Terrapin Station

Material. They're ways that our brains function.

Telling someone to read a book assumes they haven't. Why not assume that they have read the book in question?

"Read the book Flatland" . . . and don't be so sensitive about your age.

What is the "proper" understanding?

But it's okay to make assumptions about what I've read/what I'm familiar with?

My initial post in this tangent was about the following, and it was only about the following: That's not even specifically about the idea of a god. It...

The first time I read that SciFi/fantasy novella was probably 20+ years before you were born.

So first, the slave-master stuff is pertinent to 200+ years ago?

I'm not clear on how this is a response to my post.

In what way is that vague? You don't understand "better" or "more"?

What did you see as vague?

Reading comprehension 101: where did I speak of that? <wondering what whollyrolling got on his SAT>

Not surprising that you'd think that.

No, you haven't. You do a combo of just plowing ahead without understanding and just ignoring, then repeating a script like a mantra. Then you start a...

No, you can't. Over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and ...

All we know is that the big bang appears to have occurred about that time, if our theories are correct. That doesn't amount to spacetime being created...

If so, you'd think that philosophers would have better social status and make more money. Obviously something in our Bond-villain plan wasn't thought ...

No. Because nothing can be non-material. The notion of non-material things is incoherent. Nothing can be apart from spacetime, either.

Why a group, though? Wouldn't an individual be sufficient?

Aside from the fact that I've explained my truth theory a bunch of times in different threads here, the post you're responding to explains that it's "...

What would be an example or two of that (of it "causing more fog than clarity") in your view? If this is the sort of fog you're referring to, it's sim...

That's just another way of trying to sneak an argumentum ad populum in the back door. Argumentum ad populums are fallacious. Things that most people s...

What's the relevant sense? "A truth about an objective state of affairs"? If that's what we're saying it's fine, but we need to be careful with how we...

Duplicate

You're not following what I'm saying. You brought up the following above: "the fact that we're talking about god, unspecified, means that we're talkin...

I'm not saying anything like that. Knowing that P in no way hinges on P being provable.

Wouldn't these be factors in addition to logical possibility?

Okay. Is something other than the logical possibility of a necessarily detectable god required to justify the claim that you are justified in claiming...

Either logical possibility is sufficient to justify a claim or it isn't. If something else is required--so that there are some cases where it's justif...

That's good. The whole point is to get you thinking. Settling back on a prepared statement isn't going to do that. If you agree that we can point at s...

So why isn't it the case that anytime you use a finger, you're referring to (pointing at) that finger?

So that we use a concept to refer to something doesn't imply that we're referring to a concept, does it? It's just like using a finger to point. We us...

The question I asked you is if we can point at something other than our finger. What's the answer to that question?

You can't literally point at something without a finger, right? Does that mean that we can only point at our finger?

Do you not understand what reference is? You're confusing pointing with what we're pointing to.

Why would you think that I'm referring to a concept per se?

My point was that logical possibility isn't sufficient to claim something. Why not? Because for the vast majority of things, if it's logically possibl...

So, there are various ways that the world happens to be: I gave the example that a particular hydrogen atom will have a particular spatial relation to...

Facts are what claims are about.

You already asked that and I already answered it. The answer was: "Facts are states of affairs, ways that the world happens to be (at a given moment, ...

No. I'm not using the term "fact" that way. And the way I'm using the term is standard in a lot of contexts, including philosophical and scientific co...

Again, I'm not talking about claims.

For example, there's a state of affairs re the position of a particular hydrogen atom in Jupiter's atmosphere relative to a particular other hydrogen ...

I'm not calling claims facts. I'm calling states of affairs facts.

So the world wasn't in various states prior to the appearance of brains?

You're misquoting me, but there's nothing "airy" about that. The same thing will be different from different reference points, so it's worth specifyin...

What would make that better?

Facts are states of affairs, ways that the world happens to be (at a given moment, from a particular reference point).

In my view, the vast majority of facts have nothing to do with experience, and facts are not permanent.

So if it's logically possible, and logical possibility is sufficient to justify a stance, then logical possibility is sufficient to justify both P and...