Snakes Alive

Natural language draws no such distinction, AFAIK. So you're already inventing technical language precisely suited to denying the identity of indiscer...

I actually don't think this is right. You can't block haecceity in natural language, either, which is why you need to come up with an artificial langu...

Pick any formalism you like. Let's say we have a first-order logic with identity. Now let's assume a non-identity relation between a and b: ~ Now supp...

Australian philosophers always struck me as caricatures of their English counterparts. I've never really liked the style – whereas the Englishmen alwa...

It's not a matter of accepting or not. If you say: a =/= b Then I can write you a property that a has but b doesn't, namely: LAMBDA x The only way to ...

The problem with denying the identity of indiscernibles is that any language rich enough to express that two entities are non-identical is rich enough...

If you can't hear it, I can't tell you. But that's OK.

I think there is – and if we don't recognize it, thats our fault, not the question's (there are non-questions, but we shouldn't use that fact as a pol...

Yes, but language clearly allows this kind of reasoning, and I think the question the child asks during its first existential crisis, 'Why am I this o...

Logicians have to proscribe because there are no natural logics, in the logician's sense – they are artificial, so at some point have ot be laid down....

While I don't think the argument works, there is something funny about de se reasoning that I think we haven't understood, and which allows us to ask ...

The reason is because, to paraphrase Rorty, philosophers have no rules – they can say whatever they want. The reason for this, though, is hard to say....

Philosophy strikes again!

Nausea is really good. I'd take it over most philosophy. But I'm still not going to read Being and Nothingness. Eh. I did read Transcendence of the Eg...

God, this sucks.

Book 3 of Locke's Essay would be a start.

I don't know, these verbal games just strike me as boring. Maybe it's an avenue for creativity, but sometimes I feel like I would rather learn somethi...

Once you see through it, there's no going back... It took the OLP's to make me see it, I'm ashamed to admit.

Then, a bold new theory of how affects are constructed...

Another true believer has entered the room, I see...

The bottom part isn't right – one of the main points of the Tractatus is that logical truths don't tell us about the world, but 'show' its transcenden...

I don't have any dislike of Wittgenstein at all. I actually like what he did, and am in broad sympathy with the Oxford / 'ordinary language' philosoph...

What about? I'm not interested in banging my head against the wall of disciples of a philosopher. The true believers believe, I leave them to it.

Sartre was popular, but among professional philosophers he was never well-respected. There are videos of Derrida just saying he was a bad philosopher,...

You don't have to read a philosopher to have your work be descended from them. Their thoughts permeate your culture and your professional milieu; most...

You'd probably have to read the empiricists on language.

I agree he probably didn't know much of anything about Hume. The Humean nature of the facts has to do with their lack of dependence on each other, not...

The PI as opposed to the Tractatus might be a rejection of many things. I don't know if it has to do with Hume's fork, because Wittgenstein didn't kno...

Well, I didn't say anything about relations of ideas. My point was that Wittgenstein saw the world of facts as Hume did: that's the point of his analo...

No – Im not really sure what you're talking about, sorry. There must be some fundamental miscommunication between us.

Locke (along with Hobbes) postulated that philosophers were prone to talking nonsense, due to not understanding the functions of their language, and i...

I never said anything about 'Kantian facts.' I'll leave it to anyone who wants to try to exposit Kant. I'm not sure if that's even a term people use.

That's not what I said! Please read the post again!

And of course, we have to remember that when we say 'Hume speaking,' this is an abbreviation for Berkeley speaking, who is Locke speaking...and all th...

A Humean fact is one that is totally causally and logically disconnected from every other. Its holding or not holding in principle has no effect on wh...

Then read more! Consider: the reason you don't know what I mean is the same reason you take the Tractatus to be so original: ignorance of the history ...

I'm not saying it's not innovative in its own right, but the line of attack you just outlined had been part of English philosophy at least since Hume,...

And yeah, I think you're right, Rorty is not going to be a lasting influence on analytics. I see him as the culmination and also last gasp of the Moor...

It hasn't evaporated, but my sense is that Wittgensteinians are seen now more as a particular in-group, or as a cult by those who don't like them. The...

The Wittgensteinian notion of how language works comes from the idea of the world being composed of a Humean mosaic of atomic facts, and the idea that...

That pretty much already happened – being a 'Wittgensteinian' is now just one more historical specialty. It's like Rorty said, the philosophical liter...

I don't know if it's the first document to use truth tables, but those are a really great device. I think that the idea of knowing when to be silent i...

I don't think so. There could well be systematic reasons why some conceptual disputes can't get cleared up, because we lack the cognitive ability to u...

Even as an account of the natural sciences it's dumb, and the 'everything' beyond this shades in and out of intelligibility with language, and so does...

I'm not sure I follow. "The length of S at t" is a non-rigid designator, and "one meter" is (supposed to be) a rigid designator. That doesn't have to ...

I'm not sure what you're asking, or what about that text shows that 'Kripke is saying that de jure and de facto rigidity sometimes interchange.'

The Tractatus is a lot like any other work – the technical development that was lying around at the time was taken for a key to the universe. This tim...

I'm sympathetic to the old positivist idea that both the affirmation and denial of idealism have no cognitive content. I can't prove it, but I think i...

Well, I can't commit a priori to not accusing you of it, because you have to actually do something different...

Don't you think it's weird no one can do anything but say the same thing over and over again, though? Don't you think that's a sign of a stale defense...