Banno

Here's one.

I suspect that postmodernists talking about mathematics woudl be a dime a dozen. Google supports this. But a mathematician talking about post modernis...

That paragraph kinda set up for the gross oversimplification that was to come though.

I did suspect that you may have dissipated in a quantum puff for a while, but here you are, making it less likely that heat death has already happened...

The SEP article on Action was updated recently and addresses many of these issues. I have quite a bit of sympathy for Davidson's view (from Anscombe, ...

Yes. The dynamic is complex, yet remarkably the site remains fairly stable. It seems to me that amongst recent recruits there is little background in ...

Sad that the "clique" with which you are in disagreement is that of the mathematicians. Hm. Anyway, time to move on. Long ago.

Way back, I wrote of @"Corvus": Even I was not expecting such recalcitrance. That was 24 hours and three pages ago. Those three pages are replete with...

Indeed; I did; he doesn't.

Again, you wrote a sentence and you asked a question. You can call it two acts, if you like, or one act with two descriptions. What is salient is that...

Yep.

I agree entirely, and add that the where and when of the illocutionary act is the same as the where and when of the locution: In your having written "...

It's difficult to make anything sensible from this. The point I am making is simple, you misrepresented Wittgenstein's view. He is saying that mathema...

if you like. Folk to attach too much to truth. There are true sentences.

I do wonder if his inability to understand speech acts is related to his extreme individualism.

I have. I’ve addressed your post and comments directly. More misrepresentation. Pathetic.

How? Here it is again: Set your understanding out, or retract.

Perhaps; think the context part of the use, but the distinction might be made. However the issue here seems more central to our basic accounts of lang...

it's not a question of interpretation. It's clear that the subject of "mathematician's discussions of the infinite are clearly finite discussions" is ...

And so it goes. Here is what you quoted: "Let us not forget: mathematician's discussions of the infinite are clearly finite discussions. By which I me...

:rofl: I have shown that you misattributed a remark to Wittgenstein. Cheers.

You are descending into incoherence. No discussion is not finite. A double negative that you deserve. Yes, no discussion goes on forever. With the pos...

What? No. My ground involves reading what Wittgenstein says: "mathematician's discussions of the infinite are clearly finite discussions. By which I m...

...one should proceed with extreme scepticism. You have not understood Quine. I don't think you have understood the analytic/synthetic distinction. An...

Hmm. You misattributed a position to Wittgenstein. He did not say that "infinite" means "finite". Now go back to this: No, Tones took up what you said...

Well, no, it isn't. Making marks and asking a question are very different acts. Here are the same marks: "Any advice?". I am not using them here in or...

Looks a bit like he has 1+1=2 mixed up with somethign like "1+1" ="2"? I can't find anything of the sort in this thread. You quoted him, in another th...

yeah, that must be it.

...and the longer you spend on this topic, the less likely it is that you are one of them. And around and around. Language on idle.

And also, potentially, in terms of simple probability. A large volume at a high temperature may well be more likely than a small volume with a high le...

Hmm. The point is that the reasoning here is unstable - it remains equivocal, even for you, and downright dubious for others. And what is the rational...

Cool. There's also the argument that Boltzmann brains count as a marker for absurdity: Any method for calculating probabilities ought come to the conc...

Published by the Journal of High Energy Physics - what's the problem?

, I won't object to such refinements. Differentiating requests from questions might be worthwhile. That would be an exercise within speech act theory....

An argument that regular observers are more common than Boltzmann observers: http://www.arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0611271 What is clear is that the physics...

An excellent phrase.

I don't think so. There is for me a clear difference to be made between the apple on the table and an imagined apple. That is, after all, why we have ...

It seems you use "perceive" were you might better use "interact". That might be all that is problematic with this thread.

Invisible? Here you made some marks on the screen - a physical act. Those marks are letters and words - you have written something in a language. You ...

What's worse than people trying to do physics without the mathematics? Apparently, people will also try to do mathematics without the mathematics. Poi...

@"Michael"? You still there? Damn. :yikes:

Drop the requirement of proof and take it as a "hinge" proposition, not to be subject to doubt. Yep. It's not as if, that the description is only as i...

Anscombe. Was the man making shadows? Moving his arms? Pumping water? Poisoning the well? Killing the villagers? Each a different description of the s...

I wonder what more Janus wants? What more could he want?

I'll not disagree with you about "objective" truth. I don't think the notion of much use. By talking to each other we can remove biases of perspective...

Odd. You made marks. That was an act on your part. You made sentences. That was an act on your part. You asked questions. That was an act on your part...

Are you still here? Good.

That whole thing radically changes what is usually meant by "mind' and "my". I understand what it is to dream - the world around me is no dream. I und...

Yep. And given that there is a brain, the longer it persists the less likely it is to be merely a quantum fluctuation. You are nothing if not persiste...

IF you are a Boltzmann brain, all bets are off. The coffee container might contain a lion. The cup will have fallen down a black hole inside the cupbo...