Terrapin Station

What does your comment have to do with what you quoted from me? (Maybe it was an example of something without relevance? Haha)

The vast majority of people have a relevance requirement for evidence. The purported evidence needs to have something to do with what it's evidence fo...

Anything can be evidence of anything if you use a definition that stipulates that it's evidence, no? What does that prove though?

What people count as evidence for something doesn't hinge on logic games in that way. Most people would say--and I'd agree--that green apples have not...

It certainly can, but it doesn't necessarily, especially not based on simply playing a logic game that we've constructed. It depends on just what the ...

Oh. Well, that would look bad for him then.

Wasn't he criticizing you in that post? If not, he doesn't know what he's talking about. How about an actual discussion though? Why are you so afraid ...

And we can certainly talk about situations where A and B mean the same thing to S. The problem with this is that they don't always mean the same thing...

They only mean the same thing when individuals assign the same meaning to them (keeping in mind that it's not going to literally be the same), and the...

If you know you have a finite number of items, yes, but depending on how many items there are, it's not good evidence of the hypothesis being likely, ...

I'm not saying that the math doesn't work as a formalism. But the formalism has no significance devoid of context, and devoid of an actual number in t...

I don't agree that there's any way to come up with a number for claims such as that.

The math about being white or brown would make no sense if we have no reason to believe that the eggs can be white or brown. The math wouldn't mean an...

So why start with "Let's assume that we have 12 eggs and that they can be either white or brown"? Why would we even say that unless we have some reaso...

The problem is that there's no non-physical account of how anything is supposed to work.

First, we need to look at why we're saying that the eggs can be either white or brown. Is it because we know that we have a collection of 12 eggs wher...

I'd have to search for something. It's not just something I read. I learned about this from philosophers I was interacting with, as a student and beyo...

The term changed from physicalism because "materialism" fell out of fashion, again with Marxist connotations being a major part of the reason for that...

It's not as if it's not murder just because the body involved isn't fully formed. (Which isn't my view re abortion, but that's the view.)

That's a very strange thing to see as a problem, though, because it suggests that in general, people don't understand how different sorts of matter, i...

It's not just "my form." It's ridiculous to think that every (other) physicalist is merely deferring to the science of physics, and that that's all th...

Well, supposedly, on this Cartesian view, nonphysical things are not located at all. So it's not true that a nonphysical thing is located in a differe...

Ah--I overlooked that he specifically mentioned Cartesian dualism in his initial post.

But why does a dualist have to be a Cartesian dualist?

Just so you know where I'm coming from, I'm a physicalist who thinks that the idea of nonphysical existents is incoherent. However, I'm wondering whet...

Michael, you mean? It's not that difficult of a question or idea. It's just not on his script.

That would matter if physicalism were adherence to whatever the received view is in the scientific discipline of physics, but it isn't. There are a co...

You can't go off script too much. I understand.

It depends on who is assigning meaning to those statements and what meanings they're assigning, doesn't it?

I don't agree that logic deals with semantics other than formally. I had said that above.

Understanding is different than agreement.

First you didn't quote that part. I asked "What part of what you quoted . . ." Anyway, okay, so material equivalence isn't logical equivalence?

I don't see how you're showing me that I'm wrong. What part of what you quoted addresses semantics rather than form?

What would you say that has to do with my last post and my questions to you?

Logic is about form, not semantic content. You're arguing otherwise? That logical form is identical to semantics?

Well that kind of sucks for a support of it. It seems to me that there's a problem with it, and we're right back at what I've been harping on in other...

That can't be the argument for why evidence for one is evidence for the other just in case they're logically equivalent. After all, it's just a restat...

What would the argument be for that?

Not a reductionist or holist. I figure you had something specific in mind.

An explanation of? (Maybe that would work for producing an answer to what I'm calling myself that I'm not able to define.)

As I was expressing in the other thread, my physicalism isn't in any way subservient to the science of physics. What I'm saying in a nutshell is that ...

What am I calling myself that I aren't able to define?

Yeah, but I'm talking about relative to the views of (a mass of) folks who identify as holists and reductionists. Obviously someone could just make up...

A clue should be in the term "materialism"--materialists/physicalists generally think that everything is material or matter as well as perhaps "forces...

You're getting confused here regarding the exact content of their views with the sort of thing they were talking about. What do all materialists pre-s...

Instead of saying what I mean by it--because my view is relatively idiosyncratic, at least with respect to how I state it, let me ask this: aren't you...

That's got to be about the stupidest comment I've ever heard. "Just in case your physicalism isn't a deferral to the science of physics, then we have ...

Yes you can. In no way is physicalism necessarily subservient to the science of physics. It's not some sort of supplication to another discipline. The...

The science of physics is not the same thing as what the science of physics studies. You seem to be continually conflating the two (because you seem t...

?? I don't really understand your comment. You can be a physicalist who believes that some phenomena can be acausal or ontologically random, and you c...