been reading?

Find me a scientist who agrees with this statement. No, you're right I don't understand anything about philosophy, I only have an honours degree in it...

I suppose another way of putting that would be to say that Moore thought we can't know what 'good' refers to - what property it denotes. But it seems ...

I think nature comes with some built-in values. Why do we think it is wrong to be cruel to animals? Presumably because it causes the animals pain. We ...

Your first statement does not provide any grounds for accepting your second statement. Was it supposed to? If not, what is the first statement doing t...

That's like a burglar telling me it's not about theft. An atheist who believes there are such things as souls is a new one on me. There are no such th...

I don't think 'pleasure is good' is informative to any being that has experienced pleasure. I think it's something every being that has experienced pl...

You're more optimistic than I am. Nice poem, BTW. As we're sharing, I'll post one of mine. The Vivisector Observe this man. His searching eyes stare a...

Hey, EricH, now you and I are BOTH Nazis! If you're not too busy tomorrow, shall we invade Poland? D'you think maybe Gregory is trolling us all? I rea...

False analogy. Jews and gays are sentient, pre-sentient foetuses are not. When are you going to face up to this?

And YOU have the nerve to call ME a Nazi?!!? Where is Margaret Atwood when we need her?

*sigh* No I don't. It sounds like a rather messy and unpleasant job, and there's a high risk of being assaulted by deluded pro-life extremists like yo...