Terrapin Station

Causality isn't tending or probability. It's that if A obtains, then B obtains temporally posterior to it, unless there's evidence of something causal...

The problem is that if yelling "Fire" doesn't cause the behavior in every situation, how do we show that it's causal at all? Why wouldn't the other fa...

Right. So it can't be simply that saying "Fire" is causal to some specific behavior. There has to be more to it than that. There have to be some other...

(2) is the same as assigning T to (1). It's not the same thing as (1) without a truth-value assignment, and after all, we could assign F to (1) instea...

That's not something I'd agree with. I was sincerely asking you the question I asked. Maybe you believe that it couldn't be the case that someone woul...

I read "This statement is neither true nor false" as saying that the two word phrase, "This statement," is neither true nor false, and that's true. Of...

Well what definition of "sophistry" are you using?

So you're claiming the question implies a fallacious argument?

For making this decision, why do you think it would matter if you'd be a "great philosopher"? First, the only reasons (and least outside of unusual ci...

I don't agree with that part. "Is false" "Is true" etc, in my opinion, are equivalent to "spelling out" that we're assigning T or F to some propositio...

What does that have to do with what I was saying though?

No they're not, but what's your argument or demonstration of that?

It's only loaded in that if you answer straightforwardly and honestly, it weakens the ideas you want to support. So you're answering politically inste...

Right. So "No" is your answer?

Someone can yell "Fire" while people hearing that do not panic like idiots, no?

Haha, you're explaining what "causal" would refer to, as if that's at issue. I'm asking for the evidence of it being causal versus contrary views.

Right, so what makes it correct that it's causal?

I'm not ignoring that someone yelled "Fire" in the scenario. I don't count that as causal for whatever harm might ensue.

Why isn't it that you're cherry-picking only those factors which are consistent with your stance? Because it's your stance, hence it's correct? (haha)

I'm not of the view that speech causes any harm--thus it can't cause needless harm. If people are hurt in a theater after someone yells "Fire," it wou...

I didn't answer anything in the quiz in favor of "causing needless harm" in my opinion.

(Y)

The only way Wittgenstein changed my life was via being mystified why he was so popular/why he's had such a strong influence on analytic philosophy in...

We discussed this a bit in another thread . . . although with my crap memory, I can't recall much of what we ended up saying, even though I know a cou...

What I like doing more than posting on a message board is chatting. I used to frequent IRC, especially the philosophy channel on Undernet. Unfortunate...

http://i65.tinypic.com/adyryw.jpg http://i67.tinypic.com/2znybsp.jpg For a few of the questions, I voted for the first level of "okay" where what I me...

Yeah, in terms of "what we should allow people to do," I'm definitely libertarian, and a minarchist libertarian at that. In terms of economics, though...

That's not me, though. Not that I don't care about pollution, but it has to actually be pollution and not some sort of (what I consider an irrational)...

Yeah, I agree with that, and it's pushed along by universities leaning so much towards the liberal side, and a culture where now it's more or less see...

It could just be that a lot more people who identify as liberals decide to take the quiz.

In traditional logics, probability has nothing to do with it. Reasoning is fallacious if it doesn't guarantee validity, where validity is when it's im...

And given a 0 purity score, of course I don't mind that it's disgusting, haha. See, I said I'm not a purist.

http://i66.tinypic.com/29kt5eb.jpg On that one, I had to answer a bunch of questions with "neither agree nor disagree," especially the economic questi...

http://i65.tinypic.com/r8icrp.jpg

Haha--so I'm kind of right on the edge of "Water my weed plant," "420" and "Average Citizen." That seems about right.

Ah, that explains it. ;-)

Just curious where you'd been the previous 7-8 years.

Not really the point of it to almost anyone making music, and I'd say that anyone looking at it that way doesn't really get the idea of art.

Logic is concerned with validity. An argument is valid when it is impossible for the premises to be true and/or the conclusion false. The problem with...

Re "if something is not black then it is not a raven" Let's assume that's something we're not stipulating, but it's instead a hypothesis that we feel ...

This is false for most people in the context of considering what counts as evidence for each statement. Unenlightened also makes a good point in that ...

You can't go outside of your computer program (which is what makes every discussion with you futile). That's not logically equivalent to most people i...

No in terms of evidence it isn't, for most people. You can just ignore that, but philosophizing while ignoring something so clear and simple is going ...

The claim "All ravens are black" Evidence for that, for the vast majority of people, has to have something to do with ravens, the creatures, and their...

Why most people have that requirement for evidence is a good question maybe. It's not so easy to answer that. But whether we can answer that question ...

You seem to parse things as if you're a computer and you can only do exactly what the code you've been programmed with specifies.

I should be asking you the same thing.

Not with a claim per a logic game. It needs to have something to do with ravens--the creatures.

No it isn't. I explained what I meant right after that. The purported evidence needs to have something to do with what it's evidence for. That's an ex...