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Not sure I get this. Can you expand? I sympathize. Explaining what seems obvious to you, to someone for whom it isn't obvious at all, is difficult. I ...

I don't quite understand this. Are you saying that, for those without the inclination or capacities for respecting social norms, there is no argument ...

So here is a restatement of the issues in the OP, as influenced and I hope clarified by the subsequent discussion. 1) I began by saying that the quest...

Oh, I definitely agree about the tendency and the capacity. It's just that, if I happen to be one of those lacking that tendency or capacity, we've pu...

Well, OK. So if I were to say to someone, "You ought to ____ ," that would be pointless, since they're doing it anyway?

I know we've been here before, but I have to point out that this could only be true if "better than" is defined as "should be chosen" or "is worthy of...

I agree with the thrust of your post, and I personally share the sentiment quoted above. But . . . suppose I don't? Suppose I don't see others as like...

Sorry, perhaps we should have elaborated more. Fortunately it's a pretty easy concept to grasp. This schema, which at first glance seems a bit rough a...

Your OP is a well-stated version of an evolutionary explanation for morality. As such, it's open to the usual objections, which I think are correct. F...

I understand Russell's and Pryor's interpretations. I'm still not clear on how something can be neither particular nor universal. Also, why "not unive...

I want to hear @"Patterner"'s response, but I'll just jump in to say that I do think it's a fair description of the confusion -- or at any rate the un...

No, I found it helpful. A question here. If we agree, as we should, that Fa v UxGx is not universal, how does that help in addressing the second versi...

I just want to note that I understand these comments. For me, they point to two things: First, the difficulty of adapting our concepts of causality on...

Ah, OK, much clearer, and now I understand why the 1st diagram seemed counter-intuitive. I hadn't understood that only the single, designated F was a....

Yeah, saw that. It was on the internet. Why did you think you made it up? :wink: Absolutely right. Those that are caused by previous thoughts are a sp...

I happened to run across this, in Peirce: "Affectibility" is yet another near-synonym, like "relationship" or "association" or "influence," a way of a...

Pretty sure I get it, thanks. An example with English nouns and predicates would help too, I think. Or maybe this is what you mean by a good analogue....

I thought your Castro example was meant to show the opposite. Or perhaps we're debating shades of meaning, because I also agree that "certain things f...

I see what you mean, but when I spoke about "understanding mental causation," I intended to include the how as well as the fact of it. To me, that wou...

I've had that happen plenty of times too! Which perhaps reminds us that "to understand" is broad, and often incomplete. Math isn't my forte, so I've f...

When J. M. Keynes was asked whether he thought in images or in words, he supposedly replied, "I think in thoughts." There's a lot to this. I'm often a...

I think this is the wrong question, though it's invited by the way I framed the problem. Better to have said, "What conceivable public criterion could...

This theme has cropped up early and often on the thread: Our conceptual understanding of an apparently local, tractable problem like "How does one tho...

"I believe" and "I intend" are convenient examples to support this position, because they have no "content" apart from a kind of imprimatur on decisio...

Could you expand on this? I have Thought A and then retrieve a memory so as to have Thought B? Why that particular memory? We can stipulate that, cert...

Gee, coming attractions! Thanks. :smile:

Maybe I'm not explaining it well. I guess it hinges on two different senses of "necessary." If I say "The squirrel is in the tree, therefore it must b...

True. But the alleged modal counter-example has to make use of a qualifier or caveat about time, doesn't it? "Because p, it is necessarily the case th...

Yes. It's hard to deny -- and why would we want to? -- that those of us who thought "12" did so because we previously thought "7 + 5". Now, as @"Dawns...

A fascinating response. I appreciate your spending the time on it. There's a lot to reply to, but let me start with the important point you raise abou...

I get it. And, in reverse, all the muddle-making issues about physical cause show up when we try to understand mental causation! The "OP format" on TP...

Great. That's exactly what I'd like to hear about: Can we give a sense of causality to entailment or logical equivalence?

I've read the first section of Russell's paper. Do you find the putative counter-examples persuasive? They seem fishy to me, but I don't know how to g...

This is the key (problematic) statement. What sort of causality is involved here? Do you mean "cause" at the level of neuronal activity? Or does one i...

I have no problem with that but, like talk of "relationships", are we really saying much when we say that connections between thoughts are associative...

It might be any number of things -- a picture, a scent, a dream, Proust's cookie, or, of course, a previous thought. I'm not suggesting that only a pr...

Good question. But do you mean "thoughts" understood as my W2 thoughts, or thoughts as propositions? I'm suggesting that "thought" can be understood i...

Very interesting. I'll read Russell's paper.

I think you're onto something here. There's a particular type of thinking that is philosophical, though it's hard to state clearly. I would emphasize ...

Welcome to phil! I agree with all the advice about reading histories of philosophy, but here's a personal recommendation: Most phil is written in a mo...

Is there any reason why we couldn't equally well say, "The physical is a particular organization within consciousness, not something over and above it...

@"Banno"@"Janus"@"Count Timothy von Icarus" @"Ludwig V" @"Sam26" Thanks, and coincidentally, I also have to be offline for 2 weeks, as I'm going out o...

Because they aren't asserting the same thing, or at least we need an argument to show that they do. The first speaks of the truth of a statement ("som...

Before I reply in any detail, let me be sure I understand you. Are you saying there are ontological truths about the future? That is, the future exist...

A good example of how different people work with "know." I would in fact say just that, perhaps precisifying it: "I strongly believe that I will eat t...

Sorry if I wasn't clear. Satisfying the JTB criteria is how we know a sentence is true, supposedly. What makes it true would be some version of Tarski...

Yes. Or if not assume, at least spell out some criteria that don't merely repeat the J criteria. Surely not. This is the absurd "deduction" I was addr...

Of course it's circular. But doesn't it follow? If "My aunt lives in Denver" is a JTB, it must be the case that my aunt lives in Denver. No further ve...

I have trouble with that; surely the justifications matter? Can we act like P is true -- that is, assert that we have the T for JTB -- if the justific...

I'm not clear why this would be JTB. Even the ancients knew about mirages, judging from classical literature. And, in the unlikely event I had the pre...