Douglas Alan

I'm not familiar with logicians being baffled by this assertion. Logicians, in my experience, are concerned mostly with propositions that carry a trut...

Well, I'm not sure that I do know. But there are certainly a multitude of propositions that have truth values, but for which we'll never know for sure...

I don't consider chairs to be existentially dependent on us. Chairs could exist even if we didn't. There would just be no beings that had the concept ...

The word "proposition" to philosophers is technical jargon. Though we can actually find a decent definition for this jargon in the American Heritage D...

I would argue that it is the same with colors. Color vision is far from only in the eyes. There is a lot of cognitive processing that is unique to hum...

Exactly so! |>ouglas

As I mentioned previously, you can find a philosopher somewhere to support any position. At least where I am, when philosophers discuss something that...

I already ceded aletheist's point in this regard. Though, as I mentioned, the word "fact" can be and is used both ways by even famous, tenured philoso...

If you prefer to discuss what the word "fact" means to a lexicographer, perhaps you should go to The Lexicography Forum instead. Last time I checked, ...

For someone who likes to rail so much about stupidity, you shouldn't act so stupidly. You have quoted me out of context. In context, I provided the re...

The difference is that one of those is a necessary fact and the other is a contingent fact. They are, however, both facts. |>ouglas

The term "proposition", as conventionally used in Philosophy, just means a sentence that is attempting to assert something. This assertion might be tr...

The problem with this is that she'll want a guy who loves to lift weights. And I prefer to sit in front of this infernal computer and debate inane top...

Fair enough! |>ouglas

Thanks for the offer of scripture, but no thanks. As for ending it all in what would be perceived as an accident, I prefer to just tell myself, I can ...

I would not object to that usage of the word "fact". Though I think that it can be used either way unproblematically. |>ouglas

I have an SB in Philosophy from MIT and this is what I was taught the word "fact" means. Certainly I can and did go look at the Stanford Encylopedia a...

I have no idea what you are talking about! I have a degree in Philosophy and propositions are usually considered to be the primary bearers of truth-va...

There is, of course, an entire entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on this question. And if you read it, you will quickly find that you a...

So, I need to be invited to a special Discord chat, or something? I'm never going to convert to Christianity, sorry. Perhaps Zen, but that's mostly ju...

So where does one find out more about this mysterious party? Google hasn't heard of it. Twitter hasn't heard of it. Duck Duck Go hasn't heard of it......

It's all the rage on Reddit, which many people would consider to be the Internet these days. Well, that and Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. There are ...

I stubbed my toe yesterday and it really hurt. How does one give upvotes and downvotes on this crazy forum? I want to upvote you but I can't. What is ...

In order to explain all the bad shit that happens in the world, Leibnitz's explanation was that this is the best of all possible worlds, even if it co...

I personally am very bitter. |>ouglas

What makes you think that people aren't studying this??? Here's an article about a Nature-published article on what happened when they made mice with ...

That makes as much sense as saying that California doesn't exist for anyone who's never been there and is never going to go. |>ouglas

Also, the claim that art, music, and math provide no evolutionary advantage is absurd on the face of it. Music and art allow for groups of people to b...

Here's one explanation: https://www.livescience.com/33129-total-energy-universe-zero.html It's not nearly as good as Guth's though. I'll try to type u...

I am not a physicist, but I do have an S.B. from MIT. And I did write the software that was used to operate an X-ray space telescope called the Rossi ...

But if you use that anomaly power to create a closed time-like curve, you can go back in time, kill your grandfather, causing a cascade of non-causali...

Yes, this is quite true because gravitational fields have negative energy. So even with conservation of mass/energy, it turns out that you can get som...

Hmmm, that's an interesting question. It may be that having enough real monkeys at computer terminals is not actually a possible universe at all, depe...

If there are an infinite number of universes, there is one where the contents of this entire forum were created by monkeys randomly typing at keyboard...

I've can't keep track of what the disagreement here is precisely anymore. Why don't we table the discussion on whether there are colors for a moment a...

I'm not sure what this question is asking, or why it would be considered interesting. I'm a devout atheist, but I don't look to music to reaffirm my a...

I can't believe that anyone is still arguing with you, when you are clearly completely correct. I usually don't like to try to win arguments by pointi...

You're looking for meaning in all the wrong places. There is no meaning to life. Live with it. If there's any meaning to life, it's the meaning that y...

In MWI, there is no spooky action at a distance. It is a completely local and deterministic interpretation of QM. |>ouglas

This argument makes no more sense to me than saying that traveling to San Francisco is just waiting. I get on a plane headed towards San Francisco and...

Something doesn't have to be a metaphysical theory for it to entail obvious metaphysical consequences. That's not traveling; that's waiting. Let me be...

That's not a philosophical problem. It's a scientific one. And if turns out to be a question that science can't answer because there's no way to falsi...

I couldn't have said it better myself! |>ouglas

Yes it does. Or at least it does as interpreted by physicists who specialize in GR. E.g. Hawking and Smolin. Also GR allows for "closed timelike loops...

Of course it does. It tells us precisely what results from quantum entanglement. As far as I'm aware, the probability problem is the only deep philoso...

Well, I don't really know how to respond to all this. GR works fine for me as it is, and leaves me with no feeling of unresolved mysteries at all. Exc...

I don't know if "codex" is too pretentious. It may be Latin, but it's also English. On the other hand, "quarentis" doesn't mean anything to me, but I ...

Well, I guess I care because I've gotten drawn into a debate again on Max Tegmark's MUH, and so it's on my mind lately what it means for something to ...

Colors are far more complex than simple wavelengths of light. Most colors do not correspond to any wavelength. Rather they are a mixture of different ...

The agents don't have to be consciousness for colors to exist. Colors are properties of objects in the external world. Our minds can cognitively pick ...