The Great Whatever

What matters in making the moral judgment is whether the imaginer can tell the difference, not the imagined.

The point is not that people couldn't prefer such a thing. It's that the thought experiment's coherency hinges on us being able to imagine something w...

It doesn't matter: by your own example, the episode must be such that the viewer can tell the difference, and therefore there is such a difference. Th...

I believe that the experience machine thought experience is subject to a kind of logical fallacy that is common in many thought experiments. The probl...

This is a little tricky, because the Greeks don't typically speak in terms of 'my good' versus 'your good;' they just speak of the good. If pleasure i...

You can't imagine a guy chopping down seventy trees unless you literally picture a tree chopping event seventy times over in your head?

This is such a parlor game answer.

Sure, but it's also appropriate to remain skeptical of your dogma when given a good argument to the contrary that you can't refute and that poses deva...

Really? That seems exhausting and pointless, and not the way people imagine things.

No, which makes me think these notions of imagination have to be wrong.

OK, and that other thing would have to have experiential consequences, or else the example could not work by its own logic without begging the questio...

Yes it is, by the fact that you feel funny if you drink the water. This is baked into the very example.

Yes

Not at all. The idealist simply equates the presence of a drug in the water with a certain connection of experiences. No inference to something non-ex...

Right, but then you're back to assuming your conclusion. The realist will just deny that they're imagining experiences. They'll say they're imagining ...

The idealist would say there is nothing to perceiving drugged water other than perceiving the experiential consequences of water being drugged, which ...

They say you can picture such a thing because you can. If you are picturing a tree, the fact that you are picturing it in the imagining situation does...

You don't just perceive some water; you perceive drugged water, since on drinking it you have other experiences of getting drugged. To say that the wa...

Then you are using the word 'imagine' to mean 'picture solely experientially,' which would seem to linguistically guarantee your conclusion. All I can...

I deny that in imagining a tree you are only imagining a tree's smell, etc.: you are, rather, imagining a tree. Its smell, etc. may be salient propert...

Is a tree just a collection of experiential things? If yes, you've assumed your conclusion. If no, then in imagining a tree you have not just imagined...

But you are not imagining a collection of shapes and colors: you are imagining a tree. You can assert a tree is nothing but this, but this assumes the...

It doesn't matter whether in imagining the tree you have experiences, because you are having those experiences in the imagining situation, not in the ...

Yes, but you can imagine non-experiential things. If you want to deny this, you have to assume your conclusion (idealism). If I imagine a tree falling...

No, it doesn't go through, because even if the imagined situation is experiential, it doesn't follow that your conceiving of it means that there is an...

Even for the idealist, the imagined situation and the situation of imagining must be distinct. Regardless of whether the imagined situation itself is ...

While it's true that a philosopher is always bound by the assumptions they make and the conclusions that result from them, and is not, so far as he is...

I deny that when you imagine a situation, you are imagining the experience of it. You are imagining the situation. You might be having an experience i...

This is a very specific kind of formal fallacy, that I fell under for a long time. That you must yourself imagine a situation in order to imagine it w...

Yeah, I'm with Marchesk on this one: 1) is an admission that one would prefer not to do philosophy, which is fine, but then it's not an appropriate po...

That's not a good response, since it just raises the question as to why one thing is in need of explanation or not another, along with the question of...

OK. You didn't say that in your previous posts, but you said you said you did right after, which was confusing. I never said I did nothing, I said I h...

I don't understand how you think my claim can be a lie, and then attest that it's true for someone you know. Not sure what you're trying to say.

I think the best answer is just to be honest and admit there isn't any evidence for the claims realism makes. Basic epistemological and metaphysical q...

So, you haven't heard of it, but you have an example of it from your own personal life?

It seems to be a lie to you that some people don't mind sitting around not doing much? I would attribute that to a lack of life experience, I guess.

I've never had much sympathy with this position, because I don't really get bored. I like long stretches of indolence and inertia, and if anything dis...

No. Base is just a matter of notation. I'm doing no such thing. The sentences as you express them now in English are not equivalent, because they do n...

No, the proposition which it expresses is tied to its use now, because now is when you actually used it. It's another question whether that propositio...

1 and 1 do not make 2 'in a notation.' 1 and 1 make 2, period. The equation or sentence '1 + 1 = 2' might be true or false, depending on how you disam...

Not at all. 1) will be true just in case the cup is red in that situation; 2) will be true just in case the cup is blue in that situation. Now, an utt...

No, they are not. For the truth conditions of two sentences to be the same, it must be that the proposition they express has the same truth value eval...

OK, but this doesn't get you what you want. What you need for the biconditional to hold is: In the situation in which there are no linguistic practice...

To make clear the crucial point of disagreement.

I didn't feel like addressing the rest.

This is what I'm disputing. Sentence meaning depends on linguistic practice, which in turn, at least as far as we're familiar with it, depends on mind...

This biconditional is not 'false' simpliciter if interpreted materially; it is true or false depending on the situation applied to. Applied to the sit...

Your reply doesn't make sense to me. There's no such thing as a fallacious biconditional. Your proposed biconditional truth is also not what's at issu...

What I am saying is that whether something is a sentence, and whether it expresses a proposition, and if so what proposition it expresses, are depende...

I see what you're saying, but the sentence not existing isn't crucial to the example. If we need to complicate it we can to make the same point, but w...