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I believe Aristotle said it could be either. There are "natural" slaves, and also those enslaved forcibly whose nature is otherwise. Probably in the P...

Yes to both of these, and I think this points a way forward. Our Smoker has, I'm assuming, taken into account the facts about health in arriving at th...

I didn't want to ignore your other reply here. I certainly agree. We can imagine -- perhaps with difficulty! -- a kind of ideal human in whom rational...

This is more or less the same point I was making. "Being against my best interest" is an ethical term; "being medically bad for me" is a scientific te...

Quite right. We're trying to understand a case in which the person asks for a reason why they are wrong. What must we say to them? I said your argumen...

I hope it doesn't seem as if I'm quibbling, but . . . you've made a change in the terminology that needs to be brought out. You write: But my question...

OK, let's take this step by step, if you don't mind, as the argument is somewhat complicated. For starters, here are three statements (call this "the ...

But putting it this way begs the question against the individual. Let's call them the Smoker for convenience. You're assuming that avoiding the risk o...

I like that. So the alleged "pilot" self would receive information about a sense perception in order to assess it ("as a pilot perceives by sight if s...

Yes. Philosophically, I prefer your way of understanding "perceive" to the more common usage in which we can be flat "wrong" about perceptual experien...

This is interesting and of course contentious. I separate most of my ethical and spiritual practices from philosophy, precisely because it is very hel...

Glad you agree. I don't think we can take that attitude. We're assuming that there are compelling reasons we can give a flat-earther that should convi...

Sure, but you and I have talked about this before, and the tragedy is that none of these things we might say can have any bearing for the person who s...

Yes, this is a further step that need not necessarily be taken. Lewis' quote about courage highlights what I would say next: Universal maxims or discu...

I think we're getting confused by different meanings of "perceived". What @"Kranky" seems to mean is "perceive" as in "correctly identify an object of...

Perhaps not intentionally. But it's the obvious conclusion to be drawn from this: Why would your interlocutor agree that "stomping babies is bad" unle...

Sorry, not the same. The whole ethical problem resides in making that leap. Of course being stomped is bad for a living creature. But why should I car...

A typo, I think? You meant "truth functionality requires that there not be substitutional opacity," no? Or else I really got lost!

Yes, these are reasonable doubts. But I think @"Wayfarer" makes the right response: It isn't quite accurate to say that it's "a tiny percentage of peo...

I'll have to check him out, thanks. I started to write "Yes" but then I asked myself, "Well, why exactly?" What's so exceptional about such a claim th...

I thought you'd be on board with that: But maybe your "Ok" wasn't assent. I agree about not prolonging this with color phenomenology and Mary the Colo...

No. This problem has been around for a while, as you know. "Maybe Jesse's 'red' looks like my 'green'?!!" But that doesn't stop us from being able to ...

True enough. Glad to have had your thoughts.

OK, I like what you're saying here. Please do share any thoughts on the tension between Witt and Davidson. My own reservations may turn out to be simi...

Yes, and this pertains as well to the "content of you" -- of the "I" who is doing the thinking. As Ricoeur notes, above, the experience of the "I" is ...

Heck yeah. What else is self-reflection but self-knowledge?

Yes, exactly. What's left? Would you reject out of hand the possibility that "God-realization" is a term, however fuzzy and encrusted with doctrines, ...

Yeah, that's the challenge. We'd really need a different way of talking about how experience and memory work at the "below-ego" level. And this is als...

Later in the same essay, Ricoeur puts it even more clearly:

It's interesting that serious meditation practice, especially in Hinduism and Buddhism, makes this point vivid. My understanding is that an experience...

Good guess. He may be poking fun at people who can't imagine that their experiences might ever lead them astray. And that's perfectly fair, when state...

I’ve wanted to dwell on this passage before but never found the occasion. So . . . what are the actual objections FN is raising here? “It is I who thi...

Looks like this thread has run out of steam. Does anyone want to hear about, and discuss, Pincock's direct argument in support of the "tall order" (pr...

He wouldn't understand a word of that. Trumpius, god of stupidity.

Stop, my face hurts from laughing! And besides, we here in the US have plenty of good things to say about misogyny, just ask our misogynist-in-chief!

Fair enough. It would be a good OP though -- if you start it, I'll gladly participate.

I see your point. But to deny them that opportunity, shouldn't we start by branding them as liars and tyrants? (If we're willing to suffer the consequ...

Of course they have. But they lie and distort what is going on under their tyrannies, so that criticisms of the regime are vilified as "dehumanizing" ...

Yes, exactly -- they take a different approach than the somewhat more rigid ideas of US "free speech." And I respect that. I'm using "respect" to mark...

Excellent points. This should really be an OP to discuss the philosophy of speech in a democracy. For now I'll just say that I don't think free speech...

I know! I'm not sure. I certainly wouldn't protest at such a banning. The US free-speech tradition is pretty strong, but I also respect how European c...

I think it was the right thing to do, in this case, but it's worth pointing out that complete lack of response to demeaning posts can often accomplish...

But only on a particular interpretation of what it means to say something -- which is the very interpretation we're examining. Draw? :wink:

I guess I never understood why this was supposed to be obvious, or even true. Why is doing more important than saying? Certainly we want to know what ...

I think you're pointing to the fact that any definition will ultimately have to consist of simples. But why would that mean it wasn't a definition, or...

Considering this . . . I think you can make Aristotle’s argument go through if you drop the premise “The skeptic has presented a piece of discursive k...

I'm not sure how to get to that generalization. Can you work it out using the example in question?

Forgot to say, I think the rest of your post, about noesis and misologism, is excellent. These are interests of mine as well, and I agree that noesis ...

No, Aristotle has to say that 1-6 purport to be, but are not, a discursive demonstration. Which upsets the whole apple-cart. You're reading Aristotle'...

The distinction between a justification and an explanation is excellent. I agree with everything you're saying here except whether justification alone...