Ludwig V

That's not particularly shocking. Why would it be? I'm well aware that there are people who think that. Of course how people think of, and approach, t...

Well, that seems like a good idea - and the markets didn't like Trump's Tariffs on Canada. But it may not be possible and even if it is, there'll be a...

Well, there's lots of room for speculation and different opinions. But bear in mind that he has people around him as advisers/colleagues - notably Mus...

True, they never could have engineered it. But what Trump is doing was planned in advance in the US. The details are not public, of course, but the di...

Thanks for that. That post is quite right. Nothing can undo the damage that has been done. Outside the US, it's a case of taking a deep breath and adj...

Thanks for this post. The bit about the struggle session was interesting. It was obviously a set-up, and stopping the aid so abruptly today was the ob...

I get that. But do I remember right that when the South Korean President tried to go unconstitutional, the Army just refused to obey his orders? Thus ...

I'm hoping something like that will happen. Non-violent civil disobedience. As you say, it can be a powerful force. They may change their minds. But i...

Do you mean that I'm caricaturing the situation and there are good reasons for saying that things are not so simple as I represent them? I wouldn't ar...

Let's face it. Law that cannot be enforced is dead letter. Government that does not respect the law is tyranny. What next?

Oh, I think there was more than that to it - not that he wasn't smart! But you are right that it's people like himself that he thinks can make "critic...

Truth, Goodness and Beauty would be usual list. One might expand it in various ways. But, because I was introduced to philosophy via Socrates, I've al...

It seemed rather odd to me, at first. Then, I realizes that I should have seen it all along. It's one of those switches in perception that happen from...

I've hesitated about posting this. But it shows Hume as more complicated than he is usually thought to be. He wrote his essay Of the Standard of Taste...

Ah! Well, that's a different kettle of fish. But then I'm not clear what we are talking about when we talk and "the will"! Why don't we just say that ...

Thanks very much for this. I may not agree with you, but at least I can see where I disagree. Which is definitely progress. Surely, the will is not in...

Aristotle didn't miss what Hume discovered - in fact it is not impossible that he derives his views in opposition to him (or his followers). That's a ...

I do that quite often. Sometimes a thought just doesn't survive being written down. It's good to reach a consensus. Thanks for the discusssion.

I don't disagree. OK. The idea that we don't "see" anything at all is interesting. I must have missed it. (I'm assuming it's in this thread somewhere?...

In a way, that's true. But it is also true that there are three different kinds of markings, though it is true that they are distinguished by how I ca...

That's not quite right. If you look at marks, you may be looking at 1) meaningless (to you) marks, or you may be looking at 2) marks that you know are...

That's much better. It seems to allow a much more flexible idea of what translation involves than I thought. But then, it seems to leave open the poss...

No, I haven't. I would welcome enightenment from someone who has. I have a question for you. Am I right to understand Davidson's thesis as being that ...

It's as if I were to say that I see an animal, "without further distinctions or assumptions". Do you not even recognize a distinction between the imag...

Well, The main point is that we do have the information and it is integrated knowledge. So we agree. What matters here is that we don't have it via an...

Perhaps not. But a knuckle joint or a thumb or an arm or a spine can. On the other hand, I would agree that our understanding of 3D space does depend ...

I think there are radical differences in how we are thinking about this. I'm not saying it is all just a question of words. But our different uses of ...

It is certainly true that all the visual information about space can be represented in 2D. It's called a picture, and you can walk around the world th...

Yes. In terms of focusing, there is also the "squinting" that aligns the eyes so that they can focus on the same objects. (Hold up a finger at arm's l...

I agree that we have to think of the senses as part of a sensori-motor system, which cuts out the distraction of "presentations" and "perceptions". On...

Yes. But that's a misunderstanding of what intelligibility is. Intellgibility is not black and white, but a spectrum. He seems to think that "conceptu...

I did say "almost" a relief. Don't get me wrong. This stuff is really scary. Philosophy is a way of coping, given that there's nothing I can do about ...

It was written in 2012. Call it deep background for philosophers. But it's not analytic philosophy. It's written in the context of post-modernism and ...

It is really important, if one wants to understand this, not to be hypnotized by what's going on now, but to get one's head around the background - La...

Yes. The metaphor of a lens is much better. And, of course, the selection of what is to be noticed by reference to what is of interest or use makes pe...

All of that is very helpful - and confusing! I realize that it would be helpful to identify specific remarks to back up what I say, but I have found i...

Thanks very much for this. Very helpful. The more we look for abilities that both animals and humans have, the more we find.

Yes. There are those who cannot conceive of a non-human animal that truly shares any concepts with human beings and those who are quite sure that all ...

I can see why that is a problem for the Kantian system. What I don't see is why there is a problem about accepting that, because we have senses, we ca...

You are right, of course. It's probably not a good idea to re-litigate all that here. Briefly, I don't know what the difference is between an ontologi...

I do agree that our discussion is messy. That's partly because the context is a bit messy. From my point of view there is more than one context. There...

It seems that we have a similar level of knowledge about those ideas. That helps. Put it this way. For me, perception requres understanding. Without t...

I agree that we know that there are things that we know that are not available to the direct access of introspection. If we know that, we have access ...

Hume and Berkeley are both nominalists. Nominalism is one solution to the issue of universals. There are others. But I don't see how accepting one sol...

You are right that the quotation fails to distinguish between sensation, imagination and intellect. I would attribute this to his empiricist approach ...

Yes. The fascination, for me, is tracking the distortions and errors that allow him to reach his conclusions. It's a long list. And yet, he somehow ma...

Art can make people happy. Perhaps he just thinks that art is more appropriate to a philosophical context than the pleasures of walking the dog. I did...

I have a lot of trouble with the term "world". It gets used of the worlds of chess and football and physics, of the "lived world", of the different wo...

I like all your quotations. But don't they also reveal that happiness (and therefore also unhappiness) is complicated? I understand the implication to...

That's true, And yet:- Not only does he distinguish between - let's call them - real appearances - and - "chimeras" - unreal appearances but he also a...