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Metaphysician Undercover

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Correct, but "length" is a measurement, and a thing only has a measurement if it's been measured. To say that it has a measurement without having been...
February 17, 2019 at 19:57
That's where you go into nonsense. People apply standards of measurement in their acts of measurement. The rules do not apply themselves. So "an hour"...
February 17, 2019 at 18:13
You keep insisting that it's irrelevant, but your thought experiment references "an hour" after all human beings have died. So it's very relevant. We ...
February 17, 2019 at 15:56
This is the difficult part to understand, what constitutes being "raised to be a member of the audience"? This is the act of creating the audience, an...
February 17, 2019 at 15:47
Yes I remember this. Then you went on to talk about rules, and Terrapin explained that rules are human conventions. So I thought you dismissed this li...
February 17, 2019 at 13:29
I'm just trying to understand which of my premises you disagree with, and why you think it's a matter of begging the question. Then we might be able t...
February 16, 2019 at 14:35
I think that the main issue here is "importance" and it seems like you and I may somewhat disagree on the method of importance, how importance is impo...
February 16, 2019 at 13:22
Here's why the op is nonsensical S. The human being has a very particular temporal perspective. We don't see events which are a picosecond in length, ...
February 16, 2019 at 01:27
I'm way ahead of you. I knew this from your nonsensical op. But it sure took a lot of insistence on my part, repeating over and over again that your o...
February 16, 2019 at 01:10
If you're talking about telling stories, then I think that you have to take into account the historical limitations on written language. Prior to the ...
February 16, 2019 at 00:55
My action of "assuming premises" which you do not accept, is simply a matter of adhering to conventional definitions for interpretation of the terms u...
February 15, 2019 at 14:47
I think that this perspective is flawed. In order that a human being could recognize God if He revealed Himself, one would have to already have an ide...
February 15, 2019 at 14:16
It's a "problem" which has no solution. It has no solution because the exact nature of "the problem" cannot even be formulated in a universally accept...
February 15, 2019 at 13:33
That the car is moving at 30mph is a judgement. Do you understand this? And a judgement requires a decision. Without any human beings, who makes that ...
February 15, 2019 at 13:10
I don't see how this is relevant. A number printed by a machine is not a measurement. A number needs to be interpreted according to standards before i...
February 15, 2019 at 03:51
Actually, you don't seem to have tried very hard, just asserting over and over, that the burden is on me to prove that what you are saying is nonsense...
February 14, 2019 at 15:04
S's question asks whether there would be a rock an hour after all the people died. My objection was that "an hour" is a measurement which can only be ...
February 14, 2019 at 12:36
Sorry to disappoint you, but a tautology provides the most reliable premise. That's why it's as you've admitted, a "knock down argument". Measurement ...
February 14, 2019 at 12:03
I don't see how this example is substantially different. Exactly what the wearing of the mask means is subjective, even within that particular culture...
February 14, 2019 at 11:38
In some moral theory, (and I think this stems from Aristotle), there is a distinction made between the apparent good and the real good. The individual...
February 14, 2019 at 01:41
Well, the rust gets real bad after a while. I hate it when my seat goes through the floor and hits the pavement at 60 mph.
February 13, 2019 at 14:33
No, I don't thing anything can be derived from God's existence alone. What can be derived from one premise? "God exists", alone, without any defining ...
February 13, 2019 at 14:25
Right, tell me another one. It's that attitude which makes quantum mechanics such a mystery to some. The fact is that an act of measurement is require...
February 13, 2019 at 14:16
I think you're somewhat wrong about Plato here. He was quite exposed to foreign cultures, and that he noticed the differences between them is evident ...
February 13, 2019 at 13:58
If I understand you correctly, you do not accept my claim that "an hour" is a measurement, just like one degree Celsius is a measurement, and a metre ...
February 13, 2019 at 12:16
That's not true, because your premise state distinctly "we all died an hour previously". So you imply that someone has measured an hour after everyone...
February 13, 2019 at 03:54
The importance is not in what you derive from God, it is in what you understand when you recognize the need to assume God.
February 12, 2019 at 22:58
The Great Trump Wall is completely symbolic, a monument to the most excellent Donald who Made America Great Again.
February 12, 2019 at 22:52
The crack increases the chances of the vase breaking probably by at least 90%. That's right, every time I get a body job done on a vehicle, I'm so afr...
February 12, 2019 at 22:42
It's not a question of whether time would pass, it's a question of who would determine that an hour had past. So in your example, all people would die...
February 12, 2019 at 22:11
Soon, the USA will be overrun with Canadians.
February 12, 2019 at 19:28
Consider a situation in which there are no human beings to distinguish one period of time, from another period of time. All time would exist together ...
February 12, 2019 at 19:23
OK, I'll produce the argument. In order that "there is a rock" is true, it is required that a place in space and time be designated, where the rock is...
February 12, 2019 at 16:51
Your definition of 'carrying capacity' is according to 'species'. Are you saying that the hunter-gather is a different species than the agrian? Otherw...
February 12, 2019 at 14:09
The produce is grown. But how does that take us outside the solar budget?
February 12, 2019 at 14:01
It's relevant because your hypothetical scenario assumes the capacity to designate a particular time and a particular place when there are no human be...
February 12, 2019 at 13:56
A more efficient use of solar energy does not imply going beyond the solar budget, it just implies a more efficient use of the solar budget. Your argu...
February 12, 2019 at 13:53
This is an impossible scenario. Who determines the point in time of an hour past when we all died, if we all died? That's the problem with scenarios l...
February 12, 2019 at 13:35
Agriculture does not go beyond the energy budget of the sun, so the "false surplus" you refer to is completely fictitious. Sure we have artificially l...
February 12, 2019 at 13:29
But a random process is not a selection. When you toss a coin do you think that something selects whether heads or tails will appear? Science is an id...
February 12, 2019 at 12:59
Isn't agriculture necessary to feed the seven billion people on earth? How do you propose a society not based on agriculture, when eating is one of th...
February 12, 2019 at 02:56
Is it really so easy? The word "selection" implies choice, and choice requires an agent who is doing the choosing. In the case of "natural selection",...
February 12, 2019 at 00:49
I do not think it is correct to say that art explains morality. That's why Plato worked to build a separation between philosophy and art. Art may expr...
February 11, 2019 at 13:35
No that's not the case at all, because non-reasoning creatures make selections as do reasoning beings. The non-reasoning ones just don't make rational...
February 11, 2019 at 12:22
I think, that in morality the need to start again from scratch cannot be dismissed. This is because morality starts from the top, the ideal, and all t...
February 11, 2019 at 02:36
In The Republic there is a double layer of representation. At the top there is the Divine Idea, the Ideal, of "righteous person", and you might call t...
February 11, 2019 at 00:44
I think there is a division to be made between living things and non-living things. And I don't see how a non-living thing could make a choice or a se...
February 11, 2019 at 00:24
The problem here, is that nature really does not "select". Selection is a matter of choice, and some sort of will is required to choose. So the phrase...
February 10, 2019 at 13:37
We seem to actually agree on a lot, we just each have a different way of expressing what we believe. But you look at activity as the identifying featu...
February 10, 2019 at 13:21
It isn't really off topic, because the nature of freedom, and how it is that some form of freedom can get some sort of status as a fundamental right i...
February 09, 2019 at 13:57