Ludwig V

Relax! I was talking about the traditional Aristotelian approach to infinity which was orthodox before Descartes but not since, so far as I know. Thou...

Forgive my stupidity, but I don't understand what a completed infinity is. Well, it's your story. You are the only person who can provide an answer. A...

I don't say that selecting and organizing the quotations is easy. It fits better with the fact that I tend to get slabs of time when I can pursue thes...

That's no great trick. Every dog eats differently than all the other dogs. There's an ambiguity in the ordinary use of these superlatives which means ...

OK. No problem. I was just annoyed because I didn't understand what was going on. Thanks for your message. As you see, it's sorted out now.

Yes. I was saying in a complicated way, that a long post is not, for me, a bad thing. That's a useful tactic. I shall use it in future. He did indeed....

I either skimmed past it or forgot it. Sorry. Not having been trained for it, I wouldn't want to comment on it. But it is that left field plausibility...

Yes, I agree with that. I was suggesting that a slowing down according to a convergent series might count as stopped, since it would never reach the l...

No. I'm complaining that things I have never said - and do not know enough mathematics to articulate - have been attributed to me. All I know is that ...

So when you use the appropriate sense of the "world", and say that realism is true of the world, you are saying that realism is true of some parts of ...

It's very helpful, so that's fine. I get my revenge in this post. The system is not helping me here, because it invites me to link to specific comment...

If you click on the link to the quotations in your message, you will find yourself here:- That is my message. It is on the "Infinite Staircase" thread...

I won't argue with that. For some reason, I've never been able to get my philosophical head around that topic. Just like Augustine, all that time (!) ...

OK. I'm with you that far. Comment:- That's exactly what Zeno and Thomson want us to do. I guess the complications come in when we want to resist thei...

I'm glad you agree. And you are right to go on to consider choices we could make. That's interesting. Do you mean a proof that the amount of time must...

I thought that might be your answer. Perhaps we shouldn't pursue the jokes, though. It's called a performative speech act. Do you know about them? Ver...

Thank you. That is much clearer. If you want to include a wider, more commonsensical context, you could think that a lamp does not spring in to existe...

I'm sorry. There is a serious typo in The first sentence of my reply to you. It should have read:- I hope it makes better sense now. I refer to the la...

Not quite. If the last stage of the supertask was on, it is not on spontaneously and without cause. The problem is that whether the supertasks can be ...

Quite so. Except I thought that it had actually been done. Quite so. That's why I specified "convergent sequences". (I don't know what the adjective i...

Pending completion

I'm not sure whether that doesn't amount to a contradiction or whether it is an entirely distinct issue. But it seems like that if that's the case, on...

You are right, of course. I'm glad you could decipher what I meant to say. Benacerraf's position is a bit more complicated than that. Thanks for clari...

Quite so. And the phrase "completed sequence of tasks" is self-contradictory. So what do we need your argument for?

Your thought experiment, your rules. But whose thought experiment is Achilles' race and Thompson's lamp? I had the impression that they are Zeno's or ...

I think the problem is precisely that there is nothing to constrain the lamp and we want to find something. In theory, we could stipulate either - or ...

Possible outcomes can indeed be inconsistent with each other. But if they are inconsistent with each other, they can't both be actual at the same time...

Thank you.

None. I'm afraid I'm indulging in double-think in this discussion. I can't make sense of the imaginary lamp. Either it is just a picturesque way of dr...

No, we are not. But there are not dissimilar arguments in other quarters about the relationship of Language and Reality, which come to very different ...

Yes. We can discern in both practices what Derrida I believe calls the "wandering signifier". It doesn't half complicate philosophical analysis. We ca...

Don't get me wrong. My last question was a question because I don't think that "ordinary language" is the answer. As a matter of fact, I think that th...

Sorry. I have something else to do. I didn't expect to convince you, but our discussion has helped to confirm my opinion.

Not quite. The lamp is not defined as on or off. It's just that the rules don't apply at 12:00. But tertium non datur does apply. So it must be (eithe...

I'm really sorry, but my fat thumb syndrome struck and my last message got posted before I had finished with it. This version is finished. Benecerraf'...

Am I contradicting you?

So what are you arguing about?

Is is not the case that "logically impossible" implies "metaphysically impossible"?

I don't know about metaphysically possible or impossible. Logically impossible, certainly. So what are you arguing about?

So we can agree that the consequent is false. Ex falso quodlibet, so a plate of spaghetti.

You missed out "The lamp is either on or off at all times."

That seems to be true, so Benacerraf is right. Doesn't it follow that both outcomes are consistent with the rules of the problem? If both outcomes are...

We all have our idiosyncracies and few of us come up with the perfect phrase every time. I tend to be a bit cautious, if you like, and perhaps scrutin...

The difficulty is to understand metaphors. If one takes them literally, they are usually false or meaningless. They can have a meaning, and even a tru...

Yes. That will work fine if the criterion for their order can't change. But you have posited that they can change how much they eat. You need another,...

If one thinks about the various developments from, say, to Copernicus to Newton, "fixing the use of concepts in empirical propositions" seems like a m...

I'm sorry. I just don't follow this. Is there a typo somewhere? Nor do I follow this. But I can agree that if you mess about with the food, some other...

I'm afraid I don't see that the Small Worlds model affects the issue at all. Sorry. I have a lot of time for Dennett. But that doesn't mean I agree wi...

Oh, you're imagining that you have discovered a previously unknown manuscript. Who wrote it - Plato, Zeno, Themis, Athene, Zeus? Or a rat, skulking in...

Well, I don't know how this works. I have imagination deficiency. Doctors have tried for years to cure me. Don't worry, it's not fatal. I know that th...