Pie

Pretty good tour of Sellars on the given for those who might prefer videos to books: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bwyc6QCl9Is This is more bite-siz...

I've made several, but no worries.

I don't think we need to make this about Wittgenstein, even if he was one of many to point out typical confusions on this issue. As far as I can tell,...

Philosophers ! I mean the 'serious' kind who labor together, subject to the norms of rationality, carefully building and testing the self-consciousnes...

I think I've been making a decent case within this thread. In my last big post, I tried to acknowledge what tempts us to find solipsism plausible. But...

If nothing is real, everything is. Just as left needs right, I need you. :up: :up: :up:

I must disagree. Solipsism is a bold and counterintuitive thesis. That's what I've been trying to argue. It's an historical curiosity that such an out...

We so others (from the outside) as creatures with eyes and ears and noses and brains. If we check in their skulls, we don't expect to find a soul, not...

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Monisms don't seem to be useful of informative except for emotional associations. Do we need a replacement ? Do we need that kind of grand statement i...

Actually, that was intentional.

Yes.

In particular, I'd emphasize this element in Saussure, especially given the original purpose to emphasizing the need for contrastive force. (If everyt...

I'm thinking maybe there's no rule. Sometimes the fanatic who does one thing gets good. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Tal This dude amuses me,...

A nice companion to Popper's theory of us having only a swamp for a foundation : https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sellars/#Epis FWIW, I think you fi...

Oh yes, and even anti-metaphysicians are having their fun. Such as "lipstick on a tautology." Sit-down comedians.

Just in case you haven't seen this. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/#BasiStatFalsConv This connects to Sellars 'myth of the given' as well. ...

I think there is some kind of distinction to be made between problems that can be solved by finding prettier names for this or that and other kinds of...

Yeah, I think such positions are (informally) meaningless...or on the meaningless side of the spectrum, because they end could contributing to the inv...

Your kind words are appreciated. I hope you enjoy the stuff as much as I have.

. Lots of good points above. You stress practical relevance, and I'd extend that emphasis to semantics as well. What does it mean to take something as...

Nice!

Not saying that that is the final word, but I find it useful and convincing. If everything is X, then nothing is X. For X you can substitute 'false' o...

. The first kind of idealism, labelled (1), is going to use some 'godmind' stuff to play the role of 'matter' or (more generally) the substrate of the...

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To me, the Vietnam draft was unambiguously wrong. Send the young and the poor to die for the old and the rich. Reminds me of lyrics from The Boss. htt...

That indeed makes it messier and more questionable. To me it's only reasonable/decent to pressure people to fight whose lives are already in serious d...

. This connects to the menu we're stuck with. It's also relevant to main topic. https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/a-spirit-of-trust-a-reading-of-hegels-phen...

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Idealism seems me to be a tautology misunderstood as a profundity. We can't have knowledge-independent knowledge of something. There is no such thing ...

I'm not trying to be anti-social or rude. I'm just harping away at my original round square point. Q: How can you be sure that there's no such thing a...

I prefer my original name, Skynet.

I understand you to be asking for a genealogical explanation. How did we end up with these choices ? Instead of taking the menu for granted and choosi...

Some of it arguably is, but note that 20th century philosophy is largely a critique of that which came before, in terms sometimes of its uselessness o...

You forget/neglect the main thing, actual science. Philosophers helped establish that, by clearing away rubbish and superstition. https://en.wikipedia...

But it seems that you say 'we' will go to a better place, without knowing whether there's a we ? And you invoke accuracy, as if there is a 'real' worl...

The world could have no cause worth talking about or believing in. I agree with you. But why would you call something a fever dream if there are no su...

Cool link. I recently read books by Peter Gay and Ernst Cassirer on the philosophy of the Enlightenment, and it became clear to me that that was the b...

Hobbes and Spinoza (as I understand it) didn't run away from those implications. For Hobbes, the mind was subject to the same laws (was ultimately mat...

Conscription for a defensive war strikes me as far more...defensible that that for an offensive war. It does seem a little wrong to stay behind in a s...

Actually I share that preference. I just understand it (as you seem to ) as a preference. To say that I see the tree and not an image of the tree is (...

I'm talking about the perceived Newtonian physics. According to my reading, folks tended to understand it deterministically, including Kant. But how t...

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Sure. I can relate. It might be better to read Dostoevsky or Darwin. I liked Ryle, but I had the gist from Wittgenstein already. Diminishing returns. ...

My theory is that it was an attempt to protect God from Newton (free will from a world that began to look determined.) Kant also hid his own magic stu...

:up: The thing that made me care about Sellars was the idea of the space of reasons. We don't reason from sense-data. We reason from less controversia...

:up: No self without other nor illusion without the real.

Also I've found this book good so far : https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/wilfrid-sellars-naturalism-with-a-normative-turn/

You mentioned the 'many worlds' interpretation. To me there's a semantic gap between the math of physics and the norms for using concepts within the '...

I'll add a Derrrida quote here (from Of Grammatology) that complements the point by Sellars. It seems to me that our theory of the 'internal' (of mind...