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Isaac

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But to strive one must have a direction and to critique one must have a conception of right/wrong, good/bad. So one cannot strive honestly nor critica...
January 04, 2019 at 13:10
Yes, my question was (in your terminology) how would one know one is facing facts without predisposition? Do predispositions come to us clearly labell...
January 04, 2019 at 11:17
Then whose view of it is he to take, if not his own?
January 04, 2019 at 10:24
Maybe, but you weren't referring to the objective, but the method, that's my point. 'Truth' cannot be both objective and method. One cannot say that a...
January 04, 2019 at 09:31
How can you ask "what is truth?" but only persue the investigation with a bias toward truth? What would be the point of the question if you already kn...
January 04, 2019 at 08:59
If you have already determined the task of the philosopher then I don't think you're going to get much out of this text. I claimed it was "sufficientl...
January 04, 2019 at 08:50
I don't think this chimes with what Wittgenstein was trying to do at all. He's quite clear at 90-94 about the purpose of the investigation in this res...
January 04, 2019 at 08:39
You've missed a very important qualifier in my sentence. I asked if you would suggest that the reason given was not sufficiently complete, ie not comp...
January 03, 2019 at 17:11
How can this possibly be so when the question "what is 'truth'?" is purportedly within the purview of philosophy? Wouldn't that beg the question?
January 03, 2019 at 16:57
I don't agree that it is a big difference. That the human race will cease to exist is a big deal, the manner in which their extinction comes about is ...
January 03, 2019 at 08:27
As I've been out of the discussion for a while I don't want to hold things up responding to comments on previous sections, but I will say something in...
January 03, 2019 at 08:15
Yes, absolutely. Bad example of mine. I was only referring to his utilitarian view of eleemosynary duties for, as you say, rhetorical purposes. His vi...
January 01, 2019 at 14:29
Thanks. I should say the argument from epistemic peers is actually Peter Van Inwagen's, I just applied it here to highlight the seriousness of the iss...
December 31, 2018 at 10:23
You are aware, I presume, that there are different meta-ethical positions, yes? You are aware that the anti-natalist stance relies on a particular met...
December 31, 2018 at 08:11
Not an infinite regress, no. I'm pretty old, but even my birth was not an infinite amount of time ago. The true and full account of why it is raining ...
December 31, 2018 at 07:57
How is this assertion, on which your theory is based, any less subject to the problem of never being able to provide a determinate proof than the asse...
December 31, 2018 at 07:36
Empathy is the feeling of someone else's feelings. It is the act of mirroring their emotions in your own experience. It is not the sum total of all th...
December 30, 2018 at 09:56
Exactly. And all of those people would have been saved had the regime been a strictly Jaian one. So we have to decide. Its not about religious=bad and...
December 30, 2018 at 09:41
Because we don't have that luxury. People who believe in certain religions believe that homosexuality is a sin, that abortion is a sin, that women sho...
December 30, 2018 at 09:27
That depends what you mean by 'morality'. If you're meaning the entire collection of behaviours which any group of people have ever labelled 'moral' t...
December 30, 2018 at 09:00
Lack of hammers is sure way to identify all the carpenters who cannot build a house. That doesn't mean that houses are caused by hammers. If psychopat...
December 30, 2018 at 08:53
Absolutely, I'm merely pointing out (in an admittedly slightly facetious manner) that it is very easy to derive a set of seemingly determined behaviou...
December 30, 2018 at 08:38
Not at all. Imagine a game with three players. The rule is only that each player must only copy the others, no other actions are permitted. The game w...
December 30, 2018 at 08:26
There are a couple of issues with this; firstly, why would you be so concerned that a method provide principles for strictly judging correct from inco...
December 30, 2018 at 08:15
That's fair enough, it's kind of what I meant by not wanting to play that game. I'm fairly happy with what I think Wittgenstein actually means by 'rul...
