Yes. I do think that this is the weakest point in the book. I much prefer the more complex - and elusive - ideas that emerged from Wittgenstein's priv...
Yes, that example confirms what the encyclopedia is pointing at. Ryle is pointing to an alternative way of looking at, and dissolving, certain kinds o...
Wittgenstein is hard to nail down. He has several remarks about philosophy which are mostly different metaphors. "The point of philosophy is to show t...
Yes, and I have the impression that's a biig part of Ryle's reason for trying to find another way to articulate philosophical problems. More and more ...
I would reply that the claim needs to be backed up by a demonstration of the difference. Mere assertion won't cut any ice. Yes, it's a common difficul...
Well, I always thought is was basically just a posh word for "appearances" but perhaps in some contexts it is better to think of them as data. In many...
That is a brilliant account of the debates. It makes it look as if it just a question of different ways of saying the same thing. The catch is that it...
Well, it depends what you mean by a representation. There's the kind of representation that is a picture and the kind that is a symbol. The blip is a ...
Why do you think that when you see an actual flower, you actually see something else? Quite so. Thought it is a bit odd to refer to a concept as an ob...
Maybe. But it is what you asked for. Where have I gone wrong? This may not be a strictly philosophical observation, but does it not occur to you that ...
Yes, I would agree with that. But one needs to tease out what counts as access. Yes. There's an ambiguity about language. Most people seem to equate "...
Well, I agree. Perhaps I should not have characterized that question as objective. On the other hand, I did specify my reason for applying that term. ...
Well, any true-or-false statement is determined by someone, if that's what you mean. But that doesn't mean it is subjective. Since the definition is s...
I accept that the issue is not one of fallibility or error. But if they are beliefs, they involve propositions. So, not ordinary contingent propositio...
Yes, one might well want to tease out some details about them. They certainly are not ordinary, true-or-false beliefs. But whether they are beliefs or...
Yes. The point was not well put. It comes back to the question of paradigm breakdown. Perhaps Kuhn's concept of an anomaly is useful here, but that pr...
That's a very helpful analysis. Thanks. What you describe seems to me to come down to working out ways to get along in the world that we share. (And w...
I think it is one way of articulating what is happening when normal ways of conducting arguments break down. That problem is not only found in science...
On the assumption that you have not forged a dollar bill and do not have the abiity to do so, you meant to say "If I were to forge a dollar bill and t...
I think I see what you are getting at. I would worry that this way of putting it seems to claim (or could be misinterpreted to claim) that we are infa...
That doesn't follow. Take the example of forged money (notes or coins). Some money is forged. Some money is genuine. Both those statements must be tru...
It was a joke! More seriously, the question where philosophy ends and science begins is not clear and is contested. What is clear is that when concept...
Now, there's a problem. I have a dim memory that Aristotle characterizes the square root of two as "incommensurable". That would be a different sense ...
I have to read this. In context, this use of misfires speaks volumes. Isn't language wonderful? It was a surprise to find the thread and a great pleas...
Well, for me, it is a hen-and-egg relationship and I don't see what is important to you, or what you mean by "direct" here. So we'll have to agree to ...
I would say that if both theories are explaining the same data, reference has been maintained. And I never meant to say that all references must be ma...
It is a long time since I read Davidson's article and I haven't read Wang's - yet. Putting that right will take a while, but, on the basis that I have...
I was alluding to that possibility when I said I could change the definition of a swan. I was a bit abbreviated when I wrote "Swan Z is black". On the...
As Horace observed long, long ago "The "true/real) skill is hiding your skill". (Ars est celare artem) But then it looks easy and people think it is e...
There a technique in history called "prosopography". That's what we need here. But it is very labour-intensive. Wikipedia - Prosopography It's true th...
I've been thinking about other cases in which we know the socio-political tendencies of philosophers. Locke, Berkeley, Hegel, Sartre, Heidegger, Adorn...
So am I entitled to conclude from your last sentence that "all swans are white" is only as reliable as the induction that created it in the first plac...
I don't disagree. A question. Is this a critique of the people, or of the ideas? What conservatism are we talking about? Not philosophical, presumably...
Yes. I didn't mean "suggest" in the sense of something that one might ignore or refuse - "How about some crisps with that?" something more like "Love ...
It seems to me that a form of words always suggests a context, no matter how tiny the thumbnail sketch. So philosophers who think they are just consid...
I'll try to articulate some reasonably appropriate responses. As you expect, this isn't my philosophical cup of tea. I don't automatically dismiss all...
I agree with that. So I conclude that the concept of sense-data, as adopted by some philosophers, is incoherent. If the specifics don't conform to the...
What I remember about that anecdote fits with that. But then, he's not alone, neither in his time, nor now. OK. And it certainly isn't clear what he t...
Thanks. I hoped it would work, but wasn't sure. The text just seemed to fall into that format. I don't want to be picky, but Philosophical Investigati...
The irony is, of course, that he didn't think he was a sceptic, and, given that he believed in the Christian story on faith, despite his own demonstra...
Yes, but the sense-datum is supposed to be what is left when all assumptions are set aside. Would the Cambridge dictionary definition be evidence of w...
Well, sometimes they are, and sometimes they're not. What's the criterion for saying that two interpretations are interpretations of the same thing or...
I agree that's what's in the background. (There was a great revival of Hume amongst analytic philosophers, at least in the UK, at the time.) But Hume ...
You are dead right about that. Berkeley used "idea" a bit more widely but clearly included the same idea(!) in its scope. Kant's "phenomena" is also v...
My responses to Lecture XI There's a good deal of familiar ground in this. But there are differences of detail and elaboration that are of interest. T...
I Different interpretations of a picture presuppose a picture that is the original and mediates between interpretations. Ditto different interpretatio...
Here, for what it's worth is my summary of lecture XI. I've set it up as a dialogue. This lecture is about Warnock on Berkeley – a restatement or revi...
"Translation" here is an idea that came up earlier in the discussion. It treat the idea of sense-data as a question of language than of metaphysics. I...
Two quotations from SEP - Vienna Circle "The Vienna Circle was a group of scientifically trained philosophers and philosophically interested scientist...
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