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Terrapin Station

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No. :razz:
November 15, 2018 at 21:01
Well, I certainly have a lot of feelings, but I don't think you're talking about that flow of different feelings there, and if not, I'm not sure what ...
November 15, 2018 at 21:00
No idea what you're saying in any of that with respect to my comment.
November 15, 2018 at 20:55
It's something that doesn't exist mind-independently. But it exists mind-dependently. And mind-dependently, it's a "bundle of concepts," and that's wh...
November 15, 2018 at 20:53
As I explained above, we say true things about the way that people imagine fictional things, about the way they write about them, or create films abou...
November 15, 2018 at 20:42
Isn't your friend talking about your conception of a deity?
November 15, 2018 at 14:17
It would just be resting on other persons' conceptions. If the God they presented is or is not supposed to be omnipotent, etc.
November 15, 2018 at 13:36
It's just the Euthyprho problem in that case, right? And he would ask, "So God isn't actually omnipotent? There is something (natural law, logical law...
November 15, 2018 at 13:21
The subjective/objective distinction has nothing to do with agreement or a lack of agreement. It's purely about whether we're talking about something ...
November 15, 2018 at 13:17
I'd say there actually IS a him; it's actually just a bundle of concepts in your mind. That doesn't imply that "there isn't actually a him," unless on...
November 15, 2018 at 13:10
It's long been differentiated. Science and philosophy are mostly looking at the same things, just with different methodological approaches and slightl...
November 15, 2018 at 13:04
If I were your friend I'd ask you to explain that, because it reads as if you're getting kind of word-salady and diverting to something irrelevant to ...
November 15, 2018 at 12:57
What hazy thing do you have in mind? (I realize the answer will have to be hazy, by the way.)
November 15, 2018 at 12:52
(a) Within the stories and (b) re how people think about him, catalyzed by the stories, for example. Again, (b) is about whether particular things fol...
November 15, 2018 at 12:33
Honestly? If I hear someone say that about someone else that I'm not familiar with, my first thought is typically along the lines of, "The person in q...
November 15, 2018 at 12:22
Easy example when lying is ethical: your wife asks you, "Do I look fat in this" and you think she does, but not unusually so. (In other words, when an...
November 15, 2018 at 12:14
What about art that's grotesque, disturbing, repulsive, harsh, etc.? Sometimes we use "attractive" in a broader sense, so that with art, we're talking...
November 15, 2018 at 12:11
We don't know with logical certainty, but I don't agree that that amounts to not knowing. Why would we worry about logical certainty (especially when ...
November 15, 2018 at 12:05
I don't at all have a different personality online than I do offline, by the way. That doesn't mean that I'm "just one way" all the time, but I'm not ...
November 15, 2018 at 12:00
This only makes sense if, for some unknown reason, you have a belief that people are "only one way." That's hard to even make any sense of conceptuall...
November 15, 2018 at 11:58
All you're really saying here is that if someone doesn't feel wronged by having a "goal" inhibited, you're not going to agree to calling it a goal, be...
November 15, 2018 at 11:53
They're not "empty names." They simply refer to something fictional and imagined rather than something that exists in the non-mental world (at least n...
November 15, 2018 at 11:50
I don't believe so, no. And I think that folks believing that that's the case wind up saying a lot of things that are (rather obviously) incorrect, so...
November 15, 2018 at 11:41
That could be, especially historically, but what philosophers have historically said about nonexistent things is a bit of a pet peeve of mine, because...
November 15, 2018 at 10:47
I decide by introspection --looking at how I feel about a particular scenario. I think that ethics/morality is purely a matter of subjective dispositi...
November 15, 2018 at 10:14
Depends on the act. I don't feel it's the same for everything. Most lying I don't have a problem with. I primarily think that lying is only a problem ...
November 14, 2018 at 22:54
I couldn't more strongly disagree with that. I believe that everyone lies, and that they do so rather frequently. I also believe that a significant pe...
November 14, 2018 at 21:26
Why would you believe that it exists in some public, not private way?
November 14, 2018 at 21:23
A moral nihilist in the sense of being a subjectivist/rejecting objectivism, yes. Not sure why it seems like I'm "not convinced of the strength of my ...
November 14, 2018 at 21:19
What sort of great measures would you say we quickly take action towards? I hate the two-party dominance of our system, by the way, because I hate bot...
November 14, 2018 at 16:09
I agree with you that the Republic isn't a great place to start if someone is just getting interested in and starting to explore philosophy, but Arist...
November 14, 2018 at 15:04
Both formal and informal logical argumentation are what's at play in theoretical evidence.
November 14, 2018 at 14:00
I'm an atheist. I'm not an ethical objectivist. Everyone really grounds their morality in subjectivity--the way that they feel about interpersonal beh...
November 14, 2018 at 13:08
Basically you're saying that there's something inherently wrong with being highly unusual. I don't at all agree with that.
November 14, 2018 at 12:57
I've been doing this stuff for more than 40 years. What were the goal posts? You just chastised me about responding too quickly, and yet you seem to h...
November 14, 2018 at 12:55
For one, this seems to amount to a belief that "If P can not be demonstrated, then not-P." But why wouldn't you require that just as much for P="The p...
November 14, 2018 at 12:45
Maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain are only positive when someone feels that that's the best course of action. When someone doesn't feel that tha...
November 14, 2018 at 12:42
Oy vey. I don't think we're getting anywhere. If the group is right or wrong acting to whom?
November 14, 2018 at 12:28
Well, but that only matters with respect to how the person feels about those things, though. In other words, S says he has goal x. Y inhibits goal x. ...
November 14, 2018 at 12:23
Wouldn't the pertinent info be whether they feel it's negative or positive (or neutral) to be unpopular in the group?
November 14, 2018 at 12:20
Again, my impression is that we were being asked about ethics/morality in this thread, not good/bad more generally than that. I don't recall why I had...
November 14, 2018 at 12:19
What if someone doesn't approve of maximizing pleasure for the group, though? You'd say that they're wrong. Well, again, they're wrong per what?
November 14, 2018 at 12:15
But then it's not offering help that's good, because in the first case, the person doesn't want help, and you're saying that it's wrong to offer help ...
November 14, 2018 at 12:10
If S doesn't approve of taking a shorter time to complete a task, S doesn't believe that it's recommendable, then in what sense is it better or more f...
November 14, 2018 at 12:00
Rejecting help is "suboptimal" per what?
November 14, 2018 at 11:55
The reason that people present fictional things is almost never "to explain how we can speak truthfully about such things." For example, A. Conan Doyl...
November 14, 2018 at 11:54
I think it seems that way, too, but what I'm saying by that is that there are things that I feel (sometimes very strongly) about interpersonal behavio...
November 14, 2018 at 11:47
They're wrong per what?
November 14, 2018 at 11:42
It's like that in that the judgments are inherently subjective. I like Bob Dylan's singing a lot. I don't like Hegel and Heidegger's writing at all. Y...
November 14, 2018 at 11:41