Pantagruel

The criterion didn't emerge, the definition of each animal was expanded to include the species. How is this example different in principle from saying...

Ok, every thing that thinks has some knowledge, right? Everyone on this board knows something. I know my name. If a being is able to survive, it must ...

Yes, I think that the problem of the criterion arises from comparing knowledge in two different senses, what we know (which is always specific) and ho...

Then a generalized criterion of validity for propositional knowledge would be that it is (potentially) capable of self-validation. So depending on the...

Propositional knowledge is a particular subset of knowledge and not its primary form for organic beings. All kinds of creatures "know" things. So sayi...

Exactly. So having knowledge does not depend on having a criterion of knowledge. Knowledge must be self-validating. A newborn infant cries as a reflex...

So you are saying no one knew anything until there was epistemology? That doesn't seem right......

People knew things long before there were criteria of knowledge, don't you think?

Can we know something without knowing how we know it? Obviously. I know how to ride a bike without knowing the mechanics of balance (making minute ste...

This.

Percentage of people who like green eggs: 71% Percentage of people who like ham: 85% Percentage of people who like Dr. Seuss: 93% etc., etc., etc.. Th...

Karl Popper has written probably the most succinct refutation of determinism I have found, volume three of his Postscript to the Logic of Scientific D...

Quite. R.G Collingwood says philosophy is a "poem of the intellect." I also recently read a comment that what substantiates a metaphysical theory is i...

Sure, it can be a touchy subject, no doubt about it!

I totally believe that not everyone is capable of enacting free choice to the same extent. Even though "theoretically" everyone does have the same cap...

My only counter would be, if you really feel that you have not the power of the freedom of choice, you are pathologically impaired in some sense and p...

Hmmm. Well, vis a vis pessimism and free-will I can share this. My wife's cousin came for a visit with her four year old son. She's a corporate lawyer...

Yes, I advocate and practise a Stoic-Buddhist philosophy of life. Very much begins with this insight.

:up:

Obviously we should always act with compassion. But this isn't a therapy forum. If you ask a question about suicide on a philosophy forum then you sho...

I've always thought so. Bemuses me though the number of people who are willing to argue that they are logically incapable of....arguing.

Of course it is. To say that we have no control over anything we do implies equally that we have no control over anything we think or say. Thought epi...

If you are sincerely interested in suicide you might benefit from Durkheim's analysis of the social causes of suicide (anomie). I just read Talcott Pa...

People resist having rights taken away from them. Should we have the right to enjoy things that are harmful to us and may eventually cost society extr...

Undoubtedly alcohol and tobacco are quite hazardous, but people are free to consume them if they wish. I like to be informed about hazards, not forbid...

"It's better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied; better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied." ~J.S. Mill

Perhaps we do. There are myriad cognitive mechanisms which cause us literally to misperceive the truth in a variety of ways. List of Cognitive Biases ...

Life is not reducible to logic. Most of what transpires in the human realm fits into what Pareto call non-logical action, in case you didn't notice. A...

It would if the subject matter was within the realm of science. Or perhaps I should say "current science."

But as I was pointing out, not all theories in the "human" realm are - or must be - scientific. To think that all theories must be scientific in natur...

Correct. In sociological analysis it can be a given that there are "non-logical" theories which nevertheless factor significantly in the actual operat...

Here I would you you are overestimating the general level of education. Even at the secondary school level, core competencies are deteriorating. For t...

I'd say I'm more of an omnivore. I try to identify the gaps in my knowledge, and systematically fill them in while intuitively following theoretical d...

Vygotsky looks good. Interesting how these sociocultural models of action seem to create a mutually coherent structure. The Parsons I'm reading is act...

Yes, this fits very closely with the social philosophers I have been reading, Mead and Parsons certainly.

What does it mean to define something? You can define "abstraction", because abstraction is a concept (I hesitate to say an abstract concept). You can...

I wonder, at what point does the agreement, "there is a truth," degenerate into the disagreement "this is the truth?"

Nicely put.

For you, it's an assumption. For me, it's definitive of the ongoing experience of reality. I guess we each have our own truths. Mine fits with my unde...

Except that objectivity and subjectivity are inextricably bound and form the basis of the world as we know it.

Why did I know that was coming? It's context (frame) relative. If you are standing at the antipodes of the globe, and the ball is dropped, then what i...

Nothingness coiled in the heart of being? A lot of eastern philosophy I have read involves concepts like "passive volition" or "no mind". It may be so...

Qualifies the sense of "true" to match my earlier comments, that it is a perspective, and a reduction, or an approximation, rather than an absolute.

More to the point, they are approximately true....

What you say is very true. There in an intrinsic energy of dialectics that needs to be considered. The human world is definitely polarized; and I thin...

Actually, facts themselves are ultimately subjectively conditioned inasmuch as they always represent one specific perspective. Scientific facts epitom...

It is possible, but my point was, if you do move from psychological egoism to a standpoint of ethical egoism, you have given normative force to a pess...

Actually we limit our own freedom in order to do anything. "The limitation of possibilities is the necessary condition for the liberation of possibili...

But not free to agree....

I agree. :up: