Richard B

If I found one person that his philosophy helped resolve the many philosophical problems that had tormented their soul, would that satisfy you? Most t...

That is easy. All the problems he said he solved in the Tractatus, he showed how this was a misunderstanding of how language works. Stop looking at hi...

Not adding anything to this debate, think of it as more of a reaction to the debate as it unfolds.

“I said I would ‘combat’ the other man,-but would’t I give him some reasons. Certainly, but how far do they go? At the end of reasons comes persuasion...

It is not a grammatical fiction because you cannot observe it. It is grammatical fiction because we misleadingly talk about pain as if we are talking ...

Wittgenstein is not questioning whether someone is in pain if they are were just hit by a car and displaying typical pain behavior. What is a grammati...

I was going to say that as well. But you already knew that.

Pre-linguistically, we humans can do alright.

Probably the most over looked conclusion of PI, PI 307 “‘Are you not really a behaviorist in disguise? Aren’t you at bottom really saying that everyth...

Yep, we can believe “anything goes” until Nature or another human resist.

Damn complicated. My guess would be he would go the “natural kind” direction. And that natural kind terms would refer directly to things in the world,...

I was kind of prodding what you would think a Kripkean analysis of the debate would reveal?

For the indirect realist, does the “mental image of an apple” refer to an apple, a neuron state, or some mental substance, or all three at the same ti...

Cool.

And this assessment that "they are broadly equivalent" is not science but philosophical befuddlement. In normal perception, the object of awareness is...

Sometimes we humans do things not for any good or bad reason. When humans first figure out a way to handle and tame fire, they likely had not idea the...

Thanks, just a steady diet of many examples.

Let me provide another example, this one from the biological world. I have read that certain species of snake can detect heat signatures from animals....

Some thoughts, We don’t go around proving humans have sentience. It is not that we have proven sentience for humans and suddenly started using the ter...

There is a great critique by Norman Malcolm of the thought experiment that there could be Martians who have our "sensation of heat" when exposed to co...

I do get the impression you both feel that scientific discoveries demand that we should accept the metaphysical picture that indirect realism seems to...

Yes. And what scientists are trying to understand is the color judgment inconsistency with the dress, not demonstrating the accuracy of private color ...

Austin, “First of all, it is essential to realize that here the notion of perceiving indirectly wears the trousers - ‘directly’ takes whatever sense i...

This is too good. Moore took the bait from idealist, but at least he included showing us his hands.

For roughly 1500 years humanity believed that the Earth was the center of the universe. Supposedly, some folk named Aristotle and Ptolemy rationally d...

My only hope is someone new to this area gets curious and wonders why we say such things. Their curiosity, I believe, will be rewarded.

Are you saying light at 450 nm and 700 nm both will stimulate the same B neuron for John to experience two different colors or one color? Or does John...

I think these revisions make it clearer what you are trying to assert. 1. The strawberry reflects 700nm light into John's eye which correlates with th...

I am sympathetic to his idea that there are no strict laws connecting the mental and the physical. I myself am incline to think the casual laws are de...

If I paint a landscape from memory of a park I visited long ago, do I need to appeal to mental images to explain how I did it? Is it not explanation e...

The modern camera does a good job of accurately depicting the world. I don't hypothesize metaphysical intermediaries like mental images/sense data for...

I don't think science can offer any assistance in principle. Let me illustrate this with a thought experiment. For simplicity sake, let us assume this...

Yep, pure logic always searches for purity. Unfortunately, reality and humans are messy. 1. "Water is H2O" I have shown is problematic because it dist...

But those who advocate for indirect realism like to point out how all of this goes on in the brain. And last I heard the brain is part of this world.

This example was to draw attention to what Kripke says in N&N: "If there were a substance, even actually, which had a completely different atomic stru...

I will oppose your position of indirect realism from a different angle. I often argued that there is no need to posit “mental entities”. My other crit...

I looks like we both have an uneasiness with possible world semantics. I think your unease is more with the metaphysics, while mine is with the applic...

This discussion reminds me what Wittgenstein said in On Certainty 505, “It is always by favour of Nature that one knows something.”

I can conceive going to a community and asking for a glass of pure H2O and the waiter looking at me with puzzlement. I was thirsty so quickly change m...

"Water is H2O" is statement without context my friend. If the term "water" is being used like "Dihydrogen monoxide" then it is a stipulation and thus ...

OK, to understand what you are saying here, when Kripke says, "Well, if something is false, it's obviously not necessarily true." he is not saying tha...

My objections have been more around natural kinds as rigid designators, not proper names. Kripke's example "water is H2O" is about a natural kind.

Well I don't think it addresses my main concern. My discomfort with Kripke is not merely terminological — it’s that he appears to reify necessity as a...

My main point with this example is if "air" can be non-rigid, then so can "water". But I am open to hear why one would think otherwise.

Another passage I could not but wince at from N&N, "But what I am concerned with here is a notion which is not a notion of epistemology but of metaphy...

Let me give a compare and contrast between Kripke and Wittgenstein and let us see where it goes. From Naming and Necessity, "Let's call something a ri...

Am I not also raising a concern about the process of rigid designation as well?

Well, it is a good thing we don't learn what an hallucination is by evaluating our private experiences since they are indistinguishable from our verid...

I am interested in your opinion on the following and how you would think Kripke would reply. Take this two terms, "water" and "air". The claim that wa...

I think you over complicated this scenario. The essential difference between a hallucination and the perception of a mind-external object is in the ca...