Terrapin Station

? It's not inadequate if that's the most common way the term is used (for quite some time now, at least in analytic philosophy). If you're just gettin...

But ontology is typically a philosophical "inventory" of what exists.

As if etymology necessarily and perpetually determines what a term refers to.

I wouldn't say that that's what "mutually exclusive" refers to, by the way. Mutual exclusivity obtains when insofar as we have A, we can't have B, and...

But questions about taking a side either way would be secondary to taking a side either way. And while I think it's worthwhile to get into more detail...

Perception doesn't exhaust the inventory of the world. It doesn't exhaust the inventory of your body either. Lots of things, processes, etc. exist oth...

I know I'm like a broken record, but it's a point worth repeating: you have to study the physiology of perceptual faculties via perception. If percept...

If one were a utilitarian who believes that: (a) brains in a vat were the sorts of creatures due moral consideration, (b) brains in a vat could be vir...

Yes. If only all questions were that easy to answer.

Just wait until your legal guardians let you plug in electronic devices. You'll be staring at the cords, the outlet etc. for years.

You say: Yet I had said: Note first off that I didn't say anything like "when one says that 'x is wrong' what one really means is." I said that for mo...

Wait, I thought that Patrick Grim said something about utilitarianism with respect to this, and that seemed to be the point of it. A lot of utilitaria...

They're about how one feels about the behavior in question. So yeah, it's not just a matter of word assignment. Both judgments such as "murder is wron...

First off, there's no real water on the idealist view. The water, as well as the act of drugging the water, is just an idea/just mental phenomena the ...

Sure there are. After all, it merely mentions utilitarianism, and then it suggests a conclusion about what utilitarians must believe. You can't come t...

It wouldn't be that they're not answering or not responding to it. it would be that they don't accept the assumptions being made about utilitarianism ...

How about quoting what you're responding to, since I just posted a bunch of different things.

If only that had something to do with temporal extension, then your comment would be relevant.

It's relevant because it's about what a utilitarian must believe given the thought experiment. If a utilitarian believes that the thought experiment f...

??? Direct realism doesn't posit that perception is infallible, that there is no mental dysfunction, etc.

Most realists believe that, but it isn't implied by being a realist.

That would be quite separate view from realism, even if the vast majority of realists believe it.

Yeah, mind-independence but that does not imply that the item in question continues to exist when we are not aware of it. Certainly most realists, inc...

I explicitly said in my comment that the initial post presents no grounds beyond conceivability/possibility.

You're ignoring my conditional. I said that IF the mere conceivability or possibility of a claim is sufficient for believing that claim, then it would...

Wrong. A realist believes, at minimum, that some real things exist, at least at some times. That doesn't require believing that things continue to exi...

So what? How in the world are you getting from that question and my response that I was saying something about it being a contradiction to say that ne...

Again, I'm guessing you're responding to this, but you're not actually answering the question I'm asking you;

I didn't say anything about it being a contradiction to say that neither thing is sufficiently justified.

That would make that person a realist with an unusual ontology of how real things "behave" rather than an idealist.

Then you're not talking about the same thing that I am. My dreams, hallucinations etc. are nothing like experiences of real things. That's why the fac...

That's like saying that some cards are hearts and some clubs, so you need something more to justify that some cards are hearts.

I'm one of the realists around here. I don't think it's a decisive objection at all. One big problem with it is that it confuses the conceivability th...

I'd say for one because we experience real things.

It seems to me that people make way too much of "self-awareness." Mentality is awareness. Self-awareness is simply thinking something like, "I'm aware...

I don't think we should force people to live if they don't want to, however.

Yeah, that's not biased towards your own background, interests and stances. <eye roll>

Most of your post that I'm pulling the above quote from is good; I agree with most of it. I pulled that quote because I want to offer another angle on...

I agree that it doesn't make a difference what one names the "stuff" that one is talking about, but I don't buy any of the following: that in lieu of ...

Which Fine--Arthur? Kit? And why are we going by one particular person's characterization (which I'd say is an idiosyncratic characterization)?

Maybe you could explain this a bit more (if you haven't already . . . I haven't read all of the posts below this one yet).

No one with a mental condition should be pitied and helped unless either (a) they want help because they don't like the way they are, or (b) they're u...

You're not presenting an argument for why that should be the case in your view though.

As I just explained:.

Sure. But what does that have to do with whether I feel comfortable imposing something on others that they didn't request?

I'm guessing the comment of mine you're responding to is this: Are you denying that (ii) is a view that a utilitarian could hold?

Materialists believe that only material things exist (as well as whatever structures/relations they're in). Realism asserts that the existents in ques...

In my opinion these three are the case more or less: . . . Which of course implies that I do not believe that those three are incompatible with each o...

I'd probably agree if you were just saying that in the "right" (artificial) circumstances, most people will get bored. But I don't think those circums...

Yeah, I agree with that. That was part of what I was getting at. And I think most folks, as they age, learn how to find very small, subtle things inte...