Isn't it logically and metaphysically possible for the laws of physics to be different from what they are? Concerning modal knowledge, it seems simila...
Not only is that a misrepresentation of what I said, it's also poisoning the well. I think it's fair to ask you why you started arguing a point here, ...
I have - prehistoric tools. You can also respond to the rest, if only to say that you don't see it's relevance. That way, I am not left wondering whet...
Sigh. Thanks for repeating this, I had overlooked it the first 500 times you said it. It wasn't intended as an argument. It was intended as a thought ...
The only thing I can offer you at this point is a bit of armchair psychology, namely that I think your problem is that you are imagining a scenario wi...
That only works if our goals are not connected to the question what meaning is, which is to say the goals are entirely off-topic for this discussion. ...
I already did in a previous response to you. I also already pointed out that we have no way of telling how many artificial objects we have wrongly ide...
A Problem might be that there is very little new to say about the problem, and a philosophy forum isn't necessarily the best place to look for experti...
I know of no law of physics that prohibits such a natural formation. It is, of course, highly unlikely. But the point of thought-experiments is not to...
That sentence doesn't make much sense to me. You could argue the entire question is somewhat pointless, as it doesn't make any practical difference, b...
Presumably, you are making a case for meaning to be objective and using the "unproblematic" use of language as an argument. If that's not what you're ...
Whether you use a past intent or a past use, the argument stays the same. The history of an object is not necessarily a property of the object, for th...
It seems to me that, like @"Isaac", you now identify the meaning the text objectively has with a meaning that the text was, at some point in the past,...
That material difference is lost whenever the text is copied. The pixels on a computer screen displaying a work of Shakespeare have no material connec...
The text was always the same, I am not supposing it materially changes as soon as a language capable intelligence shows up. The text is a specific con...
Are you saying that an intentionally written sonnet always has meaning, but an accidentally written sonnet has meaning created for it upon viewing? Wo...
As long as some circumstances that dictate are part of our brain activity, and therefore a representation of our selves, cause and effect does not pre...
I understand what you are saying. But you're begging the question. How is it embodied? How does it travel from the marks to the reader? Absent humans ...
Not the same to a human mind. You haven't established how they are not the same in any other way, e.g. physically. No, by my lights an ancient text is...
That's true by definition, but it's also true of the pattern of waves on the ocean. And if someone did give meaning to the scratches? Would the scratc...
But no matter how you phrase the question, you are still talking about what people want to communicate. They can be long dead people, but we are talki...
What does methodological naturalism have to do with repeatability? And I don't see how you go from "social processes are not well understood" to "ther...
Thanks for that in-depth summary! That is a highly controversial statement. Which epistemological principle requires repeatability specifically? Are y...
Isn't accepting an objective context for meaning already the conclusion you want to draw? Your conclusion that meaning is objective is inherent in you...
That's neatly sidestepping the issue. We are talking about a specific prediction about near-term societal collapse due to anthropogenic climate change...
And down the rabbit hole you go again. Sorry, as long as I have the impression that you're not honestly engaging with my posts, I won't continue putti...
But if there is a significant chance for massive disruptions, avoiding or alleviating such disruptions ought to be a major concern. We still ought to ...
I did watch parts of it. I am not sure how exactly it's relevant. I know what you mean, or what you want to establish. I just don't think it works tha...
You already know what my position is, I am not going to discuss this with you again. I still don't know how I am supposed to know what words mean with...
No, but I have seen, felt and heard rocks. And I've seen pictures of Mars (and also of rocks on Mars, but we can ignore that). So I have things to ref...
I was thinking in terms of how language rules could be established, and for that communication seems necessary. One can of course make up new rules in...
The scientific method is just that: a method. It doesn't seek to do anything, it's either correct or it's not. While some particulars of the scientifi...
These are interesting questions quite apart from any specific definition of the term "rule". The rules would have to depend on some kind of communicat...
The bits of it I saw were a bit insane. What the hell has happened to the american democracy? Are these kinds of elected representatives the result of...
Why not just answer my question? I am serious. If you believe yourself to be intellectually honest, you have to be able to answer. I have told you wha...
Rocks as they are in and of themselves? Uh, ok. Just replace the words "this theory" in the second sentence with the first sentence, then you have you...
Which begs the question: If a rock is not defined by reference to human observations, then what does the definition reference? That rocks existed for ...
I just listed the argument for the sake of completeness. I understand your position. As to your question: Idealism tells us what we can know about phy...
Rocks, as defined by the English language, are a bunch of human observations. So the status of the observer is relevant. But I know you disagree with ...
Agnosticism is a perfectly acceptable position. I agree that we cannot actually know about the objective reality of rocks. I agree with Kantian metaph...
Well let's take the example of the computer screen: you can have a sequence of pictures that are not in a causal relation to each other, but instead a...
An interesting thought experiment. Someone that knows they are sitting in a room in front of a screen, wouldn't necessarily see causes and effects in ...
I can see why it would seem circular. But I am not trying to make an argument about the objective reality of time or it's attributes. I am positing th...
If events had no time dimension, there would be no time and no change. That was the point of the thought experiment. Since that is not how we see the ...
Basically, everywhere. But let's take it from the top: This is a contradiction in terms. Of course my now is now. My internal perspective clearly has ...
If there was not a delay, we'd have a situation reminiscent of Zeno's paradoxes. Every event could be infinitely divided into smaller and smaller cons...
Other events are happening in between time 1 and time 2 (thoughts included). You perceive a bunch of sensory information, and your brain structures th...
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