Herg

I don't believe in the existence of abstractions, only in the existence of concrete particulars. And the opposite claim is also just a claim. I think ...

I don't think so. Either a statement states an objective fact or it doesn't. Facts are facts; they don't have gradations.

Computers are neither rational nor irrational; they neither follow reasoned arguments nor fail to follow them, they merely execute instructions. Suppo...

I probably have an advantage over most people here, in that I have personal experience of being one man with two persons in my head at the same time. ...

Wouldn't the existence of these balancing pressures turn what would otherwise be an immoral act into a moral act?

It was the anti-theists who said I was inconsistent. I had far more trouble with the anti-theists than with the theists. The theists seemed happy to l...

The relevant distinction is the ability to feel pleasure or pain. If plants can feel pleasure or pain, then, other things being equal, we should not e...

Actually I was just trying to find out how you see things. So you think it 'makes sense' to say that the suffering of humans is a moral consideration,...

I see. Now supposing Neanderthals were still around, would it be okay to eat them? How about homo habilis, or australopithecines? I infer from what yo...

Why am I here? Because philosophy is the thinking person's Sudoku, and at the end of a busy day doing mostly housework and crap like that, I like to u...

Interesting response. You and I clearly live on different planets when it comes to morality.

Are you saying that it's morally wrong to eat any member of the species homo sapiens, but morally okay to eat a member of any other species?

The government of the day derives all of its legitimacy (in a political ethics sense, not a constitutional or legal sense) from parliament, and parlia...

Would any meat-eater like to tell us why it would be wrong to kill and eat a severely mentally subnormal human - who, let us say, does not even have t...

I've only just met you, and already you've told me you're a meat-eater. Funny, that.

I'm agnostic, on the grounds that (a) the claims made by religion are unconvincing, but (b) we cannot possibly know what may or may not exist beyond t...

Disagree. Here are some dictionary definitions of 'atheist': "A person who disbelieves or lacks belief in the existence of God or gods." (https://en.o...

My wife has just been diagnosed with cancer. You will forgive me if I say that you are talking through your rear end.

As sparrows become rarer and humans more common, the exchange rate of humans to sparrows must inevitably decline. In Jesus's day, the average human wa...

No-one knows what happens to us when we die: both the belief that we will survive, and the belief that we will not, are unsupported by any evidence. F...

I'm making an early New Year resolution, which is to avoid the use of the word 'atheist' altogether, on the grounds that it's hopelessly ambiguous. He...

Try substituting 'subjective sensations e.g. of pain, colour or emotion' for 'objective moral values': 1. If science cannot verify the existence of X,...

"Napoleon: You have written this huge book on the system of the world without once mentioning the author of the universe. Laplace: Sire, I had no need...

But you have changed 'weather' to 'day' here, and so you're attacking a straw man. To me this seems rather less straightforward than the view that "it...

There are two possible readings of your "B: It's raining.", as follows: 1. 'It' refers to the bumble bee. In this case, since a bumble bee can't rain,...

Maybe this conversation will help: A: What's the weather doing? B: It's raining. So 'it' refers to the weather. BTW, this is the funniest thread I've ...

I would think it must be similar to dreaming, in that not much if any information is coming in through the senses, and so the brain can only use its o...

I assume you're talking about hallucinations. According to Wikipedia, "the hallucinations are caused by the brain misidentifying the source of what it...

I would agree with this. The difference between dream sleep and full consciousness is not that consciousness itself is different, but that what we are...

The First Law of Philosophy: For every philosopher, there exists an equal and opposite philosopher. The Second Law of Philosophy: They're both wrong.

The problem is that if all you can say about X is that it is not Y, you are attributing only a negative property to X, and nothing real can have only ...

I don't think Occam's razor applies here, because it only applies where you are seeking an explanation for how things are, and that is not the case he...

If you can't buy the Maserati, what sense does it make to say that you are choosing it? You must be choosing it for something, or you can't truthfully...

The second interpretation asserts that there is good reason to believe what experience is telling us; the first does not.

Your phrase 'something other than "time"' is empty of meaning, unless you can suggest some of the properties of this supposed 'something'. In fact I d...

Why would it?

Ah, the God of Philosophy. I believe his name is Loki, otherwise known as the Trickster...;)

Good question. He would at the very least have to change from not yet having created the universe to having created the universe, which implies that h...

There are a few things you can be certain of. 1. You can be certain that it appears to you that you are posting here; and since it could not appear to...

I think Dfpolis' sentence was ambiguous. "Experience tells us" could be taken either as the hypothetical "if we're to go by experience", or the catego...

I used the words "we are free to choose either L1 or L2." You used the words "L1 and L2 are equally in our power." Your words and mine mean exactly th...

That's putting the cart before the horse. We apply the word "beautiful" to all and only those things the contemplation of which gives us a certain kin...

Putting your two sentences together, we get the assertion: experience tells us that being the source of new lines of action that are not fully pre-det...

When you watch a movie, does the fact that what you are watching is not actually happening stop you enjoying it? No? Then why should the fact that the...

I'm not a Platonist, I'm a nominalist. Across the board, and to my bones. You're still accusing me of confusing the model with the reality. And once a...

You seem to be in this forum to make converts. You won't convert me, because your presentation of NOTA seems to me one-sided and utopian. But I don't ...

Why not start a thread in which you present and defend Aristotle's and Aquinas' arguments? Then we would all have something to get our teeth into. Mor...

Taking a dualist view of consciousness and the material world simply lands you with the unanswerable question that Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia put t...

This is why philosophers should not take up boxing.

Only if all the non-Tory candidates stand down, leaving just the Tory and NOTA on the ballot paper. Otherwise what you will most likely get is a split...