All true. And this kind of discussion really does help to make the border between psychology and phenomenology a little less fuzzy. Ideally, I'd want ...
Good. Should we say that temperature is (brute identity) molecular energy? Or better to say that temperature measures that energy? I don't know how a ...
That's a good filling-out of my "feature" idea. I wish I could identify the qualia, though. The problem is that I know what I'm talking about when I r...
Thank you, very good article. I hope we can use it as a touchstone on TPF to ground discussions of positivistic metaphysics, as it's very fair. Lookin...
OK, but this again is assuming that what constitutes "thing" and "parts" is uncontroversial and obvious. Do you want to say that Jill is a different "...
I haven't read the Malcolm essays. Does he suggest "supervenience" as another possible way of cashing out the notion of "identity"? Probably not, sinc...
Yes, there are true sentences. They are true because we have a context in which they appear. I think what bothers some people is that "true in a conte...
I'm trying to decide if I have anything helpful to add here. I quite understand that if you think in terms of "theoretical reason (truth)," it's going...
(I stopped following this carefully, so if what I'm saying has already been addressed, please ignore) About the "law of identity": You do realize you'...
Yes, and even more concerning: if the prompt is a photograph, will I come to substitute the face that is pictured for my memory of the beloved's actua...
Ah, I think I see the misunderstanding. You're using "pluralism" and "relativism" interchangeably and synonymously, where I'm drawing a distinction. D...
I don't think I have one. Certainly not a psychological one, as that's not my field. The phenomenological question I'm posing might lend itself to a t...
This is a great citation. I'd been looking at another Malcolm piece, in fact, the one about sleeping and dreaming, to see if I could find his overall ...
Yes. My only objection here would be to ask whether this happens fast enough to constitute the complete explanation of recognizing a memory. But as @"...
This is a different aspect of the memory question, but worth dwelling on, because it suggests to me the "pastness" that @"fdrake" mentioned. What is p...
Yes, I greatly appreciated this aspect of his thought -- which he shared with its other leading exponent, Gadamer, and much interesting work has been ...
Sure. I wonder whether you'd be willing to look back over my post and notice the different uses of "relativism" and "pluralism," and the ways in which...
Yes, it's hard to know what is typical here. Perhaps I'm given to daydreaming! For whatever reason, the "unannounced or contextless memory" phenomenon...
Yes, generally. You seem to have me confused with someone else. :smile: I am not a relativist about truth or, in most contexts, values. I do, however,...
Lively and interesting replies, thanks! A few general responses: This is one of those questions -- as so often with phenomenology -- that sits on the ...
Maybe, and then I'd duck to avoid the brickbats! :wink: More fairly, I do read him as an anti-modernist, but his tone was rarely polemical. Also, I th...
I'd say: exactly like that. This is pure Kripke, and explains why he says things like "we don't need a telescope to identify the table" etc. This is a...
This is good. In drafting the OP, I found myself backing off further and further from my original claim, which would have been that we can always tell...
Yes, this "pastness" may be the very thing I'm calling the "feature" of an alleged memory, by which we recognize it as such. But I'm asking further --...
:lol: Yes, and you really can't overestimate the degree to which the US is plagued by racist and classist assumptions. In depressingly large segments ...
Thank you. This is the basic insight, as you go on to explain, "which is why modal logic exists." Right. The point is that nothing is the same in diff...
Yes. Habermas has perhaps done better with this than Rawls, because much of what he's written about this has been in response to ongoing European issu...
Sure, but isn't there a clear distinction to be made between "born with a speech impediment" and "born into poverty"? Most of the boundaries are fuzzi...
As an observation about people, I completely agree. And that bitterness would have a special sting since, as discussed, no one need be born poor. Rawl...
A good question, which can be asked of both Rawls and Habermas. Rawls has in mind a sort of ideal dialogue or dialectic, that seems clear, but there m...
Well, most of the US "founding fathers" agreed with you. These from Hamilton: "The body of people … do not possess the discernment and stability neces...
I think he does. In Political Liberalism, for instance, in the section called "Free Political Speech," he points out that "the basic liberties not onl...
Maybe I should have expanded what I meant by “crude relativism.” It would be something like this: “Everything is relative. There’s no true or false. T...
Coming back to this: The context here, for Rawls, is what he says about "reasonable pluralism" as the "inevitable outcome" of such institutions. What ...
Just to tie up this loose end . . . OK, I see that. I guess I wasn't imagining relativism as trying to avoid disagreements. And I'm sure you're right ...
Yes, a long literature on this one. I myself think it's important to keep reasons distinct from causes. If reasons "just are" causes, we'd need to rev...
Of course. "Argument" as a zero-sum game with winners and losers. . . . I had a professor who used to talk about "the gladiatorial theory of philosoph...
Interesting. No doubt the European religious wars and persecutions of the 16th-17th centuries made tolerance look more attractive. So a country that w...
Yes, it's a headache, but I don't think we can just throw out the idea of a correct interpretation, if we limit "interpretation" to some version of "c...
I shouldn't think so. As you say, the tolerance presupposes that they won't be reconciled any time soon. Nor to me, frankly, but I'm trying to present...
I guess it needn't be. As I say, it just doesn't fit my own experience of doing philosophy. I'm aware that, for some, philosophy is seen as a history ...
Thank you for the citation. I always try to read philosophers sympathetically, in context, and fortunately with Aristotle there's an enormous interpre...
I know you meant to imply this, but just to keep things straight: What's implausible here is that Joe is two different objects at these two times, not...
Yes, maybe not a spanner exactly, but we can see that Kripke is working with some (unquestioned?) assumptions about who determines what something is -...
No, that would be ruled out, so the opposite would indeed be irrational. That's why indisputably foundational premises might be abandoned in favor of ...
I understand, and I don't expect you to do my Aristotle homework for me! Would it be possible, though, to point me toward the particular passages you ...
It's a big topic, probably not for this thread. One interesting way of phrasing the issue: If realism depends upon epistemic positions that must be ta...
This is how I read Kripke as well. The truth, if it is true, that water is H2O comes first, before invoking necessity. Well, here the "is" is open to ...
Yes, this is key. I get the sense that hardcore opponents of liberal theory would object, right at the start, to the claim that we do have to do this ...
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