Terrapin Station

The fact that it's what I've been typing makes it an epistemic issue?

Gah! That's what I've been typing. lol

I'm confused what you're asking about there. I wasn't saying anything about "ontological commitments." I was explaining how direct realism isn't incom...

Again, what I'm saying is NOT just about perception. It would be the same if no people/no perceivers/observers existed. That's why I wrote "NOT" in bi...

If we have no people/no perceivers, how do we have ideas (for idealism)? I'm not saying anything about the third man argument. You'd have to explain t...

Yes, of course. Nothing is identical from two different spatiotemporal locations. This is NOT just about perception. It's about ontology (or "the onti...

It makes sense because properties are unique at each spatio-temporal location. So for example, we have this: A...............................@...........

Sure. (Although I think my analogy is better. I'm not much of a Wittgenstein fan.)

... to others, sure. You can talk about them, you just can't directly display them. It would be like if everyone had their own home, but no one was al...

Behaviorism? I'm not sure what you think behaviorism has to do with it. Human communication doesn't end up collapsing. There's just always a potential...

Circularity only winds up being a problem when at some point in the circle, you don't have an intuitive grasp of what a term refers to, or an intuitiv...

You realize that all definitions are eventually circular, right? We have a finite set of symbols or terms, and within whatever system at hand, we defi...

A common formal definition of "possible" is: ?A=???A

. Right. He's giving multiple characteristics is that, explaining it from different angles so to speak. That's why I said earlier that "One needs to h...

No, that's part of explaining the accessibility relation. That's what I was telling you in my first post.

He's not explaining possibility, though, he's explaining the accessibility relation.

You're not saying that you do not understand (the general modal logical sense of) "possible," are you? Again, the statements in question are both expl...

What it neglects is approaching epistemology the way that analytic philosophers approach it. It's a bit hard to ignore what we know/how we know it whe...

He's not really defining either "possible" or "accessible." He's rather defining what he's calling the accessibility relation. He's saying that it obt...

:up:

Yeah, that's part of it seeing science and logic/mathematics as methodological ideals. Continental philosophy often seems like its ultimate goal is to...

What is the basis for this claim? Naturalists would say that all traits of all living things emerged under or via the rubric of evolution/natural sele...

We also can't forget that a big part of the distinction is simply a stylistic one with regard to writing: * The structure of individual sentences, inc...

There's nothing obtuse about simply pointing out that "atheism" doesn't refer to views about evidence, evolution, or sundry other things.

The problem isn't inconsistencies. It's that it's just arbitrary crap we're making up. We could make up anything.

There are a bunch of other things we could be doing. For one, imagine if folks were interested in others persons' views simply because they find other...

If you've got nuthin' to say about nuthin' it's hard to keep a message board going.

Yeah, I should have left the second quotation marks off. Thanks. Re "Ain't that the root of all our problems"--I think I'm more inclined to say that s...

I can easily point to run(ning), but you need to come visit me to see it, obviously. So when are you going to be around? Metaphorical?? At any rate, i...

Suppose that in the 1700s or 1800s, say, suicides tended to be reported as some other cause of death (to the extent that any specific cause was noted)...

First, how about we don't debate and we try to talk in a friendly manner instead of like antagonistic assholes? So, again, I wasn't really arguing any...

I wasn't really arguing anything. Rather, I keep pointing out that the word "atheist" conventionally refers to one simple thing and ONLY that one simp...

I wrote: "I don't know what Dennett argument we'd be talking about" and you responded with

But I just wrote what it points to. You'd have to explain (a) how you see it as circular (in your view the instances of running are pointing to someth...

If you're using "thing" in the "noun" sense, then yes, of course you're not limited to referring to "things." "Things" in the noun sense are processes...

I don't recall if it was in this thread. But yeah, he's basically said that he posts on here to work on his own model.

The climb in suicide rates could be because we tended to report suicides as something else, especially because of the social and religious stigma of t...

Keep in mind that he doesn't even think there are any objective properties. And he believes that the world he experiences is simply a model of his own...

There's a 22-page chapter on Kant. (On his work itself.)

How accurately did we report suicides (due for one to a heavier stigma about it) and diagnose depression 100 years ago? And of course, opiates weren't...

I don't know what Dennett argument we'd be talking about, but again, atheism just doesn't have anything to do with claims about evidence. If Dennett s...

You wrote, "At no point does the phenomena we imagine as being the real object . . . " I wanted to point out, not just for your sake, but for anyone's...

Nevertheless, it's still the case that you don't believe in them, and it's not the case that you don't know if you believe in them. Sure. It just does...

Okay, but what does that matter? Picking agnosticism rather than atheism is like saying, "I don't know if I believe in Santa or not" or "It can't be k...

A history of analytic philosophy wouldn't begin with Kant. It would begin with Moore and Russell, or sometimes it would go back to Frege. There are ea...

Yes, of course. You do not?

Objects are processes, and we can talk about processes that are not normally thought of as objects just as well, because they're phenomena just as wel...

Actually, it does not. Again, atheism is ONLY the lack of a belief in any god, either passively ("weak" or "negative" atheism, where one might simply ...

So first, the effects are phenomena. If you only access those phenomena by their effects, you'd never access any phenomena.

We are? I was addressing your comment that "agnosticism is far more sensible than atheism. If something doesn't exist why bother taking a philosophica...