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aletheist

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Given that if A then B, and I believe A, then it is rational for me to believe B; in fact, it would be irrational for me not to believe B. However, if...
December 21, 2016 at 16:48
Are you working on bumping up your comment count? You know that you can edit a post after submitting it, rather than just adding another one (or two o...
December 21, 2016 at 16:36
Disputing how? The hypothetical is stipulative; given that we only have two options, and that one will always have an equal or better outcome, there c...
December 21, 2016 at 16:19
Agree or disagree?
December 21, 2016 at 16:09
How about reading the rest of my post?
December 21, 2016 at 16:06
Who has time for that? Lighten up, I was just attempting to inject a little humor; I even included a smiley in an effort to make that clear. Here, let...
December 21, 2016 at 16:02
So the issue is not that the hypothesis is imaginary - which technically is true of all retroductive conjectures - but that it is unfalsifiable; i.e.,...
December 21, 2016 at 15:37
All mathematics is hypothetical. Sometimes we use it to model reality.
December 21, 2016 at 15:18
Is there any other kind? :D
December 21, 2016 at 15:17
I am not trying to sell you (or anyone else) anything, just doing my best to answer the question posed by the thread title. If you cannot accept the r...
December 21, 2016 at 15:14
This begs the question; what we are discussing is precisely whether a cause must always be temporally prior to its effect. You cannot just resolve the...
December 21, 2016 at 15:03
It depends on what you mean by "exist." Platonists might talk about forms that exist independently in a separate realm that is real, but non-material....
December 21, 2016 at 14:39
No one argues that universals have physical existence. As I understand it, the issue is whether universals are nevertheless real - i.e., whether there...
December 21, 2016 at 03:08
No, it is the driving of nails - something that is in the future when the hammer is made, not the present or the past. That is why we call it the fina...
December 21, 2016 at 02:04
It should have been clear that I was referring to your own previous statement. This assertion is not something that I can confirm by observation, I ha...
December 21, 2016 at 01:37
Your assertion fails its own test. It is not something that I can confirm by observation, I have no good reasons to believe that it is confirmed by th...
December 20, 2016 at 23:43
I intend to drive some nails. I make a hammer accordingly. The final cause of the hammer is not achieved until I actually drive the nails with it - af...
December 20, 2016 at 23:32
I do not understand your reply. Are you claiming that "intellectual matters" are somehow limited to "empirical objects"? Why would my assent to the ex...
December 20, 2016 at 23:20
It seems to me that, on your view, there would have to be some minimum amount of change (or motion) associated with a minimum interval of time; otherw...
December 20, 2016 at 23:17
"Intellectual assent" means sincerely believing that God exists or is real, not just mouthing the words. Again, I question the assumption that this, b...
December 20, 2016 at 23:03
But that intent is not realized until the object exists and is employed for that purpose. In that sense, the final cause is subsequent to the event. B...
December 20, 2016 at 22:59
Fair enough, thanks. Does this entail that space and time are discrete, rather than continuous? If not, why not?
December 20, 2016 at 22:52
Of course, this is controversial within Christian theology; as a Lutheran, I would disagree. God's forgiveness is predicated only on the death of Chri...
December 20, 2016 at 20:59
Indeed, but presumably not just because the thief gave mere intellectual assent to the existence/reality of God.
December 20, 2016 at 19:51
Pascal's Wager is also flawed in assuming that mere intellectual assent to the existence/reality of God is sufficient to satisfy God and gain whatever...
December 20, 2016 at 19:16
Peirce's main point is that we cannot "manufacture" genuine doubt. "We must begin with all the prejudices which we actually have when we enter upon th...
December 20, 2016 at 19:03
I guess what I meant to ask is this: Do you reject the reality of universals because you embrace physicalism, or do you embrace physicalism because yo...
December 20, 2016 at 18:15
Thanks for the helpful clarification. A few quick follow-up questions ... 1. Is it fair to say that physicalism is your most fundamental view here, si...
December 20, 2016 at 16:19
, My definition of a philosopher: Someone who would rather ask the right question, and not be able to answer it, than give the right answer to the wro...
December 20, 2016 at 14:38
What about final causation, which is often subsequent (temporally) to the effect? Even most efficient causation is really simultaneous with the effect...
December 20, 2016 at 14:24
I will let Charles Sanders Peirce do the talking for me here. "We must act in such matters; and the principle upon which we are willing to act is a be...
December 20, 2016 at 03:16
Not even as a thought experiment? It seems possible to me, at least in principle, for there to be two objects that are identical in every way, except ...
December 20, 2016 at 01:22
Thanks, but I was mainly asking Terrapin Station, in response to his statement that "space is simply the extension of matter and the extensional relat...
December 19, 2016 at 23:07
Are spatial and temporal relations the only relations that you consider to be real? , I am curious to know what both of you think of this statement th...
December 19, 2016 at 22:16
Okay, my mistake. It sounded like nominalism to me in the sense that "space" and "time" are just names that people give to concepts. I would not descr...
December 19, 2016 at 20:52
Are they? That seems more like nominalism than realism. I lean toward the latter, as I believe you do, and was merely suggesting that there is a disti...
December 19, 2016 at 19:41
This is excellent advice ... for all of us participating in this forum, as well! 8-)
December 19, 2016 at 15:52
Agreed, I was just suggesting an example that is more familiar to most people than haecceity; especially since I tend to think of the latter as the di...
December 19, 2016 at 15:48
Rather than "properties," consider a quality, such as the color red - not a red thing, like a stop sign, but the color red itself, apart from any inst...
December 19, 2016 at 14:11
As I stated previously, Peirce did not confine logic to deduction, or even deduction and induction; he also included retroduction, which is precisely ...
December 19, 2016 at 01:02
If what you are trying to say is nothing more than what Peirce said, then I understand and agree. To quote him again, "The elements of every concept e...
December 19, 2016 at 00:34
That he spent most of his time and energy studying the normative science of thinking - the kinds of habits that tend to help us adopt true beliefs and...
December 18, 2016 at 23:33
I have no idea what this means, or how it relates to anything that I have said here.
December 18, 2016 at 22:26
I am still trying to figure out what you mean by "the primacy of experience." Well, we cannot think about everything in the universe all at once; so i...
December 18, 2016 at 22:24
Why would you expect me to explain something that I never claimed? I have not said anything at all about quantum entanglement.
December 18, 2016 at 21:40
I asked you to define your terms in an effort to understand better what you were saying. Why would I bother trying to invalidate an "argument" being o...
December 18, 2016 at 21:37
We were talking about discoveries in (pure) mathematics, not physics.
December 18, 2016 at 21:21
Right, and my point was that this happens because mathematics is observational - manipulating and then reexamining a diagram can reveal new informatio...
December 18, 2016 at 20:04
How exactly do you distinguish "outer" from "inner"? How and why would the best method of study - the one most likely to lead to the truth - be differ...
December 18, 2016 at 19:58
What would philosophy be without it? 8-)
December 18, 2016 at 19:54