Terrapin Station

No, I'd say that counterfactuals work just the same way. Say that there's a false belief that A.Conan Doyle based Sherlock Holmes closely on some part...

Re your earlier question, wide versus narrow scope is being used to refer to where the quantifier occurs with respect to the propositional attitude. "...

It's neither an act of force (against them) nor consent (from them), because there's no one to grant or withhold consent. Yes, but it's not force agai...

What started this whole tangent was you writing "to force him or her into existence," where you could be read as saying that there was a moral problem...

I'm probably not the only one confused about this. What is the "truth/validity of epistemic content" distinction you're making, and what is it suppose...

I don't think I understand "how predication works," either, if that would be pertinent here. How would you say it works? (I wonder if it's something t...

Just to be clear, Joe is saying that the relations you outlined, as something general about the world, do not seem like billiard balls striking billia...

While trying to avoid diversions re semiotics, semantics, etc. at the moment (we might not be able to avoid that tangent for long, but I'll try to avo...

I'm a physicalist, so I do not believe that mentality/consciousness and body are at all separate. The person still exists in a limited sense when dead...

None of that amounts to being able to do anything, pro or con, consensually or nonconsensually, to someone who doesn't exist.

"Our nature" is every way that any human is or can be. And part of that is that we don't have to feel unsafe due to difference. It's incorrect to say,...

Yes, but obviously in a limited sense, since they're dead/not functional, they don't have "personhood" in the philosophical sense, they're not due the...

The exact explanation for the example, and what we're explaining in the example, don't really matter. That's why I just picked something simple--it's ...

As long as some people tell the truth sometimes, lying would work.

Well, they can't work when everyone always lies, because then it's the same as telling the truth. People would just assume that anything anyone says i...

If your goal is to reduce suffering, and there's a chance that the child won't experience suffering, at least not anywhere near the actually existent ...

Man, I don't remember any of that, although I can't even remember if I read that book now. At any rate, that's problematic that Popper is conflating m...

The "import of the argument"? What argument? We're simply talking about people suffering or not. There are actual people who suffer (and who would) if...

The suffering isn't on behalf of someone else, it's their personal suffering, due to their desires not being met. You have no idea that the action wil...

:lol: Which is factually incorrect. Things are only good or bad to particular people who exist and who feel that that thing is good or bad. Again, to ...

I know you're not trying to do this, but it's worth noting how difficult it is to state something like you want to state here without suggesting the i...

The reason you'd be relatively on your guard when in the presence of a stranger doesn't have anything to do with difference--maybe the stranger looks,...

(Let me start by noting that I'm not a determinist, so my comments below are not sourced in wanting to support determinism:) I haven't heard that clai...

Actually all I'm doing is stressing a very technical ontological point. You're not actually doing anything to anyone, consensually or not, prior to th...

The way it needs to be mandatory and oppressive is in there being not only no laws against difference, but not control via social pressure, either.

I don't quite get what you're saying there.

What are some examples of that then? It's the ANSI (American National Standards Institute) definition, from the American National Standard on Acoustic...

So is "objective" the same as "fact" and/or "truth" on your view?

I didn't ask what I wanted to ask clearly enough there. The guy who says "That doesn't actually explain why billiard ball B moved. 'F=ma' doesn't seem...

Then what explanations are isn't determined by logic, because logic doesn't tell us (except stipulatively) which premises are true.

To use an amusing earlier example, though, if pointing a gun at someone and pulling the trigger meant that the person who was "shot" would have to do ...

Thanks for answering. That's an interesting view at least. ;-) That wouldn't come up very often (a kid going to their parent with a suicide request), ...

So, say that someone says "(Part of) The explanation for billiard ball B moving in vector v after being struck by billiard ball A is F=ma." And then t...

Aside from the fact that we'd still be talking about psychological satisfaction in response to some set of words, equations, etc. in this case, what y...

Re my name, I'm a Grateful Dead fan. "Terrapin Station" is an album and song of theirs. Re not understanding the post, I don't want to go through ever...

Do you define "trolling" so that trolling is possible if one is being honest? Just curious. And yeah, I'm exactly the same online and offline. Re the ...

I say that I'm an atheist, but just to be factual, just to tell folks what my view is. (I'm an atheist in your #2 (which implies #1) and #3 sense.) I'...

I don't know if I really follow any of it. I have tons of questions about all of it--multiple questions about every sentence of it. That would need to...

"This is material" in no way implies "This is able to be explained" first off. "This is material" is an ontological claim about the sort of existent t...

Re this, so you are speaking what when you talk about the way things aren't? Not objectively, but _____?

I don't want to keep doing long posts back and forth, so just one thing at a time. A problem with this is that there are lots of people who don't feel...

Someone needs to learn how public boards work. ;-) If you want to address just one person, private message them. That's fine, but I'm going to point o...

Right. I was curious what his view actually is, though.

It's physiological in the sense that it's identical to physiology. "Explanatory invariant"? What's that?

I haven't read every post in the thread. Did you ever say what your personal view is about all of this stuff?

That's a good point in that "preventing suffering" is incoherent if no one exists. People need to exist for preventing suffering to amount to anything...

What? I need to go back and read whatever post this is supposed to be referring to, but "the more 'absolute' and stronger moral argument" isn't going ...

My view of time isn't the standard physics view of time . . . well, and that's especially the case since physics still leaves time unanalyzed ontologi...

I think that people tend to be irrational about privacy issues. Part of that is the degree to which people estimate that anyone is going to really be ...

I'd love to be able to empirically test this. :wink: I think in general, by the way, that you grossly underestimate stupidity. You often seem to think...