Not quite. Think of it in terms of Frege's "force" as equivalent to (one sense of) "assertion". The question is then: How does the "content" (of the f...
I don't much like "context of assertion" either, but the deeper challenge here is whether, in fact, a belief can be true or false without being assert...
Predating Tarski by several centuries! And the challenge to that, coming from people like Kimhi and Sebastian Rödl (who I'm now reading with great int...
Kimhi is helpful here: He adds this footnote: On this understanding of Aristotle, a contrary pair will display positive and negative acts involving a ...
This helps point out the question I was asking. It's the matter of resemblance. I understand you're using that word because there isn't a more perfect...
The word “it” in “Is it accurate?” in reference to a painting must, on this argument, refer to either a particular painting (“utterance”) or some othe...
Well, yeah, it’s pretty philosophical - that was kinda the idea! You can find good explanations of it on SEP and elsewhere, I’m sure. Just a suggestio...
True, we don’t usually get a consensus on this. Just to help the discussion along, suppose we took Quine’s formulation - “To be is to be the value of ...
OK, it's a sort of genealogy of ethics. As such, it's foreign to the questions of ethics as I understand them, but I appreciate your laying out your p...
I don't know how I can make any more compelling the idea that we're simply playing around with what "benefit" means. I don't think "the best option av...
This is the claim that needs arguing, I think. When you speak about something being "built into our motivational aims," are you describing it from the...
Truly, we're disputing words now. We both agree that there is something of great value in standing up for a principle even if it means enduring a drea...
Quite often, that's correct. But more importantly, it doesn't matter whether it benefits us or not. We're supposed to do the virtuous thing regardless...
This is an interesting psychological picture of how people experience their connections with others, but isn't an awful lot of ethical talk being pres...
I liked what you said about the important connections between recognition and empathy. I might have put it a bit more directly -- it's hard to love, a...
Sorry, this is opaque to me. Could you expand? And, no offense, but in your own words if possible? I'm less interested in what other philosophers have...
We need, in a word, hermeneutics. Yes, with a heavy emphasis on your warning about simplistic "single monolithic episteme" talk. The interlocking is c...
Good questions. To the first, yes, I think an interlocutor of Socrates (let's call him Kantias) could have posed theories about the moral value of mot...
OK. I still see problems with equivocation, and unless I missed it, you haven't addressed the use of "good for me" as in "beneficial,"* but I will def...
Nonsense. I've been at pains to say that I do not agree with all of Kant's solutions to ethical problems. Just for starters, I don't think the categor...
I wish I knew what "modern thinking" consisted of, that supposedly made it either so unique or so pernicious. Anscombe doesn't persuade me. When I rea...
This view of a continuity between ancient and modern ethics is similar to what I’ve been saying to Count T, if you’ve been following that conversation...
Thanks for this. You've offered two suggestions I will take up: to question more carefully whether this is a case of wanting univocal predication when...
Which would lead me to think that it's actually an empirical truth, a fact about this world -- which gets back to Nagel's question, "What kind of fact...
Fair enough. So my suggestion for Version 1 should have read, “If you are good, it will be good for you, in the sense that either you or someone else ...
Yes, this is more or less the way I (and I believe Nagel) see it. It's not a matter of contradiction. What remains concerning, of course, is the huge ...
This is an excellent question, and immediately takes me back to another excellent question first posed by Thomas Nagel: "What kind of fact is it -- if...
Ah, a light has dawned for me. I think what’s gotten confused in our discussion is the grammatical impact of “for you.” I’ve been reading “It is good ...
Yes, no question. In the circumstances in which Socrates finds himself, he’s made the right choice. But I believe we’re all familiar with the expressi...
That makes sense -- but do you read MacIntyre as saying that, as a result of the classical metaphysical tradition taking sway, it was no longer a "thi...
I really feel fortunate to have someone like you describe the connections among these earlier philosophical views. You’re able to produce a world view...
I'll add my welcome! and offer what I hope is a helpful clarification. We can have strong evidence for something without being certain about it. In fa...
It doesn't render "health" vacuous, it renders the statement vacuous. This is a good example, and helps me clarify why the use of "good" is different....
These are all interesting and worthy points, and I want to go on to discuss them. But can you return to the question of "It's good for me to be good"?...
Yes, but what we're discussing is whether there's also a neurological capability to discriminate true from false, and right from wrong, in the same wa...
"Good" discussion! To start a reply, let's take seriously the possibility you raise, that this is an example, a la MacIntyre, of an ethical discourse ...
So what ought we to say to the unethical businessman? Should we say, "You're being inefficient and improvident. You're not getting as many goods as yo...
I know. I meant that your reading of these contemporary comments is "19th century" a la Kierkegaard and the Romantics, full of mystery that (to me) is...
It's hard to know how to respond to this line of thought. All I can do is read Descartes as carefully as I can, noting problems as they come up. If he...
Thanks for doing all this detective work in the Meditations -- it's very helpful and illuminating. A few thoughts: - We see how conflicted Descartes i...
Then how do we know which to heed -- the first, second, or third thought? Is the idea supposed to be that there is yet another evolutionary capacity t...
I do, and it makes sense to me. Many scientific stories, including evolution, can give us information about our species and help us decide what would ...
In general, I agree that Descartes's project can be accepted on its own terms -- he wasn't using the concepts of 20th century philosophy, and he wasn'...
I would say the unwarranted conclusion has to do with an essential identity being attached to “thinking thing.” Again, Ricoeur’s criticism is coming t...
Yes. When I first read philosophy, the cogito seemed a miracle of cleverness and reliability. What a great result! -- I've discovered not only that I ...
Yes, exactly. Descartes has drawn what Ricoeur believes to be a false, or at any rate unwarranted, conclusion. In fairness, the idea that the self mig...
But: So the challenge is to explain how "choiceworthy for its own sake" isn't incoherent. I'm not saying it can't be done, I'm just pointing out the d...
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