Terrapin Station

I don't actually see that quote on the astrology page.

I was asking primarily to help you figure out the answer to your initial post. If you buy subjectivity, then wouldn't the answer obviously/simply be t...

I'm not actually a determinist--I think that some phenomena could be random, but aside from that, if we're talking about a long causal chain, only the...

Okay, but what is it (ontologically) that you'd say makes anything moral or immoral?

I didn't stipulate that, so <shrug> It could have been hitting it with a cue, or another ball hitting or, or maybe the table was tilted, or whatever.

How would you describe the distinction there, exactly?

What, ontologically, do you believe makes anything moral or immoral? In other words, what do you believe that morality is, ontologically?

The sentence is really just a set of marks on paper, or a computer screen, or sounds that someone is making, or hand movements, etc. We don't arbitrar...

Why would we take a perception to be an idea? What would suggest that it's an idea rather than simply a perception?

The first ball striking it.

Okay, but I don't at all agree with that. "Creating situations of lack" is not at all sufficient to be a moral concern, especially when it refers to t...

Thanks.

Right, so in my view, lack is not at all sufficient for moral concern. "Why create situations of lack" is a morally null question, because creating si...

What does the concept of thresholds have to do with why suffering period, under the earlier definition, so that needing to do laundry, needing to clea...

Yes, of course. Was the rest supposed to be justifying the basis for why suffering period, under that definition, would be worth moral concern? If so,...

Are you taking classes at a continental-oriented university? Just curious which university if so (if you don't mind saying).

"Sure it is" per what?

I answered "undecided," but only because there's no "something else" option. I'm decided about my view, but it doesn't amount to Hume being quite righ...

Stylistically, at least, I'm analytic, yes.

I didn't say I had any problem with calling it suffering. I said that if it's suffering, then suffering isn't at all sufficient for moral concern.

The vast majority of what Berkeley said--and Locke, too--was wrong. I could go sentence by sentence through Three Dialogues or whatever and explain wh...

If you think that everyone is regularly suffering, and that suffering includes things like needing to do laundry, then suffering isn't something to be...

"best"/"better" are subjective.

The problem I have with religion from that perspective, though, is that I don't agree with most of its views about "the human condition," about morali...

Look at it, for example. You know what your senses provide to you, such as an external, which is presented by your senses to you. The mistake to avoid...

The certain kind of pleasure you get is a feeling that it's beautiful. Hence the utility of the term rather than using some other set of terms for it....

Yeah, same here.

Ah--we're helping you do your homework. :razz: I can understand that, but I'd need to reread them to be able to help. As I said it's been at least a c...

Okay, but I wouldn't have much of an opinion about that without rereading both. It's been two or three decades since I last read much of either. Maybe...

Nope. A fortiori because it's not even possible to have a discussion where we're not giving personal positions. You'd be giving your personal perspect...

I'd agree with Wittgenstein only because if we're talking about reporting our sensations to someone else, we can't do that without having developed a ...

See my post above (from 17-18 minutes ago) to Jamesk (re definitions) It's a useful distinction once there are people who believe that some things are...

There are people who think that some things are nonphysical. Hence the utility of the distinction.

Sigh. but they're not, because you've already said that ideas and external-to-me physical stuff are different. For an answer how idealists think of id...

Re matter, it's simply saying that a tree, for example, is the relatively hard-to-us stuff it seems to be, with a location, extension, mass, etc. Mayb...

Right, we don't agree then. Meaning is an individual mental event (or series of events). On my view, as something mental, it can't be made public/thir...

Let's just focus on one bit at a time a la chatting: So it's not just me, what I'm saying here is what everyone does. Because of ontological facts, al...

Well, personally I think that the idea of nonphysicals is incoherent, so I can't explain that end.

Sometimes I get frustrated that the board seems dominated by: (1) Religious believers or people who want to bring up religion in any event (2) Idealis...

You said that in the other thread, too, but I've not run into much of a connection between religion and astrology. I'm not sure what you're referring ...

Well, and another problem is determining just which countries are "more atheist," determining the religious views of the person you're surveying, and ...

In my view there can't be "value experts," in the sense of particular moral and aesthetic judgments, because there are no moral or aesthetic facts of ...

I didn't easily find the actual questionnaire online. Do you know where the questionnaire is, plus the data re exactly how many people they polled and...

We might not be saying anything different there (as long as you're thinking of it as an individual feat)

First, if you think that ideas and external-to-me physical stuff aren't identical, there's a difference for you between idealism versus realism. I don...

I don't know if I think it's "sensible," but it doesn't matter. It's a fact that (foundational) moral stances are how an individual feels about interp...

The love sentence is similar to the Commdore 64 sentence. They're both saying that the medium at hand isn't capable of doing the job we'd like for it ...

Why would ambiguity/vagueness have something to do with self-referentiality, though?

Say that we boot up a Commodore 64 and start typing text from websites into it. We're stuck with no storage devices other than the Commodore's on-boar...

So then simply referring to language or words when there are language or words in the sentence probably isn't sufficient for something to be self-refe...