Ludwig V

I'm afraid I missed the place where you said that. "Orchestrates" is a very good way of putting it. A metaphor is just about right for the state of ou...

I'm sorry but that's just not the case. Yes, 5 minutes with Google threw up several lists of different species that will kill (and eat) their young. H...

That makes two of us, then. Let me try to be a bit more constructive. ..... by reflecting on the question. I don't rule out the possibility that there...

Russell's tea-pot is another well-known example. It was eventually exploded by the Voyager missions. More seriously, why would indeterminate moral tru...

Sorry. My mistake. At least we agree.

Then obviously I have not understood what you are trying to say. I still don't know what you mean by "modelling". I'm used to people claiming that my ...

If moral realism is correct, then there is. So you need to explain why there is no way to prove or disprove a moral claim. It would have been helpful ...

I heard about that case. It was indeed horrible. But I'm afraid I'm very much inclined to include the doctors in my disapproval. True, they have a goo...

H'm. You didn't cover "If it's not murder, ..." Given what you've said, if it's not murder. abortion is not murder. It's vicious nasty crime, but who ...

What if there is no proof of consequentialism either way? Can I assume that anyone who says that abortion is impermissible whatever the consequences i...

You've left out a premiss. If deontology is true and the rules and principles are incompatible with abortion, then abortion will be impermissible. How...

I think that's true. They seem to take the immorality of abortion as a fixed point in the argument and adjust all the other concepts involved to fit i...

What I'm trying to get at it is that what you are arguing seems to me to be exactly parallel to the argument of many dualists back in the day. They ar...

Oh, I see. Interesting. So this is part of the argument that "becoming human" isn't a single moment, a single event, but a process. Is that what you w...

Fair point. But the question whether there is a child or not. I'm trying to prompt "pro-lifers" to think about all this, so it seems best to talk of p...

AH! I seem to detect the voice of reason. Thank you.

.... and many do not. Should not the parents have the right to their own conscience? It's not as if anybody seriously believes that abortion should no...

True. So they must have the right and duty not to bring a child into the world. So they must have the right and duty to abstain or use contraception. ...

Do you need prior modelling of the modelling? No? Then why do you need to model the action in the first place? Is the brain part of the self or not? A...

It is often argued that incest, under-age sex (both of which are usually non-consensual in legal terms at least), non-viable foetus, risk to mother's ...

"nothing at all happens without the brain" is not helpful. Nothing at all happens without the legs, heart, etc. When you say that the neural networks ...

Falling in love without becoming irrational? Surely a rational reason for friendship turns the friendship into something else - a transactional, condi...

Yes. I'm not sure exactly what cases you have in mind. One of the most popular ones is the moral cases. We classify people who do seriously outrageous...

That's about right. It's probably as much as you can ask from a human being. I usually find him worth reading.

Yes, I would. It needs to be read with a certain charity. If you fasten on all the obvious analytic objections to Heidegger, you'll spend a lot of tim...

I may well be wrong. The last thing I read by him was an interview with Dennett in which he insisted that first-person subject experience is real - no...

Yes. As far as I'm concerned, as a philosopher, that's a datum. A neat resolution is to see it as a question of lenses rather than about the world. Wi...

Oh, yes, it was one of the early bedrocks that I was taught as well. What I don't know is exactly why Kant embedded it in his work. I also know about ...

Quite so. Looking back, the original clarity looks like an inheritance from Plato. But perhaps that's just me. OK. I just wondered. That "in the same ...

Excellent. If only it was possible to get our software to remind anyone who types the word "existence" or "being" of it.

I'm glad you liked it. You deserve a pat on the back for self-criticism. In this context, perhaps there is room for a question I mostly shelve, about ...

One can make a start by getting a better idea what Nagel meant by the order of reasons. You can get a clue by going back to the beginning of the essay...

I'm really sorry. I can't decode that.

I don't think that what I'm proposing is a new paradigm. It's just a different way of looking at an old paradigm, which better reflects the questions ...

No argument here. Well, I thought you might find my suggestion interesting.

Thanks for sending me the link to this. I realize that everything has moved on in the last three days. But I hope my comments may nevertheless be of i...

In some ways, it was. It gave people a focus, just as Nagel's bat did. I never doubted that he is a clever cookie. Doesn't mean he's right. I'm not bo...

Quite so. All part of the process. Although putting Chalmers in charge makes me nervous. But then, no-one's impartial here.

That's not quite what I had in mind. I was thinking of the way that so many economists think that everything is economics. Ai Wei Wei, apparently, onc...

God forbid that we should even contemplate the possibility that the sun's burning should be dependent on our senses. That's pure Berkeley! But it is p...

I don't disagree with you. There's a lot to think about here - questions that arise once one has established that dogs are rational. Does one draw a l...

All true. So the question is, why would anyone say they don't have a concept of time? What's more, why don't we insist that human beings have the same...

Oh dear me! It was perhaps quixotic, but I was thinking about the argument about whether the dog knew it was 5 pm when the train arrived. I thought of...

There is a lot going on here, but the above is one strand which I think I can deal with without grappling with any special reading (evolutionary natur...

I know how you and I know what we expect. By introspection, whatever that may be. How do other people know what you and I expect? By our behaviour. So...

I would say that is an example of what tacit knowledge is all about. It means that the ability to verbalize one's reasoning is distinct from the abili...

"All notions of ‘physical’ at work here, including those that contradict each other, do rest on the same ground, which is human intelligence. The conc...

Thank you for telling me. But I think I'll make up my own mind, if you don't mind. If Nagel is not scientifically well informed, he is as well informe...

I'm never sure how much weight to put on explanations at this level. Bu there is another issue, not yet mentioned, playing in to this. I think it may ...

Yes. It's not restricted to this issue. People (including me, sometimes) get over-focused and can't see what they don't want to see. It's very temptin...