mcdoodle

Enter Foucault, stage left. Each of us is complicit in the framework of power we find ourselves in, indeed I oppress myself, I self-censor, I apologis...

On this we can (partly) agree, and thanks for the correction regarding probability amplitude; we are at the outer limit of my ability to talk maths/ph...

In what way is that relevant to what I was saying to AndrewM? I was making an epistemic/ontological distinction, not arguing about what hypothetical e...

I'm referring back to my previous post, which was in turn referring to Kent's chapter in a multi-author book (including Wallace) called 'Many Worlds?:...

That is an interesting paragraph as it encapsulates to me the philosophy-of-science debate going back and forth here. Mathematically states in a quant...

The criticism was not 'just a slur'. It was a chapter of reasoned argument of which I gave you the summary and another paragraph of exposition. You di...

Well, blimey :)

For me this is a prime example of why one needs to distinguish Islam from Islamism. You make it sound as if 'Muslims' are violent extremists and 'Bang...

The thread has moved on a lot and I don't have enough time to keep up with such a fast-paced exchange. But, going back, forgive me if this is the sort...

The quote from Soames is very useful, thank you. My perennial difficulty with all these arguments is that I don't understand how the examples are exam...

You can however modify descriptivism - that a name has a description lurking invisibly behind it - so that it works in conjunction with modal logic. O...

Fair enough, Arkady.

Well, where are they? I found a men's rights blog quoting a woman writer under the headline 'Radical feminist advocates for the extermination of men',...

This specific debate is surely a historical debate nowadays? I've lived through the various phases of feminism as a pro-feminist man of some sort. You...

I think your mutual misunderstanding here is excellent evidence that neither of you is part of the other's mind.

The emphasis on the burqa is interesting, It is very Othering. Some French people find it - but nothing about the way the supposedly oppressive male M...

Aristotle in Books 8 and 9 of the Nicomachean Ethics argues that self-love is central to being a good man (sic). But this is not hedonistic, it's at t...

On the scale of history modern Western society doesn't seem awfuly corrupt to me. There's a thing: we could each take that proposition and examine it ...

:::laughs::: I'm already peering nervously at the event horizon.

I don't understand how rudeness aids any debate. To repeat: to talk about 'a war with Islam' is indeed 'controversial' rhetoric. To talk about it in p...

Thanks for the list, Tom. I don't have access to the book, but David Wallace has lots of papers on his Academia page so it's easy enough to read his a...

I agree that the ontology of probability is interesting. This 'from 25 mins on' wasn't 'purely QM stuff' at all, though, it was a prolonged lecture ab...

This article is from Demos Scotland, who have their own axe to grind: preparing the ground, as they see it, for an independent Scotland (which would h...

This is surely going too far. Her words in the interview are very controversial. They easily 'meet the standards' for that. I live among Muslims, I am...

I feel we are all here, dabbling or paddling in philosophy, in search of meanings, however the term is defined. It's an enjoyable pursuit, it tests th...

Well, I see this is one crux of the question. If I am understanding the disagreement correctly, it does boil down to how one interprets Turing in the ...

I'm trying to understand this simulation business. I am using the critical eye of Christopher Timpson in 'Quantum Information Theory and the foundatio...

I disagree with all three of these opening claims. We should not confuse philosophy with a belief that we can understand human psychology. (1) To me '...

Wallace is committed though to a very particular view. Here is part of Chapter 1 of his book: Personally I am content with that and find Wallace's vie...

And some might say things aren't that thingly. I've borrowed this from Anon before: An object is a slow event. Even physicalists (as many materialists...

We have to say 'illness' to merit 'treatment'. But I'd prefer to say 'distress'. I like it that there are ways that people in distress can get help, w...

Gooseone, your account is of someone who's shown great strength of character to make it thus far. Well done to you. It's never too late to take time o...

The scientific method - or rather the range of scientific methods, sometimes idealised as 'the scientific method' - works brilliantly. Metaphysics is ...

The summary is of four categories of attitudes outlined in Tolstoy's A Confession. But the rhetorical point Tolstoy eventually makes in that essay is ...

I regard the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, however flawed, as a fine example of the possibility of a politics of forgiveness. Mut...

Go on, tell me :) 'To give a bodily form to, to incarnate...' Doesn't that make the body a wrapper?

How will American totalitarianism look? The Statue of Liberty saluting, in a military hat? With every square inch sponsored by the makers of something...

I read a bit about 'embodied cognition' but stopped to wonder: that very phrase implies that the body is some sort of wrapper. My body makes me, the '...

Sorry I'm late to this party, been busy trying to write philosophy :) I'm with TGW and Agostino, as far as I can see...there is no simple answer to su...

It's bad luck about the poems, wuli, although to be frank when I've seen yours I have sometimes more admired the actual overall shape of them on the p...

I think in terms of how a carer or parent acts towards children. You set boundaries. What words you use doesn't exactly matter. Both parties like boun...

I've just been reading Fogelin on skepticism so I may be writing Under The Influence. My feeling is that this is all what he would call 'Cartesian' ra...

Yeh, icy, if drunken determination. Like Yeltsin on a tank.

I loved Cuba the only time I visited, fifteen years ago. The public transport system had almost broken down at the time - they were oil-poor after the...

The first paper on this page, 'Idealism without God', outlines such a view: http://yetterchappell.net/Helen/papers.html

You miss my point here. In the song it's a progression. When even force fails, after love and justice, in settling a problem, you talk to your imagine...

I feel living with others is about (in)tolerance, power-relations and negotiations and what happens beyond them, not about these abstractions of truth...

I agree Marchesk these are interesting cases relating to the issue of doubt. My feeling is though that they do not contradict what Wittgenstein was sa...

Who could ever want to 'disprove' (odd word) scepticism? I like to know that annoying little terrier is always snapping and yapping at my heels.

I think of 'brains in vats' tales as imagined by the idle rich, who can somehow conceive of such scenarios without the many labourers and other resour...