Terrapin Station

Okay, but if they're not physical, then it's not physicalism.

It sounds like you're saying that under physicalism, "universals" are simply the properties that obtain via particulars. But that's not realism on uni...

As you could probably guess (or maybe already know), mathematical realism or platonism is no less a reification in my view. Our mathematical thinking ...

Sortals usually have to do with essences and counting. I'm not sure how his usage of "person" amounts to either. He's simply saying that two different...

It seems like you're avoiding answering the question I'm asking though. Re "We can be Aristotelian and believe that universals actually exist in the w...

Okay, but you're positing an entity that's not identical to its instantiations in particulars, right? What I'm asking you is how that entity is physic...

Here are some definitions of "Final cause:" "Final Cause: the end/goal of the object, or what the object is good for." ---http://www.uvm.edu/~jbailly/...

Re the parts in italics above, and especially the terms in bold, how would the entities in question be physical? Where would they be instantiated firs...

When I want to feel cleaver, I make sure I'm sharp. Well, or alternately, I just focus on beaver, which I often do anyway.

"Move a hypothetical to a fact?" Facts aren't states of affairs in your usage?

To start, I disagree with your first sentence: Philosophy could begin, either phylogenetically or ontogenetically, with any other (sub)branch than phi...

What do you take to be an example of a non-imaginary hypothetical?

Yeah, I didn't mean that personally. I'm just saying this re those sorts of views in general--from Plato and so on.

Comments: * Solipsism as a logical conclusion is hilarious. * I'd say that there's a difference between hallucinations and perceptions. (So that it wo...

I'm with you on all of that, mcdoodle. And I also think that we never fail to make big boo-boos when we attempt to conflate logic and natural language...

Although regret is usually after the fact. We could say something like "anticipated regret (where the regret can never obtain--since you'll be dead (l...

I'd say it's certainly beneficial in situations where your health and well-being are in danger. For one, it's correlated to the release of adrenaline/...

Whenever people posit such as real things that don't obtain somewhere, I can't get past a gut feeling that they're trying to sell me snakeoil.

Insofar as it's anticipatory, sure, but I wouldn't say that fear in response to some present stimulus is necessarily dependent on imagination. You'd m...

"I like going to zoos" seems like one good justification of it to me. Possible justifications are not limited to that, of course, and some of the just...

Both, I'd say (especially in the case of dentists)

Do you see the "sum of the properties"--like for example, say that we're talking about the property of redness, as an independent thing, though?

For me, literal fear associated with death is more along the lines of how I fear possible pain as well as thing ike going to doctors or dentists (I ha...

It's simply a reification, in the sense of a psychological projection into the objective world, of ideas and the mental aspects of language. A lot of ...

I think it would be funnier if the teacher would just say (and write down), "F" ;-)

The intentional fallacy doesn't say or recommend to necessarily not read authorial intent into something. It rather says that authorial intent does no...

In my view there are two issues here: (1) whether something, independent of how we think about it, is literally the same a la logical identity/identit...

My motivation is more along the lines of sharing my views, and that's really what I'm interested in from other people, too. I enjoy reading different ...

I certainly prefer some interpretations to others, some resonate with me more, etc. But unless it's a context where someone is trying to utter paraphr...

Well in my case it wasn't just the lack of a "push." I didn't know about religion at all really. No one in my family was religious (people in my exten...

But isn't that what he said--that the final cause of a hammer is driving nails? (In my case, though, I'd add, "Just in case the person who created the...

Ah, so just its properties, or "what it is." I'd agree with that, but I wouldn't call that something's meaning or essence. With respect to essence, th...

I'd talk to him if he wanted to talk to me--well, and if it's not a situation where I'm going to die at any immediate moment, as then I'd want to be t...

Yes, stated that way, it's valid but there's rather no reason to believe that it's sound.

I don't know what you'd take meaning to refer to. It's definitely different than what I take it to refer to.

You're assuming, here, that the reality "behind the bet" has something to do with the gambler's beliefs. I know a lot of folks who would love for that...

Nope. I'm saying that the conclusion isn't either guaranteed by the premises or a tautology. There are other possible conclusions that follow from the...

It's very simple. It's possible that you live as though god exists, or that you assert belief in god, or however exactly you'd like to put that, and t...

Because the claim was that it's a valid argument. Validity is about logical possibility. If it's logically possible that a conclusion if false given t...

I wouldn't say it implies either. Again, that's just going to turn out to be an empirical issue (if it's indeed something we can discover).

Someone could say, "What's the cause of the ? symbol in logic?" Where what they're asking is for an explanation of it: "It's the existential quantifie...

I wasn't leaving that out. I don't know why you'd say that we can't separate what is said from what it is about so that one logically precedes the oth...

The latter definitely isn't the case--I don't think that all there is to physicalism is antirealism on universals. I wouldn't necessarily say that the...

The problem with that is that Pascal's Wager isn't the same as the A1/A2 formulation. With Pascal's wager, we have no idea what the outcome of either ...

It's not valid. Here's just one other possibility of many: an "evil demon" god is what really exists, and he punishes anyone who believed in god durin...

"Proper interpretation" -- no such thing on my view. There can be a lack of understanding someone, of course, and people can agree or not on how to pa...

Yes. What extension is is what they have in mind. There's no "just its extension" aside from that. You could have anything conceivable in mind with th...

Very funny. Of course it matters. That's what extension is--what someone has in mind as the extension of a term. Yes they do. All that "conventional" ...

That's not a better answer, as (a) it doesn't address that the answer depends on who is using the term in a particular occaasion, and (b) depending on...

From the Wikipedia entry on a posteriori necessity: My answer to "To whom does the name 'Richard Nixon' refer" is: To whomever (or whatever) the perso...