Metaphysician Undercover

Necessary, in the sense of required for the purpose of (in this case survival), is associated with usefulness. And usefulness is the supporting princi...

Where are the objective facts which indicate to me that I ought to stop writing?

He has destroyed it, or at least caused irreparable damage. It was the will of the people - so it seems. Remember, Trump's run for presidency started ...

You seem to have difficulty accepting the truth. Is that evidence against your own premise? Let's go back to the op: How would you deal with an ontolo...

If language consists of distinct objects, separate language-games, and there can be no such thing as a theory of language as a whole, then it appears ...

That's clearly not the case, because the person would believe contradictory things as true, I ought to do this (being the real truth), and I ought not...

However, as I said, there are many instances when someone knows what ought to be done, but does not do it. For example, knowingly breaking the law, it...

But you haven't explained how knowing that it is true that one ought to do something leads to the person actually doing something. And I do not agree ...

As I explained, your example failed, and I still don't think that what you claim is possible. Our actions are tailored to our beliefs, the actions are...

The point I made though, is that the action comes about as a result of the belief. If the reason for leaving is innocuous, then you will not see the n...

I don't recognize how this would be possible. Actions are determined as necessary in relation to particular ends. The end is the belief, of what is re...

There's nothing new here, U.S. government agencies have always been doing truly awful things as they attempt to bring democracy to the world, from the...

I can't make out what you are trying to say. If a certain belief leads to good actions, then why can't we conclude that we ought to hold that belief? ...

What do you mean?

In many countries there is a legal principle known as "aiding and abetting", which holds those who assist in a crime as accountable. So the driver of ...

If the will has any power at all it must be an actuality. So why not simplify all this to say that it is a non-physical actuality?

But it's not absurd to deny that facts are what we ought to believe, as the example of the noble lie demonstrates. It is arguable that in some cases i...

I agree that there could be no objective values without facts, but we cannot derive "if there are no objective values then there are no facts" from th...

Yes, anarchists.

I think the rational basis of the Trinity is actually derived from Plato's tripartite soul, and this happened to fit well with the Church dogma, that ...

It's not necessary that the will "set the brain in motion", all it needs to do is affect, or change the motions which are already there.

You were not talking about human purpose though, you were talking about the purpose of the brain. I don't see how you can make this jump now, to the p...

I was trying to correct you. You said "the function of the brain is to process sensible data". When I suggested that the brain has other functions, yo...

There is a sort of paradox involved with the idea of describing language. When we describe something we state, using language, how the thing appears t...

The point though is that the words must be expressed before they can be agreed on, so agreement follow language.

What about the other functions of the brain though? For example, doesn't the brain also have the function of controlling other parts of the body?

I don't see the problem. People make noises without any agreement as to what the noise means. I'm talking about how that agreement made by generations...

I don't agree with that. And the reason is that naming is essentially random. So prior to the existence of language any particular part of the reality...

That is one function of the brain. What about its other functions?

Actually Luke, I was having a very relevant and interesting conversation with Pomophobe, and the term was not used that way until you interrupted, cha...

I only introduced "foreground" because it was necessary to counter your claim of contradiction.

Is it not obvious to you though, that a thesis must be stated before it can be agreed to? So this statement of yours makes no sense: "we would all agr...

Wouldn't the thesis (which stated the obvious) have to be advanced before we could agree on it? Perhaps the strikingly obvious thing is that a thesis ...

No, I do not think you can correlate these two divisions precisely in this way. There is a foreground and a background, also there are expressed opini...

If you're interested, maybe read the complete intercourse between pomophobe and I. Pomophobe referred to a "background or framework that we are always...

To change my words from "we should see that disagreement is the background of unexpressed opinions" to "all unexpressed opinions are a disagreement", ...

It's this remark which I was replying to: Kippo said: "Biological determinism is certainly true to an extent...". I think there's a problem with sayin...

Your disagreement is evidence that the background of unexpressed opinions is comprised of disagreement. If it were comprised of agreement, then when t...

No, I was not claiming that determinism is falsified in this way, I was claiming that "biological determinism" is falsified in this way. Biological de...

The conclusion is not supposed to follow logically, it is supposed to be an observation which will be made if you look at things the way I said. Your ...

You are framing "disagreement" in a very particular, and I would say peculiar way, as if disagreement only exists if it is expressed. But disagreement...

But that's just invoking magic, claiming unobservable causes. This is not a good example of unobservable causes, because these causes are observable, ...

I see what you saying, but stating it as "the background which makes disagreement possible", is only an inversion of "the background which makes agree...

But you were talking about what is "true". And truth concerns how the words and definitions correspond with the real world. So words and definitions a...

There's still a problem here. Some people are near-sighted, some people are far-sighted, some see both well, and some don't see at all. When someone s...

There's a big problem with saying that biological determinism is true to an extent, whether or not you think there is no controversy here. When there ...

Well, I'll state the obvious, 128 falsifies itself. It's a philosophical thesis which cannot be agreed with. What 128 actually says is that the only t...

Biology: the study of living organisms. It's very clearly false, this assumption that biology explains and predicts everything we will do. Sorry james...

Actually, a lot more needs to be said about debate and agreement. Wittgenstein falls short here. By 133 he is talking about "clarity" as if clarity is...

I think 128 is meant to be paradoxical. The only thing which cannot be debated is tautology, allowing freedom for skepticism. But tautology is to say ...