You are viewing the historical archive of The Philosophy Forum.
For current discussions, visit the live forum.
Go to live forum

Mentalusion

Comments

I tend to be a positivist about these kinds of questions so I would say you have a right if and only if there exists a law (and/or an interpretation o...
November 29, 2018 at 18:03
Right, IF her past had been different, she would have been raised in such a way as to potentially care and emphasize moral values. However, in the sce...
November 29, 2018 at 17:52
I don't think temporality is any more implied in the formalized LNC than it is, say, in the proposition that "2+1=3". You could read this to say somet...
November 29, 2018 at 16:44
Well, killings during war are kind of a separate issue since it gets you into questions of just war theory. The basic idea being that if you accept ki...
November 29, 2018 at 14:45
It seems to me that you and @"Tzeentch" might benefit from distinguishing b/w "murder" and "killing". Presumably all murder is immoral, but that isn't...
November 28, 2018 at 20:51
circular: "Motion is movement..." fair enough
November 28, 2018 at 20:44
The argument in the first place was related to the above where you appear to identify objects with dynamic interactions, in effect signaling that what...
November 28, 2018 at 20:31
Start it up!
November 28, 2018 at 18:11
Well, maybe in some sense, yes. Here's the reasoning: 1. To be dynamic is to be in motion. 2. Motion is defined as an objects change in position from ...
November 28, 2018 at 18:04
Maybe, I wasn't making any claims about either evolution or morality being in error, only that the attempt to find an analogy b/w the theory of biolog...
November 28, 2018 at 17:52
I'm not sure it's really all that important but at the most general level I use it to distinguish things from other things that are not physical. That...
November 27, 2018 at 23:02
Above is a definition of what I take motion to be: change in an object's position over time. I don't see anything in the definition that commits one n...
November 27, 2018 at 22:26
Of course temperature relates to or "deals with" physical stuff. That doesn't in any way imply that temperature itself is physical (I mean, it might f...
November 27, 2018 at 21:56
I wasn't asserting anything, just trying see where your belief that molecules are categorically not hard stems from. Claiming that you think numbers a...
November 27, 2018 at 20:54
I think it would be more accurate to ask whether referring to names that reference fictional entities as "empty" constitutes a category error. And, as...
November 27, 2018 at 20:34
So there are some physical objects for which it is impossible that they ever be hard, whatever we decide it means to be "hard"?
November 27, 2018 at 20:10
If you think all that stuff is physical, then do you think hardness is a possible predicate/property/etc. of all physical objects or just some or none...
November 27, 2018 at 20:05
So you don't think molecules are physical objects?
November 27, 2018 at 17:58
That's not what a category error is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_mistake
November 27, 2018 at 17:18
In: Calculus  — view comment
What you're suggesting isn't necessarily wrong, it's just unnecessary and inefficient. Math already has enough goofy notation for people to keep track...
November 27, 2018 at 17:12
In: Calculus  — view comment
If someone did that, they wouldn't understand properly what a limit is and would be trying to get out of it something which it doesn't purport to be a...
November 27, 2018 at 17:07
Like I said above, it might not be a scientifically interesting question, but it's not a question that implicates a category error. I still don't see ...
November 27, 2018 at 17:02
I don't see there being any real epistemic issue (over and above issues with epistemology generally) as long as one understands that what it means to ...
November 27, 2018 at 16:30
In: Calculus  — view comment
If you could provide an example of such an error that would make discussion a little easier. I tend to think several centuries of people successfully ...
November 27, 2018 at 16:16
In: Calculus  — view comment
It's a defined concept so the only way that it might be "incorrect" is if someone introduced a concept that fulfilled a similar role that had better c...
November 27, 2018 at 16:13
I think I basically agree with you. If one is working with a theory of naming based loosely on the notion of a Kripkean rigid designator (which I am) ...
November 27, 2018 at 16:11
In: Calculus  — view comment
I think the approximation is built into the concept of limit so you don't need the extra notation
November 27, 2018 at 14:48
The idea was just that there are long standing and, I believe, unresolved and unresolvable criticisms of any social evolutionary theory because of the...
November 26, 2018 at 22:40
Don't know, maybe it's inability to permeate other molecules? The point was only that it's not inherently non-sensical to ask the question in the same...
November 26, 2018 at 22:25
There was a relatively popular trend of "social Darwinism" shortly following and capitalizing on the popularity of Darwin's theory of natural selectio...
November 26, 2018 at 22:08
Yes, sorry, I did misquote, but still don't think it's a category error. It doesn't seem to me impossible to assess the hardness of a molecule in the ...
November 26, 2018 at 21:47
not at all. Of course, they are not properly "names" for the correspondence theory I'm thinking of so not technically empty in the first place, but I ...
November 26, 2018 at 20:22
1) I guess I didn't find @"andrewk" 's post really clarified much. On the contrary, far from being a category mistake, meanings are exactly the kinds ...
November 26, 2018 at 20:07
Yes, I'm assuming a correspondence theory. I'm not sure how it side steps any questions though.
November 26, 2018 at 19:29
It might be helpful to treat the 2d definition as essentially analytic. In other words, what a "substance" is in the context of defining an "element" ...
November 26, 2018 at 19:12
Generally I don't have an issue with your claims about how syntax can operate with proper names, and even think the type/token distinction could be us...
November 26, 2018 at 18:51
It looks like you're trying to prove a substitution lemma, or something involving the substitution lemma (I'm assuming I understand the notation you'r...
November 26, 2018 at 16:29
You're right that we can't be certain about anything, that includes our own existence and, a fortiori, any meaning that attaches to it. The reason for...
November 26, 2018 at 15:49
two points: 1) the gist of naming and necessity is that Kripke argues that you can have analytic a posteriori truths. His famous example is the claim ...
November 21, 2018 at 14:32
I'm not sure the example gets to the difference between type/token and proper names. It seems to me that both speakers there are using proper names. t...
November 20, 2018 at 23:37
1) Doesn't the description for Frege just unpack into the referents? That's the whole point of the "morning star" example, isn't it? So in the case of...
November 20, 2018 at 23:06
The claim that does not seem correct. There is nothing inherent in the definition or concept of a truth table that identifies it as being anything oth...
November 20, 2018 at 00:30
Ferreira is generally correct. The problem with your "proof" is in line 1. There is no rule of replacement or inference that allows the move from (D -...
November 15, 2018 at 21:43