SophistiCat

I still have no idea what you mean by this. Warrant is what makes epistemology normative. To say that such and such belief is warranted is to say that...

http://i.imgur.com/po2SNcP.png "Attempted murder", now honestly, what is that!? Do they give a Nobel prize for "attempted" chemistry?

Of course warrant is normative. How can you say that it is both normative and vacuous? That seems contradictory.

That is a very contentious proposition, and in any case, I don't see how it bears on warrant. No one denies that we do think - and behave - inductivel...

That the second premise seems weak is a point in its favor (whether it really is weaker than the first premise and whether it even makes sense is deba...

Let me make some general remarks first, just to make sure that we are on the same page (and to help those who are less conversant with the topic). 1. ...

Fair enough, I didn't read that book - my recollection is of his own gloss of the argument in a short paper that I no longer have at hand. So let's as...

Possible worlds for the World are just all the ways in which the World could possibly be (where the sense of "possibility" is left open).

This doesn't really have much to do with Anselm's argument, other than being a species of an a priori "ontological" argument, one that, in a way of ma...

Or, Imagine a being, such that it cannot fail to exist. Therefore, it exists. (That's Plantinga's version, only he obfuscates it a bit.)

I don't know about circular arguments, but concepts are sometimes said to have a circular dependency. (Specifically, we are talking here about a "tigh...

When TheMadFool, Bahman, this "programming god" guy vomit up several new topics each day, any deletion for "low post quality" is going to look arbitra...

Nice video. The material ontology consisting of inert, amorphous matter substrate as a distinct existent, with form and/or animating spirit or force o...

I take it you weren't exposed to much Continental philosophy in your curriculum ;)

Well, there are purely conceptual resolutions based on disentangling equivocations about words such as "good" and "evil." Another consideration is tha...

In a deterministic universe every possible outcome can and is realized (in its time), since every event realizes the only outcome that is possible at ...

No, it doesn't. "In such a universe" - what universe? You mentioned interpretations, plural. Are you thinking of some particular interpretation? And w...

I honestly have no idea what you are talking about.

I don't understand the question.

I agree, moral attitudes seem to be prescriptive: they are aimed at compelling or constraining actions, which other attitudes such as pleasure, disgus...

What you describe sounds like morality simpliciter. What is particularly "objective" about it? Or, to put it another way, what would a non-objective m...

Of course there is a difference. There is even a difference between "I don't like liver" and "I don't like Brussels sprouts." But, assuming emotivism ...

Science is a social endeavor. There are universities and research centers that produce research. There are scientific journals and book publishers tha...

Superposition states are states too (they are also called "mixed" states, as opposed to "pure" states). But I think I get your point: if we haven't be...

Yes, I think Vilenkin entertains similar fun scenarios, but frankly, not having followed the derivations, I am a little hesitant to commit to such spe...

The case of a simple bound system, such as a hydrogen atom, is easier to analyze than a more general case: we can actually solve the quantum equations...

Well, I cannot answer for Vilenkin or Tegmark, but I think they were speaking informally. How we interpret these results depends on how we think about...

Let's bring down the scale to a manageable size to explore this concept. Instead of Earth, let's consider one hydrogen atom. Now, an atom has a finite...

I don't know, I am not a fan of powers and propensities on the one hand, and I don't know what Feser's argument is. Maybe he proposes a reduction to f...

Even in Euclidean space, as soon as you introduce something to break the symmetry, you already have some kind of "preference." For example, in a unive...

Sure, you are right. Though "the axiom of infinity" is just a name for an axiom that posits the existence of a set with certain properties. But those ...

I have alluded to some more exotic mathematics in which an infinite number can actually be specified (and yes, more than one) - that goes all the way ...

Note that fishfry's source for this claim is, apparently, the bizarre little argument that follows it, and not what scientists actually write, which w...

The idea of an infinitely large number is not as unintelligible as you think - don't underestimate the intelligence of mathematicians ;) But we don't ...

And the classification of multiverses is given in Tegmark's Parallel Universes.

True, but I don't understand how this is relevant to what noAxiom was saying. For those interested, the argument that, as a generic consequence of inf...

Well, the most popular account of causation nowadays is probably counterfactual dependence, which seems to be as far from teleology as you could get. ...

If you are going to imagine a fantastic alternative world that is not "broken," as you say, then why fiddle with all these little details like minimum...

Starting from premise (2) (potentiality/actuality) the argument heavily relies on idiosyncratic and antiquated Aristotelian metaphysics, which I feel ...

Why should Humean account (as you describe it) be confined just to Newton's theory of gravity? This contrast between Newton's and Einstein's theories ...

Well, I am not sure what a 'purely philosophical problem' would entail for you, but I tend to regard such problems as language problems. And like it o...

One Soviet writer and intellectual who was jailed and later exiled for publishing a book of fiction abroad, once quipped: "My disagreement with the So...

I read these passages a couple of times, and they still confuse me somewhat. In keeping with my earlier is/ought distinction, I would distinguish desc...

Indeed, but who is doing that? And what influence the study of ethics may have depends on the kind of study. Specifically, whether the study concerns ...

Well, thinking about what to do would be practicing ethics (of course, not all decisions are ethical decisions, but I am assuming we are talking speci...

Your thesis that no discourse about ethics is admissible unless it is aimed at helping us making ethical decisions in our daily life seems bizarre to ...

It seems that you haven't made much progress in developing your argument, so let me try to prod you along, starting with premise 2: There is objective...

This is really exasperating. Three times I challenged you defend your premise - and you respond by repeating it, almost word-for-word, still without p...

You can point to some reasoning that justifies premise (2). I don't know how I can make this point any clearer than I have already done.

I am talking specifically about premise (2), and no, it is not "confirmed" by anything, as far as I can see. If I missed some reasoning, please point ...