The material is the social, and the social is the economic. So the material is the economic. Whether you conceive of that like Marx does or whether yo...
I think a little more than that. Not only that it has multiple meanings, but that this meaning is better than the one set out by the mind-body problem...
It only has a meaning within a context or a background of some sort. One context is the mind-body problem, and there the contrast is with mind, where ...
Mkay. Focus on the big-picture idea then. "dialectical materialism" because the main perspective thus far has been from the mind-body problem, and I'm...
The big-picture idea is that the material is the social world we inhabit. So, given that this is a materialism, no immaterial. "dialectical" because t...
I think it's easier to defend a version of "dialectical materialism" over "physicalism" -- the physical is the social space we inhabit. We can specula...
Yup. Miracles really are true, we managed to close a thread of thought. What say you @"schopenhauer1"? I'm wondering if the premises from causation co...
Yes, I agree. And normally I wouldn't bother to make a distinction. But then there's the part of me that thinks "Well, I know this is persnickity, but...
With the lectern this makes a lot of sense to me because I can't honestly think of how an individual under discussion could possibly be made of ice fr...
Heh. I'd say I'm confused and trying to figure things out. :D But thank you for the vote of confidence. Cool, so I'm misusing "extension" then -- thou...
I was thinking that: Meant I should reconsider some things because I think people are actually referring to what they say they are referring to. The d...
I'm confused here. A lone molecule of water, to my mind, is one floating in space somewhere around a planet that happens to have water, and given the ...
I can offer a common sense thought: Clouds don't instantly appear because H2O molecules have been individualized in the gas phase. You only see clouds...
Following my thought to its (seemingly) logical conclusion -- there are no lone molecules of water. Insofar that we're willing to use chemistry in a p...
Yeah I think that introducing "cause" creates more problems than it solves. Which causality? Stochastic causality, for instance, could have a necessar...
A funny thought: If water is H?O then water is necessarily H?O It is possible that water is not H?O Therefore, water is not H?O I'd say this is a redu...
I best be careful then. If my account means that people cannot refer then it's in trouble since we do successfully refer! Isotopes are a good example ...
Got it. So we agree on the latter, at least, and to be honest I'm somewhat hesitant about my distinction between water and H2O, though I think that th...
Yes on future-looking, but I'm uncertain on probability. If water actually is H2O, for instance, the probability of the statement is 1, and if it is n...
True. I agree that heredity is not identity. I think we've both brought up those difficulties with @"schopenhauer1", but the response has been more al...
Cool. So we at least agree that this is an extra-scientific, or maybe scientific-adjacent, sort of question. With respect to water there are a number ...
The water example doesn't work for me either. I'm going to try and explain some difficulties here. From a chemical perspective "water" is an aggregate...
No need -- just a possible path that I'm laying out to try to understand how I might say the same thing. Since I've already pretty much admitted to no...
It should be clear that this is not clear to me, at least :D -- it's the "etc." part that looks like it would make a difference. One of the things tha...
That's true. I'm curious what you think about natural kinds and causation @"Ludwig V" -- it seems that since continuity of a person is the real underl...
I should say I messed up too -- communication is always two-way, so no worries. I agree that water and humans are closer to one another than either ar...
Do each of these examples have to have the same criteria? The first seems to be asking after the psychological, the second a kind of everyday understa...
True. That makes sense to me. Without the conventions of the internet then the dubbing wouldn't matter -- it's the communal enactment of personhood wh...
I agree with you. I don't believe that conception is a good time-point to choose for personhood. I'd draw a distinction between personhood, personal i...
I think that @"Banno" managed to split the difference here between us: Here is the individual, this individual has the name Moliere, and this individu...
I'd pick up the existential or phenomenological angle for identity. Somehow what's significant to us, what we care about, isn't the same as the list o...
Yup. I think my beliefs about DNA still pretty much rule out necessity between the particular sequence and identity, though I recognize that there are...
Ok, fair. Yes, I think so, and I'm wandering too much there. I'm willing to grant the premise you started with to see where it goes, though. I'm proba...
Fair. I clearly don't either. Thanks for pointing it out: now rather than just some random thought I have some questions and readings for figuring out...
I think about my theory of mind from time to time, but I cannot say I have a firm position staked out. I think it's one of those questions that's incr...
These are good observations. I think you're right to bring up how we think about counter-factuals. They are kind of funny in that they can seem real-i...
If I, in a counter-factual, was born with blonde hair but basically lived the same life as I've lived up until now then I'd say that my personal ident...
Maybe our understanding of necessity differs? To my mind if you can switch a part of the code and have the same results then there is not a necessary ...
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