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SophistiCat

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This is only a part of Frege's sentence model. He specifically excludes "concept words" from this part. God (capitalized) is, obviously, a proper name...
December 13, 2019 at 16:27
In: Brexit  — view comment
That's not a problem, that's a feature. Of course I define what is 'rational', as does everyone else.
December 13, 2019 at 11:49
In: Brexit  — view comment
You mean they don't see themselves acting irrationally. Of course. If they did, would they act that way? When I say that people act irrationally, that...
December 13, 2019 at 11:32
In: Brexit  — view comment
What this and other recent and not-so-recent events show, I think, is that in times of stress people often act irrationally; self-destructive forces p...
December 13, 2019 at 11:11
It's an eye-opener, isn't it? Keeping the phenomenological perspective in mind helps to not get oneself confused with language and clever abstractions...
December 13, 2019 at 06:02
As you noted, these what-if questions pop up in different contexts. In the 1980s paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould raised this question with respect to...
December 11, 2019 at 17:14
I think the way Penrose explains the situation makes it clear that it is only superficially paradoxical: There is no "difference that makes a differen...
December 11, 2019 at 15:21
You keep saying this, but three pages into the discussion it makes no more sense than in the beginning. I think we may as well leave it here.
December 10, 2019 at 06:57
I think that your main worry here is the relativity of simultaneity, the conventionality of clock synchronization protocols in SR. The only time when ...
December 10, 2019 at 06:30
Her current age is not a meaningless concept, just under-defined. Pick a reference frame - any reference frame - and the ambiguity will disappear. The...
December 09, 2019 at 23:03
I don't know which part of what you wrote he had in mind. As I already pointed out, you equivocate between a trivial (but wrong) descriptive statement...
December 08, 2019 at 18:30
Sorry, ki ? (0, 1) was supposed to mean that ki is in a set consisting of 0 and 1. Not sure what the correct notation should be.
December 08, 2019 at 11:53
ETA: Corrected the formula: \frac{1}{2}+\sum_{i=2}^{\infty}(-1)^{k_i}(\frac{1}{2})^i, where k_i is 0 or 1 We should be able to prove a stronger claim ...
December 08, 2019 at 11:46
His sum, the one he claims can only converge to a rational number, is something like this: 1/2+\sum_{i=2}^{\infty}(-1)^{k_i}(\frac{1}{2})^i, where k_i...
December 08, 2019 at 08:39
How is this "objectively an error?" You have not shown this. Your argument is that a closed system will by necessity converge towards a stable (static...
December 07, 2019 at 13:40
By the same token, my hypothetical acceptance of the contrary proof could be "based in a failure to see that its unsound, a mistaken understanding." I...
December 07, 2019 at 12:18
It's not odd and it's not dogma. It's just straightforward logic: If Cantor's proof is correct, then his result is a theorem and therefore it is right...
December 07, 2019 at 11:07
No, I haven't read your proof. I don't need to, because I have read and understood Cantor's diagonal proof. That's all I need to know that Cantor is r...
December 07, 2019 at 10:19
That's a far cry from "nothing," especially when you add some sort of periodic state change, as you do further on. And it isn't anything that any cosm...
December 07, 2019 at 09:58
First, to be clear, your argument is not, strictly speaking, against what you wrote in the title, that there isn't "more than one infinity," because y...
December 07, 2019 at 09:50
You are just playing with words here. No one would describe a ball rolling downhill as trying to get to a more stable state, except metaphorically. No...
December 05, 2019 at 05:16
You are right that we can learn by means of logical arguments implications of which we were not aware, even though they were always "contained" in the...
December 04, 2019 at 12:37
You are trying to do two contradictory things at the same time. On the one hand, you are trying to make your statement trivially true, so that you can...
December 03, 2019 at 15:41
But you cannot just define goals. I as a moral agent select my goals according to what I judge to be good or bad; you cannot unilaterally define my go...
December 03, 2019 at 13:25
You keep repeating this, but it makes no sense whatsoever. It is trivially true that every thing either changes or it does not, but no normative state...
December 03, 2019 at 12:12
This is just foundationalist utilitarianism, with your preferred utility inexplicably declared as "logical necessity."
December 03, 2019 at 08:16
You are making it sound like corruption, but this is just how language normally functions: in the most general, informal context words have multiple u...
December 03, 2019 at 07:39
No, it doesn't. You are misusing probability.
December 02, 2019 at 06:00
If you say that the probability is 0.5, then you are saying that you have no more reason to believe one way than the other. And you appear to deduce t...
December 01, 2019 at 08:07
Again, just noting that something is improbable is too unspecific. Something, somewhere is always probable or improbable, depending on how you look at...
December 01, 2019 at 07:57
Probability can be used to decide whether to believe something - arguably, probability is nothing more than degree of belief (according to the epistem...
November 30, 2019 at 08:38
Migration has a lot to do (and will have even more to do) with climate. People flee from lands that are stricken by severe droughts, floods, hurricane...
November 29, 2019 at 16:49
Failure of reading comprehension. As per usual.
November 29, 2019 at 13:12
If quantum behavior is different in natural settings and in research settings, then it is not not the quantum behavior that we know from quantum physi...
November 29, 2019 at 08:16
Um... ok. I certainly didn't expect such an overreaction to my critical response. I'll take your suggestion.
November 29, 2019 at 06:31
What does it matter if it isn't? The proposition itself is not a scientific hypothesis or theory, so you can't turn it on itself. This is a common but...
November 28, 2019 at 17:41
While everything that you wrote up to this point is very reasonable, this is pure sophistry. It's like saying "you can't fight death." A truism, of co...
November 28, 2019 at 17:25
"Citizen science" is a thing, and I think scientists, by and large, welcome that. But most good citizen science is just what you might expect someone ...
November 28, 2019 at 13:54
I think (I hope) that we are adaptable enough to survive this crisis without actually diving ourselves to extinction, as other species and populations...
November 28, 2019 at 12:18
Give it up, troll. You might as well be peddling Moon landing conspiracies here.
November 28, 2019 at 11:39
No, they are not. If you are talking about QM, and entanglement specifically, the mechanisms have been laid out out in theory decades ago, and have si...
November 28, 2019 at 06:40
Euphoria? More like weary skepticism, that was my impression. And at this point there is not much hope for it. UN Emissions Gap Report: "The 1.5°C goa...
November 27, 2019 at 17:51
It's a big and to my mind unjustified leap from reported "synchronicity in the brainwaves" to "contradict a thermodynamic interpretation of nature." I...
November 27, 2019 at 14:47
You know, when you repeatedly encounter what looks like a special term in a largely unfamiliar area, the smart thing to do is to look it up, instead o...
November 26, 2019 at 21:03
There isn't any exact or even approximate methodology. There isn't even a definition of what philosophy is that would match most paradigmatic examples...
November 26, 2019 at 15:27
Like I said, atomic theory is already quantum. If memory serves, we have analytical fully quantum solutions for the hydrogen atom in special cases, an...
November 26, 2019 at 06:14
It appears that the reasoning for your conjecture is summed up by the following flawed but rather common line: X (in this case consciousness) is myste...
November 24, 2019 at 08:30
I am not sure what you think the role of quantum effects are going to be in modeling perception "directly." I mean, quantum fields aren't qualitativel...
November 23, 2019 at 15:11
Yes, and I don't see how this is a modal argument (the size of the universe wouldn't be relevant for that). His language here is sloppy, but he is, I ...
November 23, 2019 at 15:03
I think it's pretty clear that he is making an ontic claim - he says so himself (it's a "purely existential" statement). He is tilting against the win...
November 23, 2019 at 10:29