Moliere

I think what you describe is plausible. I don't think I'd call it lying in the strict sense. But what makes this plausible description something which...

I think I can agree that war is basically an evil. I don't know if I'd say immoral, because morality tends to refer to either acts or character and wa...

Why not? The reason I say that lying being based on knowledge or belief is a minor disagreement is because I'm willing to go along with your theory of...

Yup! :D So it's something, in your view, that happens along a chain of reasoning. So you might have the notion that this is going somewhere bad, and t...

That's a pretty good example of what lying to oneself would be like in action.

I'd say that given a dimension of time that this could be overcome. So right now if I believe "X", then I know "~X", I could then choose to believe "X...

Heh. Well, I'm not exactly the wisest so I don't mind. :D I suppose I'm trying to understand the notion of a split mind -- so I'm looking for somethin...

Some more things about lying: In order for a lie to be successful, and not just count as a lie, it seems to me we have to rely upon some guesses as to...

What evidence persuades you that you are a neural network? **** I sort of feel like the computational approach has to abandon "belief" -- there is no ...

I think we're in agreement here. We tell someone a falsehood we know to be true. Maybe there's a motivational component to this but that seems to be t...

What if we are of two thoughts? I believe something good about myself. I know that it is false. These are in conflict with one another. So let's say w...

We want the lie to be so successful that we begin to believe it ourselves? :D Sounds like a good premise for a play. I'm noticing that your examples s...

I guess that depends on whether or not we really are the good guys or the bad guys. :D Though that sort of evaluation isn't exactly amenable to basic ...

This is really complicated. :D Do you feel like an amalgamation of computations? I don't really. If it is true it's all "under the hood", so to speak....

I think desire plays a role, for sure. But it has to be a certain kind of desire. To use the virtue example above, if we really wanted to be virtuous ...

Do you think that we can deceive ourselves, as opposed to lying? Let's say that we are not one. If we are divided then it would seem that we could lie...

. Interesting, and good stuff. What is it about Jesus and the Buddha that makes them have undivided minds? Do they simply believe, rather than say the...

Definitely. I'm curious about this, first at a conceptual level and also as a phenomena. I think that if we could demonstrate somehow that we were suc...

Well, by "successful" I only mean that we lie to ourselves, and we also believe it even though it is false. So the goal of lying is successful -- what...

It seems to me that studying logic is something of an empirical matter that can then be formalized. Logic is that set of inferences which are truth-pr...

By "mental states" do you mean human mental states, or are you aiming for something more general?

I was thinking on your response, and life requires variety -- I was doing other things. So sorry for the delay. So you're proposing something of an et...

Well, mental states are semi-independent, I might prefer to say. They are queer in that they aren't totally independent of what's happening around us,...

I guess where we differ then is on this notion of empirical propositions. Or maybe possibly differ. We are communicating in English. I am typing on a ...

One I often find myself repeating: "It is what it is"

That was long. Just noting here real quick I think we also probably are closer than what may have seemed to be the case at first. I am generally skept...

Naw, I don't know Ramsay, so no worries there. I think there's a difference between "They can both be right" and "They are both right" -- so when I sa...

Well, they can both be right, insofar that we are clear on what we're saying. So if we're talking about "what it is like", then it does no service to ...

I'm more amenable to this view -- especially because you're explicitly stating that there is a difference between meaning and decidability. I'd say th...

I would say that they understand the meaning of the word just fine. What other's disagree with is not the meaning of "consciousness" -- it's well expl...

I prefer that way of saying things, though I'd still insist on saying that it is only worthless to someone -- that this is a matter of preference more...

Is that somehow different from saying that consciousness is an illusion? And don't they understand the meaning of the word in responding like this? Wh...

Yeah, moods were what I mostly had in mind when saying that the mental state isn't about anything in particular -- since moods are global upon experie...

I guess I'd just shrug and say, "You can't please everyone!" :D

I'd say as long as both sides can articulate the other's then the propositions that two people are using to debate have meaning. So in the case of con...

I don't think that a shared metric for deciding what answer is superior is required for a meaningful debate. That would make a debate end, but many de...

Sounds good. Looks like this is where we disagree anyways, so there is no need to read it at this point (unless you just feel like it, of course). I f...

Yes, and I'm drawing from the history of philosophy in making said statement. But I believe I have said that an understanding of the is important to h...

So I managed to find a text-only version of the Pinker book you mentioned, and could find the names listed underneath your graph but specific publicat...

Sections 3 through 7 of chapter two details the positions of others that Chalmer's disagrees with. This is after having spent some time arguing that c...

One thing I'm not being clear enough on is that there is certainly a difference between doing something and doing philosophy. The distinction isn't us...

I really love The Last Temptation of Christ -- I was reading Hegel at the time, and that in conjunction with Hegel was the closest thing I came to a c...

I'm not understanding what is meant by violence if conflict resolution through negotiations is violent. The threat of violence is violent. Saying I wa...

What makes you believe this? What I most hear to this question is that there would be warlords and gangsters in a world without a state, just as there...

Need? No. I think need is too strong a word. I think it is possible for us to live in peace. I don't think it is easy to attain, given our circumstanc...

I think this is an overgeneralization. Every communication of how you will react is not violence, though perhaps it is a threat. But if your communica...

Another way to look at it -- consider you are invaded by some fighting force, and are forced to defend your homes. Because it is justified and defensi...

Sure there is. There is the threat -- threatening others is still violence. Calling it "defense" doesn't change that. If you raise a weapon and tell m...

Is it close? The medical value of talking about the state someone's mental life is in, including my own, seems to indicate that there must be somethin...

Well, if we look at what philosophers actually do, then I'm inclined to say they talk, they write, they think, they reason, they ask questions, and th...