The way a Wager-like argument is commonly used (again, it is arguable whether Pascal himself meant it that way), the argument seeks to sidestep the bu...
Others have developed an objection along the lines that our sense of beauty is not independent of the universe's constitution, so it is no coincidence...
If you say so :roll: As do all systems (the concept of a system already implies some degree of orderliness). If telos characterizes everything in exis...
That's just as I said: your ideas about science and the PSR are idiosyncratic, and I expect that you will find few allies, regardless of their positio...
Yes, making the threat credible would help, but that means that the claim no longer justifies itself, which is what constitutes the principal appeal o...
That's ok, I wasn't really offended, and looking back, my sharp tone was unnecessary. Given that your ideas of what constitutes foundations of science...
My point was that if you want to engage those whom you want to convince, you don't want to open the discussion by poisoning the well with such an obno...
I think you get biological teleology wrong. The way you describe it, teleology arises from individual organisms' striving to achieve a goal, much like...
I don't know about that. I was never a biology student (and neither were you, AFAIK), so I don't know what students are taught; but teleology in biolo...
In the context of this topic (purported normativity of logic), "logic" is not just any abstract system of inference. You could throw together any numb...
I would define a normative belief as one that directly justifies and urges or inhibits action or conduct. It says "You should do this," "This is the r...
One can raise the stakes of any proposition, simply by appending to it a stake-raising clause. For any proposition A there is a proposition A* = A & C...
Isn't that what the normative principle amounts to (or something similar)? It's precisely because mounting an argument without the use of logic is imp...
It's mind-boggling that despite a consensus opinion of the expert community, no remotely credible scientific and engineering justification, no indepen...
But in order to make use of all that energy you would have to cover the entire surface of the earth with perfectly efficient solar panels, which then ...
In The Norton Dome and the Nineteenth Century Foundations of Determinism, 2014 (PDF) Marij van Strien takes a look at how 19th century mathematicians ...
"Nuclear fusion is always 30 years away," as they say. This indeed has been the case for the last half-century if not more. LENR is just a rebranding ...
Thanks, but I cannot take credit for what I didn't actually say :) The rigid beam case is indeterminate in the sense that multiple solutions are consi...
Korolev actually does a similar limiting analysis of the dome itself, showing that for any finite elasticity (assuming a perfectly elastic material of...
In Determinism: what we have learned and what we still don't know (2005) John Earman "survey the implications of the theories of modern physics for th...
Not exercising a quintessentially human faculty in the context of performing a specific task does not make you "less than human," in and of itself - i...
When judges defer to law, they are not exercising their human ethical judgment (at least in theory, which I take to be the context of your hypothetica...
Neither does the past, whether finite or infinite, according to the A theory of time, which you brought up for no apparent reason. The A theory of tim...
Your "conceptual mapping" of a finite past was a semi-infinite number line. You say you cannot think of a corresponding "conceptual mapping" for an in...
Conceivability, the way you are using the word, is nothing more than an attitude, an intuition, a gut feeling. While different individuals can hold su...
Yes, we are. On one message board that I once frequented (now defunct), which wasn't even specifically for philosophy, a subsection within its only ph...
My mistake, your point is well taken. It should be said (somewhat contradicting what I said before) that even in something as seemingly dry and precis...
Well, inconceivable is a subjective assessment, it's a far cry from being provably impossible. If you just want to say that you don't believe the past...
OK, so you make a distinction between something you call "Absolute" infinity and any other sort of infinity. I don't know what that difference is, and...
The same way we can empirically establish anything at all. We don't necessarily need to count to infinity for that, just as we don't need to write out...
In today's physics space and time are usually modeled as a continuum. This is true for classical mechanics and quantum mechanics and for many other th...
Dennis, if you really believe that philosophical theories are uniquely derived from experience with unassailable reasoning, and that this can be done ...
Not paradoxical, just undefined. Let's tweak the story: - Imagine Donald Trump - You notice he’s counting (you can tell because he is muttering and ho...
Well, when it comes to philosophy, at the end of the day it does come down to "taste;" there's no getting around it, unless you believe that you can d...
Singularities are nasty beasts, and there's a better reason for eschewing them than past experience: singularities blow up your model in the same way ...
OK, I see now that your position is deeply embedded in Aristotelian metaphysics, which holds no attraction for me. Thanks for taking the trouble to ex...
The age of the serious writer as a public intellectual carrying wisdom and moral authority is even shorter than the age of print - that started roughl...
19th century was the golden age of print (or more precisely, from late 18th century to early 20th), and, coincidentally or not, that is also when the ...
Would you consider just dropping the PSR? It's difficult for me to see what the attraction of an unrestricted PSR is, Della Rocca's arguments notwiths...
Have you tried Google? I just highlighted "Why do athiests have Morals" in your title, right-clicked, and selected the option to search Google. (You m...
My understanding is along the lines of what @"Snakes Alive" said (I think). For a modal realist like Lewis possible worlds serve as a reductive explan...
I am ambivalent about it. The advice that I gave you about seeing how it works in a philosophical context is the advice I would take myself. I haven't...
Knowledge is a word, language use is its reality. It's not like there is some celestial dictionary in which the "real" meanings of words are inscribed...
Yes, Gettier's counterexamples are where all three of the JTB criteria seem to be satisfied, and yet the result doesn't meet our intuitive, pre-analyt...
This reminds me of Russel's famous conundrum: "The present king of France is bald." Anyway, the most charitable reading of your post suggests that you...
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