OK, so if we were going to continue conversing, I'd have a pretty good idea what you meant by "world," and could phrase my own thoughts accordingly. O...
Your response shows exactly why @"Banno" might prefer a PM discussion. He poses a perfectly reasonable question to the members, and you slam into him....
I don't follow that. How does skepticism enter the picture? I took @"Banno" to mean that we wouldn't have a reason to doubt something or find it odd u...
It sure is, and the "reason/cause" subspecies of disambiguation has always seemed to me especially important to understand. The problem can be put sor...
OK. Can you say why you think it's extraordinary? Not that it could happen -- that is certainly extraordinary -- but why you think the claim is extrao...
Yikes, that's a lot of questions! Let's slow down. I'm not seeing yet what you don't like about my sketch of an extraordinary claim. What might be an ...
Well, in a sense. I find the idea of a view from nowhere both seductive and alarming. It keeps calling, but I suspect it's a chimera. Hey, you didn't ...
I see. You're right to point out that never/always statements are often made in contexts that imply foundationalism. But I don't think that has to be ...
Yes, it is a little different (and I'll avoid the lawyer jokes!). Do you think the difference consists in mastering the kinds of behaviors you name? A...
I'm glad you brought Goodman in here. In one of his later papers, he says, "No firm line can be drawn between world-features that are discourse-depend...
I don't really think it's a hoax, because as I said, I haven't seen the inventors of things like C-G claiming to have created a conscious entity. What...
But isn't it fair to say that this is, precisely, the "world doing as advertised", including the unpredictability of people? I don't mean this just as...
That's a bit dire. I didn't say there was no such thing as a shared world, or that we can never decide how to talk about it meaningfully. I just meant...
Yes, I understand. I'm trying to take a slower path, through the Land of How We Talk, before getting to things like That's a good question, of course,...
Yes, at least dualist in terms of how we talk about these things. Let's bracket the question of whether we're right to do so. I'm interested in seeing...
A fair question. Let me start by discriminating: I firmly disbelieve that C-G is conscious. I also think it's probable that no non-biological entity c...
Sure, that's one way to look at it. But would you say the same thing about a CD that, when you put it in a player, declared that it was "feeling good"...
That's what it says -- how do you know it's true? If I were programming it, that's exactly the sort of answer I would arrange for it to give. Breathta...
And also, the idea that some circumstances do invite a rule-bound, rigorous, deductive approach -- and others do not, and many are in between. I'm eve...
Yes, I like this too. I'll see if I can develop it even further. Some places we might need to visit, or to give an account of what they're like, will ...
These are key questions. So: Is this a partial answer to the above questions? Do reasons determine a conclusion in the same way that a physical cause ...
Do you mean that there may be some facts included in a piece of fiction as "raw material"? Fair enough. Could you expand on the "constructed or decons...
They're doing what they were programmed to do, feeding back your words. If someone asked you if you could offer "the self-expression of consciousness,...
The thing is, once you acknowledge that there are perhaps intermediate, context-derived principles or standards . . . there's little left to disagree ...
This is interesting, and let me generalize it to avoid unnecessary rancor. The question is, What's the difference between "reasoned rejection" and "me...
This seems off to me. Lies are meant to deceive. If fiction is presented as fiction, which it usually is, no deception occurs. Do you see something mo...
I'm sure you know what I'm going to say!: "Brownian motion" as the only alternative here is yet another either/or binary, about as useful as "absolute...
I thought this was sensible: I took you to mean that trying to pin down "arbitrariness" was less important than the distinction being made between abs...
This is all very reasonable (!), and I largely agree. You raise an interesting point about whether being smart and experienced in a discipline is enou...
Yes to this first part, surely -- that's just conversational civility, I would hope. ". . . . without actively engaging with them." But is it really n...
I thinks the questions can be separated. It's perfectly possible to take a foundationalist approach while remaining agnostic, just as it's perfectly p...
I hadn't thought of this, but it's an intriguing parallel to what counts as an intellectual "practice." On this analogy, I want to say that there are ...
Trouble is, these same questions can be asked of the allegedly absolute standards: "By virtue of what do you determine this standard to be absolute?" ...
I agree, if "their epistemology" concerns some actual field of study or practice. The more abstract this gets, the harder it is to generalize about wh...
Looking over your conversation, I think this may be worth focusing on: This is asking two good questions -- though first, I'll say again that I don't ...
The situation you're describing seems accurate to me. There's a great deal of disagreement among epistemologists and philosophers of science about cri...
Thank you for returning us to what's in front of us -- the nature of philosophy itself. Those who see it otherwise -- who think that something has gon...
Well, that's a clear enough credo. I'm probably not the right person to talk you out of it, even if I wanted to. I also appreciate you, your passion f...
"Some narratives are acceptable, true, or valid for one sort of reason; some are so for another sort; some for a third sort; etc. . . . . . . . If you...
Yes, that would be great. But again, the opposition of "absolute" and "arbitrary". Really, nothing in between would do? (Either/or opposites again. Ka...
Again, that's not a very charitable paraphrase, but let it stand. It's hard to draw general conclusions here, isn't it? One person's "incredibly vague...
Very kind, thanks. I keep thinking that there is some way of making this clearer in the abstract, but maybe not. Perhaps you have to examine some real...
I have to smile, because "never" is once again an all-or-nothing option, implying that if I sometimes do, I have contradicted myself! To which I can o...
Nah. There can be many good reasons for something -- hence not arbitrary -- without requiring that any of them be absolute. The infinite regress of "j...
Nor am I, because this is a point of debate about Habermas, at least (not sure about Peirce and his convergence theory of truth). The question is, Is ...
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