Terrapin Station

The idea of an existent that's somehow external to "spacetime" is incoherent on my view. I'm 100% certain in ruling that out. Remember, by the way, th...

If inner experience is variable, then language is impossible because . . . ? Well, who knows? In order to conclude that we'd need to be resting on a t...

I'm an atheist about there being an entity that created the universe through non-magical means, too, because I'd say the idea of that is incoherent. T...

Are you an agnostic about that, too?

So would you say that you're not 100% sure when it comes to denying any arbitrary, absurd/fantastical claim that anyone makes? Are you not 100% sure t...

The conventional definition of "empirical" said it. Are you an agnostic about every empirical claim, such as whether you have an automobile?

I'm an atheist. I'm not angry. I'm not really an agnostic. Empirical claims are not provable period. So that "There is no god" isn't provable is a red...

So correspondence requires thought on your view?

I don't care for her, but I don't dislike her or disagree with her any more than a ton of other philosophers I don't care for, don't agree with. And I...

That's a claim. I'm asking for your support of that claim. How does correspondence work sans thought?

The mystery would be why you believe that people agree on moral principles. If people agree on moral principles, how do you explain arguing over wheth...

Haha, well that's what you should be doing to do philosophy--think about this stuff. If we're going to claim that the relation obtains outside of a ju...

If you take thinking about the actions of the interlocutors out of the picture, how would you say that meaning arises? In other words, how do those ac...

What I'm asking is not what's objective about life expectancy, etc. I'm asking what's objective about "we should have x (re life expectancy, for examp...

First, it's nice to see a longer post here that's well-written. You state a topic and follow through with it, explaining it in more depth, you define ...

What a strange idea in my opinion--that language amounts to "copying" something from one mind to another. What happens instead, in a nutshell, is that...

If no one is claiming that there's anything that interacts with nothing, then why would we not only point out that it's not the case that there isn't ...

And who claims that anything interacts with nothing?

I'd say that the biggest threats are: (a) the two-sided coin of (i) tribalism (in a very broad sense, including all of the "identity politics" categor...

What's objective about that?

So here's what happens in my head when I read your post: I think, "Hmm . . . okay--I'm not sure exactly what you'd call 'reductionism in ethics' or wh...

I just noticed your post now. If things were deterministic, the belief that they have free will still makes a difference in the comparative cases, eve...

"Not influenced or controlled in any way" there doesn't mean, for example, that independent things do not interact per the laws of physics. You're rea...

"Hot" and "having a high degree of heat or a high temperature" or "hot" and <pointing at a glowing coil on a stove> or anything like that don't amount...

"Independent" doesn't imply "incorrigibly isolated and not capable of interaction." So arguing against those notions amounts to arguing against a stra...

How is "the reduction of uncertainty" not either hopelessly vague or just not related to any conventional sense of certainty/uncertainty?

How do you believe the relation obtains outside of a judgment?

Didn't Shannon not really define the term? I'm not sure about that. It's been awhile since I read any of that stuff, but I seem to remember the term n...

It would depend on the definition of "information" that we're using. That word tends to be used in a lot of different senses--including simply denotin...

You have a belief that the cat is on the mat, say. You have a belief that such and such is the state of affairs that obtains. Truth, on the other hand...

On my view that's more nonsense that we're making up in order to avoid having to revise theories on a more foundational level.

Because stuff is invented (space as a separable thing) to make it work. It's akin to epicycles re planetary motion. That theory fits what we observe, ...

You're assuming here that's there's something different from you, called space, that you occupy. That's not at all something that you're observing. Yo...

What does this phrase refer to? What would that amount to, to be "bounded by its own individual space"?

Are you suggesting that you or anyone else is presenting arguments or observations? Just curious. You've got to be joking. You observe "unified space"...

Isn't that putting theory above observations? Theory should explain observations, not dictate what can be observed, and then require fanciful inventio...

I have to read through the thread in detail--I might be missing context I need here, but there would be two three senses to talk about: One, relative ...

"Pure assertion" as opposed to? At this point, you should be able to answer these questions as I would. That doesn't imply that you'd agree with me, b...

Obviously truth is always to someone on my view, and the notion of it possibly being the case independently of anyone is incoherent on my view (incohe...

Thanks for sharing all of that. Wouldn't other conclusions for most of that simply be that (a) people can believe things, including theoretical things...

It's what "being true" is--when you make a "positive" judgment about the relation (for example, judging that "yes, the proposition corresponds to this...

As I note, it's a judgment about the relation between a proposition and something else. I wouldn't say that judgments in this sense are beliefs.

No, space isn't something separate from locations, separate from extensional relations. It's identical to them. The orbit between the orbit of Venus a...

Right

There would only be a center in an abstract sense. It would be in the sense that we can basically "triangulate" a relational center. Rates of position...

They can't be contemplating the same proposition. What I said is that they can be similar.

Again, as I wrote, "They are locations, and locations are always defined in terms of relative extensional relations." So, for example, the Earth is lo...

There is no "balloon itself," things moving apart are simply changing extensional relations.

I have no idea beyond "somewhere on Earth," but presumably you know your address.

The mistake that's commonly made is to think of space as a container (and to think of it as a container that could exist on its own, like an empty box...