December 29, 2018 at 17:09
Yes, but that doesn't work if the person describing the world as flat then says "I don't mean 'world' in the sense you're testing, and I don't mean 'f...
December 29, 2018 at 14:17
I'm not sure. The problem I can see with testing faith based positions against boundaries determined by rational statements of fact (or the limits the...
December 29, 2018 at 13:57
No, that presumes that the definition of "rule" exists prior to our investigation and we are demonstrating that the thing we have identified belongs t...
December 29, 2018 at 13:15
I did promise myself that I would not get involved in this kind of nonsense, but I just have to ask, what is this method you're referring to for "expl...
December 29, 2018 at 12:58
If I may be so crass as to interject a favourite quote here, I think it's apposite to the difficulty some people have with the Philosophical Investiga...
December 28, 2018 at 07:03
Are you saying that you aren't able to respond when someone asks you to "fetch a red apple"? If not, then you know the rule to that language game to t...
December 28, 2018 at 06:30
No, nothing directly about Antinatalism. I only meant that, for example, his anthropocentricising of moral value would have prevented there from being...
December 27, 2018 at 21:14
Are you engaging in a discussion or providing book recommendations? It doesn't matter if David Benetar wrote a whole book about it. Ethicists like Phi...
December 27, 2018 at 16:34
Not much of an argument. Does he say any more about how he arrives at this conclusion?
December 27, 2018 at 13:54
Yes, I understand that you are making these three assertions. What I was asking is whether you are interested in discussing the assertions themselves ...
December 27, 2018 at 08:24
But there is no problem here to resolve. The rule only appears vague when we are looking for something 'hidden' behind it. Absent of that, it is not v...
December 27, 2018 at 08:14
I don't understand what your argument is here. You seem to be saying that from a negative utilitarian perspective, bringing new children into the worl...
December 26, 2018 at 15:11
I'm afraid you've lost me, so this may be a bit piecemeal, I'm just trying to understand where you're coming from. Are you saying that it seems to you...
December 26, 2018 at 07:32
I may be misunderstanding what you're saying here, so correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems this (and similar objections you've raised) are of the for...
December 25, 2018 at 16:17
Fair point. It's an interesting take on it. I'd be inclined to agree insofar as I'm allowed to emphasise your use of the word 'also'. My reading of 55...
December 25, 2018 at 07:43
Yes, I see what you're doing now. It's a tricky balance to strike I think, so I hope you'll take any future such wide-focus comments I may make as add...
December 24, 2018 at 09:36
To paraphrase 51(end of) to 54 the way I interpret it; In order to see more clearly we must look close up. (51) But what prevents us from looking clos...
December 24, 2018 at 08:24
Nice exposition, thank you. One point I disagree with though. You say; Unless I'm mistaken, you seem to be suggesting that 53 (and I suppose 54) are s...
December 24, 2018 at 08:13
I'm rather fond of Vaughan Williams, and whenever I hear his music I feel good. I wouldn't presume that I therefore know how everyone else is feeling ...
December 23, 2018 at 16:32
It does if you see the matter being referred to as 'the method of philosophical inquiry', not 'a study of the way people learn rules', but these are j...
December 23, 2018 at 14:56
I don't think it is possible to analyse the book aphorism by aphorism. Wittgenstein develops thoughts often in three parts. First he will set up what ...
December 23, 2018 at 09:47
I don't think Wittgenstein is talking about different roles for the chart. He's talking about different roles for whatever it is we see as the paradig...
December 23, 2018 at 08:26
As I hopefully made clear in my response, I don't see how this is an argument in respect of the text we're discussing. Wittgenstein doesn't claim that...
December 23, 2018 at 08:12
This is where I disagree. I don't think Wittgenstein is suggesting this at all. I think you may have added a 'simply' into your paraphrasing which Wit...
December 22, 2018 at 18:35
It's interesting that you've looked at it this way round. You seem to be interpreting the person making the 'slip of the tounge' as the one trying to ...
December 22, 2018 at 16:53