Terrapin Station

I'd add that it has to be more than a mere correlation, it has to be a "direct connection" between two things (I would say an intentional connection, ...

It's certainly possible that someone does. Here's how you know: you ask the person in question.

You can just make up shit, you mean? There is no "general rule" about preferences that is universal. In addition, there are no preferences period, whe...

Because they've expressed them. Sometimes formally: again, here's an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_healthcare_directive If you want t...

For an unconscious person, their preferences prior to being unconscious are what matter (for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_healthcare...

They can't withhold consent can they?

I don't think it needs to be explained. At any rate, there's no way I'd get into a "Does this work/count as an explanation" discussion without you fir...

The issue is whether the person being born is granting consent or not, correct?

I guess you could say desire to not be in pain, although we could just say pain and not add another step to it.

What happened to this part: "Possibilities simply amount to a state not being impossible given contingent facts. "Potential" is often used with a more...

Not to mention that it has nothing whatsoever to do with climate scientists' area of expertise. But we can't even predict simple sociological phenomen...

Say what? Nothing has no properties. It's not infinite (in whatever respect you're thinking of that) or anything else.

Well, and presumably He'd not even create the rest of the universe in that case, as that would have been doing something, changing in some way.

I want "bantery" posts anyway, even if we're "strictly" doing philosophy. I prefer chatting to message board posting partially for this reason. It's t...

If I were going to bother "proving wrong" every ridiculous or dubious thing that anyone said, that's all I'd be doing 24/7. I'll let a sort of natural...

One popular model has God necessarily not doing anything. He's supposed to be "changeless."

Change obtains because things are in motion. It could also obtain acausally or indeterministically. Possibilities simply amount to a state not being i...

Keep reading. One distinction was the sentence that followed in the post you quoted: "If there are physical laws, it's literally impossible to 'disobe...

I don't agree with Wittgenstein, though. (And in my opinion the "Wittgenstein cult" is one of the worst things to happen to philosophy in the last 100...

Square one was me asking you what empirical evidence you're referring to re the unclear-to-me phrase "circumstances of the possible future event"?

Look, basically you think of things like definitions as being meaning, and the definitions still exist as words in a dictionary, say, even when no peo...

Anything extant has empirical evidence available --it has properties, for example. The relevant context here is whether there's empirical evidence. Wh...

Hence, empirical evidence isn't inappropriate. I just said that whether we're aware of it is pertinent to whether there's any reason to believe it.

Our awareness is about epistemology. Ontologically, empirical evidence is appropriate if we're talking about things that have properties, that interac...

First, the idea re whether empirical evidence is appropriate or not isn't saying anything dependent on our awareness.

So something could exist, have properties, etc. but there could be no evidence of it?

A phenomenon is any event, occurrence, etc.

An existent non-phenomenon? Are you just randomly combining words?

If phenomena exist, there's going to be some empirical evidence of it.

Right, we don't agree. What is elaboration going to do?

Elaborate --because you don't understand what I'm saying?

That's how conversations work, dude.

Wtf? I just said that it's ridiculous in my opinion to think that empirical evidence is ever inappropriate, especially when we're doing ontology. That...

Yes -- evidence, empirical evidence. Why do I have to spell that out completely every time? You can't remember what I said?

What happened to what I just typed? There's zero evidence of meaning outside of thought. That has nothing to do with logical positivism.

No one is saying anything about "verification" or anything like that.

The idea that it would ever be inappropriate, especially when we're talking about ontology, is ridiculous.

The empirical evidence there is of us doing something. There's zero evidence of meaning obtaining outside of that. We obviously do not think of the ma...

What I'm going by is empirical evidence. There's no empirical evidence of meaning obtaining outside of people thinking in particular ways. There's no ...

Get lost with that crap. Societal problems could happen. It's not a bad idea to prepare for that possibility. The problem is that there's no way in he...

Let's see if we agree on a couple things so we don't have to go back over them: We agree that "If x is/means/etc. y, then x is/means/etc. y" is tautol...

Consent is a category error because there's no one to either grant or withhold consent. We need there to be a person capable of granting or withholdin...

Typo--I'm trying to get used to a new keyboard. I guess I wasn't hitting the shift key right. :wink: Anyway, so I guess I'd need to ask Mr. Gensler wh...

I brushed over that the first time I read your post. That's an English paraphrase of 1=1=2 according to whom? It certainly bears no resemblance to any...

duplicate

It's not that it's trivial it's that it's a category error. I've explained this to you before. It doesn't stop being a category error just because you...

Likewise, there's nothing in "If Herbert Hoover is president, then Herbert Hoover is president" to imply that that will change, is there? The conditio...

You don't think either is worthwhile. Okay. So what am I supposed to do with that information now?

Knowledge of epistemology?

Here's how that reads to me: "I (, unenlightened,) also do not know enough about epistemology to realize why a claim like that is a problem."