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Staying within the Tarskian framework for the moment: If we say 'p is true in language L', are we ascribing a property to p? If not, exactly what are ...

Yes, quite close, and Kimhi is a hard-core Aristotelian if he's anything you could put a label on. But I assume Aristotle did not describe truth as a ...

Thanks, we certainly find the existence question in Kant. (That's why I chose "a hundred thalers" as my example.) What I'm trying to pin down is wheth...

Gosh, I seem to have riled you re Haslanger, which was certainly not my intention. I said this about her: "Sally Haslanger (and others, I'm sure) has ...

We seem to be inquiring into, and differing about, the meaning of the term "happiness" here. As you know, Sally Haslanger (and others, I'm sure) has s...

Thanks, very helpful. No need to run this into the ground but I still feel there ought to be a separate category other than merely "state of vice" to ...

Yes indeed, but that good may not be named as, or experienced as, happiness; we see this in Pat's case. I think you're right to place Robbie in this g...

Yes, these are interesting points. You're saying that, IF the satisfaction of a desire matches my expectation, then I am, ceteris paribus, happier tha...

Some philosopher once said that, while common sense doesn't necessarily get the last word, it should certainly be given the first word. So I'm trying ...

I don't know . . . possibly I've hung out with the wrong people but the idea that "humans necessarily want to be happy" is extremely implausible to me...

Yes, some fascinating connections here. I want to hold off and continue following this thread so I can learn more about Przywara, whom I haven’t read....

Yes, good. My concern is with the further, reflexive problem: Is that question (“Are we to begin our investigation with being or mind?”) a metaontic o...

Thanks for starting this thread. I will follow it with interest. But just to be clear, could you state what "this" refers to, in the quoted sentence? ...

A very interesting OP and discussion. A salutary reminder that analytic philosophy doesn’t necessarily provide the correct framework for all important...

Haven’t we conflated two different problems here? The first – the one raised by Locke – is whether there are innate ideas, which are presumably concep...

I understand what you're getting at, but it's a bit of a strawman, isn't it? "Unanalyzable primitive" doesn't seem to capture what philosophers mean w...

Sider is indeed arguing for a privileged ontological structure, and so is Nagel, and so am I. What isn’t privileged is the terms associated with that ...

Thanks, that's helpful, and I will mull my response to this. But just one thing . . . No one is assuming that such a disagreement is impossible. The p...

There's a lot here, and in your recent previous posts. I want to reply, but first I'd like to make sure I'm understanding you. Is there any "second-or...

Yes, good spotting. "Ontologically neutral quantification" (which I bolded, above) is exactly what we want. It's a good way of describing the differen...

Is this really right? I haven't worked with modal logic deeply enough to say. Certainly I had in mind the standard use of ? in non-modal logic, and I ...

This thread has developed far and wide, with the discussion quality very high, and I don’t mind at all the divagations from my OP. Unsurprisingly, thi...

This is great, thanks! Didn't know the sample was available online.

The more I think about this, the more I'm persuaded that this is the right line to take. It makes the most sense of some difficult concepts. So on to ...

With all respect to @"Banno", the formula "Numbers are something we do" could use some clarification. For one thing, it lends itself to the interpreta...

Yes, since the discussion needs a natural stopping place, we could certainly toss the ball back to the friends of QV. And yet . . . haven't they given...

Yes, it's complex. I keep thinking, though, that a "sincere dictator" isn't impossible. Consider two scenarios: 1. A rational egoist of some stripe en...

Very interesting, thanks. Agreed. Richard J. Bernstein, in Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, says this: Interestingly, Bernstein believes this is onl...

I'm sympathetic to that view, and offer a homely analogy. We can say true and false things about Sherlock Holmes. That he had lodgings in Baker Street...

I had in mind his Three Worlds conception, where Russell's individual brain-events would be thoughts in the World 2 sense, whereas the universals or o...

Thanks, it does look interesting.

I think this is a version of the question that was worrying me, about whether " ??’ is uniquely troublesome in that it’s used to refer to both a quant...

Sure, that's a perfectly good intuition, based on restricting "existence" to a certain range. All the problems come up when someone then asks you, Why...

Do I get a prize? :halo: You're right, the question expands beyond terminology to language itself. I was trying to keep it snappy. As for QV, I'm stil...

"The eternal Thompson gunner, still wandering through the night" . . . there's a Schopenhauerian thought for you.

Only a terminological question? By no means -- it's the question. @"Banno" is getting at the same thing: Absent an agreed-upon use of the existential ...

Thanks, that makes sense. There's a lot to unpack here. - Could you give an example of how a person would resort to standard explanatory schemes conce...

I agree that there is a kind of circle happening here, or perhaps better, there are two possible paths toward understanding what the dictator is doing...

And I appreciate yours, in sharing your understanding of Habermas, which may well be more extensive than mine. (I only discovered him a few years ago....

I'm sorry if I wasn't clear about the difference between the two. Dictator 1 makes a genuine argument for his ethical stance -- he tries to show why i...

For the sake of argument: Why couldn’t the dictator genuinely believe that it’s rational to advocate dominance over others? In that case, he’d be offe...

I more or less agree with this, though as I say, I don't know if I'm agreeing on Habermas's behalf or not. He might mean that even the dictator, by si...

Yes, this is similar to the first point that White raises when he pushes back on Habermas's communicative action schema: "Is the obligation to provide...

OK, that fits my reading of Habermas here. The quoted phrases are what require explanation or understanding, based on the principles of communicative ...

:grin:

Yes, this gets to the heart of it. One place where I am unclear concerning Habermas is the distinction he makes between communicative action as such, ...

I'm not sure "trying to find what is not so ambiguous" really captures Habermasian communicative action. Habermas wants to generate additional or furt...

I hope Astrophel will answer, but my response would be: Rorty's allegiance was contingent and pragmatic. He thought that reason was a historical pheno...

Thanks for your reply, Astrophel. What you say about value and ethics is true when ethics is conceived as being about specific content, such as the vi...

I agree that this is a difficult argument to make, because it challenges our basic intuitions about what makes an X an X. I could reply, “Right, I thi...