Pfhorrest

Like if "Superman" and "Clark Kent" are just two names for the same person, then everything that is true of Superman is necessarily also true of Clark...

If we don't even know whether or not we can know anything, we nevertheless cannot help but act as though we believed one way or the other (either that...

Yes, absolutely. That's why all of this discussion of parsimony is couched only in terms of "multiple beliefs or theories or abstract models that all ...

:up: :100: I don't get it.

:100: :up:

Worth noting here that in the Roman era a "genius" was a kind of spirit (in the modern sense of a magical non-corporeal being) that a person had, not ...

This is completely true and an important part of modern quantum physics: time-energy uncertainty. In order to measure the energy of a particle more ac...

If you're advocating for or against science, you're doing philosophy. If science is the right way to do something, philosophy can contribute by arguin...

What's next (or what should be next) is a bridge between language and practice; a framing of philosophy's place as defending the physical sciences (or...

Maybe a human being won’t have the brainpower to actually do all the low-level modeling to understand why humans do things in terms of quantum mechani...

If you just don't care to understand one kind of phenomenon's relationship to another kind of phenomenon -- in a unified way, not just "here are two p...

If it’s eliminative, then it’s not actually incorporating all experiences into it as I advocate. “Reductive” OTOH is just a pejorative way of saying “...

The gist of the difference between experiences and judgements (e.g. observations and beliefs) that I was agreeing with @"TheMadFool" about is the same...

Because it's always possible to fit some curve to any data, it's just a question of how complicated a formula it takes to do so.

Yep, on my account that is the important difference; and analogously on the moral side of things too. The difference between experiencing something, w...

This as well. If nothing matters, then it doesn't matter that nothing matters.

And that's the real point underneath it all. If someone finds life worth living then it is, precisely because they find it so, because there is nothin...

That leaves entirely open the question of how to decide what the prescriptions to try to conform to are, which makes it sound like option 2 to me.

That sounds to me like either the first of fourth options, depending on whether you think the application of theoretical reason and practical reason a...

Yeah that's pretty much exactly what I had in mind for option 2, as I said before, which is why I'm asking if anyone has changed/cast their votes afte...

Political parties are a consequence of freedom of association. US law does not recognize political parties as part of the governmental structure; they...

So it looks like out of the seven votes here so far, just over half of them say they fall into the same category as me, and just under half say otherw...

What I'm advocating is a rational algorithm by which to process those things. We can invent new algorithms. You sound to be suggesting that it's only ...

The scenario in question is one where they have failed to do so, and we're looking for a way to move forward despite that impasse. Saying that what we...

The analogies are meant to be for illustration of what I'm trying to say, not for persuasion (except inasmuch as clear understanding is necessary for ...

Walk me through what "abolishing political parties" would look like, and how it would differ from enshrining one party as the sole official not-actual...

The "you'll believe whatever you want to believe" part sounds like you think there is no way of correctly figuring out for sure which of several diffe...

I'm trying to make clear a differentiation between different facets of the communicative act, what I called in that last post the "packaging" and "con...

So your view is that there is no way at all to judge one belief to be better or worse than any other, and all there is is the fact that people believe...

Nah I meant “here”; I’ve refrained from posting new threads a lot because of fear that they will turn into intractable time sinks going around and aro...

I've never said that matching everyone's observations is the sole sufficient criterion for accepting a theory, only that it's a necessary one. Literal...

I'm not claiming that the meaning of any particular word just is identical to a psychological state, but only that some of the many different things y...

Intersubjectivity, at least in the sense I'm talking about, is not about majoritarian or even unanimous agreement on people's opinions, but rather abo...

I am currently discussing it in another thread (the one about identity politics and morality) with Isaac, and have ended up going over it (always with...

Is there not something paradoxical about “government-mandated freedom” of any kind? It can be (and should already be) illegal to prevent people from s...

I’m more or less asking what people generally think about that gap, yes: it’s real and the sides of it are very different, it’s not real and everythin...

I think this is just another difference in our uses of language. When I talk about what it means to be of some opinion or another, I mean to talk abou...

I'd say that objectivity is the limit of any series of increasingly comprehensive intersubjectivities. In other words, as you take into account more a...

In this thread I'm not trying to argue that my views are correct, but just to find out where other people's views fall, and it's clear that yours fall...

I would consider Wayfarer’s option to fall within either the first or fourth options, depending on whether you think the things seen from those differ...

I’ve been shying away from using “normative” because so many people seem to misunderstand it to mean specifically “regarding social norms”, as in what...

He may not be directly answering the question to the satisfaction of those of us who think the two domains are separate, but it's pretty clear that he...

That sounds like your view is either option one, or else if perhaps you take there to be nothing more to a prescription than a description of what som...

It sound like the first option is the one for you.

Relativism is a kind of anti-realism. (Also, not all universalism is realism).

It sounds to me like you’re still asking the descriptive question of what caused us to have the inclinations toward moral judgement that we do. I don’...

Just wanted to note that I caught and fixed a brain fart in the OP: in the last sentence of the paragraph about option #4, it had said "just as well a...

The words that I emphasized in that response were supposed to draw attention to how I'm not disputing that those descriptive facts -- NB though that t...

Sounds like you do, thanks.