I agree this distinction is important, and your description of what counts as self-evident seems fine. But I think you've begged the question a bit ag...
I don't understand this. Is there a particular liberal philosopher you have in mind, who says this? I'm trying to associate "Freedom over all else" wi...
I didn't have liberalism as such in mind at all -- though perhaps I should have, but I forgot the name of the thread! I was adding my voice to @"Joshs...
It wasn't meant as skepticism, but as a literal statement: We don't know. Better to say, "I don't"? But I hadn't thought you were claiming to know suc...
Yes, these are the assumptions we're talking about, but I'm asking for the justifications for them, as they would have been put forward by early moder...
Just to highlight this: I agree, and too often, in authoritarian hands, it turns into "Make X Great Again!" with results we can all observe daily. We,...
God knows you're right about that! :smile: I just think that, too often, the wranglers actually believe someone must be correct, which, when it comes ...
Yes, but the first bit was a different reply to a different comment, sorry. The point about metaphysics as an investigation of structure was separate ...
And that's fair enough. All the more reason not to worry about what's metaphysics and what isn't! I like your move toward asking about "assumptions" i...
Sure, it's perfectly good way to use the word, and my own preference. But I hope you also agree with me that "how to use the word correctly" (assuming...
Not exactly. The question, remember, is about the intuitive truth of the LNC, not truth per se. I'm suggesting that, in the described case, we couldn'...
Yes, but you're right, we shouldn't assume that everyone can fill in the ceteris-paribus qualifications. This connects with the question about the gro...
I'm with you up to a point, but this leaves out the entire difficult conversation about what might make the LNC intuitive, or self-evident. "It just i...
Hence my recommendation that we turn away from worrying about how to use "metaphysics" in true statements. Perhaps it should be, but nevertheless it i...
Only if "the world" is pre-limited (is that a word?) to the physical. Questions about structure ought to include questions about language, about thoug...
This discussion is shaping up -- no surprise -- as a terminological dispute about what counts as "metaphysics." Janus conceives of metaphysics as an a...
Yes, epistemology strictly speaking, but isn't epistemology a sub-inquiry under metaphysics? Is it possible to frame a question about what we can know...
Ah, but which ones are the fly-bottles? :wink: Problem is, to ask "Should all metaphysical questions be dissolved rather than (if possible) resolved?"...
Couple of things: Honestly, that never occurred to me as a core problem in metaphysics. In any case, it doesn't surprise me at all. No, I think metaph...
Yes. Same here. Emphasis on "enduring." I'm not crazy about the "purity" theme, but this certainly sets out the problem concisely: What sort of person...
Yes, there's a lot to this. A great deal may depend on the idea of "data." Are questions considered to be data? It looks to me like the questions that...
I read Wayfarer as giving a context, as you suggest: In his formulation, "real" is stipulated to mean "as opposed to illusory or misleading". But I th...
This is one of my perennial favorite philosophical puzzles. If Major Philosophical Position A is obviously correct, how is it that Major Philosophical...
I think you're missing Hamlet's point. :smile: He was suggesting that just, proportionate punishment is what we all have coming, because we've all mis...
A fascinating and difficult issue. If philosophy is understood as an ideal form of rationalism, then I do think it "stops at the door" of spiritual or...
Yes, this is part of the "very deep question" that @"Wayfarer" points out. Mercy is precisely most admirable when it's undeserved. But consider this f...
Yes -- the reconciliation of justice with mercy. I may be wrong, but I get a flavor of this in some versions of Buddhism as well. The bodhisattva dese...
Good. And starting with Kant, and the relation of metaphysics to human knowledge, would be a sensible program. We could take a sounding on what is ind...
Again, this might be true. But whether it's true is a philosophical question. It seems to me that discussing that question is neither apologetics nor ...
As it happens, I agree with you about the rational arguments. I believe religion begins where philosophy ends. And theology, that halfway house, has n...
Nor me, in quite that way. I was bringing up this example as a contrast with the idea that such grief is experienced as a privation, a lack, not as an...
Yes, and I'm under no illusions that anything I propose could settle the issue. But about privation . . . I don't know whether you've had the misfortu...
Completely agree. Traditional Christian theology is primitive, in this area. But I think we can "expand the circle of compassion" without necessarily ...
No, definitely not. I'm saying the opposite. It would be a monstrous lie, cruel hoax, etc, if there were indeed no salvation, no possibility of an aft...
That's it, in a nutshell. If our human notions of goodness and justice are so far off the mark, from God's point of view, then why call God "really" g...
Well, sort of. I'm invoking the standard construal of something like "p ? q; p; ~q". This would be impossible by virtue of the assigned meanings of th...
I agree. And "might be called" is a good way of saying it, because logical or semantical determinism is peculiarly arid and sui generis, and doesn't r...
Sorry, the "that" was ambiguous. Better to have said, "A logical impossibility is so by virtue of its form. And we know that logical form is unaffecte...
Yes, a perfectly good way of putting it. I'll try to put it more precisely. A logical impossibility is so by virtue of its form. That form is unaffect...
David Foster Wallace gives a very original analysis of the sea-battle problem in his "Richard Taylor's 'Fatalism' and the semantics of physical modali...
I agree that taking into account the knowing mind is essential, and that too much physicalist or scientistic thinking refuses to see this. But actuall...
OK, this helps. I don't know if I've got @"AmadeusD" right, but I think the position you're describing would be something like: When we say "ought" in...
I'll ponder that Mill quote. Thinking about Germany's current policies on Nazi speech . . . perhaps there's such a thing as an entire nation suffering...
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