frank

Criminality is better than dementia. There's a worry that Biden will soon be unable to recognize people around him. We don't know.

He has a speech impediment. He stutters. Old people tell me that every year after 80 gets harder. I don't think that's true for everyone, but the basi...

"Vance has embraced aspects of the Dark Enlightenment, a movement that sees mass participatory democracy, particularly liberal democracy, as a threat ...

Yea. I just don't want to have to hear his big mouth for the next four years. Either way, I think the US is headed for some kind of political shift.

I don't think he deserves to die. Like many, I just wish someone would assassinate him. I never claimed to be a saint.

:up:

I don't think he's like Hitler. I'm just one of the millions of people who wish that shooter hadn't missed. Or how about just badly injured him so he'...

Or Santa Claus

If you do what's right because you're trying to satisfy others, that's a lesser form of morality. If you do what's right because otherwise you'd let y...

I don't know about them, but I sure did.

It sounds like you're most comfortable leaving the parameters of the issue fuzzy. You don't want reduction, you don't want obligation to reduce to per...

So you'd be ok saying they don't exist in corporeal form, wouldn't you? In a context where you detect that "exist" is being used to talk about corpore...

For a reductive materialist, the explanation would have to stop wherever physics says it stops. Particles? Waves? Somewhere in there. I think it's bec...

What do you think laws reduce to?

Yea, it's an epic like Star Wars where Trump is Luke Skywalker and his wife is the lady with the bobs on her ears so they can't be ripped off by stray...

Every detail of what?

It was yesterday

I think we're just going to disagree here. I said earlier that what exists is people saying and doing things. The rest is feelings and ad hoc explanat...

Or it could come from an attempt to assure someone. Meaning depends on context.

I think it's probably context dependent. Noam Chomsky said "real" is like an honorific, just specifying that a certain thing is special. Promising can...

:lol:

What the heck are you talking about? He survived.

If that shot had been just a few inches to the right. :sad:

I guess you could. I don't.

I guess you're asking what "obligation" is supposed to be adding to the act of uttering a promise.

Badum chee!

A new employee arrives who has a stutter. You have a stutter. What's the first thing you say to him?

It's a mind-dependent thingy.

I think obligation is something people feel sometimes. "He didn't want to go to the party, but he felt obligated.". Or it could be something that peop...

I'm an ontological anti-realist. I don't believe the categories of physical, mental, and abstract should be cashed out as more than elements of a worl...

This kind of borderline freaks me out every time I watch it. Look especially for when the muzzle starts receding until the lips are actually behind th...

I think promises are for societies where people lie all the time. If you make an oath, you're signaling that you're telling the truth for a change. Ot...

But another thing people forget is that the vaccine was revolutionary. The massive pile of cash coming in to fund it from governments and rich guys wa...

Sounds right. :up:

You're saying that if I have more choices, I have more freedom. The way I think about free will is that it's about the ability to choose at all. To me...

It sounds like you're equating freedom with potential. That's an interesting take.

I hear you. I recently spoke with a doctor in private practice and he expressed the opinion that all the hype was for nothing, that we damaged our eco...

I guess you mean that if I have the knowledge to build a bridge, it makes it easier for me to cross the river, and so I'm more free?

You define the terms for the sake of progress?

Free will is about possibility. If you're going to make a choice, there must be multiple possibilities, as if time is a branching thing and you can ch...

What's instrumental value? Could you give an example? It's an intellectual challenge in its own right.

No. The next one might be a variation of Ebola. We'll see.

Sure. Oaths, covenants, verbal contracts, and promises are ideas that come to us as parts of a religious heritage. For our ancestors, a marriage was a...

A better question is: have you been able to shape your world so that it's a paradise you roam in? Or is it a hell you constantly fight against?

Ok. You get the last word. Carry on.

You finally allowed the existence of abstract objects. It only took you ten years to do it, but you made it! Congratulations professor!

You know better than this. The promise is an abstract object. You yourself deny their existence as features of the world. Stop playing this game.

No, he didn't. Stop with the provocative crap.

:: virtual hug::

You misunderstood me. No offense, but I'm not interested in pointing out how you misunderstood me, only to have you respond with the same misunderstan...