Banno

Sure.

That much.

I had to read that twice, eventually deciding that "he" must be Descartes - Midgley is, infamously, of the female persuasion. Mmm. Perhaps not as clea...

I will not disagree, but wishing to make the logical point that doubt requires us to hold something certain, I'll accept pro tem that anything might b...

Beaver-ism? I should be the last person to draw attention to typos. Well, no. See the entry in the SEP, and allow him some subtlety.

One can presumably construct games of doubt about anything. Whether these are to be taken seriously is probably a function of one's credulity. But in ...

You left out "vapid". :wink:

What is your claim? That the whole of analytic philosophy is infected with ghosts? Including Ryle? You do understand that in your quote, Ryle is setti...

You posts often do not come up in mentions and are not flagged. Something to do with the way you are editing them, at a guess. Yeah, it does talk to b...

An odd post. You point to the "Official Doctrine" (yes, Ryle) which is down to Descartes, but pretend it is a problem for analytic philosophy. It isn'...

I'm certain I am writing this reply. Aren't you certain you are reading it? When I say I am certain that I am writing this, I mean, more or less, that...

Well, I gather you more or less agree with substance dualism, a notion that I cannot see as coherent. I decide to move my hand, the damn thing moves; ...

No, but we see meaning in how someone uses words as well as with other things. The indiscernibility of identity is just using words coherently. Yep. T...

Ok. Thanks for the response. I think I see your point, but I'm not sure it addresses the argument I made. That you are reading this now is not just "p...

Is that what you were saying? It all got a bit muddled. Do you have an account to offer? How does Descartes conclude that others exist, without making...

Pragmatism

:wink: One of the consequences of the approach Descartes takes is substance dualism. It's not, for him, the body that does the doubting.

Meh. You are presenting a pretty stock pop version of pragmatism. You are unwilling to consider where it goes astray. No helping some folk. Cheers.

To exist is to be the subject of a predicate. I don't think this definition uses "exist" in a circular fashion. Instead it claims that to exist is to ...

Getting back on track, I think that had claimed that there was no difference between belief and knowledge, and then we'd made some progress with him a...

Sure. The meaning is just what the cat does. Yawn.

Forty-two pages ago, I posited:

You continue to think of belief as a discreet "thing in the head", as mental furniture. We each have innumerable beliefs that we have never articulate...

I'm not so sure that we are in agreement. Take: Follow your own argument and apply this to itself. Are you going to say that we only know that, say, P...

Ok. nice. Ok. The notion that evolution 'progresses" is somewhat problematic. Take care.

This infatuation with evolution is new, isn't it? Why should we kowtow to evolutionary "progress"?

Ok, cheers. But I would go further and suggest that "absolute certainty" is a nonsense formed by concatenating two otherwise innocent words. Trying to...

Is it possible to be too preoccupied with defending Descartes to see Midgley's point? I doubt that Midgley would have disagreed with your account of D...

Notice that these are things we do, not statements about the way things are. The advice is not to talk about such things, but to enact them - whereof ...

, , all of this speculation and discussion takes place in a context that involves there being language and other people with which to chat. Midgley, a...

From were we are now, it was not public enough. Wittgenstein and others have shown us how the enterprise of doing philosophy emanates from our place i...

Are you engaged in exegesis, or advocacy? Sure, Descartes' ideas made sense for Descartes. but do you agree with them? Isn't the target here more the ...

:meh:

Misogyny will carry a thread only so far, but perhaps too far to drag it back to something more interesting. One way to think about the Cogito is sugg...

But we do know things, all sorts of different things, often with good reason. Science is not the world. Limiting your examples by presuming that scien...

Dude, check out my posts on page three. I think I've set out enough to be getting on with. I'll take that argument to be facetious. Here's where I thi...

Well, no they are not. But you thinking this might explain your error.

So you are saying it is true that there can be accidentally true statements? Or is that also an accidental truth? Think a bit further. If you say you ...

, Again, the difference between the stuff you know and the stuff you merely believe is that hte stuff you know is true. No, it requires truth.

The US does not have a monopoly even here. The decline of democracy in the US will have much less of an impact on us than you might suppose. The Unite...

Elsewhere, there was an extended discussion of the logical structure of the Cogito - "I think, therefore I am". The slogan appears to be a deduction, ...

Yes, but in its defence misogyny and sexism do tend to increase the length of a thread. The podcast linked above, which sparked my interest in the tit...

I had close ties with a group of Nepalese folk in the Eighties, with whom I would discuss many cultural differences. I recall being perplexed when the...

, you and make much the same point, taking the thread in an unexpected direction. Nice.

I'm much the same with regard to your post.

Stoicism is not therapeutic?

:meh:

Why would you think that?

Yes, that seems to be one of the points being made...