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Andrew M

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That human beings share the same biology and need for self-preservation and well-being (including for offspring and allies). So moral language builds ...
February 11, 2019 at 11:49
You might be interested in Grice's conversational maxims which cover this sort of thing. In particular the maxim of quality is that you should not say...
February 10, 2019 at 08:02
:-) It's hard to keep up. Back in the day, what was real was real and what was moral was moral!
February 10, 2019 at 05:30
No, the moral realist is representing what is going on ontologically. The Alice and Bob cliff scenario shows two different kinds of action that is imp...
February 10, 2019 at 05:24
Yes, so we have two different models for using moral terms. On my model, whether or not Bob's action is moral is independent of whether anyone approve...
February 09, 2019 at 14:50
I'm contrasting it with what I understand your view to be. That Bob's action is moral if he approves of it. Or have I misunderstood your view? I'm des...
February 09, 2019 at 12:43
How so? If Bob pushes someone of a cliff (ceteris paribus), then what he did was morally wrong. Bob's opinion or approval of it isn't relevant.
February 09, 2019 at 12:29
I mean the scope of a property. A property can have a limited scope (e.g., only be applicable to human beings) and still be real. According to Patrici...
February 09, 2019 at 12:07
Whether the ingredients are going to make us sick or not is not a matter of personal preference. It's a real state of affairs. But what you said above...
February 08, 2019 at 01:02
A low quality pizza might have old ingredients and be partially cooked (or burnt), whereas a high quality pizza would have fresh ingredients and be pr...
February 07, 2019 at 12:35
OK, interesting. Before continuing down that path, I'm curious about your answers to the other parts of my post. Do you think people ordinarily intend...
February 07, 2019 at 01:18
Alright, I'll try again. When people comment on pizza, they can be talking about their own subjective preferences or they can be talking about the piz...
February 07, 2019 at 00:00
Are they synonomous? No. Are they related? It would seem so. So it is valid to investigate what that relationship might be. Our moral reports are data...
February 05, 2019 at 23:58
You can try the sentences in different contexts to see if they're different. (1) I used to like pizza but now I don't (2) Pizza used to taste good but...
February 05, 2019 at 23:17
This is just the point at issue. People use moral terms as if morality were objective. The Aristotelian claim is that a functional purpose can fit tha...
February 05, 2019 at 14:09
I'm just pointing out that things can have intentional properties without first requiring that they be recognized (or judged, preferred, evaluated, ex...
February 05, 2019 at 04:59
It can be a possible (functional) explanation for why particular actions are right or wrong just as Newtonian Mechanics and Einsteinein Relativity are...
February 05, 2019 at 02:38
Yes, it isn't something concrete that can be perceived like rain. Instead it is an abstraction that can be considered part of the world. Similar to in...
February 04, 2019 at 02:57
If you make that kind of distinction, sure. But you can also hold the view that the intentional is part of the existential or empirical context as, fo...
February 04, 2019 at 00:51
A state of affairs (presumably conditional on some standard or value). So the judgment "I ought to save the child from being run over" can be true (in...
February 04, 2019 at 00:21
A miscommunication here because @"Snakes Alive" intended to say "... is a judgment" (see the original referenced post). @"Snakes Alive" was simply sta...
February 03, 2019 at 23:23
Historically, John Kenneth Galbraith. More recently, Paul Krugman.
February 01, 2019 at 05:34
I now observe the moon as it was a second ago and everything on my desk even sooner. The timing can be factored in as needed. The point is that relati...
January 28, 2019 at 12:26
I think I can observe things in the present.
January 28, 2019 at 10:03
No. Dinosaurs existed in the distant past independent of any observers. Whereas our knowledge of dinosaurs depends on observation. We know relativity ...
January 28, 2019 at 09:26
Yes. The way I would state it is that our knowledge (of reality) is reference-frame dependent. In my reference frame, I make a distinction between the...
