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Cabbage Farmer

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Like other artists and devotees of truth. In my view that's close to the heart of it, sorting out or untangling conceptual confusion. Not only in one ...
October 24, 2017 at 15:49
There's something clearly right about this. I wouldn't go so far as to say there's no such thing as an individual mind. I'd rather say... no human min...
October 23, 2017 at 16:11
What light does this shed on the point in question? Or is this more "skating"? The law of identity merely expresses the logical form of judgments of i...
October 23, 2017 at 15:53
I don't think the two views conflict. They seem compatible to me, but one seems supported by experience and the other doesn't. We can imagine a wide v...
October 22, 2017 at 16:37
I would say the world "as we inhabit it", or "as we experience it" is only here while we're here. But there's no reason to suppose that the world as w...
October 22, 2017 at 16:30
I'm often struck dumb at the way most theists seem to neglect this aspect of theology where it counts. They use it as a charm to wave off doubts in th...
October 21, 2017 at 18:08
It's an apt turn of phrase from a skilled rhetor. McDowell is a warm and fuzzy naturalist compared to Dennett. My impression is McDowell intentionally...
October 21, 2017 at 17:57
I still don't see what difference you're suggesting. So far it seems perhaps you're mistaking an abstract mathematical representation of some interact...
October 21, 2017 at 10:05
I'm not sure I understand your way of framing the principle as an auction. I suppose the simplest explanations would explain everything in terms of a ...
October 20, 2017 at 21:22
Good to see the second-person perspective getting some play in that de Quincey essay. I hope to give it a look sometime. Meanwhile: I think it's a gre...
October 20, 2017 at 19:01
How does this issue have implications for our thoughts about "what does and does not count as alive"? It's not news that organisms like us need oxygen...
October 20, 2017 at 18:21
I'm not sure what you're talking about. What sort of melancholy is evident in the philosophical work of Wittgenstein and in Aristotelian logic? For th...
October 20, 2017 at 18:11
In: #MeToo  — view comment
I was never assaulted in a workplace and I was never sexually harassed by a superior in a workplace. I'm not sure whether I've been sexually harassed ...
October 20, 2017 at 18:00
I'm cracking up. But I'll leave it alone.
October 20, 2017 at 15:39
I'm not sure such dismissals are motivated merely by practical concerns about the utility we might expect from pursuing such questions. I think it's w...
October 20, 2017 at 15:32
Well put. I strongly agree about the political and cultural value of the art. That justification makes it entirely practical, and also gives a standar...
October 20, 2017 at 14:46
A rhetorical call to radically reform the practice of philosophy sounds like philosophy to me. What a social practice "used to be" is not an authorita...
October 20, 2017 at 14:40
I agree with your stronger formulation of hiring policies. I also agree that our decisions here about what discourses to exclude are most definitive o...
October 20, 2017 at 14:35
One day when I was still a boy, I went to see a professor in his office to ask for an extension on a Hegel paper. By way of reply he told me, "Philoso...
October 20, 2017 at 13:24
Glad I'm not beating a dead horse. I've said before, I think the moderators do a fair job, and I'm personally satisfied with the balance in applicatio...
October 20, 2017 at 12:57
I recall seeing two or three such exchanges on the previous site. I'm sure the unruly way we carry on in these spaces is a prima facie deterrent to th...
October 19, 2017 at 16:52
"Constituted by exclusion", now there's a turn of phrase. I might call a speaker's discourse more "inclusive" if it's arranged to account for a greate...
October 19, 2017 at 15:19
I'm talking about philosophy in general, philosophy in the academy, and philosophy in this forum.
October 19, 2017 at 14:13
I agree. Our community reflects a wider range of philosophical biases than any philosophy department I'm aware of. I think that's for the best. I hope...
October 19, 2017 at 14:09
The point you took issue with was the point that our thoughts don't have to be "identical" but only sufficiently "similar" to support communication an...
