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The Great Whatever

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By NOW, do you mean something like 'ever' or 'while I exist?' So do you mean to ask me, 'do you ever have those sorts of experiences?' or 'Do you have...
April 13, 2017 at 16:56
I mean that I exist at different times, and find myself having different sorts of experiences at those different times.
April 13, 2017 at 16:50
But I do find that – at different times of course. I mean that in the perfectly ordinary sense. Forget about the A and B theories – we're not assuming...
April 13, 2017 at 16:42
OK, I've been pulling your leg a little bit. I actually am familiar with all of these theories, and have been playing dumb because I don't want to get...
April 13, 2017 at 16:13
Great! So let's talk about P3 independent of metaphysical theories of time. Let's suppose (as is true) that I have no stake in the game of which theor...
April 13, 2017 at 16:06
Don't you think that any theory that forces us to say that sensical things don't make sense should prima facie be disregarded, unless there is good re...
April 13, 2017 at 15:29
I think there is some misunderstanding here. The issue is not over which metaphysical theory of time anyone does or doesn't understand – it's about th...
April 13, 2017 at 15:28
Alright – I still don't really get it. I don't know what the difference between a past time 'existing' versus not. It seems to me to be a confusion ab...
April 13, 2017 at 06:07
This is not what I was asking. I was asking what this word, NOW, you've made up, means. This does not help. You need to use it in sentences. The terms...
April 13, 2017 at 05:53
I don't know what this means. How many senses of existing are there? I know I exist. I know that sitting here etc. is all I experience right now. But ...
April 13, 2017 at 05:32
There is no 'ontological' sense of 'now,' if by 'now' you mean the English word. If you do not mean this word, then why not make up a new one so as to...
April 13, 2017 at 05:03
No, since you'll exist tomorrow and existed yesterday and had experiences then as well. I'm being polite. What you quoted is more lucid than what you ...
April 13, 2017 at 03:55
If I can intuit from my introspective experience "The only thing I experience during the time in which I exist is sitting at my computer, etc.," and t...
April 13, 2017 at 03:15
If you clarify what you mean, then the sentence may lose its intuitive plausibility: that is the gamble one takes when moving from an intuitively plau...
April 12, 2017 at 17:46
It is relevant because you are appealing to intuition for the truth of an English sentence and presenting your argument in English. P3 and whatever va...
April 12, 2017 at 13:28
I think the reason we are talking past each other is because I am taking the sentences you say at face value as English sentences, and interpreting th...
April 12, 2017 at 06:08
Something like, 'in general, the only thing I experience is sitting at my computer' or 'the only thing I ever experience is sitting at my computer.' I...
April 12, 2017 at 05:51
The simple present in English typically has a habitual reading. This is a fact about English, and has nothing to do with any metaphysical position. Fo...
April 12, 2017 at 05:01
I'm asking about your position. Do you not see why it is a contradiction to claim that you have only one sort of experience, and that you tend to have...
April 12, 2017 at 04:53
This is not possible since you only exist for an instant. You cannot both have only one sort of experience, and tend to have different sorts of experi...
April 12, 2017 at 04:50
OK. 1) and 2) seem to contradict each other. Surely you are not committing to a contradiction. So why do you believe they don't contradict? If you are...
April 12, 2017 at 04:45
I'm sorry, but I literally do not understand your position. Can you please just give me a straightforward answer, as to whether you accept both 1) and...
April 12, 2017 at 04:44
Do you assent to the following two sentences: 1) I only experience sitting in front of my computer 2) I tend to have other sorts of experiences ? I as...
April 12, 2017 at 04:40
So you tend to experience other experiences? How, then, is the only experience you have of sitting at your computer?
April 12, 2017 at 04:35
So what are you saying? You're not saying that the only sort of thing you experience is being on a computer. You're not saying that all you're experie...
April 11, 2017 at 23:11
I did not insist on anything. You used the present tense yourself in making the claims. I was pointing that out to you. I have adopted no theoretical ...
April 11, 2017 at 19:00
Not at all. I believe it's false because they don't seem to be true, independent of theoretical position. If someone asked me what sorts of things I e...
April 11, 2017 at 18:55
It doesn't matter what you 'mean.' What I am saying is that the sentence you uttered, a sentence of English, cannot mean what you are saying it does. ...
April 11, 2017 at 15:38
To be on the nose about it, this: Is obviously a description of what your experiences were at the time of typing, not what they are in general or at d...
April 11, 2017 at 07:26
So I'm trying to understand how to interpret your claim. If I say this: My first inclination is that this is simply false. I experience all sorts of t...
April 11, 2017 at 07:23
But this is just false, right? Read that back to yourself and ask whether it's true. The only thing you experience is being at your computer? No: you ...
April 11, 2017 at 06:30
That depends on the semantics of your language. You can of course construct a language in which 'A implies A' is contingent or even a contradiction. S...
April 11, 2017 at 04:27
I don't think this is an assumption – it's a plain fact. That is written in the present progressive, and means that you are not experiencing any other...
April 11, 2017 at 04:23
Tautology is a semantic notion – the semantics are presumably set up in a way where their interpretation of the syntactic form is always going to yiel...
April 11, 2017 at 04:12
I'm not sure that's right, but in any case it doesn't matter – as long as there's a notion of having an experience at a time, the same holds, since th...
April 10, 2017 at 22:55
Not that you are experiencing all of them, but that you have or will experience(d) (or are experiencing) all of them. But it does, via the present ten...
April 10, 2017 at 20:45
Hi, I'm not going to read the thread, but – P3 seems easily deniable by the worm-theorist, who can claim that we experience all times in which we exis...
April 10, 2017 at 19:37
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BG1iOpM34GY
April 09, 2017 at 00:14
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X2atEH7nCg
April 08, 2017 at 04:36
Titus Groan - Mervyn Peake Mistress of Mistresses - E. R. Eddison Lud-in-the-Mist - Hope Mirrlees
April 07, 2017 at 02:03
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CGsEVVeyDk
April 05, 2017 at 19:07
Yes, in my experience technical and artistic achievements are accompanied by distinct and irreducible sorts of pleasure.
April 05, 2017 at 04:09
Williamson and Soames are unusually parochial, but yeah, their point can't be denied. The formalization of arguments is less interested than the forma...
April 02, 2017 at 02:29
The formalization, more than just explicitness, gives a sense that there are actual stakes to what's being done – because if you need your models to p...
April 02, 2017 at 02:14
Lewis himself was a modal realist, which is a bizarre metaphysics, but his formal treatment of counterfactuals probably could be adapted into any meta...
April 02, 2017 at 02:04
Counterfactuals aren't a problem for any theory of truth so far as I can tell. Modal truths are in a sense 'about' non-actual world states, but they a...
April 02, 2017 at 01:51
The classical view is that you can order possible world-states along some contextually determined relation of metaphysical similarity, and that any co...
April 02, 2017 at 01:48
If you're interested in classic semantic accounts of counterfactuals using possible worlds, Stalnaker's 1968 Theory of Conditionals and Lewis' 1973 Co...
April 02, 2017 at 01:45
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-XmmznY45I
March 31, 2017 at 02:42
The idea that things cause each other is grounded in everyday experience. The idea that they do infallibly according to necessary principles isn't. An...
March 27, 2017 at 04:59