It's the fall back to medication - and specifically justifying that fall back by the argument that the actions are simply not under the sufferers cont...
Of course, a line of approach we've not yet considered is the later Wittgensteinian one that would treat the word "possible" like the word "game" - no...
I think the motivation behind my position is that where the condition involves action, it is always possible to reason through it (even if doing so re...
Yes, counterpart theory - perhaps the most extreme form of nominalism I've come across. When I read Lewis (like you, years ago) I was reminded of Hume...
This is precisely the issue in reverse though - what are the criteria for impossibility? Are we talking about physical impossibility, logical impossib...
OK. Well, regarding the first paragraph, many different people report having similar kinds of dreams - naked at the bus stop/teeth falling out/etc etc...
For someone new to this thread and does not really have the time to skim through all the posts, what's the usual response to the claim that whilst NDE...
A little like @"jkg20", I'm beginning to get a little lost, since what is unknown is not commonly what is unintelligible. Supposing I don't know what ...
Some interesting points, and your last paragraph is something I've posted about on my website in the past (the unexamined commitments to possibilities...
Sometimes, but not in this instance. Here I was arguing to try to get clear on exactly what your philosophical proposal is. However, when you respond ...
OK, let's leave aside the philosophical distinctions. Again, non-sequitur and possibly also just false. If by "fact1" you mean that the term "nothing"...
Of course I agree that unicorns are not actual. What I do not agree with you is that that makes them abstract. The philosophical distinctions concerne...
Take a look at modal realists like David Lewis. They will equate a fictional with a possible unicorn, but possible unicorns are just as much particula...
And perhaps another disagreement. There might be possible unicorns, there might be fictional unicorns but a possible or fictional unicorn is not strai...
So here is one possible point of disagreement. You say "in all cases I have 0 of the thing given", and I say "that's logically equivalent to saying yo...
On a point on which I believe we are agreed, I think the idea that modality is a central issue for science (and I include philosophy) is correct - I e...
A few questions the answers to which may help me follow this post. Concerning your opening gambit: How do abstract dimensions have length and width, a...
Do you regard the efficient use of environmental resources as an urgent issue? I'm not sure about that myself, but if one were to think so, then there...
Possibility does not pose a problem for intelligibility if what is possible is constrained by the laws of whatever logic you happen to prefer. David L...
It's not about considering physical conditions, perhaps the conditions are not physical. The point is that at some time t, the will intiates something...
"Being human" might be one response that an animal eater would be tempted to offer. Filling out what it is about being human that is morally relevant ...
You misunderstand the position - the idea is that pain is morally irrelevant, that morality should be based on something other than a capacity for pai...
But why is sentience morally important? I thought the general line of reasoning in the foregoing was based on the idea that sentience is morally impor...
A system of morality does not require being based on whether the objects of moral concern feel pain or not. If that were the case, we needn't have any...
Absolutely, but where there are mysteries we usually have the wherewithal to formulate ways of going about trying to find an explanation. How are we t...
Sure, "doing something for its own sake" might need to be unpacked, but I don't think it unpacks into a tautology. If you do something for its own sak...
Here you are going against the grain of all empiricist philosophy. Rationalists like Spinoza certainly believed that the relation between cause and ef...
1 1) F --> Premise 2 2) G --> { --> ( K * ~ K ) } Premise 3 3) F Assumption 1,3 4) ( C --> C ) --> G 1,3, Modus Ponens (MP) 5 5) C Assumption 6) C->C ...
Yes, having reread some of what I was saying, it could seem as if I was suggesting that the mentally ill can just "snap out of it". But I'm not that h...
@"Metaphysician Undercover" Even if you are correct about the connection between decision and action not being logical, I don't see how freedom of the...
Yes, I should have been more precise. I mean that I'm trying to work with the idea that actions are such that they are in principle things within the ...
I think here we might have some disagreement, since whilst I agree that making a decision and acting on one are not one and the same thing, I'm inclin...
I suppose my position is that all or our actions are within our control, although I do agree that in some cases bringing them under control can be imm...
I suppose I'm a little reticent just to accept that someone can consciously decide to do one thing but proceed to do the contrary (short of mundance c...
That's an interesting comparison - I'll have to work it through to see where the differences between the cases lie and what significance those differe...
To some extent yes - is it in my control to blink when someone throws a dummy punch at my face? Probably not. However, you home in on the point that t...
QM indeterminacy, whatever else it does, neither affirms nor denies free will. QM is in general entirely irrelevant to most fundamental metaphysical q...
On another point, although no doubt related: The problem with separating the intellect and the will, though, is that it then becomes a problem to esta...
Part of the problem with X's ritualistic behaviour, and I think this is the case for a number of sufferers from OCD, is that it precisely does have a ...
Well, someone might propose that one reason for doing so is that OCD activity cannot be explained rationally. In fact the whole "mental illness is phy...
@"jkg20" That's right - although @"Moliere" is on the mark insofar as I'm not being clear enough about what it is that I think X is saying: In the fir...
True, but then for some people that is more palatable than idealism. Incidently, there was at least one recent philosopher (David Lewis, whose ideas a...
The many world's interpretation is, at root, just the idea that the wave function quantifies over all actual and possible states of affairs, where tho...
Regarding 1, granted it depends on how one argues for idealism, but simply to include other minds from the start smells of avoiding the difficult issu...
Your use of a wheel chair is not determined by your lack of legs. Certainly the actions you can choose between for getting from one place to another m...
I will get back with a more detailed reply, but first of all I certainly acknowledge that the first premise of my argument need to be defended: it is ...
Well, on empirical grounds he has already established that it is within his control. But on more philosophical grounds the framework of the argument w...
OK, but bear in mind that many worlds interpretations effectively deny that there is any such thing as the collapse of the wave equation at all. Mater...
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