Metaphysician Undercover

You say that the ability to make "one's own" choices is the measure of moral value. Then, you want to allow that a person making choices which are not...

From Plato's Allegory of the Cave. After exiting the cave, and "seeing the light", the philosopher returns to the cave, with the intent of teaching ot...

OK, so let's call this premise #1, a person's capacity to make one's own choices is what defines "morally valuable". That is the premise which lays ou...

A true understanding does not simply consist of "things are as they are".

To have a true understanding of the human condition.

OK then, just take "materialism" out of that post, and replace it with "determinism", if it offends you.

The next step, I believe, after freeing oneself from naive realism, is to free oneself from materialism altogether, and understand that the so-called ...

Your example is of a choice which an individual must make. And, your principle is that what is valued and protected is the individual's capacity to un...

What you are insisting in this discussion, that pain does not necessarily involve unpleasantness, simply indicates that you and I have a different und...

I don't think this is really the case, and that is why this sort of discussion goes on forever. Our model of the world is one put together through the...

For sure, there are many types of unpleasantness, and not every one is pain. "Unpleasant" is the wider concept. So not all unpleasantness is pain, but...

I don't know Dan, you presented me with the stick. I tried both ends, and still get it wrong, maybe it's time to go sideways. Now we're right back to ...

I think I now see what's going on, thanks to @"AmadeusD". You have two distinct value systems. One is "moral value" based in consequentialism, and the...

Huh. I think that's a very strange thing to say. Unpleasantness is exactly what "pain" indicates to me. It refers to a wide range of unpleasant feelin...

Isn't this what the example is, a person faced with making a choice which does not belong to that person, because it concerns the lives of others? And...

I told you already. The two aspects are known scientifically as the sensory aspect of pain and the affective aspect of pain. If you research those to ...

I wouldn't call it a hall of mirrors, but more like a relation of reciprocation. Each back and forth comes with a change. That change ought to be incr...

The problem with this point of view is that it assumes to know the type of legal action which will be applied, before hand. This implies that the pers...

Some don't apprehend the coherency, others do. This is why ideas are fundamentally subjective, some see meaning where others do not, and this serves i...

So a person should avoid ever trying anything new in one's life if one doesn't want the potential for a serious legal matter? Don't even go out the do...

I've heard musicians talk about how dreams inspire composition. But I think it's the opposite of leading to greater coherency. There is something very...

Why would you suspect that dating would lead to a court case, unless you were planning on doing something wrong on that date?

There is a fun experiment which one can do as an artist. You take a blank canvas, an array of colours, and proceed to produce a painting, without any ...

The capacity to uphold a "no" is the most significant moral challenge that there is. It is called "will power", and if we all had it we could make our...

That's not true though. The choice is not about one's own eyes, or one's own life, That's why the choice does not belong to the person, it's about wha...

OK, the choice is not the type of choice which ought to be protected, nor is it inherently valuable, so why care about it? The example is a ruse. You ...

No it's not. When you are being asked to speak, they want you and only you. The prices being paid in that industry, with all sorts of bonus perks offe...

Let me ask you this. How does that choice, in your example "belong" to the person in the example? The choice which belongs to the person, is one which...

Not only that, but colour is far more complicated than your simple description. Our eyes are never receiving one simple wavelength of radiation from a...

I have made it through to the end of the primer now. I don't understand how this could be an issue. You have already claimed to restrict "freedom" to ...

It seems that you focus on the sensory aspect of pain, and I focus on the affective aspect of pain. I did this to argue that pain is not simply sensor...

If the choice truly "belongs" to the person, as you have been using this term, then the person is free to use whatever method of deciding which on wan...

I don't think we can say this. There are many internal pains, sore muscles, stiffness, headaches, stomach aches, and pains of other organs. I don't th...

It's questionable whether pain is properly a sensation rather than a sort of idea. This is because pain crosses all the sense types. Generally we thin...

I think that's right. Pain is presented by Wittgenstein as an example of a sensation. He probably chose pain because it produced a special example, in...

Desert deserves an entire plate of its own. Even the most remote possibility of it touching something else on the plate, or even thinking about it tou...

Then it should be very clear to you, that you are not seeking to protect freedom of choice. Likewise, you are not seeking to protect freedom to act. N...

I think we are at a standstill here. Neither of us will budge. I strongly believe that when you say "it is the freedom to make certain choices that I ...

By definition, "height" is a measurement. You just like to use words in a realist way, and claim that since you can use them in this way, it makes wha...

This supposed "bar to clear" is extremely problematic. For the person who is "understanding", there is no difference between understanding and misunde...

That is a faulty assumption. When one sets out to measure a mountain, they assume that the mountain is likely measurable. You are making the cliche mi...

Reminds me of "Eddie the Eagle". He became a star, world wide, after his low-flying Olympic performance.

You should read the article I referred, it's quite interesting. The subject is how Peirce dealt with "the problem of induction", and how this relates ...

Hmm, I guess that's a matter of opinion. A slightly different way of looking at the same problem is what he added. Neither proposed a solution, in my ...

It seems we have the habit of attaching a "shadowy entity" to the word "red", a meaning. In reality though, the word has a different meaning each time...

Come on apokrisis, how can such a gigantic exaggeration just roll off your keyboard as if you were stating common fact? The exaggeration is twofold. F...

I don't understand how you can think that you could take a specific type of actiion, like deception for example, and say that most times it is not a r...

Why not let them ride the train tracks as well?

Does a thin particular exist? If so, it is an SOA. And if it is an SOA it must have thinner particulars as constituent parts. That leads to infinite r...

It seems like half the houses being built these days are over 4000 square feet. And the owners might not even have two children. 60 years ago 2000 squ...