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Pfhorrest

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No, I said the implications of your position that thinking up an idea creates that idea would make that situation absurd. If thinking up an idea creat...
August 24, 2020 at 16:39
That was, more or less, sarcastic. If “socialism” meant wealth redistribution, not just from those with the greatest means to those with the greatest ...
August 24, 2020 at 16:25
No, I’m saying that moral objectivism isn’t the claim that everybody does value the same thing. It’s not the opposite of descriptive moral relativism,...
August 24, 2020 at 16:16
Only if you think moral objectivism has anything to say about what people do in fact value as part of "human nature", which it doesn't necessarily.
August 24, 2020 at 07:31
If you mean the "same chair design" scenario, that is totally possible, and I never said otherwise. What I mean is that that doesn't constitute two se...
August 24, 2020 at 07:29
I think the problem with arguments that stem from “human nature”, the objection to such arguments, is that the picture of “human nature” being put for...
August 24, 2020 at 06:44
It's not because they're different people, it's because they have made two different instantiations, so if the instantiation is the idea, as you seem ...
August 24, 2020 at 05:20
No, I mean if the “idea” is not its content but its instantiation, then two people who separately instantiate it, who separately invent it, have inven...
August 24, 2020 at 03:45
There is no algorithm that will eventually spit out every possible irrational number? I know they can’t be put into a linear order, but is there no wa...
August 24, 2020 at 03:38
If they both invented, created, their respective ideas by the act of instantiating them, such that the idea itself and the instantiations of it are no...
August 24, 2020 at 03:04
Tristan makes great arguments against the invention-only side. I wouldn’t say that that means ideas are discovered-only though, because the act of fin...
August 24, 2020 at 01:26
Thanks for sharing that, great find! I want to be hopeful that this candid testimony (the sister was unaware her remarks were being recorded) will cha...
August 23, 2020 at 14:38
He’s asking on what grounds can the independent inventions of two people be called “the same thing”, unless we’re talking about the abstract eternal i...
August 23, 2020 at 14:27
How Americans think income should be distributed, how they think it is distributed, and how it actually is distributed: https://cdn.theatlantic.com/st...
August 23, 2020 at 04:58
citation needed
August 23, 2020 at 02:27
But as has already been shown in this thread, just being spontaneous doesn't produce something we would count as creative either. If Google Image sear...
August 22, 2020 at 22:54
You're looking at the "middle income class". Marx doesn't divide classes up by their income; he divides them up by whether or not they own the means o...
August 22, 2020 at 21:45
:up: :clap:
August 22, 2020 at 17:44
:brow:
August 22, 2020 at 05:30
The casual English speaker in me wants to agree that they’re simply invented, but the philosopher in me thinking about what they actually are demands ...
August 22, 2020 at 05:00
Yes. These are cases where the distinction doesn't make sense; the possibility of steam power was always there, and inventing the steam engine consist...
August 22, 2020 at 00:28
:up:
August 21, 2020 at 22:33
Because states are not communist. Communism is definitionally stateless. The states you’re talking about called their system “state capitalism”, which...
August 21, 2020 at 20:09
The point is that what rightfully belongs to who may be questioned, and whatever answer is settled on is then enforced by violence, in any system. Com...
August 21, 2020 at 17:54
This isn’t about knowledge, so the Rationalist vs Empiricist debate you’re invoking here isn’t relevant. I’m not talking about an “idea that...” somet...
August 21, 2020 at 17:46
Like how the employees of a business can’t just keep the profits of it for themselves and not give any to the owners without the owners showing up wit...
August 21, 2020 at 15:34
No, I’m saying that in the case of abstract objects like ideas, it makes no sense to differentiate invention from discovery. Not that invention goes a...
August 21, 2020 at 15:23
I am broadly an empiricist, but I don’t know in what way you mean like Locke specifically. I don’t understand your second question. But no, this isn’t...
August 21, 2020 at 06:33
Only the distinction between that and the content of those ideas is not relevant. Of course any idea is had by someone, but bringing that up has nothi...
August 21, 2020 at 05:14
As I said before, I’m not saying that ideas are only discovered not invented, but that there is no sense to be made of any distinction between discove...
August 21, 2020 at 00:11
I’m not arguing for determinism, but rather for the irrelevance of either determinism or non-determinism.
August 20, 2020 at 23:36
Sure, but what we're talking about is how the content of the ideas gets there. What you're talking about is trivially true and I'm not contesting it a...
August 20, 2020 at 23:20
I just said I'm not conflating them; one is like a picture of the other. ...and then after collapsing invention vs discovery into a distinction with n...
August 20, 2020 at 23:14
I'm using "idea" as something like "mental picture of a possibility". We can think of the "coming up with" process as something like nature photograph...
August 20, 2020 at 23:10
Yes, but the production of an idea in a concrete medium is not usually what we take to be the act of "creativity": it's the coming-up-with of ideas th...
August 20, 2020 at 23:01
I'm not sure what more I can say in response to this that wouldn't just be repeating something from the OP, but I'll try. Surely every possibility is ...
August 20, 2020 at 20:46
Different things.
August 20, 2020 at 20:35
Smith and Marx agree more than you'd probably think.
August 20, 2020 at 18:58
Agreed.
August 20, 2020 at 16:22
Surely then a situation where most people own practically nothing (because almost everything is owned by a very few) will be one in which hardly anyon...
August 20, 2020 at 15:15
I’m not saying anything at all about what they are meant to be. A map or model in the usual sense is useful precisely because it is a simplification. ...
August 19, 2020 at 19:14
Talking about a literal map of a city is probably a clearer illustration. You can walk down a real city street, but you can’t walk down a street on a ...
August 19, 2020 at 17:24
We can hold people responsible in the sense of demanding restitution: whether you had a choice to do so or not, you caused some harm, so now we’ll mak...
August 19, 2020 at 16:20
No, I’ve concluded (like many before me) that it’s not a problem. “You don’t have good enough reason to think that” cannot be good enough reason to th...
August 19, 2020 at 07:52
Even if we’re not brains in vats, all of our experiences could conceivably be hallucinations. It is always possible to be radically skeptical to the p...
August 19, 2020 at 05:52
Except we can, in principle; it’s just very very hard to get at that information.
August 19, 2020 at 04:36
You’re basically just saying “nuh uh” here. I am explicitly endorsing the equivalence of physical reality and a mathematical object, so pointing to th...
August 19, 2020 at 01:24
Structure is function; to be is to do. If you were to make a truly complete map or model of something, you could not help but replicate its function, ...
August 18, 2020 at 22:03
You know that famous prayer asking for the “serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to k...
August 18, 2020 at 17:36
I broadly agree, I think, which is why I wrote before that drama (comedy+tragedy) is “sort of mirror image of beauty”: you can still see something via...
August 18, 2020 at 17:15