If you do not communicate with us, what grounds could there be for supposing that you even have thoughts? The issue here was if someone could have a c...
The odd thing 'bout science is, it's not just shite we make up. Imagining turtles all the way down is not enough, scientists will poke and prod the se...
Is Hoffman claiming that the way a bird sees the world could not be translated into a form that we could understand? If so, I'd counter with Davidson'...
I'm happy to be corrected on this, but so far as I am aware the evidence, from locked-in people and those not exposed to language at an early age, sho...
The Shanon Entropy of a signal gives an indication of how repetitive that signal is. Any pattern can be coded as a signal, and then the degree to whic...
I'd like to take some time, to thank the manufacturers of the laptops or other devices on which you and I write, Isaac. The designers who cooperated w...
...and you can do this only because you also have thoughts that are about other stuff. That's how you worked out the difference between "me" and "anyt...
I agree with this diagnosis. Here's an extraordinary thing, that it seems to me is not explained if all there is to "the leaf is green" is our agreed ...
Well, what reason did Descartes have for such doubt? Why do you need reasons for confidence, but will doubt without such reason? What leads to this cu...
Sure. The ineffable part is... well, here is the leaf. If you don't agree that it is green.. then we can talk about how you and I might differ in how ...
Somewhere in this mess you've moved from (c is d) to "Isaac believes that (c is d)". Here's an invalid inference: 1. A iff B 2 hence, A iff (B and C) ...
I'm confused by this. The phoneme "the leaf is green" may be a sound wave. But that's not the same as the locution "the leaf is green"; the locution i...
...or we could flip this argument and say that the poverty of Cartesian Dualism is that it can't be sure of the existence of the computer on which you...
Forget about moral rules ad look at the person who hits the LOL... what do you make of them? They are telling us who they are by their acts. You tell ...
It's a claim, not about what is the case, but what ought be the case; and it's a claim that applies to everyone, unlike a mere preference. Hence, ...a...
Interesting, and a whole new kettle of salmon. I'm agin just equating modal possibilities with quantum possibilities - at least not without a conversa...
I wonder... Could the laws of physics not be such that the outcomes are not fixed; and yet, since in your thought experiment we are re-running time, t...
Fair call. Descartes set himself the task of finding something of which he might be certain, and was dissatisfied until he reached the cogito. He was ...
If you don't mention my name or quote me, I may not see your reply. And, as noted previously, that's just a muddle. Not because it's wrong, but becaus...
I started this line of thought with an old Anscombe article, which superficially was a critique of Davidson's position that reasons for action are ind...
It seem'd for a while back then that we were about to find out something really profound, to do with reflexive iterations, self-similarity, Chinese ro...
Philosophical systems are like penises... fun to play with, but not in public. Further, we know they are there, and that they have great import for th...
Comments