I think so. I could imagine something like a "moment of belief" and/or a "moment of consideration" that might actually present to consciousness in tha...
I'm not an ordinary-language-first guy, but this is a case where I think we have to start by considering what we do say. If you ask me, "Do you believ...
No. I was trying to understand how you could regard a telos as strictly humanistic or anthropological in some way, not involving transcendent elements...
This suggests to me that we should treat "understanding" as a cluster of concepts and (perhaps) events, and not try to generalize more than necessary ...
As I've said, we've been here before!: The equivocation on "good." What is good for a human, using the same sense of "good" as we'd use for a rat, has...
Well, that's the difficult leap. Yes, we might be able to discover human "nature," if that is something that science can reveal. (I'm not sure it is, ...
No, Kripke and Kaplan say indexicals can be rigid designators: Unless you think the "demonstrative / indexical" distinction is important here? I think...
OK. But in fairness, what you said was, "Are you willing to go out on a limb and say 'rape is wrong, anytime, anywhere, and regardless of the consensu...
Given this, I think your dictum could be phrased more clearly as: "Opinions are plural; anyone can have one. But if your opinion happens to be that th...
This is helpful, and I think you're right, except I wan't really looking for such a level of reference. My chain of thought was mainly an attempt to d...
Well, yes, but isn't that what Kripke is interested in too? He wants to know how we fix the reference of a new term -- a proper name, say. The baby's ...
This is a really interesting fulcrum for different styles of philosophy. One might ask a proponent of any philosophical perspective, "Could you specif...
Pretty much what I was getting at with "background belief," wouldn't you agree? The important thing is that a background belief really can't be said t...
Well, because there is universal agreement on how to recognize and judge blue, and nothing similar in regard to beauty. But in any case, I see the con...
Yes. Both of these are what I'm aiming at. Moreover, I want to take this out of "private reference," which would apply only to me, and make it what yo...
Others here have focused on this as well. It simply doesn't follow that, because there is no transcendental or foundational basis for aesthetic values...
These are all good examples of what might go wrong, if the issue were one of meaning. But I don't think it is. I was using "glunk" to try to de-fang t...
Good stuff. But some questions: - Why would it follow that, because we don't judge a disposition prior to an act, said disposition could not affect wh...
But couldn't we get around that in the way I suggested earlier?: This way, it's a behavior, not a mental intention, and the speaker still can't be "wr...
That's why I was suggesting that maybe a better way to understand this is "The man over there who I think has a glass of champagne in his hand." That ...
I've pondered this one before. Would you say that dispositions, possibly including beliefs, can be distinguished from thoughts on the basis that they ...
This raises the question, Could there be a private language of reference? I don't see why not. Sometimes I talk to myself, and need to keep track of t...
Before we get to nonsense and contradiction, I want to understand a little better what Kripke is saying about reference. Here's the passage you quoted...
I feel a little dense, but what does that mean exactly? We're talking phenomenology here, right, not science? (I'm assuming there is no scientific des...
Let me just say, I sympathize with your mixed feelings about bringing in the Tao for a subject like this. On the one hand, it's an important reminder ...
Well, yeah, but . . . at the level of the Tao, of course all the boundaries and categories are arbitrary. More mundanely, we're happy to talk about so...
Right on both counts. But I think part of a philosopher's job is to understand, not merely refute. To me, eliminative materialism/physicalism is not c...
I'm inclined to agree. Maybe not dogma, if we take it literally as "canon of beliefs." But it's no coincidence that "dogmatic" has come to mean rigid ...
Let's imagine something more on the lines of Roomba. We could, I suppose, install a program in a Roomba-like robot that would respond to "hard day" (v...
And yet it's standard physicalism -- Dennett, the Churchlands. I don't believe P-zombies could exist either, but we ought to allow them in our thought...
This is a good challenge to P-zombies. Notice, though, that an advocate for the possibility of P-zombies would deny Premise 2: "Beliefs play a central...
Yes, and the whole belief-forming process, as @"Banno" reminded us, is different depending on the object of the beliefs; what would lead us to form th...
This is an interesting way of helping us see how "belief" really refers to many things, in various combinations. I will definitely read the McCormick ...
Yes, but with an intriguing difference. We know what the "uninterpreted bones" of musical sounds are -- the paraphernalia of acoustics, which is a sci...
Thanks for chiming in here, very helpful. I was going to say something about de re / de dicto at this point too. We can stipulate a property that's ne...
If I'm understanding @"Banno" correctly, he's agreed with, and explicated, my talk about a "different level." To say, "The fact that 'a' has the refer...
Yes, either "Here's what you should do . . ." or "Here's what I would do if I found myself in your situation . . ." Interesting that the first is abou...
I think you're absolutely right to do this. A good interpretation requires all the same care as a good explanation. Arguably the community that produc...
But does that consign the human sciences to arrogance or folly? Hermeneutics suggests that the job of the human sciences is not to explain but to inte...
Right, it's always a compromise. So is any notation, but jazz especially. I'd want to say that those tiny moments of musicality shouldn't be notated, ...
Just an aside: That's a great story, which I'd never heard before. I wish I could have been there; I would have asked him, "Do you mean too hard to pl...
The default assumption is that what goes for one, goes for all, if the property in question is putatively essential (as "identity" would be). If I am ...
Yes, I think so, if we're wondering whether to speak the same idiolect. And K can give the answer, "Because I want to bring out the character of rigid...
Sorry, didn't mean to say that you were bringing it up in an ad-hoc way here. Rather, if someone were to ask you, "Why opt for the bizarre reference-f...
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