The point in this thread has been the question of whether two truly distinct things can be in the same place at the same time while remaining distinct...
I used to participate on a very different forum, The Lycaeum, in the late '90s and early '00s, and I am pretty sure this same guy, under the same hand...
The principle of identity of indiscernibles says that if two objects are the same in EVERY way, then they must be one thing, not two. So if two things...
Before we get into the history of things, I want to get more clear on what it means for something to be a thing or an object. When you speak of two th...
Do you mean to suggest that two objects can occupy the same space in two dimensions while being separated in a third? Like a sheet of paper stacked on...
Are you sure? Let's put history aside for a moment. Physically understood, what is weight? What is color? Aren't they both reducible to shape in space...
Consider the addition of waves. Drop a pebble into a pond. Drop another in a different spot. Watch the ripples produce an interference pattern. Can yo...
I looked at the link. As far as I can tell with a cursory skim, it doesn't talk about two identical particles being in the same place at the same time...
You mention differences of shape. Let's focus on that for a moment. Suppose we have a 2D world and in this 2D world, we have a square and a triangle "...
This is a very interesting question! Coincidentally, I was just thinking about it a few hours ago. It seems to me that two things in the same place at...
Life involves a highly integrated sort of complexity. It is highly structured, but has many degrees of freedom. It requires a balance of freedom and n...
This ^^^^ There is a difference between lying that you are seeing a cat and it being true that you are in fact seeing a cat. Only if you wrongly equiv...
Other sentient beings don't belong to us to do with as we please, plain and simple. Just treating them as property and a resource to be used is a prob...
I'll preface this by saying that I am sceptical of God, the afterlife, and all the rest. But supposing there is a God and an afterlife, all the horrib...
To focus on an interesting point, suppose we build a robot that we program to do "nice" things, one that helps old ladies across the street, one that ...
I was making an analogy. My point was that God might deem it better that when we do good, it is because we choose it, not because we are programmed to...
To actually address some of the issues you wanted to get into, I'll say that for us to have free will and the capacity to choose evil would perhaps be...
As regards eusociality and what you said about fertility, consider the problem of homosexual behavior in both humans and bonobos. How to explain it? I...
Did I suggest otherwise? Anyway, I think what you say about bonobos fits into the basic picture I am trying to paint here, which is simply that our ta...
As a good example of the evolutionary argument as regards sexual taboos (what some call morality), consider the incest taboo, which is one of the firs...
There is a lot about bonobos I would need to learn before it would be clear to me how their instincts mostly align wih their evolutionary interests, w...
I disagree. For one thing, there is the is/ought problem, which was so cleanly laid out by Hume. "'Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destructio...
The parental investment matter you describe is exactly on the mark. Thank you. I once read an interesting account of why extreme sexual jealousy proba...
I'm inclined to think the biological significance is exactly what gives rise to the large "moral" significance here. In part, our morals here are what...
As for large objects, they mostly effectively behave like classical physics would predict because the De Broglie wavelength is very small, but effecti...
There are things that happen all the time at small scales (with real and obvious effects at large scales) that seem to be truly random. Some interpret...
We can't verify the existence of the experiential by any non-introspective means. Objective empirical and rational methods of investigation are utterl...
What do you understand rational to mean? The understanding I have of the word makes me surprised that you would say this. Clams survive, and they are ...
But where conception is a good possibility, it just never is only about two people and what they want to do with their bodies. Many people do fail to ...
I don't see how deep differences in the life of the parent in one case versus the other justifies dismissing all concern about the interests of the ch...
The real solution to puzzles of why you find yourself as the kind of entity you are is to arrive at the realization that there is only one subject and...
Epicurus: "Why should I fear death? If I am, then death is not. If Death is, then I am not." In other words, you never experience being dead. But, as ...
That seems possibly tautological. Justification and entitlement. Are they separate? If so, does one depend on the other? And if one is prior to the ot...
Entropy is going to put a damper on that hope. As long as your God is a physical being, he is going to have serious limitations that run contrary to m...
One might be tempted to point out that what he was cool with isn't really death. It isn't personal annihilation. If he didn't believe in a soul of som...
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