Terrapin Station

If I believe that they're the same thing, I can't have an "insofar as I believe there can be a difference." That's a contradiction. If there can be di...

This makes no sense, though. If usage is what makes meanings true, and a definition gives the meaning, then a definition isn't true independent of mea...

"Possible" refers to what can obtain. (And can refer to different contexts, such as what can obtain logically, metaphysically, etc.) "Conceivable" ref...

That's a report of usage. At any rate, the reason I asked for clarification on this is that if you're NOT saying that definitions (or meanings) necess...

In my view, insofar as those things are real (again, read "extramental"), you can have an encounter with them. We could give examples of real things t...

The first task is to understand just what it is that nominalists are claiming. Very few if any nominalists deny that we think about things in terms of...

You're not claiming that what "definition" (or "meaning" in your usage) refers to, though, is "report of usage" are you?

I'm not sure what comment of mine you're responding to, but the initial post of the thread claimed there is a problem with this based on ideas such as...

Maybe not. But nevertheless, there would be a non-trumpable law in place, and a police/militaristic force in place to enforce it, that would disallow ...

The predictions are supplied by the mathematics, correct?

Wait, though. If I say things such as "That tree is actually just my own mental phenomena," and "You are just my own mental phenomena." "Only my menta...

Every sentence of that last comment, pretty much every phrase, seems completely ridiculous to me. I could try to sort it out so that your view that me...

But entailment isn't something that can make claims about anything. Anyway, I'm not suggesting for you to write any differently than you do. I'm just ...

So you're just saying that it's a permanent, essential, inseparable attribute of the world that there are meanings . . . as long as people exist? (Whi...

The ad hoc part is that we posit the ontological ridiculouslessness of parallel worlds.

Yes, of course I value it. I think that everyone does, really (that is, everyone with anything like a normally functioning brain, at least), whether t...

Like usual, I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about. Even things that seem to me should be simple I don't get. For example, "It claims s...

It's true in your view if it describes the meaning of the term per what?

But in MWI, the probability that both are measured is 100%, no? One is measured in one world. The other is measured in another world.

How are you figuring that meaning (in either sense) is permanent/unchanging? Doesn't at least some meaning shift over time?

That could be for Stoicism, which I don't know much about, really, but Holiday appears to be writing popular self-help books.

One thing that I think is interesting about self-help books that are geared towards people reaching particular goals is that they can't work for every...

I don't want to get into a big tangent about other minds and empathy, but I'm not suggesting that we only deal with morality from a behaviorist perspe...

It's not just whether something is logically possible. Entailment is implication, or that something follows from something else. Things follow from "I...

Well, because you're necessarily interpreting them to refer to the objectivist framework. I rather look at it as (a) talk stemming from normal talk ab...

I believe that what leads to action is someone feeling strongly pro or con particular behaviors. The belief in moral principles being objective is jus...

That sounds to me like you're talking about what I'm calling "feeling" though.

Yeah, I was just reading about him on Wikipedia. Seems like he understands marketing well, at least (although not well enough that I've heard about hi...

This thread is the first I've ever heard of him. Not sure why anyone should have heard of him.

I agree with him that it's relative to something--although it's relative to the logical "system" we're employing, not (just) a(ny) "model," And I don'...

Someone might have that view, but it would be very unusual, including that it wouldn't be clear what they'd have in mind by entailment. On the surface...

Okay, but that's the probability I'm talking about there being a desire to remove. There's still a probability of what one will observe in one's world...

Where you say "unqualified" is by saying "Definitions are true or false." "Definitions" there is unqualified. Again, what's true or false is that so a...

The sarcasm was on my part. I was indicating that asking for more specificity than "the truthmaker is the facts" was sarcastic understatement from me....

I'm here for purposes of enjoyment/entertainment, to "stay in practice" (re both thinking and writing in a philosophical context), and with some hope ...

Haha--yeah, but what facts. Be a little more specific. (Sarcastic understatement again.) Again, this has nothing to do with general context-independen...

That wasn't the idea there, although yeah, I'd say that the two facts are related. The idea is more that if you want to claim that there is a context-...

You're not forgetting that I'm talking about a specific context here, right? Namely, how particular persons are defining/using the term(s) in question...

I don't even know what that would amount to. But we probably have very different views on what meanings and concepts are (a fortiori because my views ...

I'm probably being overly optimistic in assuming this might work, but could you explain to me in a specific, "practical" example how the infinite regr...

It's probably important to keep in mind the context of a discussion for something like this. (Which is meant as sarcastic understatement.) We're talki...

X entails y is the same as y is implied by x, in the sense of y validly following from x. You need to know what validity is to understand that. Tradit...

I think you're seeing the justification of ethical claims as necessarily needing to be rooted in objective morality, or moral truths. That's what I'm ...

So re the Schrodinger equation, do you disagree with this statement: "The associated wavefunction gives the probability of finding the particle at a c...

Here are some conventional definitions of "inherent": * "existing in something as a permanent, essential, inseparable attribute." * "involved in the c...

Definitions are correlated to meanings. I wouldn't say they "describe" meanings. For one, in order for something to count as a description, one has to...

I'm not saying anything about institutions. Here are some common definitions of "consensus": * "general or widespread agreement" * "majority of opinio...

(1) It seems like you're shifting to "meaning" in the semantic sense rather than "meaning" in the "purpose"/"meaning of life" sense. (2) I don't see h...

Yeah, I'd like that the one neighbor helped, I just don't see it as morally negative that the other neighbor didn't.

I don't think that anyone (except perhaps some high school kids who are more or less acting in a trollish way or at least who are wanting to not be bo...