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Metaphysician Undercover

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I think you should chill out Claran, and not be so dismissive of the earlier parts of the text. All parts of a book are believed to be relevant to the...
December 14, 2018 at 03:49
I don't see any mention of "grammar" as such, so unless this term "grammar" can be somehow related to what Wittgenstein is saying, I don't see how thi...
December 14, 2018 at 03:33
To me, what you have said here appears very confused. Why does something have to be absolute to be real? Are relations not real?
December 14, 2018 at 03:00
It's actually quite simple. The concept of "primary elements" is self-refuting, because these elements are said to be things which nothing can be said...
December 13, 2018 at 12:39
I know that music is a universal, and as such there is no violation of the law of identity. The point is that TS claims all things are particulars. An...
December 13, 2018 at 11:45
Actually, the Republicans need to figure out how to get rid of Trump and get someone respectable to run in his place, in time for the next election. I...
December 13, 2018 at 03:09
OK, so let's go back and revisit your claim then. You said something like, "the song Kashmir is music", as an example of how we can say "this is that"...
December 13, 2018 at 03:01
No, I'm not missing that point, that's quite clear, as a premise of sorts. But there's a bigger point being made which extends into the ontological st...
December 13, 2018 at 02:44
i believe the dichotomy of simple and composite at 47 ought to be treated as a digression. What he demonstrates is that it doesn't make sense to think...
December 12, 2018 at 12:27
Right, and just a few hours ago you were talking about the existence of music, and matter. How you contradict yourself.
December 12, 2018 at 00:20
I don't own a rocker, so it's not my rocker that I'm off, I'm off all the rockers. That's right, I'm saying that we sense individual pieces of clothin...
December 11, 2018 at 22:55
Of course not, this is classification. But music is not the thing you are sensing, you are sensing the particular playing of a particular song, just l...
December 11, 2018 at 18:14
By denying the reality that there is nothing physical, sensible, which the word "matter" refers to, you are creating a problem for yourself. All you n...
December 11, 2018 at 17:35
Trees are not matter though, they are trees. You violate the law of identity if you say trees are matter. I don't see the problem. You asked me for th...
December 11, 2018 at 17:23
The difference is that I can sense the existence of one but not the other. I can go out in the world and see trees all over the place, I can't see mat...
December 11, 2018 at 16:58
I specified the difference with great clarity. A tree is a thing which I can sense. Matter is not. What's your problem?
December 11, 2018 at 16:51
Not exactly. We call things by names so that we can talk about them. I am talking about the things which are named, not the names. So the thing which ...
December 11, 2018 at 16:08
The thing called "the tree" is something I can see, and reach out and touch. If that thing were called "the matter", then I could see and touch the ma...
December 11, 2018 at 15:57
There is a fundamental, yet very simple problem with this idea of "primary elements" which Wittgenstein exposes at 48. The problem with the concept of...
December 11, 2018 at 13:59
That's fine, but the issue here is whether "numbers" (note the plural) refers to a thing. I explained to you why it is always unreasonable to assume t...
December 11, 2018 at 13:31
I discussed this with you earlier in the thread. There is nothing in the physical world that we sense as matter. I'm not saying that the tree is an id...
December 11, 2018 at 13:24
Matter is not physical though, strictly speaking. And that's the demonstration which Berkeley makes. It's an assumption we make, an idea, which helps ...
December 11, 2018 at 13:00
46. A passage from Plato's Theaetetus is quoted in which Socrates is observed describing what "some people say"; that the "primary elements", out of w...
December 11, 2018 at 12:41
Why is this a problem? It's informative, and may serve as a premise for a deductive argument. It tells me that anger is classed as an emotion. If we a...
December 11, 2018 at 12:20
Some people just don't seem to be able to grasp the obvious. Because it's obvious they dismiss it as if it's irrelevant to any serious discussion abou...
