Yes, I put that very badly. What I was getting at was that "largest number" or "smallest number" is not defined, or rather, the possibility is exclude...
I'm glad you agree. Nor do I find fault with the definition of a mathematical system. However, there do seem to be some differences of perspective and...
I take your point. It does seem to me that ideological convictions are uniquely human and by far the most dangerous power we have. A dose of philosoph...
I posted an earlier draft of this comment by mistake. This one is less of a mess. Forgive me for jumping in, but I think what is needed here is a clos...
That's perfectly clear. Thank you. Come to think of it, it's an example of his recommended tactic of replacing a proposed mental object with an actual...
I must admit, I have trouble seeing how Trump's adventures would make America great again, any more than the NeoCons' expeditions did. Yes. It is hard...
The standard expectation is that when someone asserts that p, they are asserting that it is true. We can infer, without further evidence, that they be...
Absolutely. I'm not clear whether (how far) that "neurophenomenology and enactive embodied cognitive science" actually derive from W and how far they ...
This is the part that many people find it very difficult to grasp. What's worse, it seems to me that some people who one might expect to have grasped ...
You could say that he was changing the subject - dropping the pursuit of language as a abstract structure in favour of language as an activity (or a c...
Quite so. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it certainly keeps philosophy alive. Perhaps the good side of scepticism? I may be misreading this. T...
That's right. I should have been clearer that that sentence was my report of the dog's behaviour. I thought it was obvious that the dog could not have...
Two comments on pp.18 - 20 Don't these remarks invite distracting arguments about whether they are factually correct? Do w need to say more than this ...
Yes. That seems to be our starting-point. Out differences lie in what a proper account is. No, I don't suppose that a dog that knows its own name "in ...
As I understand it, the paradise bird's behaviour is specific to mating and breeding. Human (and, presumably, bonobo) sexual behaviour is not strongly...
Some people might call that begging the question. One needs to explain the criteria for assertng it. But that's not a simple matter of evidence, becau...
That would work. I suppose it is (or is like) the difference between those who think that "the present king of France is bald" is false and those who ...
Yes, that's true. I'm not quite sure what to say. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson published the best "argument" for this - "What the tortoise said to Achille...
I'm sorry, but I had the impression that his explanation of the temptattion is the only answer that I found in the text. I must have missed something....
It would help if we could clarify whether we are talking about a creature being capable of thinking about its own thought and belief or about a creatu...
I don't know the texts well enough to comment on Cavell's comment. There is sense in what he says, but I'm not sure that it is what W wants to say. In...
On reflection, I'm very unhappy with this comment. Setting it right, or at least righter, high-lights a complication in our question which has not gon...
Brilliant. Thanks very much. It all goes back to this. But doesn't it follow that the authority of a pronouncement within the language is actually con...
In the context of philosophical scepticism or nihilism, that's so. The remark was, in a sense, only a flourish. But I was thinking of the parent tryin...
Yes, I'm aware that the idea of autonomy can be applied to any living creature, including bacteria and moulds. (There are complicated cases, like lich...
I don't deny that. But I think W leaves a gaping hole in the demonstration that mental objects - in the "occult" sense, drop out of consideration as i...
Oh, I see. I misunderstood. But now "a theory you form in your mind specific to the mental state of another mind" seems just like a belief, so what I'...
I suppose you contrast the idea of metacognition, which might be considered to be clearer. However, the answers that it returns seems to me to be, let...
So if he was trembling before Janus arrived, would you conclude that he did understand that he had done something wrong? Forgive me, I thought that yo...
I hope you will not mind if I post a comment on p. 15 - on causes and reasons - before progressing to p. 16. The first bolded passage, it seems to me,...
That's true. We might get some clues from thinking about how we decide what a human being believes or can believe and then thinking about what a creat...
Now that is a very good question and distinctively philosophical. I shall look forward to that discussion. I think there are problems with this. In th...
Thank you for this. I agree that it is important in that it puts the relationship between knowing and doing at the heart of both. Philosophy has creat...
How do you know that non-human animals don't have a theory of mind? How do you know that other people have a theory of mind? Since the theory of mind ...
I may be wrong to think that you are referring to something that I said. If you were, I am troubled by your impression that I would dismiss the philos...
I meant a critical step in getting perplexed about understanding carrying out an order. If you casually said that in the middle of a battle, I think y...
Quite. A history of philosophy as endless mistakes is as much a mistake as a history of philosophy as endless progress. One might think that, though p...
Isn't that exactly what is about to happen to humanity? Perhaps it would be best to scrap the present system and start again. No-one will mind except ...
Thanks. So even our awesome power to wreck the entire planet has forerunners. The rabbits' power is not different power; rather, the humans have a "su...
Yes. There's a difference between recognizing that one's own philosophy is historically conditioned and not. Much more could be said - the names I cit...
Yes, that's true (!). But I think my point is that W seems to start from our perplexity, which may be a good starting-point in one way. But in our act...
Well, those questions are indeed important because they disorient us and conclusive answers are hard to come by. But I also think that the everyday co...
Can I take that as suggesting that the things that make humans so special are not necessarily important to other creatures or, necessarily, to the pla...
Quite so. It's a variant of the liar paradox. Most people seem to read it in the context of the analytic philosophy of his time. I think that must be ...
Sadly, intelligence is not restricted by ethics. It enables us to do wonderful things, and also to do terrible things. Well, our creation story doesn’...
I agree it's not just about mathematics. I think W is quite right to point out that a rule has no magic powers and that we determine what it determine...
That's odd. I thought you were asking how we might determine the significance of the difference between animals and humans. It's just that we can argu...
I wasn't conflating those two descriptions. I was pointing out that the mathematical description of the trajectory of the ball does apply to the ball ...
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