Snakes Alive

Didn't I say the same thing as him, though? And isn't what I said true?

Well, it would be true. Think of it this way. If I say 'John thinks it's raining, but it's not,' there's really no issue. And suppose I'm right: it is...

The problem is we're talking, presumably, about normal English, not the specialty language of philosophers. I wouldn't really trust the specialty lang...

I don't think you're getting the point of the example. Everyone, including Moore, agrees it's absurd, that one wouldn't normally say it, etc. That's t...

It is not 'my' approach, but what Moore already suggested...and I haven't ever seen a better explanation than the one he gave. It fits into a more gen...

That is not what the Lazerowitz paper (whichever one you're referring to) is about, nor is it what's outlined in this thread. And that is not the posi...

What are you talking about? I don't think you're following the discussion.

You're missing the point on a very basic level, so I'll repeat. The point is not skepticism towards whether any purported metaphysical objects exist, ...

We don't understand it, so a commitment to your current scientific practices being efficacious mans that it can't exist (or else there's something tha...

It's worth noting also that the characterization of words like nouns and adjectives as denoting single universal essences that a person can recognize ...

What does a philosopher have to contribute to that question?

I like those articles because I cannot, after a considered appraisal of the issue, take the problems he critiques seriously after reading them. I just...

The deeper point for Lazerowitz is that one can in principle construe these words how one pleases where the ordinary language itself doesn't decide, a...

I think that Plato likely had something like initiation into a mystery religion in mind.

What about it?

Good question – I tend to think that folk religion is cognitive, while classical theism and so on isn't. Folk religion has God or the gods be transcen...

The question is, then, what makes a certain claim cognitively meaningful? By this we mean 'meaningful' in a restricted, technical sense of interest to...

It's a strange comeback, since this was the claim in the first place. Of course we don't understand – that's what we're saying! What makes people upse...

It should be remembered that there is no such thing as a 'scientific worldview,' being 'pro-science,' etc., to begin with. These are just popular myth...

Yes. In fact, otherwise lying wouldn't work! The whole point of lying is publicly committing to believing something you know to be false (well, in the...

Asserting something commits the speaker to believing in the content of the assertion. "It's raining, but I don't think it is" (and its variants) there...

No, I think that take on things is rather silly. That is clearly not the reason – though it is something like the 'public relations' answer.

This was actually known as Moore's Paradox in the earliest analytic philosophy (not the Moore's Paradox for which Moore eventually became famous) – wh...

No, that's a psychological question. Anyway, this thread has long since degenerated past the topic and into the very sorts of meaningless disputes it ...

How is this a metaphysical question? Depending on what you mean, it's probably a historical, linguistic, or psychological one. Are you asking about wh...

So what is the question? Is it, do electrons exist? Okay, sure. Is it, do electrons have similar properties? Okay, sure. What else is there to say?

I'm really just not seeing that from anything you've written. For one thing to be north of another is for the two things to exist on or near the surfa...

This seems to me so deeply confused that I'm scared to touch it. Being north of something is constituted by being in space relative to something else....

I know this is getting a bit off track, but crows are capable of technological manipulation that resembles that of the earliest modern man, and may be...

Crows and chimps actually can demonstrably create crude technologies, and as you just saw in the video, crows demonstrably can engage in quite sophist...

I don't think this is right. For example, I think that marriages and universities and money and bits of data on hard drives exist, but they do not nec...

Funny! But I don't think nominalists or realists seriously take their positions to be reflected by such stories.

I really have no idea how to answer that question.

Presumably yes, but even putting it that way is probably something I wouldn't do, since it just presupposes a bunch of useless baggage.

It's worth pointing out that the point here is that both the claims that universals do and don't exist are equally confused – that is, 'nominalism' is...

But what does this actually mean, is the question? I don't know what it would be for mathematical objects to be 'real' or not. I once did read a sci-f...

I definitely think that here, as well as in many other topics, there is a lot of mystery, and we know very little, and that people are justifiably puz...

I'm not sure it matters. The point is not some kind of 'gotcha!' to make fun of philosophy, or anything. The point is to understand where it comes fro...

This seems like an astounding claim. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZerUbHmuY04

I really don't understand what the question is supposed to be. Again, what is the difference between 'the idea of apple' being real or not? It sounds ...

I'm really not sure what to make of any of these questions. As to necessary truths, I tend to think that they're the result of conventions of language...

I'm not quite sure about this. As I grow older I see more and more that people do behave in a magical way, and have trouble distinguishing between the...

The difference with causality is that I recognize the difference between causality and constant conjunction by how it appropriately motivates the mani...

Okay, so you see... What does it mean to conceptualize the world 'as if' it had something, when we can't even tell what it would be for it to have tha...

How can one be worried about 'avoiding' something that we cannot even describe? How can we even posit universals if we don't know what it would be lik...

Is that a meaningful question? Why is our language so full of universals? Well, our language is full of things like nouns and adjectives. Is that what...

OK, so you can't describe what it would be for there to be universals as opposed to there not being universals. Notice that I did not ask you to descr...

Ah, ah, ah. Look above. That's how it just went.

Let's suppose that we came across two kids arguing at the zoo over what a certain animal was. One insisted that it was a tiger, and the other insisted...

Exactly! You're so close to getting it!