Terrapin Station

So that's a big part of why it's incoherent. If we can't say anything about what a thing is, then it's hopelessly vague. So that really pins it down. ...

Well, some of that might be contradictory. You're giving just three descriptive terms there: "pervasive"--so it's located . . . everywhere? most place...

I'm open to anything, really, and I'll try to read anything with an open mind (I always do that, though I can quickly get frustrated/annoyed, haha), B...

I wouldn't say that that way, actually. I wouldn't speak for everyone else like that. But I'd say that I don't believe that nonphysicals are coherent ...

I didn't say "You can't find an idea in a brain" though. You can find an idea in a brain, but from a third person perspective, it's not going to be th...

Again, on my view, re semantics, terms mean, terms refer to whatever individuals consider them to mean/refer to. In other words, meaning is subjective...

"It" is a pronoun, an indexical.

It's basically just a matter of what an individual takes to be essential and accidental, or necessary and contingent properties re their concept of Ni...

Anyway, if we were avoiding semantics and ONLY talking about grammar per se, then obviously the subject of "It is raining" is "It." As soon as you ask...

https://forum.oxforddictionaries.com/en/categories/grammar-punctuation-usage

As I explained above, "The meteorological condition outside is rain"--it doesn't have the same exact grammatical form as "It is raining," but that's s...

That bluff won't work because I know what I'm talking about.

Sure, and if you don't care you can keep responding to me. That would be a good way to show that you don't care/you're not interested.

So, you'd say that "It is snow" is the same as "It is rain" because we could make a substitution in either case and you'd analyze it the same grammati...

What I feel you're doing is entering strained-puzzle-creation mode about mundane shit.

Is "It is rain" the same as "The meteorological condition outside is rain"?

I don't parse any moral talk in terms of rights, but aside from that, sure if a course of action is something that no one could gain anything from (pr...

The first big problem in that description is that what it is for something to have meaning is for an individual to mentally assign a meaning to the it...

Okay, but you can (and I often do) come up with an entire piece in the manner I described. I was just describing one simple step of it. What you do th...

As I asked Michael, why would you just be doing a simple substitution,as if that's what I was suggesting, as if you're a robot? Are we asking for the ...

I'll do thousands of words back and forth with you picking all of that apart, but one at a time. (The first part, in order, would be the thousands of ...

First off, it behaves that way just in case someone thinks about it in that way, right? Re "It" in your sentence, it can simply stand for "The convent...

Maybe that's what Baden was referring to. Why would you just be substituting the one phrase for the pronoun like that, like you're a robot?

I don't know where to start because every sentence in your comment has multiple problems and I don't want to write a thousand word reply. Let's just s...

Here's a simple example how it can be a conscious, systematic process: Say that I'm writing a bit of music and I have the following melody notes: C Eb...

He probably just wasn't as interested in the content of the initial post as he was in what he thought the thread was going to be about based on his in...

It's not clear to me why this one would be perplexing to anyone. "It" is a pronoun, just like "he" or "she." You're not confused by "He is running" ar...

Sure, but he said that when he read the thread title, he thought it was going to be about the Enlightenment. Apparently he's far more interested in th...

I wouldn't agree with that premise, by the way. And I would assume that Hinduism doesn't assert that selfishness isn't inescapable if it asserts that ...

Aren't you familiar with https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment?

That's interesting because for me a lot of the process is conscious and pretty systematic. I'm not suggesting that you're wrong or anything like that-...

I agree with you all the way up to this: I'm an identity theorist. I don't think it's that ideas are just dependent on the brain. I think they're iden...

Yeah, I agree the chess thing is a minor part that's not really worth the time we're spending on it (though it's amusing to me watching people trying ...

I wouldn't say that that distinction is picked out by "not having learned rules," though, especially not in contradistinction to "learning the game," ...

No. But this one does.

You'd have to be trolling to respond to my post that way. What did I say the subject was?

You don't know what "climatological conditions outside" refers to? Just do one word at a time: Outside, or outdoors, not inside/indoors. Conditions--w...

To best understand everything ideally one would read all of the major texts in chronological order, starting with the presocratics. No one is actually...

The subject is the (climatological) conditions outside. (Well, or i should clarify "What I'd normally take the subject to be in lieu of other informat...

So you're just saying that it's different in how Joe is thinking about it?

In logic, validity obtains when it's impossible that premises are true while a conclusion is false. That's the definition of validity. Anyway, re your...

Maybe, but I still plan on participating. Sometimes here it seems like people want to approach texts almost like a disciple approaching their religiou...

First, I wouldn't use the word "valid." When we're talking about moral stances, we're not talking about truth value. No moral stance is either true or...

So first, are we imagining people saying, "Joe has learned chess," as a response simply to watching Joe play chess? Re this: Actually, I'm trying to f...

Again: "'It's morally acceptable to needlessly kill non-human animals for food (but not human animals)' is a foundational stance for me, so the reason...

But I'm not attempting to insert it in a linear chain of nomological event-causation. That latter part is up to you. I'm just saying that it's there i...

No. And likewise, I don't believe people when they tell me that they can visualize nonphysical existents, either.

What would the difference be there when we're talking about chess? How do chess rules require inductive reasoning where knowing the possible moves doe...

I'm not saying anything about hard determinism (I buy free will--remember) or being compelled to believe something. It's not a coincidence because we'...

What I asked you is relevant to your question, because I indeed did answer your question, but you didn't seem to accept it as an answer. (I'm assuming...