Clearbury

That's not what I understand the word 'grounding' to mean. Propositions are about things. Causes seem to be what explain things. This is why a 'causal...

I am not sure I quite see that an explanation is a proposition. I'm not a fan of 'grounding' as it is not clear to me that it's a good alternative to ...

A belief in a moral principle is not sufficient for the principle to exist. We're going in circles here. If you believe it is right to rape people, th...

Ha, all he seems to have done is make something that is quite easy to understand an order of magnitude harder by use of those terms. 'Fact' is not the...

Yes, it implies that there are some things that do not have explanations. The most common modification in light of the above is to hold that it is onl...

And you seem not to be grasping the point. You said, and I quote That's obviously false. 'Believing' there are such principles enough to explain why a...

That's like arguing that God must exist otherwise people wouldn't be able to do what they believe God wants them to do! If someone believes God wants ...

She is being illogical as solipsism is the view that only one mind exists. So a person who thinks it is surprising that there are not other persons wh...

It's based on simplicity. Both theories are explaining the same data - the empirical data. But the standard evolutionary theory posits lots and lots o...

This is a claim you made in your initial post. But the point is that you seem to be confusing the evolution of moral beliefs with the evolution of mor...

Admittedly, my theory has changed slightly as it is now simpler than the original. But the original evolutionary story involves random mental state ge...

I have always been entirely unimpressed by this kind of cosmological argument for God. For even if its premises are true - and they seem highly questi...

No, the principle of sufficient reason says that everything that exists has a sufficient explanation of its existence. It says nothing about simplicit...

What's being posited is a mind that is in a mental state - so, whatever total mental mental state you are in now (including all experiential states), ...

So if I just 'think' the theory of evolution is true, then that's sufficient for there to be reason to believe it is true? That's not a defensible the...

That misses the point. The best explanation of why we believe there are reasons to do and believe things is not that there actually are, but that beli...

I can make no sense of that. You haven't explained how something non-physical can expand. Something cannot expand if there is no space for it to expan...

The issue does not seem to be what kind of a thing the mind is. It does not matter for simplicity's sake whether minds are material or immaterial. Wha...

I do not see why the principle of sufficient reason is equivalent to the principle of parsimony. They seem like two quite different principles. The fi...

But only something that occupies some space can expand, as there needs to be the space it occupies and then expands into. So something that is not ext...

I asked you kindly not to do what you are now doing.

Principles of reason seem as jeopardized by an evolutionary account as moral principles are (which are, i take it, just another form of principles of ...

That seems false and also not to provide us with a reason to think it solipsism false. It is not psychologically impossible to believe that you are th...

I think you have missed the point. Posits are not expalined, that's what makes them posits. Positing two things is more complicated than positing one,...

It's what the term means. And that's how I am using it. Solipsism is the view that one mind - and one mind alone - exists. it's not even a view about ...

I don't think that can be true as that generates an infinite regress. So unless we say that every assumption is as reasonable as any and all others, t...

But how can something unextended 'expand'? On reflection, it doesn't even matter if we suppose only extended things to exist, for the solipsist thesis...

That's a strawman. Solipsism is the view that only one mind exists. What I am arguing is that we can explain what needs to be explained more efficient...

That knowledge cannot exist absent minds isn't in dispute. It doesn't raise a problem for the 'truth requires a mind' thesis. It is the thesis that tr...

That's a different point. My point is that my thesis is simpler than the alternative. That is what jkop is disputing. Other things being equal, we hav...

Yes, but we are both appealing to evolutionary processes. You're positing billions of physical things, I'm positing one mind. In terms of simplicity, ...

What one could do, perhaps, is reduce existence to truth. That is to say, perhaps what it is for something to exist, is simply for the proposition 'th...

Yes, only minds can know things. However, it doesn't seem to be a necessary truth that there can be knowledge without minds. The opposite - that there...

We can certainly conceive of many propositions that seem troublesome, such as that 'no minds exist'. That seems capable of being true, yet it would no...

I take it to be self-evidently possible. It seems manifest to reason that if something exists, then it is true that it exists. That seems like a neces...

Thank you for clarifying. I think that is the direction I would go in too - that is, I would deny that truths can exist absent all minds. But then tha...

I am interested in the nature of truth. I am late to this discussion. But am I right in thinking that the issue here is that truth seems to require mi...

I accept a case is needed for thinking that mind monism is simpler than physical monism, but I don't see that you've made a case there for thinking ph...

I am not sure. As this is a solipsistic theory, then I am the mind in question and I do not seem to be a god. The theory would need to explain my appa...

What a rude person you are. I won't be responding to you again.

Whole as in 'entire'. What's odd?

Not sure what you mean. If supposing a wholly evolutionary story is correct lands us with a reality bereft of principles of reason - something I am un...

No, because it seems premature to conclude that there are no moral principles in reality until the paradox is resolved. Plus I am not sure how i can r...

I should adjust my view a little, for if I am wrong and the idea of a mind coming into being is less problematic a starting assumption than the assump...

As I hope I have now clarified, that was not the argument I made. The point is not about where one looks, for it really does not matter by what mechan...

By 'question begging' I mean the vice of assuming the truth of that which needed to be demonstrated. You have strawmanned my argument. I gave, I think...

I don't think it does have a start. i admit that the idea of there being something that exists eternally is probably problematic. But I think the idea...

That's question begging. Whether that's the whole story or not is precisely what the paradox calls into question.

I think this has the same implication as before though: that this is going to turn out to be a neverending story, though one that will start over and ...

I think that's an open question. Depends on how the paradox is resolved.