Ludwig V

No, I don't think you get what I mean. 1) You are interested in propositions. I do not know what they are. I am interested in statements. I couldn't g...

No apology necessary. Everyone has an off-line life to live. The answer to the first question is Yes. The answer to the second question is No. The tru...

I've never understood why the mere fact of being created by God confers any meaning on this universe, whether It created it or not. There's another is...

I'm sorry to be picky. I do, of course, agree that the new-born should be protected. But what's the point of protecting them for the first year or two...

We obviously misunderstand each other. This is starts from the grammatical structure of verbs. There are only three persons in the singular and three ...

Could you please explain how that the requirement of a specific kind of intentional act before any action doesn't give rise to an infinite regress? I'...

I'm sorry if I led you to believe that I thought that "will" is a thing (object/state?). But my criticism was not about that. Your belief that all act...

But if I know that John knows that p, I do know that p is true. If p had been false, I wouldn't have known that John knows that p. What's the problem?...

I'm surprised that you don't draw the obvious conclusion that it is in the interest of any society to support parents and ensure that a good social an...

Your case study (thought-case study) is persuasive. But I had in mind people losing their jobs and even careers. The new jobs are often lower paid, lo...

But I don't have a sceptical account of truth! Your first comment, if the software is working correctly, includes:- I inferred from the first sentence...

I don't follow your iff sequences at all. Let me explain how the third person is relevant. Let S be a person who knows something. Let p be the somethi...

That's right. And ordinary or natural language has a way of dealing with claims that are not true. We are expected to withdraw them, on pain of lying ...

You're right about both of these. I hate to make things complicated, but you don't mention a third category, issues that are foreseeable but not fores...

I agree. I agree also that you were careful to make the status of your interpretation (or perhaps quasi-interpretation?) clear. I had no intention of ...

I agree with that. In a way, sustainability enforces itself. Unsustainable activity can't last forever. When the crash comes, there is turmoil and aft...

I think it is very hard to let the idea of knowledge go, because it carries a promise of certainty. Even if we did speak only about justified belief, ...

I'm grateful. Arguing about such an issue is no fun, just annoying. So I reciprocate. :smile:

It may be just a linguistic issue, but I prefer to say, not that knowledge is uncertain, but that we know less than we think we do. Is the natural lan...

Engineers and scientists need to be careful and accurate. Lawyers, with their concept of "beyond reasonable doubt" are similar. I don't have a problem...

You caught me seconds before I logged off. I have to go soon. In philosophy, "contingent" doesn't mean "open to rational doubt". It means it is not se...

I don't think there's anything very new about people accepting they can be wrong. Think what happened to Socrates. I agree that first-hand experience ...

I'm sorry. I wasn't clear about this. For some, the question may well be "Did this come from God?" How that should be assessed is not for me to say. (...

Yes, I'm afraid I wasn't consistent enough in writing that. I wanted to distinguish clearly between knowledge and fallible knowledge, which, as you ma...

Well, I guess one agreement out of two propositions is not bad. I have a couple of questions about this. I agree that pragmatically we tend to strike ...

That's perfectly true and it is good to discover someone else believes it. Fallible knowledge is just belief under another name. There's no point to t...

Yes. Ideally it should also not interfere with the process of mating itself. I picked up a fun fact about decoration that improves attractiveness but ...

Yes, that's also true. Well, some would say that in developing robots with AI, we are developing the life form that will replace us. If that turned ou...

We can only progress from where we are. For better or worse, the problems of the past, if they have not survived into the present, are beyond mending ...

It might be helpful to think about Rousseau’s distinction between amour de soi (self-love) and amour propre (love of self). The names are awkward, but...

I had read all of those posts, as it happens. But perhaps I didn't engage with them in the way you expected. There is a discussion there of "ways of b...

I'm never sure about intervening in an on-going debate. I hope that these comments are helpful. I was very struck, when I read Darwin's Origin of Spec...

Well, I guess that concludes our conversation.

Well, there's nothing to say, then. Thanks for enlightening me.

As I understand it, both Plato and Descartes are against error, and I support both in that respect. Both are in favour of rationality and I support th...

I'm afraid I don't know anything like enough to debate why various battles have been fought. I would be very surprised to learn that any battles have ...

Oh, I thought it was obvious. A battle is between two groups of people. A solipsist cannot recognize that there are any other people. So a solipsist i...

So you are concerned that solipsism might be unprovable but nonetheless true. Historical speculations fall into that class. There could be evidence, b...

The struggles that you are referring to were, in my opinion, entirely justified. Understandably, there was little thought given to what would happen w...

Well, I can't understand solipsism from a solipsist's point of view, because I have a different hinge (axiom?). Even if I didn't, I still couldn't und...

Can I understand that quotation as meaning that you are trying to express a real conflict or something like that. I can understand that. I've never be...

That is a possibility. I'll think about that.

Could you please clarify what you mean by "true"? I thought that nationalism was about values, while solipsism was about truth. Whereas conflict is al...

I don't understand. Do you mean that solipsism consists of just that statement "I alone exist", in two versions, "I exist and nothing else exists" and...

We are not brainwashed by society. Our brain is trained (programmed, if you like the computer analogy) by its environment, physical and social. Withou...

I'm replying to you because you started this discussion. I hope I'm not being too disruptive by intervening at this late stage. I have read the discus...

Thank you for that. :smile:

I think there's a lot to be said for that view - although we can select traits and preferences at least up to a point. We are aware of our particular ...

Yes. First person use of "know" is different from the others, because there is no difference between justification and truth. In the case of second or...

Ah! I was hoping you didn't mean Dr. Pangloss's belief that all is for the best in the best possible world. I think you may be right in suggesting tha...