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Terrapin Station

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It's not a term I invented, but "weak conception" was your characterization, so presumably you had some idea of a non-weak conception of ontological f...
December 03, 2018 at 21:24
What would be a "robust concept" of ontological freedom (versus determinism)?
December 03, 2018 at 21:15
No. It has to involve will (which is conscious), or we're just talking about ontological freedom in general.
December 03, 2018 at 21:13
You're barking up the wrong tree re asking me who I'd take to be a "proper authority" re something so broadly discussed. I'm simply referring to the c...
December 03, 2018 at 21:12
I don't see the point as trying to "salvage" anything. We're simply wondering whether ontological freedom obtains in relation to "will phenomena," so ...
December 03, 2018 at 21:07
But that's just changing what we're referring to in the conversation. No one in the debate was using "free" to refer to whether a choice is a product ...
December 03, 2018 at 21:03
If I just wrote, and you just quoted "no moral utterance can be true or false, objectively correct or incorrect," do you think that I'm going to say "...
December 03, 2018 at 20:57
Since we're only getting loose direction in proceeding and folks have moved on a bit past what I commented on before, I'll do my comments on the next ...
December 03, 2018 at 20:53
In my view our exploitation of other species is no more of an ethical problem than other species' exploitation of our bodies for food and housing (bac...
December 03, 2018 at 19:49
In the sense that all empirical evidence is anecdotal, sure.
December 03, 2018 at 19:31
But then that's not compatibilism, because you have no ontological freedom in your ontology. You're just saying something about culpability.
December 03, 2018 at 19:30
I'm a physicalist/materialist, but my view isn't a "belief in physics" per se. Among the big problems for me with the "God" side of things is that in ...
December 03, 2018 at 19:26
Based on data re people who have attempted or committed suicide, including from health care professionals/psych professionals I know personally, and i...
December 03, 2018 at 16:58
Okay, but I think all of that has problems. Being able to conceive something simply means being able to imagine it, at least "kinda"--often those imag...
December 03, 2018 at 16:51
Not saying anything about metaphysical possibility (lol). Just contingent fact.
December 03, 2018 at 16:17
I don't at all agree with that. What would be the support of it?
December 03, 2018 at 16:12
RIght. Folks will ad hoc rationalize it, but I don't believe that it's something that's arrived at via just reasoning about anything.
December 03, 2018 at 16:08
You never even got to supporting your thesis that democracy is dying. You started off fine, giving a definition of democracy, but then you got sidetra...
December 03, 2018 at 16:06
I don't agree with that, though. And there are benefits, because under the scenario I wrote "In fact, the vast majority of people enjoy it a lot." Tha...
December 03, 2018 at 15:53
Well, I'm a physicalist/materialist. I don't believe that mind is anything other than matter/processes and relations of matter--just like everything e...
December 03, 2018 at 15:48
Sure. Do we know if there was a possibility of there being another outcome?
December 03, 2018 at 15:25
Re this, by the way, re Aristotle: So In Aristotle, there is passive and active intellect (which someone could easily parse as mind in a nonphysical s...
December 03, 2018 at 15:19
What's the reason you couldn't logically have passive or active mind, as well as passive or active matter?
December 03, 2018 at 15:13
So we're saying, without proof, that maybe it could be otherwise--maybe when A happens, B wouldn't have to happen, right? Or if that's not right, we c...
December 03, 2018 at 15:08
How are you seeing those as incompatible? Let's say we divide the world into matter and mind. Why can't there be actual and potential with respect to ...
December 03, 2018 at 15:05
Are you going to answer my question after I answer yours? (And in a way that I consider an answer to it, unless you're fine considering this question ...
December 03, 2018 at 15:01
Well, we didn't dismiss it in "folk metaphysics," If you mean outside of that, who are we talking about, where was the dismissal, what exactly was it,...
December 03, 2018 at 14:55
And knowledge-wise, what prohibits us from knowing necessary connection? A billard ball hits another at a particular velocity, etc., and the struck ba...
December 03, 2018 at 14:53
I'm fine with parsing some things as contractual fraud, and I think there should be prohibitions against contractual fraud. Contractual fraud doesn't ...
December 03, 2018 at 14:49
Wait, first, "we don't know anything with certainty" doesn't gel well with "Hume is very certain about causation," does it?
December 03, 2018 at 14:37
Honestly, my one response would be to call the authorities so that we can get you treatment. In my view it's not something that you're goint to talk s...
December 03, 2018 at 14:33
How would we know with certainty that it's not necessary connection?
December 03, 2018 at 14:24
That doesn't avoid Cartesian dualism (in folk metaphysics especially), though. Re an actual/potential distinction somehow solving how mind interacts w...
December 03, 2018 at 14:23
Yeah, I don't agree that ontological freedom/determinism has any necessary implication for anyone's view of culpability (aside from "if determinism is...
December 03, 2018 at 14:14
If we assume that the agent's decisions necessarily have some rational connection to the cognitive processes the agent engages in (I don't think this ...
December 03, 2018 at 14:05
The analogy would have to be that they don't mind the kidnapping when it happens either (at least the vast majority of babies, toddlers aren't complai...
December 03, 2018 at 13:58
Are you simply focusing on the Humean comments that amount to us not being able to be certain re causation? You should make that explicit if so. The f...
December 03, 2018 at 13:49
First, we shouldn't assume that there is a "primary substance." Among other things, that (exact term) is linked to ideas that are pretty incoherent a ...
December 03, 2018 at 13:47
Which suggests that the whole idea of Platonic forms is so arbitrary that it's hardly worth bothering with whether Plato would say that clouds have fo...
December 03, 2018 at 13:36
If we're talking about materialism, the mind is material stuff. That's not "another kind of stuff" in that regard. "Both mind and matter are processes...
December 03, 2018 at 13:31
I think it's reasonable to say that one broad stroke of "folk metaphysics" is that it's dualist re mind/matter, but I don't think it's at all reasonab...
December 03, 2018 at 13:20
Not that that's what I did above. But again, we'd need demarcation criteria re just what counts or doesn't count as an explanation for you and why. I ...
December 03, 2018 at 05:37
It seems to me that saying "There are hypothetical abstract implications" is claiming existence of them. So either I don't understand what you mean by...
December 03, 2018 at 05:04
A causal explanation given in words? The reason I'm asking is because it's important when that's what we're talking about to realize that no explanati...
December 03, 2018 at 04:54
Well, first, don't equate physicalism or materialism with being a Dennettian. Dennett and that ilk (the Churchlands, for example) are often considered...
December 03, 2018 at 04:37
Isn't 2D semantics focused on possible worlds? Why would "the best summary for TLP" involve possible world analysis?
December 03, 2018 at 04:26
Well, it didn't appear to be about materialism, for example. It appears to primarily be about certainty. And as far as I can tell the quote doesn't ha...
December 03, 2018 at 04:04
Which jibe was the answer in?
December 03, 2018 at 03:38
Just briefly skimming some of that, it doesn't look like it addresses anything in the vein of "Materialism is self-contradictory to that which apprais...
December 03, 2018 at 03:37
I'm surprised you're responding without answering questions you've been asked. (Did you believe that?)
December 03, 2018 at 03:23