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No, we're actually in agreement here. The difficulty with posting is that it's hard to convey the tone of voice, or the fact that something is being p...

Compare 1) The cat is on the mat. 2) I think that my cat is on the mat. Would you agree that the two statements assert different things? If so, the pr...

Yes, good. My question was closer to Witt than Frege. As you've shown me, 1st-person assertion is a bit of an issue for Fregean logic. I was wondering...

This is the example I raised the assertion problem about. Let's allow that handing someone a blanket counts as some kind of assertion; perhaps phrased...

Right. Can they both frame assertions? I would say so. Then is "the proposition we're asserting," in the blanket example, really the same? How would w...

And virtually the entire history of 20th century arts in the West! As I'm sure you know, the question of novelty or originality as an aesthetic value ...

Digging a little more deeply into that: Does this understanding of assertion commit you to including both "it is true that . . ." and "it seems quite ...

Yes, the theme of being drawn to inquiry or puzzlement as an aesthetic choice in phil. I resonate with that, especially if "aesthetic" is broad enough...

Yes. They're hardly ever otherwise. The OP question prompts us to ask, So what about that? Is this a mark against using our (conditioned) aesthetic cr...

Got it, thanks.

This is an interesting point, but I missed what follows from it. You go on to show how the duck-rabbit "game" is embedded in a host of other backgroun...

I'm not completely convinced it's a dependency relation, but something in the neighborhood for sure, and I could be persuaded. Other than that, both y...

Good question. Pretty sure the OP wants to encourage an expanded use of "aesthetics," so I'd say yes. And it's interesting again because to really ref...

For some reason I keep reflecting back on this. Partially it's because the concept of something "mattering" is nice and broad, and invites real reflec...

That challenge, he can handle, in the same way he restores certainty to all the items formerly doubted. More troubling is the "appeal to inattention,"...

I would underline this as the key point in the discussion: If it's true, which I think it is, then it allows us to say that "birds gather twigs in ord...

Very interesting discussion, thanks.

Terrific questions, thank you. Also terrifying! Just for a place to start: Yes, I have a sense of my own taste in philosophy, and I've noticed that it...

Yes, very good. The indeterminacy doesn't carry over to the functional level, so to speak, where all As and Bs and Cs have the same function relative ...

I think I have Williams' answer here. He says that Descartes used the term "eternal truths" for what we might call the truths of mathematics, logic, o...

Extremely interesting reply, thank you. This is what I would have called genetic priority, a statement about method, and it's very true. The ordering ...

I agree. So the question is whether the "I" in "I think" can survive the change to "there is thinking going on," not semantically, but in terms of a d...

He quotes this, from the Principles: "All forms of consciousness (modi cogitandi) that we experience can be brought down to two general kinds: one is ...

Good question. No, I wasn't wanting to bring rationality into it at this point. The comparison I'm inviting between "actual" and "descriptive" would b...

@"Joshs" Yes, thanks, and it's close to the sort of paraphrase I would have offered. The problem for me -- in my language, that is -- is that none of ...

Just a quick response for now: Yes, this is what Descartes says too, and Williams tells us that both "je pense" and "cogito" were much broader than th...

Knickers untwisted! :razz: But the binaries "essential-or-meaningless, succeed-or-fail" are from the Heidegger quotes, and if he doesn't believe he's ...

You were. Thanks for pointing me back to it. You're doing a careful job of trying to find a way to separate out the idea of a "moral fact" as a univer...

Again, I'm curious what this amounts to without the hyperbole. To understand anything in a fundamental sense is to understand it in a new way? Why? Co...

Very good. Reminiscent of Rodl's "naive" questions about what 'p' is supposed to represent.

Hear, hear. This is what is important: There is an obvious distinction, and we can probably find some consensus on terminology that eschews the "phil/...

I know what you mean, and the mathematical analogy makes clear what "actual philosophical work" might look like, on this view. But I think -- and don'...

Oh, indeed. Descartes himself dealt with a number of objections from people who pointed out that the "I" in "I think" could use a lot more specificati...

This is possibly the most interesting part of the paper, for me. We could take W's remark to mean two things: 1) I have not lived up to the highest po...

Yes, and it's the third one that connects with a "pure" good will that does not consider ends to be reasons for acting.

And thanks for yours. I definitely want to reply in depth to your points -- you're right, for one thing, that I'd forgotten the thrust of your OP -- b...

Thanks, that's helpful, and probably connects with @"Janus"'s insight about "knowing that" and "knowing how." As long as we acknowledge that Heidegger...

Sure will, but probably not tonight, life calls. Appreciate the insight.

Good. That makes Heidegger's hyperbole here a bit suspect, doesn't it?: The bolded statements are kind of criticism-proof, aren't they? Reading them a...

Yes, Nietzsche is a good response, should have thought of him myself. Except . . . do you really believe he didn't want to be understood by his contem...

It's an . . . unusual claim. Does anyone know whether another philosopher besides Heidegger ever said something similar? Reminds me of Beethoven sayin...

Trying to explain why something is funny to one person but not to another is a notoriously hopeless task. If @"Count Timothy von Icarus" meant to amus...

Yes, but entertaining vacuous self-indulgent name-dropping garbage. :smile: (Not really, Count T!)

The endlessly running policeman represents Wittgenstein, coming to the aid of these poor language users who haven't agree on their game . . . Notice h...

I'd thought we could focus more on why Descartes chose methodical doubt as a way to establish certainty. But given the many objections you raise, and ...

OK, thanks.

Well, that's a clear statement of moral relativism and/or the incoherence of allegedly moral values. Do you think there's a worthwhile purpose for the...

Sure. I only said that we can't conclude, without further argument of the sort you describe, whether feeling good is what moral good means.

Yes, same point I made above. Morality asks what is the right thing for me to do, not how the species should survive, or how to feel good.

What would decoding mean, then? What have the scientists failed to do with the nematode? As a non-programmer, I guess I'm asking whether decoding is a...