Metaphysician Undercover

What the will is, is not an easy question. There is much disagreement between people. We tend to tie "will" to "intention", such that if an act is wil...

I agree. You write in incoherent fragments. I'm lost.

Any definition can be stated as a claim. That two parallel lines do not meet can be said to be a claim. The so-called claim here, is derived from the ...

Well it's not strictly that the angles are "non-right angles", because a parallelogram need not have right angles. What is necessary is that the angle...

The thing is, there is a lot more to time than duration, a fact which many of us overlook. More fundamentally, it is a distinction between past and fu...

At four years old, your friend Josh is well versed in language use, and clearly capable of holding beliefs. Obviously. "Language" is not the first wor...

The question of God is very relevant. Understanding the nature of God, fundamentally "I am that I am", provides us with a perspective of time which is...

No, the parallel lines never meet, it is impossible, because the definition indicates this. If they meet they are not parallel. The point being that w...

Correct, the certitude "that something is there" does not qualify as belief. As I explained earlier, this certitude exists in dreams, and in the subco...

This is our main point of disagreement now. I think that being self-conscious in no way necessitates any degree of empathy. This is why it is necessar...

A line exists by definition, it is a defined thing. You can't see what it looks like, nor can you even imagine it. I think this throws everyone off, y...

Yes, it says just what I thought it says, I looked it up before I posted to make sure. It's all a matter of definition, and non-contradiction.

Right, that's exactly what I am arguing. Right, I would not call that a belief. When a child learns one's first words, "mommy" and "daddy", for exampl...

I really don't think that physics has an adequate concept of time. We know that the past consists of events which have already occurred, and the futur...

The parallel postulate is simply true by the law of non-contradiction. Lines which do not meet are parallel lines. Lines which are not parallel meet. ...

I see things differently. What you describe, I apprehend as only a first step toward transcendence. This recognizing oneself as an autonomous agent on...

What I am saying is that what is required to fulfill the conditions of what we understand by "belief", is thinking about thought. This is the only thi...

No, what I am saying is that the will to be indoctrinated is just as necessary to the process of indoctrination as the actions of the indoctrinators, ...

Hmm, why don't you come and teach that lesson to my kids, then I might start to understand some of their contrary terminology. I think, that just like...

The "constraints on possible worlds" which is referred to here, is nothing more than the assumption of an actual world. As soon as we assume that ther...

So you don't think that the will is free? You believe that we learn by being indoctrinated rather than through the will to understand? If we learn by ...

So it's self-evident to those who see it as self-evident, and not self-evident to those who do not see it as self-evident. How does that help MindForg...

All right, I can accept this principle. When it appears like love, internal feelings, emotions, and things of the subconscious are illogical and irrat...

So the belief is framed by language. I assume then, that know-how is required to frame a belief. With know-how we put a belief into language. So I don...

Still the same issue, sensation is necessary for perception, so space, as a perception cannot provide the condition for the possibility of sensation. ...

I apprehend some inconsistency here. In the first, you describe space as a "form of pure intuition". In the second you describe space as one of the "f...

Here's the problem creativesoul. You say there must be a "baseline". Sam26 says there must be "hinge-propositions". I think that you guys are just mak...

We clearly haven't determined what counts as a belief. So what makes you think that anyone has determined what counts as an imbecile? What is really t...

Let's say that thinking is drawing correlations. One can do this without believing. The content is memories. Belief is a certain type of judgement, su...

Evidence that the law of non-contradiction is dubious.

I don't agree, but this is only because you and I wouldn't agree on what describes "belief". I think that a living being can think without holding bel...

You'll need to clarify what you mean by "frame beliefs". I don't apprehend a difference between a belief and the frame of a belief. What could frame a...

Tell that to Banno. who says that belief is demonstrated by actions. The belief you describe here, is itself a know-how, it is just not a knowing how ...

Definitely not. I've seen you guys go around in circles for weeks before, but I'm thinking maybe this time there will be a break through. Same thing. ...

Soon the rest of you will get to the point of recognizing that no belief, no matter how convicted one is of it, nor the description of one's belief, i...

I think it may be a mistake to describe "love" in this one-sided, subjective way, as if it were a part of one's autonomy. In reality love is always tw...

Judging by the discussion in this thread, there is no such thing as "the concept belief". Doubt is clearly warranted.

This is a problem with democracy in general, the idea that people might rationally decide who ought to rule them. The real reasons for why individuals...

Oh, sorry for the misunderstanding. I was trying to be sure of what you were saying so I took dictionary definitions. I suppose you have an idiosyncra...

A belief is a firm opinion, a conviction. To expect is to regard as likely a future occurrence. A correlation is a mutual relation or dependency of tw...

I'm inclined to disagree. I don't see how love could be part of the rational faculty. Conventional wisdom tells us love is of the heart, not of the mi...

The presupposition of "a bike", is just that, a presupposition. The presupposition cannot grant truth to that which is presupposed. That you know how ...

We have some agreement on justification, but there's a way of using "know" which indicates that it is believed that the thing known is necessarily tru...

Around here, you couldn't avoid hearing that authoritarian voice saying "You're fired!".

I think this is the wrong place to ask that question. You have to direct it at the right people.

A "field" is a mathematical construct. To apply field mathematics to the existence of objects in space and time requires some fundamental assumptions,...

Let's see if we can find a point of agreement. I would agree that when we proceed with conscious actions, we proceed with "confidence". And I also agr...

Why do you think that I need to be certain that I'm having a discussion in English in order for me to have a discussion in English? I've seen children...

Sorry, never gave it any thought, because it's irrelevant. So I really doubt that I was certain of it at the time.

I'm not so confident that what you're discussing is epistemology. And if what you are discussing is epistemology, then what I'm discussing is not epis...