You are viewing the historical archive of The Philosophy Forum.
For current discussions, visit the live forum.
Go to live forum

Metaphysician Undercover

Comments

Minimal effort, yet The Man needs someone to hold his beer for him while he does it. Well that's a paradox deserving of a thread of its own.
May 06, 2024 at 11:08
That would be eternal truth, if there is such a thing. Some would attribute this to God, others to mathematics, and some perhaps to physics. It seems ...
May 06, 2024 at 11:01
Doesn't "valued because they are valued" imply infinite regress, or maybe a vicious circle, rather than bootstrapping? In the op you say "Bottom line,...
May 06, 2024 at 10:48
Lordy mama, why does the big man need someone to hold his beer when he springs into action?
May 06, 2024 at 10:33
I believe it was Paul who insisted on the individual identity of the resurrected soul.
May 06, 2024 at 01:49
Ha ha, evidence that meaning has a temporal duration. The thread has different meaning now than it did back then.
May 06, 2024 at 01:40
It is demonstrated this way. Purpose is prior to any display of purpose. Therefore there must be a purpose which is prior to all things which display ...
May 06, 2024 at 01:30
Quite simply, God is the source of purpose. Those who do not believe in God have a big hole in their capacity for understanding, because the purpose w...
May 06, 2024 at 00:56
Faulty conclusion. If someone tells you the earth has spun on its axis 1460 times, therefore it's time for you to go and vote, so you do, this does no...
May 05, 2024 at 21:20
I've heard that some states have declared open season on wild boars. Kill them by any means, pounds of rat poison, machine gun, landmines, bombings, w...
May 05, 2024 at 19:04
Oddly enough, voting is not just limited to those who are educated. Now, it has been argued that a certain degree of education ought to be mandatory, ...
May 05, 2024 at 18:55
"Rockabye baby on the tree top ... down will come baby cradle and all". Moral of the story: sleep with one eye open.
May 05, 2024 at 12:05
The Lounge is where I go to take the edge off the day with a good lullaby. Thanks NOS, I slept well for four days after that one. Have you ever heard ...
May 05, 2024 at 11:59
Fishfry doesn't quite grasp the reality of the fact that the judgement of true or false, which we subject premises to, is really just a judgement of r...
May 05, 2024 at 11:45
What's with the price of olive oil these days? It seems to go up by about twenty five percent every time I go to buy some. Is there a shortage of oliv...
May 05, 2024 at 11:36
I told you how the person gets back to the ship using free will. That's one point for free will, zero for you. A robot cannot decide whether or not to...
May 05, 2024 at 02:27
Yes, I agree with that. But, there is no "seconds" inherent in that passage of time, nor does it appear like there are any natural points for division...
May 05, 2024 at 00:22
You continue to refuse to acknowledge the difference between the measurement and the thing measured. T1 and T2 are points designated by the measurer, ...
May 04, 2024 at 17:21
The use of "physical" in this thread has gotten so ambiguous, that equivocation abounds everywhere.
May 04, 2024 at 12:02
I think, and then I do. The "force" which moves me comes from within me, and therefore cannot be described by Newton's conceptions of force. "Speed", ...
May 04, 2024 at 11:57
I dealt with this already. If you restrict the meaning of "physical" to that which abides by the law of physics, then every aspect of what we would ca...
May 03, 2024 at 13:40
You've got this backward. Some supertasks are coherent and consistent, therefore logically logically possible. In this case, that is the proof that th...
May 03, 2024 at 10:52
I think that this principle says something about our capacity to observe. It might resolve paradoxes, but it does so by recognizing the limitations of...
May 03, 2024 at 02:03
I backed it up with logic. It was suggested that there was a fallacy involved in the logic, the fallacy of appeal to consequences. But referral to a d...
May 02, 2024 at 13:38
I really don't see how there could be a staircase which is not physical. That really makes not sense. However, just like in the case of the word "dete...
May 02, 2024 at 11:49
As already argued in this thread, above, the so-called "stochastic nature" of radioactive decay, is best understood as a feature of the means employed...
May 02, 2024 at 00:46
I can explain it very easily. There is two different senses of "limit" being used here. One is a logical "limit" as employed in mathematics, to descri...
May 01, 2024 at 12:01
It is not useful to assume spontaneity, just like it is not useful to assume randomness. Are you familiar with the theory of "spontaneous generation"?...
May 01, 2024 at 02:15
That's not quite what I'm saying. The process described by the op has no limit. That should be clear to you. It starts with a first step which takes a...
May 01, 2024 at 01:59
Are you saying that you believe that there would still be an April 29, even if there never was any human beings with their time measuring techniques, ...
April 30, 2024 at 21:59
Anarchists, who are not well educated in politics, or moral and social philosophy in general, are the modern day libertarians.
April 30, 2024 at 21:42
No, it's not based on such a desire at all. I recognize that to be impossible. My desire is that the writer of the material which I am reading, would ...
April 30, 2024 at 20:05
Notice, in your referred article, that when the argument's conclusion concerns good and bad, rather than true or false, it is not considered to be a f...
April 30, 2024 at 11:44
That "flavour of characteristics" is what I call ambiguity. Your use of this word conflicts with the idea you expressed above, about using well define...
April 30, 2024 at 11:40
Deductive logic proceeds from premises which are often produced from inductive reasoning and empirical evidence. As you noticed, empirical evidence do...
April 30, 2024 at 11:32
There is no limiting process in the premises of the op, nor in what is described by . The "limiting process" is a separate process which a person will...
April 30, 2024 at 11:08
"Repugnant", is a commonly used word in philosophy. The argument I gave is logical, but what is concluded is that the assumption, "there is ontologica...
April 30, 2024 at 01:54
That's like saying today would be April 29 even if there was never any human beings to determine this. If you can't understand how this is wrong, I do...
April 30, 2024 at 01:05
Nice try Michael, but "ground state" is an ideal which does not occur in nature. It's like a "blackbody" and things like that, ideals used for theory,...
April 29, 2024 at 11:36
OK, the earth goes around the sun indefinitely, even if there were no humans on earth. But there is no "years", nor is there any individual "orbits" s...
April 28, 2024 at 20:44
So these attempts were a matter of caring about something else (your spouse, your health), more than smoking. And this is what actually failed for you...
April 28, 2024 at 12:53
If someone would explain to me, in a way which makes sense, a better perspective, then I'd happily switch. Simple assertions like "It must", and "no i...
April 28, 2024 at 12:03
Ontological randomness may be logically possible but it's philosophically repugnant. The problem being that if something is deemed as random, it is in...
April 28, 2024 at 02:20
Notice your reference to "previous occasions". That's what I described, the will to get past the failed attempts, until you find the strategy which is...
April 28, 2024 at 01:37
That's fundamentally incorrect. If you truly believe that an increment of time exists without being measured, tell me how I can find a naturally exist...
April 28, 2024 at 01:21
It's pretty obvious that the exact thing which you need to care about more than smoking, to stop smoking, is not-smoking. If you look into the scienti...
April 28, 2024 at 00:59
This is wrong in multiple ways Janus. First, addictions do not work like that. To break an addiction is not a matter of deciding that there is somethi...
April 27, 2024 at 12:18
You have not avoided the contradiction, only obscured it. Increments of time must be measured, the are the product of a measuring device. The measurin...
April 27, 2024 at 12:09
I believe that is the essence of freedom of choice. Possibility is general, it is then divided by the mind, individuated into a multitude of specific ...
April 27, 2024 at 02:33
The contradiction is very obvious. I'm surprised you persist in denial. The supertask will necessarily carry on forever, as the sum of the time increm...
April 27, 2024 at 02:09