fdrake

That there is a unique ordering of events with respect to time is something that is false because of the special theory of relativity. So time cannot ...

I certainly think it's possible to think that there is a real unique ordering of events by rejecting relativity. But I don't think it's possible to th...

Emoticons are cheating. Also, nice post.

I don't see how these two things can be compatible: (1) There is a unique order of events induced by the idea of the present in presentism. (2) Events...

Sarcasm doesn't transfer very well to strangers over the internet does it? :(

Yes of course, the degenerates.

Of course they should. We wouldn't want to get our lovely ballots spit stained by those drooling retards.

Do you think that beliefs are necessarily derived from utterances?

People with an IQ lower than 125 shouldn't be allowed to vote. Period. They contribute nothing to society, have no awareness of what's going on around...

Well, if you're happy to adopt the rules and stay on topic, I would've at least read your responses.

No, I just don't trust you or Rich to have anything I would find worthwhile to say on the topic.

And you don't think that simultaneity is a frame dependent phenomenon refutes the idea of there being an objectively correct answer to whether A is be...

I think we agree on this. So long as you're not going to say that from the equivalence of motions we should posit one reference frame as privileged. I...

I was meaning something like the following: the equivalence principle in SR is essentially that motion is always relative motion - which introduces co...

I don't think an undetectable in principle difference should be elevated to a difference in practice. I'm assuming 'foliates' here means, essentially,...

Aha, I see what you mean. You're providing a demonstrative example of motion in 1 spatial dimension and 1 temporal dimension, not saying space and tim...

Yeah, I don't think a block universe is necessitated by the conceptual structure of relativity either. I spelled out what I thought were the ontologic...

I interpreted noAxioms as suggesting that it's possible to interpret things in a way that made 3 dimensions of space & time combined. Don't see much o...

I didn't make much of the 'timeless space' paper, I'm sure interesting things do happen when you discretise space to the nearest Plank length, but see...

I find a lot to agree with, but I wanna place some extra emphasis on the strengths of the theory. I believe it is informative to a naturalistic metaph...

I don't think you payed much attention to the link you gave me Rich. The presence of dark energy has implications for the cosmological constant. That ...

Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. People have found things out about dark energy and dark matter. Neither the existence of dark matter nor ...

Just a general note: to categorise something as an illusion is pointless without trying to spell out why it is an illusion and how the illusion came t...

AFAIK dark matter is considered to be currently unobserved particles. Neutrinos used to be part of this before their measurement. AFAIK, there are loa...

I think it's strange to say that there's no motion in special relativity, considering the theory's topic is about what changes in motions that have sp...

Expansion of the universe shows up when the metric tensor has components which are an increasing function of proper time or proper distance depending ...

It's a pretty interesting discussion piece. I don't particularly like the last two bits - essentially a rejection of the reality of time as described ...

If you have two truth functions T1(x) and T2(x) such that T2(x)=NOT(T1(x)), then is a contradiction. This says nothing about other values of x. It's p...

Since I remember you like Austin: Maybe the difficulty in finding the constitutive or implicated beliefs in an argument is that arguments consist of f...

This would be like saying written language is reducible to words. Stories reducible to their constituent sentences. Mathematics does more than that. T...

I'm not sure I believed myself to be writing English, I was simply writing a response in English. The belief never 'entered my head' as it were. Where...

As soon as faith takes on a personal character, aspirations take the form of divine grace. The particularity of the relationship with the divine imbue...

It's interesting to see religious faith as motivating the same sort of acts as secular authenticity. The deficiency of life in terms of its current st...

Been reading through Jared Diamond's anthropological work, following it up with Debt by David Graeber. I think this is completing my late teenage Marx...

Do you think beliefs are shown in philosophical discourse in the same way(s) they are shown in non-philosophical activity? In other words, do the acti...

You'd have a lot to talk about with @"Hachem"! Scientifically minded scientific skepticism, only he was obsessed with optics.

If they had any kind of awareness, I think it's likely that they would be dreaming, or something like dreaming. Being aware in the usual way we are re...

I'm in a dark room with two light switches which will be activated by one switch. I also have a torch. The torch, as well as firing photons out, has a...

I think it's a Sorites paradox thing really. If I had to choose I'd say >0.5 is likely and <0.5 is unlikely. Really all this shows is what's expected:...

That's what I meant, partly. If 1000 events that are 99% likely happen, and they're independent, the probability that they all happen (iterated conjun...

Iterated conjunction of 'likely' should produce 'unlikely' in some cases. Iterated disjunction of 'unlikely' should produce likely in some cases. I do...

Spell it out, how do you formally reason with true, false, likely and unlikely?

Bigger than which cannot be conceived!

Typically probabilities are ascribed to events. Can the statement be seen as an event? Maybe not. So in this sense it could be a category error. There...

I don't think nature uses Pi either, except as part of our constructions. There's something in Pi being part of a bridge between our constructions and...

The only explanation I can see for your behaviour is that you think an appropriate response to the ontological argument is immediate dismissal through...

Aaaaaaand you interpreted me as disagreeing with this? Or worthy of scorn because I put more effort and nuance in defending the position, or a positio...

I'm surprised you think criticisms of ontological arguments in general are bollocks. You actually read me as someone who believed they could summon a ...

Read the rest of the freakin' post you trigger happy wing-nut.

Can you stay your anti-theist murderboner for one second and realise that I've spent most of the thread comparing the ontological argument to chaos ma...