January 28, 2019 at 00:26
You seem to be interpreting presentism as a denial of relativity. But I haven't seen anyone claim that. I certainly don't. As far as I can tell, etern...
January 26, 2019 at 20:47
t1 and t2 are 20 years and 30 years if you're using Alice's clock. Alternatively, t1 and t2 are 20 years and 26 years if you're using Bob's clock. The...
January 25, 2019 at 02:01
Yes, that's relativity of simultaneity. The events that are simultaneous for Alice need not be simultaneous for Bob. But, again, any apparent disagree...
January 24, 2019 at 21:10
Yes. It just means there is no absolute (or frame independent) time. Here's an example in terms of the twin paradox. Suppose Alice and Bob are twins. ...
January 24, 2019 at 05:04
Can you give an example of a factual disagreement? In the time dilation example, one clock traveled a different spacetime path to the other. Once each...
January 24, 2019 at 01:46
A presentist need not deny observer-independent reality. Instead they are describing reality from a preferred reference frame - their own (as Luke dis...
January 23, 2019 at 23:25
Both clocks traveled the same amount of spacetime. However since one clock traveled further in space, it therefore traveled less in time. Which is to ...
January 23, 2019 at 01:59
OK, but how about the following example: (1) All Alice's children have three legs (2) All Alice's children are children (3) Therefore some children ha...
January 17, 2019 at 23:35
Here's a familiar real world example that follows Darapti: (1) All black swans are black (2) All black swans are swans (3) Therefore some swans are bl...
January 17, 2019 at 21:28
That's fine, as far as I can tell. Aristotle was fine with abstractions and hypotheticals, as long as their use was intelligible. The only issue I've ...
January 16, 2019 at 01:05
I'm not clear on how the example applies. There's one natural number that satisfies that identity (the number 2). But even if the result were an empty...
January 15, 2019 at 23:58
I don't think he's stipulating an additional premise. He's instead saying that predication is only applicable when the subject term refers to somethin...
January 15, 2019 at 13:42
It is a valid argument form in Aristotelian logic because statements of the form All A is B must have one or more instances in order to be true (just ...
January 15, 2019 at 01:15
That seems equally true when attributing any state to things, such as that the switch is on. Do switches really have state or is that just a conceptua...
January 14, 2019 at 06:15
The switch being on and off is an example of an inconsistent state of affairs. The SEP entry for States of Affairs gives the example of Paul's having ...
January 12, 2019 at 11:07
Yes, that's the scenario that is unintelligible. Mental maps (and beliefs) are abstract representations of the world. We know that representations can...
January 11, 2019 at 05:30
(Just an aside - I recommend using the Quote button or otherwise distinguishing the parts you are quoting to make it easier to read your posts.) Well,...
January 09, 2019 at 01:23
Suppose you have a logic that could represent a switch that is both on and off in the same sense and same respect. Can you visualize or simulate a sce...
January 09, 2019 at 00:53
Note that @"PossibleAaran" said that the idea of A and not-A obtaining is unintelligible. This follows Aristotle's use of the LNC as a rule for thinki...
January 08, 2019 at 12:41
I think once you accept Kant's premise of a phenomenal world (the world as representation), the noumenal world inexorably follows. It's Plato's Cave r...
January 08, 2019 at 10:03
Thanks for your explanation, that was helpful. As I read it, Kant is reifying the way things appear to us into a world of appearances and making that ...
December 18, 2018 at 13:45
People at one time thought that the movements of the stars and planets were mysterious. But that turned out to be a statement about people's knowledge...
December 18, 2018 at 04:23
So that is Descartes' proof of one's own existence. Whether perceiving correctly or incorrectly, there is always a subject doing so. Your existence is...
December 18, 2018 at 01:09
As far as I know, no information need be lost in principle. In practice, holograms created from real subjects will lose some information in terms of r...
December 17, 2018 at 22:06