Stock market players create no value. They build no houses, sail no ships, entertain no crowds, sew no garments, dig up no precious stones, make no me...
We couldn't use the concept 'sitting' if we had no concepts. But we could sit if we had no concepts (hamster example). And we do have concepts. So wha...
We don't get a vote. MP's will decide who is the next Prime Minister. I can guarantee it will be someone who supports traditional Conservative values ...
Thank you for the diplomatic compliment. In case you did not know already, England is sane in the same way as the first guy you meet on the ward who a...
@Darkneos. Wherever we would be sitting, it would not be on a concept. If we had no concepts we might still have somewhere to sit - as a hamster might...
Limited by English culture, I had to look up Claritin but now I get it. I think it's the font but it seems to say 'The New Yorker'. Brilliant cartoons...
I think the problem starts with the first paragraph. It says The concept of a chair is a concept. It does not follow that a chair is a concept. And in...
From the OP I get the impression that you think people may not behave well in the discussion and now you have raised a suspicion that someone is troll...
Thank you for this very thoughtful and sensible post. I would say that there is not a clear distinction between what 'ordinary people' and 'philosophe...
Are there eternal souls? As we don't know and have no way of finding out, we might learn to live with uncertainty, unless anything less than certainty...
I'll go with nominative suggestivism. Tom Tugendhat was a Swedish Bauhaus architect. Benjamin Wallace was a nineteenth century chemist and Ben Wallace...
The connection between epistemology and emotions is a thing and has been a thing for a while: https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/epistemology-and-emotions/ A...
I forgot that one. Or that group of theories. I think that's probably it? I suppose it (or they) is a kind of theory that is used when any other theor...
Well, I think changing OP text mid-discussion can cause confusion - a footnote to say 'I typed X and should have typed Y' is clearer. But I can work o...
Sounds like a straw man to me. Nobody has ever proposed a theory to explain everything. A 'Theory of Everything' in physics would not claim to explain...
I agree. That was the first premiss in the post I called the 'slingshot' argument. The argument does not dispute any claim made in the OP. Let it be t...
The slingshot argument does not claim to establish that continuation of the race justifies any course of action or even that it's a good idea, let alo...
That would be an additional argument. The slingshot shows that if we agree that it is wrong to procreate, then we cannot rule out destruction of the r...
Here's a theory: The 'big questions' (can we know there is an external world? etc) are based on misconceptions and false analogies. To ask how we know...
If you are right and if any of us are parents then a lack of focus is the least of our faults. Desert and consent are not unrelated. If I choose to dr...
In this presumed just world, nobody would ever be landing. Justice would be done - no undeserved harm would be inflicted by birth - no-one would be bo...
Sorry, to clarify. The thing that is 'forbidden' in many social circles in the West is referring to suicide as sinful or worthy of condemnation. If yo...
It is a big difference. I don't think it has always been that way. When a politician resigns in disgrace, he is sometimes said to 'fall on his sword',...
As long as humans exist there is no Nmax. Someone will always pitch up to propose the last number suggested +1. And without humans there's nobody roun...
There is also a slingshot argument. Let's grant all the OP. Let's also assume that we ought not to commit injustice. Let's further assume that 'ought'...
Do children protest against the injustice, if it is an injustice, of having been born? It seems so. It occurs to some children to remind their parents...
I wonder whether this happens because drugs skew our judgement and perception, making us unable to tell when we are confused and unable to express our...
Perhaps the reason we don't have a term for 'without a beginning, but with an end' is that it is incoherent. If a process had no beginning then it wou...
It was reported by A W Moore from a lecture by W and I don't know more than that. Like a lot of Wittgenstein's remarks it is suggestive of an argument...
I think it is eternity - without beginning and without end. Wittgenstein in a lecture once asked his audience to imagine coming across a man who is sa...
No, not for the long haul, at least the left side of the left. On the other hand, neither does the right of the right stand much of a chance. The left...
I think Aldous Huxley's After Many A Summer is an interesting answer to the question. He tends to the view that immortality would be disgusting, vices...
On the contrary, the statement is (as far as I know) true, just as it is written. Religious people are not necessarily stupid - but most stupid people...
Hmm, interesting. If it's true, then it may merely be because most people are religious (to some degree) and also that most people are quite stupid wh...
If there are Marxists who also believe in inevitable capitalism, then I imagine they are too busy trying to square one belief against the other ever t...
The quicker you set them right, the better the world will be. It only remains to show that they are wrong or that there's no reason to suppose they ar...
I think all the above post is true. The robot has issued such and such words and the words all made sense. But did the robot mean any of it? On the ot...
That is true. Socrates could be seen as a pre-Christian martyr, for example. But let's not get carried away. Early Christian thought and theology was ...
True. We can also be seen as angels, demons or lizards. If we turn out to be lizards that blows a hole in the robot theory. The point I'm making is th...
Comments