Pfhorrest

Analytic a posteriori is like what Kripke talks about in "Naming and Necessity", e.g. about how it's necessarily true that Batman is Bruce Wayne, beca...

While I mostly disagree with Bartricks here, I think there is at least a similar point to be made about how the original Stoics had a metaphysical vie...

Thanks for the applause. :) Freethinking proselytism is what I'm calling this, though I'm hesitant about that "proselytism" as a name for what I mean....

Broadly on the topic of this thread, I'd just like to note that philosophical counseling is a thing.

I notice that we now have at least one student, a couple more people who say they have no philosophical education at all, and someone who took some pr...

Thank you both. Meanwhile ... There are two things to consider about what people call "mind": One of them is phenomenal consciousness, the topic of th...

Is it not equally impossible for every two points on a line to have distance between them, because it would result in infinite distance between any tw...

From your description in that other thread, that is exactly the same thing that I am talking about under the more traditional name of panpsychism. It ...

Systems philosophy, from what I can tell, appears to be speaking only of access consciousness, the subject of the so-called "easy" problem of consciou...

It complicates it because, as someone else said after me, someone might want to eradicate grief but not eradicate memory. I know I would. Eradicating ...

Emergence in philosophy of mind means something different from that. In this context it means that phenomenal consciousness, something defined as irre...

Emergence is only one proposed solution to the hard problem. Dualistic accounts address the same problem and have their own share of difficulties. The...

The hard problem of consciousness is hard because it's an illusory problem so there is no solution, only dissolution. The mere having of a first-perso...

Technically those are different things. Non-contradiction says it can’t be both true and false. Excluded middle says it can’t be anything but true or ...

Taking a pill to forget that the grief-causing event happened complicates the scenario, because most people would choose not to forget even if they wo...

You’ve only asserted that there’s something wrong with not feeling bad in the face of tragedy, when I asked for a reason why that’s wrong. I’m not ass...

Why ought anyone ever be unhappy, if they can manage not to? What use is it to feel bad, all else being the same?

Plantinga's ii and iii sum up to "possibly, it is not possible for there to be a world where evil is not possible, and the world we have now is the le...

Meanwhile I'll continue slowly answering my own questions. In a word, critically. By which I mean in the manner of critical rationalism, as opposed to...

@"StreetlightX" or someone, would it be possible to split this conversation with creativesoul off into its own thread? I don't want to shut down that ...

This thread wasn’t in the Lounge when I started replying to it, and the only thing bringing me back to it is people replying to me.

Gladly.

I don’t know what you’re talking about but can you please point me to an ignore function here because it’s clear that you’re a witless capitalist apol...

You don't seem to understand the point of this conversation. Yes, we're talking about small businesses, which are most businesses. And of course the b...

Yeah I've told you what I think belief consists of, and what I think thought consists of, and you haven't told me what you think either of them consis...

I described thought as reflexive mental activity. If that wasn’t clear then I think you’re not understanding anything I’ve said. I think I would rathe...

The interest is exactly the problem. You’re looking at the risk from the lender’s point of view, when my whole point is that the availability of credi...

My earlier point was than most new business ventures fail, so if you can’t afford to fail enough times to hit the jackpot and come out ahead, saying “...

No actually, quite worse than nothing, as I had just explained. Having access to credit doesn't improve your odds of winning or losing, you're still e...

To quote myself from the old thread Mark linked to, there's different kinds of "optimism" and "pessimism" that I think it's useful to distinguish betw...

Commonality to all empirical experiences, or instrumentality toward explaining such. This means an empirical realism, or a physicalist phenomenalism, ...

Why do you claim reflexive mental activity requires naming or other linguistic capability? More to the point, where are you going with all this? I don...

Pessimism is just an excuse to not try.

Yes, I am saying that. And I gave criteria for a thought to be a belief, and for a mental state to be a thought, and for what makes a state mental, so...

I think I’ve already answered that question so if there is something to my answer I’ve left out you’ll need to specify. And yes language-less creature...

Sure. Beliefs are a kind of thoughts, thoughts with descriptive content, thoughts about how the world is, in contrast to intentions which are thoughts...

:up:

People with less money spend more of it, increasing the velocity of money and so the productivity of the economy. If you take money from the rich and ...

Not sure if sarcasm or not, but in case not: those are all means for those with money to gamble with to gamble on the ventures of those without such m...

Yep. And I also argue that appeal to popularity is also just an appeal to the authority of the crowd and so an appeal to faith, and appeal to intuitio...

I argue this very point in like the second paragraph of my book so thumbs up to both of you for making it too. All appeal to authority is fideistic. T...

Important point to note: those with more to start with can better afford to fail until they make it. If you’re living check to check and one failure w...

I don’t think any real socialists villainize the rich as people, rather they figure that everybody is doing what they can to get ahead, and criticize ...

That sound like an answer to my question about the meaning of descriptive statement, yes.

You'll note that I don't say anything at all about whether God exists until the very last chapter of my book. It's an open question, and most of the b...

I am winding down for bed so this will be brief but then I’ll be mostly away for a few days so I want to reply with something. Mostly I think you’re r...

You'll note that in that essay (thank you for the praise BTW) I explicitly clarify what I mean by supernatural, and say that I'm not saying that any o...

What effective difference is there from a country like the UK where the head of state is powerless in practice, so only the head of government matters...

I hold to roughly the verificationist theory of meaning, but limited in domain to only descriptive propositions, those trying to say what is real. Tha...

I don't think we disagree in the end. As I frame it, all action is driven by a combination of what we think is and what we think ought to be, so the p...