Terrapin Station

Preference is the only reason you'd believe one thing rather than another?? Yikes. ;-)

The vase we painted isn't art. It's just what we've painted.

In the scenario where we have no idea what causes a room, its furniture, etc. to exist, on what grounds are we concluding that a tidy room can only be...

Why wouldn't order be a sufficient reason to deduce "not God" in that case?

Empirical claims are not provable. So no need to worry about that from any angle. So, the question becomes--why would we believe one option or another...

What does cause and effect have to do with the idea of there being sentience behind the same?

Yeah, I don't know if Thinker was ever serious in this thread, but it seems like he lost interest in that, at least.

Well, it's not ice cream, either, is it? Why not say that? Or how about a musical composition? Is it that? Why not say it's not a musical composition?

If no one is saying that anything is a coincidence, why did you use that word?

It would be bizarre because I know what watches are. I know how they're made. But okay, let's pretend that we have no idea what watches are. Why would...

Who is positing that anything is a coincidence first off? Where is that idea coming from?

Order isn't sufficient evidence that someone was responsible for the room. it's bizarre that you'd think it is. Say that you had zero idea how rooms o...

Well, that's what morality is. It's judgments that we make. It's not identical to what the judgments are in response to. It's similar to painting, say...

Only animals that have consciousness, that can have options in mind and then choose one. Whether that's only humans or not, I don't think we know for ...

You mean would you be able to know per my judgment whether I'm acting immorally? I'd say you'd have a very good idea of that if you knew me well enoug...

I'm not sure I know what you're getting at there, but I agree that it requires what the agents are making moral judgments about--certain types of inte...

I'm expaining why the analogy, why the argument doesn't work.

That definition doesn't specify that, though, and neither do other conventional definitions of the subjective/objective distinction. Since you use "ob...

Aside from the fact that the word "coincidence" doesn't at all resemble what science posits, too well for it to be a "coincidence" based on what? In t...

But the reason you conclude that someone was responsible for the room isn't that it's orderly, is it? You'd have no grounds for concluding that someon...

No, I wouldn't say that. For one, people often act in ways that are expected of them, ways that won't rock the boat, etc.rather than following their o...

Okay, that's fine, but that's what I'm referring to. Subjectivity conventionally refers to, for example, "(Philosophy) relating to or of the nature of...

Right. So I guess you won't be talking to me any further.

"Objective" and "subjective" refer to whether something occurs in a brain functioning in mental ways or not. We don't make any moral/ethical judgments...

And I don't really want to have a conversation with someone who is so hell-bent on being combative (and thread-crapping in the process) that they can'...

I'm not asking what I want to do. I'm asking if you're okay in dropping that one sentence, or do you need an explanation of how my post can make sense...

I wasn't talking about definitions, though. So we're back to you not being able to comprehend how someone could say something like "often thought of a...

What does the pronoun "it" stand for in that sentence?

I explicitly said "often thought of." That doesn't denote that I'm about to give a definition. You can't read. But do go ahead and "lecture" me some m...

Why would you believe that I was talking about definitions in my post? You seriously believed that I was saying that the words "act or procedure" were...

That's only believed by deficient philosophers to not involve acts or procedures. What does the "secondly" part have to do with anything I'd typed? (A...

One thing that's interesting about that is that anyone would think that natural phenomena are akin to shaking a box full of any arbitrary materials.

With the room, the fact that there's a room in the first place, the fact that there are items in the room, etc., are taken to be evidence that someone...

It's not changing the subject. You're just not following along very well. Again, the thought experiment was a means of countering some strange tangent...

No, not at all. It was introduced to counter some odd things that you were saying. Change can logically obtain with two events that have no causal con...

By it being physically impossible to divide it, and by it having no smaller parts.

Then it's certainly not outside of the scope and tenor of the thread in general just in case it's rudimentary. (And just like having to answer your qu...

Again, this is asking for a cause (otherwise explain what it's asking). But if there's no cause, one can't give a cause. At any rate, it seems like yo...

It could be physically indivisible with dimensions. That you could imagine dividing it isn't the same thing.

There wouldn't be some mechanism or cause to it, would there?

I had already written, "I don't buy the notion that everything must have a cause." So yes, there's no reason to believe that something can't come into...

The question was "How is that not asking for a cause?" You didn't answer that.

We're already explaining sense and reference in Frege. That's not rudimentary?

Anyone who might be reading the thread and who might benefit from further clarification. You know that anyone can read a public message board, right? ...

Did you read the whole post? The last sentence was this: "Just bringing that up because it might help some folks understand it."

Assuming that's the case, it doesn't at all follow that the way of expressing it in something akin to mathematics would be any more or less universal ...

In contemporary analytic philosophy, "referent" is more common for "the object we're pointing at." "Reference" is often thought of as "the act or proc...

How is that not asking for a cause? You're asking what the mechanism would be, what would trigger it, etc.

I don't believe that's nonsense at all, and not just per a thought experiment. I don't buy the notion that everything must have a cause.

Not that anyone is necessarily doing this, but I think it's important to remember that it doesn't work in a "robotic," black & white way. Words in iso...