Terrapin Station

Because it's a pet issue of mine. I see that appeal to the crowd, to the status quo, come up again and again, in all sorts of guises. At any rate, the...

Hence "precipitated by the counterintuitiveness of it," but the world isn't actually required to conform to what's intuitive to us. I had a laundry li...

So what's the point of drawing attention to "except for some incredibly minute exceptions" as if that's of no importance for imagining this?

So first, by definition, nothing comes before it. Re causing it, apparently you buy the old "something can't come from nothing" bumper sticker slogan,...

Why couldn't we simply focus on what we're referring to in "practical," observable, experiential, phenomenal terms? What would be the motivation to po...

Correct. Hence why I wrote "the supposed evidence you give of it after the post above"

What bothers me about comments like this--and they tend to be legion--is the apparent assumption that it goes without saying that the popularity (or a...

So not actually presentism but presentism without a start. I'd agree that would require time that extends backwards infinitely by definition. I wouldn...

I find that idea extremely dubious--that that is a common, unchallenged way to think at present, and the supposed evidence you give of it after the po...

The "I can't actually address the objections brought up, but I'm not about to drop my spiel" tactic.

That was the beginning of the sentence. The rest was: And I said that this was just the start of what we'd need to do.

How would we know such things, unless you're just defining them tautologously to things like if a child is ever tortured . . . but then that wouldn't ...

So if we experience a stream, a linear sequence of nows, where we don't experience the past and future in the same way, how do we avoid an infinite re...

Yes--it's simply a matter of whether something is really the judgment someone is making or not. We can't say it's their moral judgment if the utteranc...

So thoughts, desires? They don't need mind to exist? For one, it matters for an argument that morality is objective because it is based on reason. If ...

Basically you're restating the common belief that witnesses matter re probability of something being the case. I'm aware of the belief. I addressed. Y...

Speaking of reason, I didn't see you answer if you were claiming that reason exists independently of persons.

Not that I expect anyone to read the whole thread, but I addressed this above: "Basically, one needs to ferret out other stances that the person has, ...

I don't agree with the last phrase. Right and wrong in this context are simply another way of saying whether someone holds moral position P or not-P. ...

In that case, you'd simply not be honestly reporting your moral stance. You're saying something different than your actual stance for some other motiv...

Okay re "correct." So how do you think we'd argue that relative to the person in question's views, slavery isn't morally permissible? Isn't that simpl...

I wouldn't say that you're correct relative to you. Correct/incorrect is a category error for this stuff. So you're neither correct nor incorrect. It'...

First, the only way we could establish that the number of witnesses testifying to something implies that it has a greater probability of being the cas...

Right, as no empirical claim is provable, period. That includes claims like "There is a refrigerator in my kitchen."

Well, in terms of what we experience, how else could we think of it? Does anyone experience no distinction between now and past/present?

Is the reason that anyone criticizes the alt-right because "it is white"?

I don't know what that is referring to, though. What is it that they're arguing that most other "ethnic groups" take for granted?

Of course, I don't think there's any doubt that there is no God, so I'd say there's a correct answer there, but I realize you don't agree with that.

But states of affairs are some way that things are. Some arrangement of things. I don't know if "entity" is any clearer. The other two points don't ma...

It's just important to realize that a moral relativist is never going to say that any moral stance is "infallibly morally correct." That's pretty much...

Sure. That's always the case (that it's possible for my view to be incorrect). It follows from the fact that we can't prove any empirical claim. So ho...

Why wouldn't conditions be "things"?

In my view it has absolutely nothing to do with what the merits of one versus the other would be. It has to do with which one is the way the world rea...

First, this is pure speculation, and it's dubious at that. But we can ignore that, and ignore the problems with a term like "harmonious" and just say ...

With eternalism, isn't it the case that we experience a series of "nows"?

Yeah, even with the compass "people can tend to pigeonhole themselves to fit into a spectrum or compass, which isn't a good idea," as I noted. But the...

And would you claim that reason is something that occurs independently of persons? (I don't want to ignore the rest of your post, but I don't want to ...

"Talk about what ethics is ontologically," "talk about how we can know ethical stances," etc. is conventionally named "metaethics." If you don't like ...

I'd agree that all moral arguments are equal from any objective perspective, but I'd add that an objective perspective is a category error when we're ...

That's really only going to work if the "starting values" are pretty specific. It wouldn't work if the starting value was something like "it's is mora...

It would simply amount to arguing over whether there is any evidence of the world, independently of persons, making a judgment (or whatever word you'd...

What is (at least an example of) my disagreement with it a la a quote that I'm disagreeing with? The last post of mine addressed to you prior to this ...

You seem to be conflating the idea of empirical evidence and "proof." You want certainty of the claim, not just evidence of it. But (a) we can't actua...

When we acquire survey data we don't have to do anywhere near 8 billion people. But it's far more survey data than the norm, because it's a survey we'...

Yes. We've all done surveys of hundreds if not thousands of people, all of whom have moral preferences. None of us has yet found anyone (conscious) wh...

In other words, you'd have to be saying that "from the point of view of someone who has no moral preferences at all, but who is considering the moral ...

Here's what I said again: "Validity obtains when it's impossible for a conclusion to be false and/or impossible for premises to be true." You can brea...

Say what? That wasn't a response I expected. I didn't say anything about soundness. I didn't define soundness. So from where are you getting that I'm ...

What do you think the important differences are (between what you're quoting there and what I said)? (I know what you might answer, but that will give...

Yeah, it's a term of art from logic defined as impossibility that a conclusion is false and/or conclusions are true. See for example: https://www.iep....