You are viewing the historical archive of The Philosophy Forum.
For current discussions, visit the live forum.
Go to live forum

jkop

Comments

Social constructionists might want to challenge the test as anachronistic if the birth in question occurred before the 1980s when testable DNA had yet...
March 27, 2017 at 18:51
Heidegger's obscurity makes him more of a guru than a philosopher, which might be sufficient reason for students or teachers of philosophy to skip som...
March 27, 2017 at 17:29
I get how the assumption of powers beneath consciousness and beyond logic can have such a deplorable influence on people's respect for argument and th...
March 25, 2017 at 10:11
If uncritical acceptance of his doctrines qualifies a reader of Foucault, then I'm happy to decline. But I was never applying to be "a reader of Fouca...
March 25, 2017 at 04:41
It is neither equivocation nor misreading to infer that he is, in effect, replacing argument with discourse. He does so by introducing alleged powers ...
March 25, 2017 at 03:35
Does my use of the word "replace" matter a lot? Foucault's prose is notoriously dense, so let me quote what is written on the subject in Stanford Ency...
March 24, 2017 at 05:32
Foucault replaced argument with discourse, recall, so, you don't get to argue at all. Instead there is discourse, and whatever rhetoric you can muster...
March 24, 2017 at 03:59
What you guys want seems unreasonable. Foucault, for instance, replaced the very idea of argument with discourse, and truth with power (Archaeology of...
March 24, 2017 at 01:40
According to Chomsky it was around the 1970s when a group of Parisian intellectuals and maoists (e.g. Julia Kristeva & Co.) could no longer deny the a...
March 23, 2017 at 19:14
Not when the claim is supported by good reasons. But to say that no reason is better than another would be dogmatic, because without the possibility t...
March 22, 2017 at 18:50
Great! (Y)
March 22, 2017 at 17:42
Postmodern "thought" is among the most pernicious anti-intellectual movements in modern times. In philosophy it matters little (most of it is sophistr...
March 22, 2017 at 17:34
By distinguishing one's personal experience as a fact from one's personal belief about its meaning or interpretation. For example, I taste a sip of co...
March 22, 2017 at 16:06
What exactly could be in doubt when you're having a personal experience? In order to be fallible and something to doubt the experience would have to r...
March 22, 2017 at 01:53
No, in PayPal one is asked to choose the currency, and at the forum's subscription page it says $, hence I assumed that this is managed in the USA, or...
March 21, 2017 at 15:12
I assume that the site is managed in the USA, so I sent some US $ (via PayPal). Another thing which can help keep the site going is a secure connectio...
March 21, 2017 at 14:03
What sometimes gets under my skin is not a particular philosophical question, but the misuse of philosophical questions. For example, when the problem...
March 20, 2017 at 20:09
A pigeon or human who is deprived from knowledge of how the food is delivered can only speculate, or test whether the delivery of food might have some...
March 20, 2017 at 18:21
Like radical relativism, superstition provides us with an implied promise that nothing here on earth is absolute, e.g. we don't have to accept mortali...
March 20, 2017 at 13:48
Who would appoint your "democratic" military if not the citizens or their representatives, i.e. the federal government? Moreover, without a shared com...
March 19, 2017 at 16:03
That's because they are not proofs. A proof is sufficient evidence, or sufficient argument, for the truth of a proposition. But the "proofs" you refer...
March 19, 2017 at 14:30
:-} The military is also used for attack, conquest, or invasion, recall, which has little to do with protection. The US-led invasion of Iraq, for inst...
March 18, 2017 at 02:16
One might add that the meaning of 'red' is causally constrained by speakers' interaction with things that emit or reflect em-radiation at 620–740 nm.
March 17, 2017 at 14:43
There are many more creator-candidates beside god, such as in various pagan myths (nordic, aztec etc.), or the flying spaghetti monster, or some natur...
March 16, 2017 at 15:23
I agree. It is as if consciousness would have to remain beyond explanation and current scientific principles, no matter what. No reconception, clarifi...
March 15, 2017 at 23:44
He does not advocate, say, Searle's materialism.
March 15, 2017 at 10:39
Likewise, Nagel seems to maintain the question as unanswerable (or as if it would take some future science).
March 14, 2017 at 10:36
Therapeutic is not so passive. To do philosophy is a form of training, like physical training in sports. It can make you more fit and qualified to cha...
March 14, 2017 at 09:29
Qualities are universal, including qualities we may love. But love is an experience, not a quality, an experience doesn't express anything, rather it ...
March 14, 2017 at 00:28
It became relatively easy to find others to validate shared views already in the 19th century, when a lot of people moved into the cities. Now, would ...
March 12, 2017 at 23:25
??? I don't think this issue has anything to do with idealism.
March 12, 2017 at 21:41
Ah. That old subjectivist dogma was decisively refuted in 1976, 1982 etc. by Putnam.
March 12, 2017 at 20:22
Nobody says there would be a universal cat. The cat is whatever it is that we interact with and thereby refer to as 'cat', a 'feline animal' etc. (the...
March 12, 2017 at 20:17
Really? Trump does not seem melancholic, just hilarious.
March 12, 2017 at 19:58
No, because in ordinary speech a word such as 'cat' truly means the feline animal, regardless of your power. If some mad military who happens to hate ...
March 12, 2017 at 19:05
Truly? :-} In a world where nobody believes in shared truths only the powerful reign, and the wise with uncomfortable truths are easily dismissed as h...
March 12, 2017 at 16:13
Those people are not describing anything, they're prescribing or pushing their own arbitrary meanings, typically whenever it suits them. For example, ...
March 12, 2017 at 12:37
What's this talk about inevitable misunderstandings? Both author and interpreter are obliged to comply to the rules and vocabulary of the language tha...
March 11, 2017 at 22:24
A government should focus on fulfilling its function, of course, which is to determine and enforce state policy. Obviously it should have as much powe...
March 11, 2017 at 19:11
You can do both: get sufficiently educated for a job you don't hate, and which leaves you with enough time and energy to pursue your own projects on t...
March 11, 2017 at 18:25
What is 'Snoopy'? Is a concept of the fictional dog atomic, or a composition?
March 11, 2017 at 17:06
The most valuable thing in life is its variety of values.
March 11, 2017 at 14:17
What have semiotic theories achieved so far in that respect?
March 11, 2017 at 13:55
Good people in bad surroundings become lonely, whereas bad people in good surroundings become famous.
March 10, 2017 at 14:18
What does it mean to say that an image is different from what it is made up of, and that experience and perception are bound up in what an image is ma...
March 10, 2017 at 13:07
Prior to seeing something you don't know whether something is present and subject for interpretation. You don't get to sneak in knowledge of its prese...
March 10, 2017 at 02:10
Look, Sherlock, an individual molecule is insufficient for reflecting or emitting light, it lacks electrical charge etc. We'd need a powerful microsco...
March 09, 2017 at 22:41
Experience is subjective, not interpretation. What could be subjective about the use of public words?
March 09, 2017 at 22:16
That makes no sense at all. How could the projection of an oval that you see be just an alternative way for how it could be seen? Could you see an ova...
March 09, 2017 at 14:14