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Not so sure about "logical ideas" (maybe just "ideas"?) but otherwise I agree. At this point we need to make sure it's not just a dispute over terms. ...
October 17, 2024 at 14:06
Interesting paper, thanks, though I lack the background for some of the science. Still, I think I get the point. But I don't understand how anything A...
October 16, 2024 at 20:45
Right. "The thermostat is sensitive to the temperature" vs. "I feel warm ". Either is good English, but the philosophical difference is considerable. ...
October 16, 2024 at 20:20
Yes, and if you "define down" sensing so that it becomes something a thermostat can do, then you're still minus a theory of consciousness, which now h...
October 16, 2024 at 16:56
I must be missing something. Why do you need a "who" to monitor anything? A thermostat monitors itself just fine. It receives a stimulus and responds ...
October 16, 2024 at 16:27
But to know that they were "sensors," you'd have to already be importing some idea of what it means to sense, i.e., be conscious. Otherwise, aren't th...
October 16, 2024 at 14:38
I agree. I took that to be part of asking how a "sense" of stimuli could take place. I don't read "arises" as a type of causation. We need a verb to d...
October 16, 2024 at 14:16
There's a reason why Chalmers says "arises from" rather than "is caused by." You're assuming causation here, but that's not built into the hard proble...
October 16, 2024 at 13:41
Many thanks. I'll try the Heidegger lectures; always looking for entry points to MH's thought, which I find uncongenial.
October 16, 2024 at 13:20
But this just pushes back the theory of error one step. So these philosophers are offering fairly pained interpolations, trying to rescue nonsense? Bu...
October 15, 2024 at 20:31
Fair enough, and of course the response of someone like you, who's clearly done his reading, makes me think I've still missed something with Derrida. ...
October 15, 2024 at 17:07
Good point. My response to @"T Clark", above, is an attempt to mount such a defense, in the spirit of charity. But you're right, it's open to a lot of...
October 15, 2024 at 15:10
Well, not quite. The response I and others are making is more like, "Keep trying." And the "keep trying" can take many forms, including asking another...
October 15, 2024 at 13:32
This all makes sense. The separation of realism from conventionalism and nominalism is important, I agree. (Sider speaks about it terms of a “privileg...
October 15, 2024 at 12:38
And that would be stringent or hardcore physicalism. But I'm trying to be fair to physicalism as a more general thesis (one I don't agree with, but it...
October 15, 2024 at 12:30
This is a really useful context for exploring physicalism, thanks for posting. One question to start with: We all have an idea what physicalism is, bu...
October 14, 2024 at 21:15
Actually, I agree with that too. If there's any perplexity here, it has to do with the role language plays in constructing our experience of the world...
October 14, 2024 at 14:17
I'm not sure whether the Tractatus is quite as common-sense as you're describing it, but I'm no authority on matters Wittian. I agree that the proposi...
October 13, 2024 at 23:51
Happy to go with you, but could you restate the question? Something off about the grammar.
October 12, 2024 at 22:49
:lol:
October 12, 2024 at 22:46
This may be getting to the heart of it, especially if we push back, even gently, on the idea that "language" and "world" are easily separable and dist...
October 12, 2024 at 22:45
I'm happy to drop either "fact" or "state of affairs," as long as it's clear that, whichever one we retain, it's the non-linguistic referent of a stat...
October 12, 2024 at 21:56
Yikes! But I don't think so. We need to make statements in order to talk about anything, certainly, but that doesn't mean that everything we talk abou...
October 12, 2024 at 21:41
The statement describes or names a particular situation in the world. This is done using words. What I'm calling a "particular situation in the world"...
October 12, 2024 at 21:39
Agreed, but just about no one mistakes the statement for the state of affairs. But you know this, so I realize there's something I'm not understanding...
October 12, 2024 at 21:29
Ok. The statement from @"frank" that I was questioning is "States of affairs have the same form as thoughts." We can be more generous and change it to...
October 12, 2024 at 21:26
Well gosh, I opened my copy and it all looks like a bunch of words to me. Where's the cat-on-the-mat-looking part? I know that's not what you meant. B...
October 12, 2024 at 20:40
Agree. I've noticed a tendency for many people to get exercised about the so-called problem of "treating subjectivity as an object." Like you, I can't...
October 12, 2024 at 20:20
No worries, this is sort of the after-party! Well, but this is what I'm contesting. Even on the most generous interpretation of "form," a cat sitting ...
October 12, 2024 at 20:12
Glancing at SEP, what I see is "States of affairs are similar to thoughts. Thoughts are true or false; states of affairs obtain or not." That's a litt...
October 12, 2024 at 17:48
I guess I should "like" your post. :wink: That may be close to it, if by "expression" we include the act of thinking. The new part is Kimhi's confiden...
October 12, 2024 at 17:37
Really appreciate your thoughts here. What you say about unity vs. duality is, I think, the best shot yet at trying to explicate Kimhi on that topic. ...
October 12, 2024 at 15:22
Strange indeed. I have a friend who refers to this as "the impossible problem," for the reasons we've just laid out. The good news is that such absolu...
October 12, 2024 at 15:04
An interesting dilemma follows from the idea of "experiencing what X experiences." Am I having that experience, or is X? If it's me, then it would app...
October 12, 2024 at 13:11
Just for the record, that isn't the standard way of stating the problem, and it isn't David Chalmers' way (he coined the phrase). You can listen to Ch...
October 12, 2024 at 12:45
Well, anyway. All this was in aid of investigating whether clarity really is a hallmark of (let's call it) Anglophone philosophy, or whether the "uncl...
October 12, 2024 at 12:36
Good question. Anyone know?
October 11, 2024 at 22:44
Yes, forgot McDowell.
October 11, 2024 at 22:42
OK, I spent a little time with the PhilPapers survey. You did notice that those surveyed were, by a huge majority, English-speaking (mostly US) and id...
October 11, 2024 at 20:52
Cool, thank you.
October 11, 2024 at 20:35
Arthur C. Danto is the only name that comes to mind. His early works were certainly Analytic but as he became focused more on aesthetics, his interest...
October 11, 2024 at 20:35
Do you happen to know what group was surveyed?
October 11, 2024 at 20:26
OK, thanks. It's an interesting take on Rorty's part but I'm not sure it's held by too many others. It makes for some strange groupings -- Husserl is ...
October 11, 2024 at 19:27
Well, I did say "arguably". :smile: Perhaps it would have better to say something like "In the early 20th century a split in methods and interests occ...
October 11, 2024 at 14:48
OK, I'll stand up for the Continentals here! Is it possible that what you're calling "unclarity" could better be called "difficulty"? Case in point, p...
October 11, 2024 at 12:58
To the first point: you'd said "the quality of our lives" so I took you to be referring to something intersubjectivity or semi-universal. But now I se...
October 10, 2024 at 00:50
Good. All too often, a philosopher's conception of personhood is asked to do too much, especially in the ethical area.
October 10, 2024 at 00:29
I can't help asking: Isn't the above a definitive answer to the question of how to do "proper" philosophy? So when you discovered the answer, were you...
October 10, 2024 at 00:24
Yes, an excellent piece. That's one of the reasons I appreciate Nagel so much -- he refuses to be doctrinaire about the type of philosophy he was trai...
October 09, 2024 at 22:56
I understand that the outliers are not the subject of your OP, but I do want to point out that this view of personhood, based as it is on a capacity f...
October 09, 2024 at 22:55