December 11, 2018 at 03:03
We call that a self-evident truth. Some axioms are self-evident truths, other axioms are not self-evident truths.
December 10, 2018 at 21:11
This is doubtful, and where we might find some contradiction if we dig deep enough. The eternal circular motion described by Aristotle is a form, and ...
December 10, 2018 at 13:45
This all begs the question. Is there or is there not a real distinction between legitimate and illegitimate in the way that language is used? What is ...
December 10, 2018 at 13:38
Sure, I agree that's the case, but "numbers" is not a thing. That's the whole point. So your argument is nothing other than a category mistake. 'I can...
December 10, 2018 at 12:43
It's not a contradiction because his so-called cosmological argument demonstrates that if anything is eternal it must be actual. The actual eternal th...
December 10, 2018 at 02:29
I asked for the list, not a description of it. Did you read my proof? I do believe that a logical proof qualifies as "evidence".
December 09, 2018 at 14:20
Earlier in the book, Wittgenstein suggested that for philosophical purposes, a name is like a label which is attached to an object. Now, he demonstrat...
December 09, 2018 at 14:16
All of them of course. I want you to prove to me what you claimed. "I have them collected in my mind." If what I say is true, then what difference doe...
December 09, 2018 at 13:16
You have all the positive numbers collected in your mind!? Can you list them then? My claim is quite simple. A large number of grains of sand is colle...
December 09, 2018 at 04:33
I haven't collected them all yet in my mind. So how could they be collected in my thought? Furthermore, "all the positive numbers" does not qualify as...
December 09, 2018 at 04:13
Yeah, I was thinking that, I guess great minds think alike. But we're talking about "justice" here. Surely Plato didn't suggest that a philosopher mig...
December 08, 2018 at 14:04
As I mentioned above, we have no indication in the text so far, as to what "public" would mean in this context. We have people playing games, "languag...
December 08, 2018 at 13:35
You ruined the moment! When anything looks so good, there always has to be something bad hiding behind it. It's that duck-rabbit syndrome. The duck lo...
December 08, 2018 at 13:18
No it's not quit like that. What I said is that "the" implies a single object, while "multi" implies a multitude. I could have just as easily said tha...
December 08, 2018 at 13:00
Oh I like that, it's poetry waiting to be written ... love, the unexplored territory, let's go explore it. Almost makes me feel young again, and, in m...
December 08, 2018 at 12:32
It actually shows very little, if anything at all. It says "I love you more than words can say". And this is really a meaningless comparison as andrew...
December 08, 2018 at 03:08
So let's say that a just city is just, to the extent that it partakes in the true form of justice. And, a philosopher can recognize the true form of j...
December 08, 2018 at 02:47
Actually I don't really know what a multiverse is. In one way, "multi" implies a multiplicity of objects, but also in another way "the" implies a sing...
December 08, 2018 at 02:10
Yes, the aim of philosophy is understanding. But notice how "understanding" is a multifaceted concept, and part of that is a sort of empathy. So when ...
December 07, 2018 at 15:26
I thought I was making that distinction clear. I think your apparent obfuscation was pretense. We've been through this, one is memory, the other antic...
December 07, 2018 at 14:15
Just to remind you, at this point in the text there is nothing to indicate that meaning could be private, or "public" (whatever "public" might mean in...
December 07, 2018 at 13:50
No I'm not confusing these, I simply believe that there are physical forms which I sense. I also believe that the physical vs. non-physical dichotomy ...
December 07, 2018 at 12:35
Discussion of whether the author is right or wrong would digress into endless bickering, because in philosophy this question usually cannot be resolve...
December 06, 2018 at 13:55
There is surely an indefinite aspect of infinite, which is not so commonly developed in talk of "infinite". One definition of indefinite is limitless,...
December 06, 2018 at 13:49
I think it is important to understand this aspect of ostensive definition. What is being "pointed" to is the word, that is what is being defined. The ...
December 06, 2018 at 13:04