Snakes Alive

I never disagreed that there were groups of things that shared properties. Earlier you seemed to want something else, though, and asked the question, ...

That people talk doesn't entail they're saying anything. I think people are being disingenuous when they say they understand what the universals debat...

Yet you cannot explain what it means. Shouldn't that give you pause? People take their paychecks seriously. Metaphysics, not so much – even profession...

Part of what is striking about metaphysics, to me, is that this isn't so: those debating it do not seem to understand what they are saying, or what th...

I didn't say that. The point is that talk of universals does not merely "have issues" – there is no body there to have issues to begin with. It's just...

Talk of properties is part of our pre-philosophical heritage. I see no reason to think of properties as philosophers have. If philosophers want to tal...

I'm not claiming theory-neutrality. The choice here is between talking about something, and talking about nothing. If you have an alternate way to loo...

Not at all. Language only becomes intelligible under conditions of use. Ordinary language has conditions of use, and so tends to be intelligible, alth...

Talk about properties is part of ordinary language, and questions about properties are to that extent intelligible. So far as I can see, talk about un...

This sounds like a labored and pointless way of saying that things can be similar to each other. Seeing as this vocabulary seems to offer no intelligi...

I have heard people discuss the question before, and read people discussing it, but none of these discussions have ever made any sense to me.

No, because I still don't know what a universal is, and saying that it qualifies as a possible answer doesn't make it so, because I have no notion of ...

Asking "where the relation of 'north of' exists" is bad philosophy.

So a relation is universal if more than one set of things can have it? So by "do universals exist" do you mean "can more than one thing have the same ...

What do you mean by using it in a universal manner? Are you asking how people tell when one thing is to the north of another?

This question, again, strikes me as confused, like asking 'what is the mortgage of jam?' How am I supposed to answer? The only way I can construe a ha...

It strikes me that if someone asks "where is the relation 'north of' located?" the appropriate response is not to answer "nowhere," as Russell does, b...

It reads to me as very bad philosophy. I'm not sure I would quote that passage in support of anything.

I know what the word 'tiger' means, and I know what a tiger is. Something is a tiger in virtue of being a certain way, exemplified by certain members ...

I'm sorry, this really doesn't help. I'm not sure Russell is talking about what you're talking about, and in any case the last bit of text strikes me ...

That's not quite right; you're asking about the existence of universals, which you've billed as an explanation for this phenomenon. However, you've sa...

Again, if you're asking a psychological question, it's meaningful. What other question you might be asking, I can't understand. Other people perhaps u...

If nobody knows what a universal is, then it can't explain this fact. If you can't articulate the question meaningfully, then Carnap (and anyone else)...

This is a psychological question, and meaningful. But I don't see what it has to do with the existence of universals.

If it's a tiger, it's a tiger. What's meant by "being a member of the tiger group" other than being a tiger? Are you asking me what makes it so that i...

I don't understand the English sentence being asked. I know what the individual words mean, and it's grammatical, but I can't interpret it, and don't ...

But you've used sentences that I also can't make sense of to do so. I can try other sentences like, "Do some things have properties in common?" Sure. ...

I simply don't understand the question. I know what it means for a dragon to exist (or not); I don't know what it means for a universal to exist (or n...

I'm a positivist at heart, but it seems fine to pick and choose here. Whether consciousness exists seems to me a meaningful question, and the answer i...

I don't see what Zeno's paradoxes have to do with commensurability. They have to do with infinite divisibility, which is not the same. The traditional...

If the sides are 1, the hypotenuse is radical 2, which is irrational. If the sides are 2, the hypotenuse is 2 by radical 2, and so still irrational. W...

But they don't involve any incommensurability, right? I'm trying to understand the connection.

Which one of Zeno's paradoxes are you talking about?

Depending on how it's read, it seems to me perfectly unobjectionable given what you've said in this thread. I'm not sure what your issue is.

How do you understand the OP? I can let Wayfarer speak for himself, but this is what was bolded: "The physical world cannot be separated from our own ...

Yes, that seems to be the point of the OP, and it is the Kantian conclusion.

That's not what I said. What I said was, "the only thing measurement ever allows us to partake in are those things that are ontologically dependent on...

But there's the rub: what it tells you is only that some bumping took place. In what way would this ever amount to bumping-transcendent facts? This I ...

Would it help if the label "Kantianism" were dropped? We are still left, on your purported solution, with the inability to ascertain any properties ex...

I don't follow. Can you explain? I don't understand. I never denied this, and I don't see why it's relevant.

"Us" would be whoever's measuring. How am I doing this?

Very well – but if you say all properties of the thing we're interested in are relative to the measurement in this way (what it is to have that proper...

The comic is a more intuitive explanation of what I was talking about. I didn't say anything about measurement not being physical, exclusive to humans...

We seem to be talking past each other. I don't understand what this has to do with my post.

I'm sorry, I don't see how this addresses my post. Can you explain?

Here is an easily digestible illustration of the problem: http://www.supermegacomics.com/images/164.gif

This is true so far as it goes, but there is a lurking problem: there are parts of the universe that are dependent ontologically on the act of measure...

It depends on how you read it. Belief can be neutral – we can be undecided as to p, and so neither believe that p, nor that not p. When undecided, one...

We ought to be suspicious of the equivalence of (1) and (2), since we can find cases where truth value judgments about them don't coincide. For exampl...

I've read the OP a bunch and I still don't get it. What is the disaster? Given the existence of irrationals, isn't the point made here already accepte...