Terrapin Station

Well, if he can't beat Trump in any of the traditionally conservative states, doesn't that make him score low in the "ability to appeal to some of the...

I don't know enough about him, really. What would you blame for him being defeated by Cruz last month?

If we're not to choose him again in 2020 the Democrats had better start getting their act together pretty soon and come up with some viable candidates...

Yeah, I'd be fine with 2, 3, 5 and 6. Not with the others. With 1, I'm not only not in favor of the death penalty, I'm not in favor of the prison syst...

I wouldn't eat meat, including fish, if I had to kill and prepare it for myself. Not for any ethical reasons. Just because I'm a lazy f---. I don't ev...

The thing is that with respect to whether atheism obtains or not, where/how the lack of belief arrives is irrelevant.

Trying to maneuver people who very conspicuously don't want to control others into positions of social influence.

Are you just referencing the Catalonia Independence movement there?

One difference is that idealsts are saying that not every existent has mass, but materialists are saying that they do.

That's what I was trying to get at with asking how we go from a phenomenal tree to thinking "that's just an idea," but no one has really answered that...

In Berkeley, there's no non-idea tree is there? If you're claiming there is, what would be the textual evidence of that? And whether that's in Berkele...

Someone like me who thinks that only particulars exist does not think that concepts do not exist (concepts simply are particular ideas in particular h...

This will be kind of laborious, but I'm going to start doing this with people who tend to always type in ways that are a bit inscrutable to me. So her...

At least you have humility.

Not to mention your poor teaching abilities. (Under the charitable interpretation that you're not just forwarding nonsense at this point.)

The problem is that at this point I'm not clear on how you're using the term "random," but you're just using it in a sentence anyway, and then you go ...

Aside from strongly disliking the word "pure" there (partially because I have no idea what it's adding), why is that problematic?

I have no idea, because I'm not clear on either how you're using the term "invariant" or "random" at this point.

"No determinate possibilites" isn't coherent in my view. And if you're saying something like "infinite possibilities," then you're reifying mathematic...

It has to refer to something coherent. Invariant--never changing? the same? No to either one of those. Otherwise how are you using that term?

Then we're going to tend toward all the possibilities occuring more or less evenly, which is what you said wasn't randomness. Again, given a set of po...

No, I'm not sure what that's supposed to refer to, because all I believe exists are particulars.

Okay but if 1 and 2 (out of 5 possibilities) occur the vast majority of the time, then that would simply appear to be a "law" that either 1 or 2.

Or just speak plainly. I'm still not even sure what you're referring to here. I'm not going to lie and say I know what you're referring to when I'm no...

I can't think how it would be possible to avoid statistical regularlties. If there are multiple possibilites, either they're all going to occur more o...

No idea what this is saying.

What in the world is that even referring to?

"Random" means that if there were 5 possible properties, then over many iterations, 1 is going to occur 20% of the time, 2 is going to occur 20% of th...

No cop out, that's what morality is. If you're going to argue against a view, you need to understand the view and not just present a straw man version...

I already answered that. They're properties of the particulars in question. There's no reason to expect the properties of the particulars in question ...

You didn't actually quote anything there, so I'm not sure what post you're referring to. Re "really explains nothing," explanations are merely sets of...

Why would we expect it to be random? What makes the default the default?

Unique a la nominalism.

Different properties, not different than the matter they're properties of. I'm saying the properties are different a la nominalism/contra universals o...

Why would it be something other than the electron itself? I don't understand why you're asking that.

I didn't say "The letter is not a letter." What a letter is depends on context. They're ink marks on paper, brain states a la particular ideas/concept...

Aren't you folks at all familiar with nominalism? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominalism

For example, the charge of an electron, the mass of a neutron, etc. Are they different? Yes, they're not identical. The nonidentity of discernibles is...

Every instance of anything. Every ink mark, brain state, etc.

There goes the identity in the sense of it being just one thing, yes. Again, I'm a nominalist. Every instance of a letter, number, etc. is unique.

It's simple the properties of the particulars in question. The other alternative would be that the properties of the particulars would be random. But ...

There are regularities, but not because of laws that somehow exist as an abstract whatever. In my view there are no real abstracts. I'm a nominalist i...

Natural laws are ways to think about phenomena we observe.

The main thing we'd need to get over is people wanting to control others. We'd need people to be comfortable with letter others do their own (consensu...

What do you see as the conflict there? It's difficult to explain to you without having some idea of what you'd believe to be the conflict.

Then you weren't addressing what I asked you to address and you instead wanted to change the topic to something you wanted to talk about instead. You ...

What was your question? Was it "Is a letter some ink or a brain state?" If so, it depends on the context. it can be both. Sometimes it's just one or t...

So all I ever need to do with you in order to present an argument is disagree with you? Sweet. Too bad I didn't have you as a professor.

Why can't we just go, "An idea as such can hardly not be matter because ideas are matter"?

Haha . . . we have enough problems without people pretending to be morons.