Terrapin Station

First, whether any society is moral or amoral, assuming one thinks the idea of that even really makes sense, is a subjective judgment.

Just want to clarify if you're giving this of an example of something that's not a factual claim.

Wait, you're claiming that ontology isn't philosophy?

I think saying they were ontologically necessary, even, isn't really justified, but it would be an unusual situation, at least, for me to have written...

Sure, but that's not what a cause is. I still had to decide to write mine. I could have decided otherwise.

So what's an example of something that you think isn't making a factual claim?

They were not the cause of my responses, correct. I had to decide to answer, decide what to type, etc.

Is there a reason we'd be trying to give an exhaustive list?

Muscle memory is another example if you don't consider that coextensive with autonomic functions.

Autonomic functions can, for example.

Decisions don't have causal antecedents. That's the whole gist of free will. I don't buy determinism.

Usually deciding to perform them.

Yeah, it doesn't work if one is a strong (thoroughgoing) determinist. I'm not a strong determinist.

It's not unreasonable if he wants me to believe that speech can be causal to actions. The main thing we'd have to show is that the people in question ...

As I've requested many times, specify all of the causal factors/the causal chain.

One place it should get you is a realization that I wasn't saying anything about possibilities and I wasn't dismissing correlations.

Reading what I had already written in the thread?

Do continue making up what you think I'm arguing.

lol

But then it seems weird to me to have a belief one way or the other. I would think those folks would instead say, "Let's figure out what we're even ta...

No, they precisely DO NOT think this. They don't think it's possible for a god to exist. That would be knowing that it's possible. They do not know if...

I'm not sure what the regression is. You know that you don't know if you think that it's possible for a god to exist or not.

I don't understand for the first part why you were basically writing the same thing just with a "cannot" instead of a "can." At any rate, sure, if you...

To laugh at the fact that you weren't familiar with "correlation does not imply causation" and then to laugh again at your eventual attempt to claim t...

Right--without having a belief in possibility either way. That's just the idea.

Sure, and I'll keep commenting as I do. Glad we have that sorted out. Maybe we can end the metadiscussion now.

If you or S or someone were to ask me this right now, I'd not be able to know whether it's even possible, especially if you don't tell me where you li...

Not necessarily. You might be able to discover the information, but you don't necessarily know when you're asked and when you respond. It can be the c...

I have zero interest in "debating."

They simply don't have an opinion on it. Maybe they don't have enough information, or they think it's not something that can be known, etc.

Imagine someone asking "Is my car parked on Main Street?" And then the person we ask says, "I don't know . . . I don't even know if it's possible for ...

Because one doesn't know if it's possible or not for a god to exist. So you're not believing that's it's not possible, but you're not believing that i...

Yeah, you are. You realized you made a gaffe, and you're doing typical Internet conversation moves of trying to spin it into a save.

He's saying they can be agnostic on whether it's possible, too. That's different than believing either that it's possible or not possible.

In terms of psychological certainty, I'm 100% certain that no deity exists. It's not about proof. Empirical claims are not provable. I see religious c...

lol again--now at the fact that you're inserting "the possibility of causation" in there.

I'm familiar with it. It doesn't really address my take on this, which isn't the same as either actualism or possibilism.

It wasn't precluded from happening, given physical facts as they are. Some things are precluded from happening. Those things are (and were) not possib...

Lol, no it doesn't. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation

You're seriously not familiar with "correlation does not imply causation"?

I did address that. The cause of C can be A and B. The cause of C isn't A in that case. It has to be A and B. A alone might never result in B. So in t...

If you think it's causation in the sense that I accept that term, you could try to demonstrate the physical causal chain.

As I've pointed out at least four or five times in recent weeks, influence and causality are NOT the same thing.

You don't believe it. What you do is not be a realism fetishist, because that's not pertinent to fiction. You enjoy the fantasy for what it is rather....

You don't buy free will?

Fantasizing is different than believing.

So I don't consider Hitler to have caused anyone's death. (Insofar as I know, at least. I have no idea if Hitler himself ever killed anyone directly, ...

I wouldn't be so quick to generalize there. I'd bet plenty believe that the god of different religions isn't any different. They'd think that the diff...

I'd say no. It rather creates things that turn into selves.

First, the question is why we can't say this about the sun re prior to writing about it, the sun didn't exist, or at least there's no way to "prove" t...