J

Yes, #1 has its attractions, but notice that, in its entirety, it commits us to the belief that the "I think" can be experienced. This may be hair-spl...

Right. And for Rödl (and I think Kant and Sartre) it isn't even a matter of "prefixed"; the "I think" is supposed to be structural or internal. That's...

Good start! Re Davidson, I'm not sure. But since I'm more or less thinking about three phil topics at once these days, I wouldn't be surprised So, if ...

Now you've got me curious! Would you be willing to share a link to one of them with us?

OK. Rödl is dealing with some similar issues in Self-Consciousness and Objectivity. His "absolute idealism" leads him to very different conclusions, o...

I don't think that's the problem. Rules of math and logic are also extremely general principles, but we don't have trouble finding agreement there. So...

Rouse is helpful here in showing this connection among the five philosophers. Whether all their accounts fail, I couldn't say. When he writes, "The un...

Just to keep the argument clear here, what should we say the description "a cat" is contingent upon? Obviously I'm not looking for a reply along the l...

I see how this all hangs together, thanks.

Yes, everyone finds their own Wittgenstein! Kimhi, in Thinking and Being, claimed Witt as a fellow exponent of the monistic unity of thinking and bein...

OK, that's clearer to me. My point -- somewhat off the point, perhaps -- is that we never arrive at something we can simply take as what it is, as opp...

This is tricky. I want to say that a major chord is not "that string, that string, and that string." If I'd given such an answer back in school, I wou...

OK, but the annoying question is, "Wouldn't it have to follow that 'being a piece of wood' is a way of treating Object A ?"

No, exactly that. I think that is (with a couple of technical tweaks) the concept of a major chord. But I thought you were saying that we didn't have ...

@"Banno" I just came across this, which speaks to the Wittgensteinian theme being discussed over in the "Mathematical platonism" thread: "Only as it i...

I can definitely do without "mental items in one's head," though in fairness that's a somewhat tendentious way of putting it. But I'm wondering whethe...

Don't be too sure. Our ignorance about what other species can do is astonishing. It wasn't so long ago that scientists questioned whether other animal...

I do a section a day, after coffee, when if I'm lucky I can concentrate for 30 minutes. :halo: But please don't slog on my account . . .

Yeah, I know, unfortunate. But he's a good meta-philosopher for all that. Pretty sure Nozick would agree with that. The tone of the book is discursive...

Yes, everything you say is a nice concise view of the problematic territory here. I'm more comfortable with Davidson than Witt on this topic but that'...

I'm sorry, I can't resist a good typo. Yes, I too find small numbers to be prim, even reticent. But then there's ?, which is small but goes on and on ...

I realize that, sorry if I implied otherwise. I was just using your question to compare with a type of question that I think others have been asking. ...

Yes, though as I wrote above, I'm still locating all the pieces on the board with Rödl. It's a dense book. You're reading it, right? His arguments abo...

Yes, the ref is I 1, 641a10ff. Also: "C.f. De Anima, Book III, 429a." I haven't gotten to pp. 118 - 123 yet. Good to know he's on target with Aristotl...

Interesting, and thanks for replying to my OP. I'm not sure where Rödl is going to take this, but I'll be better informed now.

This subthread shouldn't get left behind. Some of this was sounding familiar to me, and I thought it might have jogged a memory from Nozick's Philosop...

I hadn't thought about a conceptual scheme of the sort that Davidson denies when I articulated this idea. But you raise a good point. Let me think on ...

I could respond to some of your specific points (I could say, Well, in a way we do speak about instances of Rock showing up, categorically), but what ...

Apology accepted.

My friend, there's nothing here to be angry about. We all use the forum to question and debate each other's ideas. I think you haven't gotten my point...

Granted, there are many versions of an appeal to authority, including the argumentum ad baculum (check your Thomas)! Those who regard an appeal to rea...

I didn't want to neglect this, in the flurry of posts here. Call these your axioms: Existence is a property. All material objects have this property. ...

Thanks -- but if we can't distinguish "conceptual" from "terminological," then what I'm saying wouldn't make sense. How about this? We likely construc...

I know what you're getting at, but discussing the Divided Line is a different matter, no? Surely we can adapt the ideas of pistis and dianoia into our...

Thanks, and you've put your finger on what I'm wondering about too. Can Rödl go on to say that nous cannot be included in any domain? It gets finicky,...

I think we're in agreement, actually, and if you don't follow, the fault is likely mine. We're both saying that there is a conceptual division that we...

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that the three first-order translations, taken together, describe the conceptual territory covered by "exist" in ...

OK. OK. But now you've lost me. Is this a coincidence? You've said there's no definitional relation, so how and why does this relation obtain?

This, to me, is starting to step in the right direction, because with this distinction we're at least no longer asking "existence" to do more work tha...

Cool.

Good! But that must mean that "existence" is being given a much broader interpretation than "made of material stuff." So here we go again . . .

Yes, if I thought there was a hope of ever settling it. But using the "existence" terminology to do so just doesn't seem to get anywhere. Instead, let...

That's one of the better defenses of continuing "existence"-talk that I've heard. I woudn't want to cut all ties with one common usage (and I'll come ...

I'm fine with the concept of existence; you can even use it in logic as long as you confine it to existential predication. What I'm urging (tongue a b...

Yes, it's not a very exciting result when applied to things like rabbits, because, as has been said, we can be pretty damn confident. I think it gets ...

That would be one answer to what I was calling a more interesting question, yes. Addition does seem a more plausible candidate for causal efficacy tha...

Perhaps a more interesting version of this question is to ask, "Does the addition of 2 and 2 cause the result 4?" That is certainly not how we speak a...

Got it, thanks. And I would say that the ban on connections between being and thought goes in both directions, so to speak. A deflationist won't enter...

Good. Your "weak idea of correspondence" is an excellent limit case, calling into question whether we would even use the term "model" for a mapping th...

I'll take the liberty of repeating something I wrote previously: The posts on the last couple of pages make an excellent argument for my case. What wo...