Terrapin Station

But you don't have to be a realist on physical law to be a physicalist either.

That doesn't make the difference though. You said: "The reason I raised this issue is because I have argued elsewhere that we are forced into existenc...

What I was hoping to discuss with you in this tangent was "What does 'entailed by physics" mean exactly?" We never got very far with that.

If you'd simply read the IEP or Wikipedia entries on reductionism, you could easily learn some different ideas re what it refers to.

Again, it seems like you're wanting to simply rehash the old physicalism vs dualism (or whatever) argument. I'm not interested in that. We've done tha...

Conditionals do not imply causality. Thinking that they do is one of the dangers of plugging natural language into the structure of a logical argument...

Because the job is to capture what it is that people idenfitying as reductionists and holists are talking about. Not to make up your own thing that yo...

You're not under an impression that you presented any sort of evidence or argument that that's a common definition though, are you?

That's a good support of most people who identify as holists or reductionists seeing the issue that way and not seeing Aristotle's four causes as a mu...

I'm skeptical that a majority of people who identify as either holists or reductionists would see the issue as being about causality and that they'd b...

This again isn't clear. Physicalism doesn't amount to some sort of endorsement of the science of physics (which we can see as a set of social facts/so...

Well, then the answer to my question "logically possible with respect to what (domain)?" would be "the domain of metaphysical facts" then, no?

So "If you knew everything about the physical world" then? I'm just clarifying because "physics" can be read (and probably should be) as being about t...

That's saying something about the science of physics per se, isn't it?

You're trying to skip to the "point" or "meat" of the argument. I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in what "logically possible" or "logically ...

Well, that makes no sense. You know that I'm asking you what entailed by physics amounts to, right? So an answer would have to fit "x is entailed by p...

In the sense where we're talking about the "furniture of the world" so to speak a la things that can be known via experience, whether directly or not,...

"Forced to exist" in the context you were using it has a connotation of being forced to do something against one's will, especially because you're hop...

I'm not talking about "empirical" in the sense of epistemological empiricism obviously.

How about referring to it, then, rather than referring to referring to it? In other words, how about saying what it means exactly?

??? Check your dictionary maybe.

What does "entailed by physics" mean exactly? You're not saying something about the science of physics per se, are you? And otherwise, what does it me...

The first problem with this is that physicalism doesn't require a belief in (strong) determinism. One can be a physicalist and believe that some event...

So ontology doesn't deal with empirical things in your view? Time isn't empirical for example? "Everything is water" isn't an empirical claim?

The bulk of metaphysics is ontology, no? And it's sounding more and more like you're simply giving up on trying to support the logical possibility/"lo...

What does it mean to "logically account" for something empirical? Sounds fancy, but I think it doesn't actually mean anything.

Oy--this is just what I'm talking about though. Logically possible with respect to what? Metaphysical facts? Some set of statements? Logical possibili...

Hence why I'm asking what we're saying it's logically possible with respect to.

The idea is that something is logically possible just when it isn't contradictory. Well, whether it's contradictory is relative to the domain we're co...

You need to already exist to be forced to do something. Hence you're not forced into existence.

We should have you rewrite EPM, because you write far more clearly than Sellars.

There's no you to be forced into anything prior to your conception, at least (and I'd say prior to the the development of minimal sentience, which is ...

Slightly more seriously, with the first one, given only ten seconds, I doubt I'd be able to come up with anything more than, "I'm the god of thunder--...

Freud or Jung? I'd change majors.

It depends on who or what we're talking about for that though. For example, if we're talking about on-sentient objects, then saying "your preferences ...

This seems dubious to me unless we're simply saying that conceivability is logical possibility. And with respect to logical possibility, what domain a...

So you're saying that the semantic content of statements in an argument matter? You were ignoring that idea with the p-zombie argument and only focusi...

Mattering is subjective, though.--it's a subjective measure of how important something is to someone, how much significance they put on whatever it is...

I don't agree with this. I think that teleology is bunk outside of sentient creatures thinking about things in terms of goals/aims/purposes. Re evolut...

You're conflating concepts and terms (names for things) with the things that the concepts and terms are about. Outside of concepts and terms there are...

With respect to ontology, nothing(ness) isn't an object that exists. That doesn't mean that the term has no denotation. It denotes the absence of obje...

This basically, but I don't buy the idea of "emergent properties" beyond the fact that matter in particular dynamic structures has properties that thi...

Okay, but how would we phrase this so that it doesn't suggest anything teleological? It would have to be something like, "Are we not completely in con...

It's not about the word, but the ontological ideas: It doesn't matter what we call the idea you're getting at there. Doing things "for something else,...

Purposes only occur when sentient creatures think about things in tems of an overarching goal or credo that they're attracted to. So you'd be asking w...

For assessing the argument. (Or in other words, the whole focus of the discussion we've been having)

Semantic content doesn't matter for that, does it? I asked you that earlier and you just ignored it.

The conclusion is B, because If A, then B, and A. It's a simple modus ponens. So you're saying that the conclusion of a modus ponens is a contradictio...

His argument is a simple modus ponens. If A, then B. A. Therefore B. You're saying that is a contradiction?

Yes, and the opposite view isn't that no things are determined. The opposite view is simply that not everything is determined. It's similar to idealis...