Metaphysician Undercover

Oh look, Janus has reversed the roles, asking Dusty to defend physicalism. Janus, why are you asking Dusty to defend physicalist principles? if you re...

In many countries it's barely over fifty percent who vote, so saying that you're more politically active than the average person doesn't say much.

I agree with this, but laws of physics can't be applied to acts of living beings because living things are self-moving. So it's not semantics that I'm...

Remember, it was about thirty years ago when DT first started meeting with Russians, and he threw out into the media the possibility that he might run...

Then you are not talking about "a model of suffering", you are talking about modeling a particular instance of suffering. So how can you call this a m...

Awe, that's so cute. A pair of boobies.

The issue though, is that fulfilling a desire is equivalent to, or the same thing as pleasure. Pleasure is fulfilling a desire. So if you have a desir...

In my translation we are talking about a "perspicuous representation". The perspicuous representation is said to be "of fundamental significance for u...

We could take the approach of Plato. The Gorgias, and the Protagoras, if memory serves me, provide the best examples. What Plato does, (Socrates in th...

If a group of people like us cannot agree on an interpretation, and the author of the material intentionally ensured such disagreement through the use...

There's actually two "methods" which we have to keep an eye on here. One is what you call his method of analysis, the other is his method of writing (...

Why would you assume this, that we are looking for a precise meaning? Have you not attended philosophy seminars? The goal is to discuss the variety of...

But I have the capacity to remove myself from the keyboard, thereby annihilating that relationship. And if I go on to establish relationships with oth...

Wouldn't this allow that the universe would eventually come back to the exact same state again, making time cyclical rather than infinite?

Any point which you assume as the middle, or centre, will always end up having something further within, even if it's just a matter of "information" w...

Learning to type is like learning to play a musical instrument, it's a matter of fingering. Anyone who says that playing a musical instrument is "mech...

That's right, it's a matter of judgement, and those who make those judgements, by that very capacity, are those who have power and influence.. Why is ...

There's such a thing as "inertia". Due to the brute fact of inertia, described by Newton's first law, your screen will not disappear at any moment, no...

It's not surprising that this process is circular, because "centre" is derived from circle. When you assume a centre you've already assumed equidistan...

I don't know, I haven't seen the indictment, some espionage or something like that. I think the US wants to emphasize how some information was obtaine...

I think the US already has an indictment.

I think that's the judgement that a trial is supposed to determine. So without a trial the question is rather pointless.

Doesn't the Michelson-Morley experiment show that if there is an ether, bodies do not move relative to the ether? This would mean that possibly bodies...

If you eat the food off the plate, you are not leaving things the way they were. You are leaving the plate the way it was, but not the food. Therefore...

Have you read MrCypress' posts? What I think is that there must be detectable motion of the emitting source of light, relative to the medium (ether).

Suppose an object is moving relative to space, and some sort of ether occupies this space. Suppose also that the object is emitting light, and the mov...

Obviously, cleaning is not leaving everything the way it was, or else cleaning would be doing nothing.

He's not making a contrast, by bringing the metaphysical use back to everyday use, he is dissolving that contrast. As I explained to Luke, his method ...

But making a metaphysical claim is a context of actual use, just like any other special circumstance of use. You can't say that making a metaphysical ...

So that would be in the context of a language-game then? If the word is use in the context of a game, it is a correct use, if it's outside of all game...

Isn't this a misleading statement though? Suppose a word like "game" has a family of meanings, and therefore is involved in a multiplicity of differen...

The problem though, is that the same words may be involved in a multitude of different language-games. Therefore there cannot be such a thing as "the ...

The two distinct perspectives of temporal continuity, which I described, are both metaphysical perspectives, that's the point. That "inertia" is the o...

I've reconsidered what I said yesterday about language-games taking the place of context. Language-games cannot completely take the place of context b...

Yes, that's the issue, the inertial frame of reference is essentially arbitrary. Yet it is extremely important because inertia under Newton's first la...

"Rest" is not a scientific principle. What rest is, has never been demonstrated empirically. That "rest" is relative to a frame of reference is an ont...

This would be done on the occasion of making a philosophical demonstration, as Fooloso4 points out, it's similar to when Moore says "here is one hand"...

The point though, is that "rest" is an ontological principle. Therefore the reason why one rest frame is preferred over another ought to be ontologica...

The point made by Wittgenstein was that if the sentence "This is here" makes sense to you, then you ought to question the special circumstances where ...

I don't know what "absolute motion" would be, perhaps you mean absolute rest? In any case, it's a matter of a preferred perspective, the preferred res...

That depends on your ontological perspective, doesn't it?

This is a problem with even the earliest forms of relativity theory. In relativity, velocity is not a statement concerning a property of an object, it...

Think of this. Someone could point to absolutely any object, at any particular place whatsoever, and say "this is here". Therefore, the sentence in it...

The fact that they were hiding this, at that time, indicates that there was not complete ignorance.

Exactly, it could be used in absolutely any circumstances, therefore the circumstances in which it is usable are not "special" at all. But if it were ...

The context is given, someone says "this is here" as he points to an object. There's a sort of paradox involved because one might point to any object ...

In the example, "this is here" means nothing more than "this object is in this place", exactly as it sounds. Notice a pointing motion is indicated. Th...

"Language-game" is a substitute for "context" here. "Context" has two very distinct connotations, each of which are very important to meaning. The fir...

Quantum mechanics provides conclusive evidence that the universe is not the type of system which is required for the heat death. That's why the many w...

The problem though is that there is a conservation law, and entropy does not actually decrease the amount of energy. So at maximum entropy there is st...