October 19, 2017 at 12:28
I'm inclined to say fairness and compassion are more basic than a conception of "rights". I might also say that compassion is more basic than fairness...
October 19, 2017 at 01:54
Perhaps a solipsist may find some way to argue consistently with his principles that the world disappears when he sleeps. I'm a skeptic, not a solipsi...
October 19, 2017 at 01:41
Can you support your claim that there's equal reason to take the opposite sort of alternative seriously? I've been unable to find a satisfying argumen...
October 19, 2017 at 01:13
I've read a little feminist philosophy here and there, and I've had philosophical conversations with many people who call themselves feminist. Cultiva...
October 17, 2017 at 18:19
I'd say the moderation is about right. It's hard to assess, since I'm unaware of most of the cases of censorship. Perhaps the moderators could maintai...
October 17, 2017 at 16:06
It seems perhaps extravagant to suppose that there's a finite list of clearly distinguished human values that belong to human nature, or to suppose th...
October 17, 2017 at 14:52
Perhaps there's no contemporary philosopher whose work I've enjoyed more than McDowell's. I see he's got a response to Wiggins on akrasia in essay fou...
October 17, 2017 at 14:37
Can you support your bold claim that we must "have the same thought" in order to communicate, instead of merely "similar thoughts" as I suggested? Mus...
October 17, 2017 at 14:07
By "inadvertent self-deception", I mean to suggest that the self-deceiver has not clearly acknowledged for himself that he is deceiving himself. In th...
October 13, 2017 at 15:24
What does it mean to say "practical wisdom and virtue go hand in hand"? I take it one who is virtuous has practical wisdom, but some agents with pract...
October 13, 2017 at 13:59
I don't think it's a mistake to recognize a significant opposition in experiences of pleasure and pain or in their roles as motives. But it is a mista...
October 13, 2017 at 13:20
What is a "mental world"? How many mental worlds are there? What does it mean to say an idea or concept or fictional object "exists in the mental worl...
October 13, 2017 at 11:25
This seems like the same type/token distinction we've encountered together before. I suppose the answer depends in part on what we mean by "informatio...
October 12, 2017 at 18:56
Do I understand correctly: The problem is that one or more forum members, including one or more moderators, have told you that your OP doesn't belong ...
October 12, 2017 at 17:52
The dichotomy of pleasure and pain is slippery. The coordination of pleasure and pain with desire and aversion is complex. The relation of affect to r...
October 12, 2017 at 08:34
What does it mean to say "NOTHING is nonexistence"? Do you mean that "Pegasus does not exist" and "Pegasus is NOTHING" are essentially the same claim?...
October 11, 2017 at 11:21
No. Especially since you seem to have characterized "happiness" so as to make it incompatible with pain and suffering. I suggest that most of us do no...
October 02, 2017 at 12:42
I have the impression this remains a hotly contested region of philosophical discourse in the schools. I'm inclined to say that perceptual experience ...
October 01, 2017 at 16:55
Are we talking about natural languages, like English, or some sketch of an "ideal language" in a logician's notebook? I'll assume we're talking about ...
October 01, 2017 at 16:10
Try this: Propositional content: S loves everyone, S = "you" (the addressee) Propositional attitude: B intends (desires, recommends, commands...) that...
October 01, 2017 at 12:53
It seems we're in agreement on the underlying logic.
September 30, 2017 at 17:23
Thanks for crunching the numbers for us! I'm relieved to find that the math, at least, confirms my intuitions. I was running with unenlightened's usag...
September 29, 2017 at 15:41
@"unenlightened" I'm still not sure what our discussion about probabilistic inference has to do with Gettier's paper. Is it your position that wheneve...
September 29, 2017 at 14:44
Surely someone better versed in the logic of probability than I could help us clear up this confusion. I'm not sure it's valid. I take it the probabil...
September 29, 2017 at 14:23
As a number concept, the quantitative concept of zero entails a unit-concept. We need to specify the unit, an answer to the question "Zero what?" More...
September 28, 2017 at 19:38