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OK, I see. I hope not too many philosophers are fooled by the equation of "popular" and "aesthetically valuable." We have to seek objective standards,...

I'll grant the remote possibility; I don't know it for certain. But this is on a par with Descartes's evil demon, isn't it? A chance so unlikely that ...

I'm surprised to see you use a phrase like "actually made up your mind"! :wink: What can I say? I don't know how actual it is, but when I make up my m...

This was my "battle of the bands" example too. I think it even goes beyond a question of practical usage. For many types of comparison, "the best" mak...

Yes, but as I've often averted to in past discussions, there's one exception to this -- namely, when the audience who is "shown" is myself. It simply ...

You probably know that Danto, in addition to promulgating his theories about the artworld, offered a frankly Hegelian picture of what art is. It invol...

This is key, I think. Trying to compare the relative beauty of Bach and Vivaldi may not get us very far, since "beauty" is notoriously hard to pin dow...

Sure, but my point was that, within each respective tradition, non-relative aesthetic judgments can be, and are, made. The reason you've heard of Bank...

Well, but tie that back to the Battle of the Bands. Aren't you saying that we can't compare the two bands meaningfully without a commitment to there b...

I don't get that. Are you saying that a relativist is committed to claiming that all aesthetic judgments are equally valid? I don't think that's how t...

Ah, and this can be given a good, sensible construal. Let me paraphrase and see if you agree: We can't compare items in terms of qualities they may sh...

Good, and likewise your subsequent formulation in terms of shared mental representations, rather than a strictly individual/psychological construal. Y...

I don't think this can be right, at least not across the board. I assert that the Beatles were a better band than Gerry and the Pacemakers. I can make...

Yes, there it is. That is what I take him to mean, and he himself ties it back to that Kantian motto. Highly controversial, but I think he's onto some...

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You're right, sloppy phrasing on my part. Both A and B are about a thought, since each begins identically: "I think . . " What I should have gone on t...

Excellent. Let me say this in slightly different words, to see if I've understood. You're positing that science goes about its business by splitting o...

True. My comment reveals which ticket I hold in the Consciousness Lottery: I think it'll turn out to be biological. But we don't have a clue at the mo...

Yes, it is. My eyes got wider, not glazed! And we need to acknowledge that any story we wind up telling about the origin of propositions, or reasons, ...

When it's put in terms of "what X is ultimately made of," I almost always agree. If the question is more about "What are we committing ourselves to wh...

As I understand Rodl, he's setting it out like this: A) I think: "I judge that the cat is on the mat." B) I think: "The cat is on the mat." As he says...

Good response, thanks. I'd like to find a perspective on this that Soames, Hegel, and Rodl could all accept. Do you think Soames would say that a prop...

Same boat here with academic presses, but do you have interlibrary loan? My public library got me the Rodl book and let me keep it for months. The onl...

Now that's a can of eels! Do you think the psychologist can ask questions about psychology that are, at the same time, bracketed by psychological expl...

Yes, that's just the sort of further dialectic I was picturing. It doesn't have to follow that "consensus wins" will always be the final decision -- e...

A philosopher of art whom I respect, Susanne Langer, has pointed out that we can often learn more about an art by noticing what it does not have in co...

Yes. In the arts, "improve" might better be thought of as "develop" or "enrich" or, of course, "react wildly against"! And then we have the question o...

He certainly is, and a hero to all of us working in that area. Interestingly, his case for animal rights goes through even if you disagree with the ut...

I agree, mostly. I'm rereading "Actions, Reasons, and Causes" right now, on a different issue also prompted by @"Banno".

No, it needn't be an opposition, as my example suggested. In a too-simple sense, we could think of it as hierarchical: Knowledge can lead to understan...

Hermeneutics. Dilthey, Gadamer. They might not say that all philosophy is interpretation, but I think they would say that most of the important questi...

I mean that we have to agree on what an assertion is, what counts as an assertion, for Philosophy Room purposes. In real life, we don't, and as a cons...

Not at all, better than assuming I already understand! I am fairly familiar with those ideas but am trying to suggest that, though established, they m...

But this assumes what I'm calling into question. Why are the only alternatives "true" or "false"? I'm pointing out that ordinary speech doesn't work t...

Right, that was more or less my point. It's not a logical entailment or something that's true by definition. We have to agree on it.

No, I agree that I can't. So if I merely assert the sentence, without you and I stipulating what an assertion is going to mean, are you able to come t...

This might seem like nit-picking, but I think I could assert a sentence without also judging it to be true. I could merely mean, "Yes, I'm saying this...

See my reply to @"Banno", above. Yes, the link is situational, but perhaps not so very special.

I'm claiming that all three statements have different truth conditions. J and Banno may be "saying the same thing," but the statements are not. OK, th...

Yes, that makes sense to me. I was with you till the final word. Sometimes the standards purport to be more than, or different from, aesthetics, no? P...

Yes. My question is whether "I judge that sentence to be true" ever follows from "That sentence is true"? If I assert the latter, have I also committe...

Good, that's how I see it as well. Have you read "Thinking and Being" by Irad Kimhi? Or "Self-Consciousness and Objectivity" by Sebastain Rodl? I'd re...

Yeah, I was kind of burlesquing the response some novices have -- "Oh, that's a great idea, let's look into it!" not realizing it has, to put it gentl...

I'd still like to explore the natural-language usages a bit more, because some of them are fairly common and intuitive, and might teach us something. ...

If P is not true, then the cat is not on the mat. So if I assert Q -- "I think that the cat is on the mat" -- some would allege that I am mistaken. Bu...

I think we have to let the quoted part represent a proposition; that was my intention, anyway. Though it may not matter, in this sense: If the quoted ...

Yes, and this comes too close for my liking to "flaw-based" resolution of a difficult issue. The anti-realists "refuse to get in the game" -- hmmm. Wh...

Interesting. I guess you're using "self-expression" in a very general way. A technical discussion of some point in modal logic, for instance -- you co...

OK. Let me rephrase: Compare 1) I assert, "The cat is on the mat." 2) I assert, "I think that my cat is on the mat." Would you agree that these two as...

This is a very good exchange. It shows that a protracted disagreement isn't simply left to rot, with a shrug of the shoulders, nor is it (we hope) dis...