On first reading I interpreted your puzzle to mean that "You" is a fifth physical person, who has You's own experiences, and in addition has the abili...
Yes, in one important sense: The entailment I stated above will hold, regardless of who thinks it, or if anyone does. So if we use "thought" in that s...
Do you think that pictures (or the smell) of good food cause hunger in the same way that the thought of "If A, then B; A" causes the thought "therefor...
Very good discussion. Here's what I'm wondering: This is quite a commitment. The idea, presumably, is that unlike time, physical processes do not requ...
Indeed, and as I said, I wonder whether philosophy is the right mode to give that explanation. We can't know for sure, but it has the feel to me of a ...
Very good. I'm reminded of the so-called "ripple effect" theory that Christian theologians have sometimes offered to explain how the incarnation worke...
Yes, though maybe we should use scare-quotes: "The babe has not yet learned to see 'the ship' and doesn't do so until they do so under description." T...
Totally agree about the metaphors! He inherited "reference magnetism" from David Lewis and others, and "carving at the joints" is Plato, but still . ....
Picking up on these observations: By starting with the idea of "looking at a ship", we can be misled into believing that to perceive a ship is always ...
Yes, I like that. It shows that, if there is indeed something different about ontological structure, the difference must have a degree of non-subjecti...
Your post focuses on some important stuff. I like the way a good conversation can do some chaff-separating, helping all parties see what's really wort...
I think it depends on how comprehensive the "book" must be. I think you're right that the ways are boundless, since humans are but one type of conscio...
That would be cool, but one way or the other, yes, good conversation. And @"Wayfarer" can of course elucidate, but I took him to mean that a "law" isn...
Interesting OP, thanks. Reading the presuppositions, the first thought I had was that most laymen, even quite educated ones, still make the same pre-1...
This really gets to the tough problem. Let's agree that we'll use "naive realism" to mean the idea that 1) there is a description of the world that is...
I think we basically agree, and you're right to make the distinction (which I did not) between illusion and simple difference, perhaps due to one's sp...
The last couple of weeks, I've noticed that I'm not being emailed about some of the references, replies, and quotes from my posts. I can't see any pat...
Great insight. And the acid test would be: By drawing the joints this way, can you increase the substantivity of the discussion? Can you head off disp...
So it's just about human reckoning? I was wanting you to make a bigger claim: I asked, "If there could somehow be a view-from-nowhere perspective on w...
Well, no, I don't see the argument for it. But anyone attending the Lectures on Metaphysics, given in 1935, would have heard that "in speaking of grea...
Thanks for the excellent OP and thoughtful shepherding of the ensuing discussion. You may not need another cook for this broth, but . . . This asserti...
Yes. I would add that the "different concepts" may be seen as more or less perspicacious, more or less adequate in capturing ontological structure. Th...
I really can't disagree with this. An actual adoption of Ontologese is utopian, or possibly dystopian, as you point out. But if, having taking Sider's...
Very good discussion! Especially because I see a lot of latitude in interpreting what Sider recommends. To say it again -- his main concern is to draw...
OK, I understand. You value the "leap of faith" whether it's religious or merely toward an ethical ideal. I agree that "faith" or "belief" (in this se...
I'm happy with this way of putting it, as long as we remember that being "about language" is in a sense peripheral. I'm just highlighting Sider's poin...
Yes, we shouldn't get too lost in abstractions here. The problem with racism and homophobia is that it insists on telling people they are defective wh...
Could you clarify this a little? What would constitute proof that a given entity exists? I assume you're not using "proof" in the logical sense of bei...
A "thick" term can also pack an emotional or spiritual punch. This is a type of connotation, but worth calling out on its own. We're reluctant -- I th...
This is a good target statement for the viewpoint that "fundamental structure" can only be fundamental to a certain perspective. Your use of "everyday...
There's a fascinating book called Baboon Metaphysics: The Evolution of a Social Mind, by Cheney and Seyfarth, that makes a strong case that baboons ha...
I'm not sure that helps. We can think of far too many cases -- the majority, probably -- in which suffering is bad for specific reasons. Let me really...
With all of these quotes, we're focusing on a key point for Sider and the idea of reference magnetism. I believe it's a somewhat open question. If we ...
Thanks for your appreciation, and I'm really glad the concepts made sense, and spoke to experiences you've previously had doing philosophy. It was muc...
But not to assume it is to assume something much harder to swallow -- that this is indeed the best of all possible worlds, so good that not even God c...
This is an interesting context to put it in. First off, I agree there's some similarity with what Williams is doing with "thick terms," in that Willia...
OK. I thought you were drawing a distinction between the two terms, in terms of metaphysical possibility, but no matter. I now see you mean them both ...
Trying to grasp this . . . Are you saying that "omnipotent" and "maximally powerful" don't mean the same thing, in what you're calling classical theis...
That's probably true, but these discussions do show that the classical problem isn't necessarily the only way to frame our understanding of God and ev...
Glad it makes some sense. This is a nice coincidence, because I'm trying to finish up an OP about this very thing. "What X means" is not a straightfor...
Yes, almost always. But philosophy is one context in which they are not. Consider the context of the discussion you quoted: We're trying to decide whe...
OK, that's better. I didn't realize you wanted the second instrument to be playing something that would be mistaken for an overtone produced by the fi...
I guess I'm not understanding your question. If an oboe plays an A, that is a tone with overtones. If you actually change the overtones, it doesn't so...
It isn't very good, as a work of art. But it does capture that "draining life of meaning" feeling. It's a problem for philosophers, isn't it? We tend ...
If the actual overtones were changed, that would be a change in the sound played on the first instrument, and it would be objectively measurable. Chan...
That's a great way of putting it. (And we see again how binaries like illusion/reality can rapidly become so equivocal as to be unhelpful. "Are illusi...
Strong arguments. Nicely done. You perhaps know that this "heaven theodicy" is found in Kant (in the 2nd critique, I believe, though I can't cite the ...
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