Arkady

Perhaps I'm just obtuse, but "ground of being" has no intuitive meaning to me...saying it's "just what it sounds like" doesn't help much. It likewise ...

Yes, I'm familiar with confirmation with regard to, for instance, the Catholic Church. I just found your post somewhat confusing because you said you'...

Oh, I wasn't suggesting that gay men should speak on behalf of gay women or vice-versa. I was just pointing out that discussions of male homosexual be...

I don't think anyone can reasonably claim that the gay community (to the extent that gays even had the comfort of a community; presumably many didn't,...

I wonder why it is the case that discussions of homosexuality seem to far more often revolve around homosexual men than around homosexual women. Even ...

I wasn't aware that one could be confirmed as a "Christian." (I've heard of, for instance, Catholic confirmation.) Whichever denomination you were at ...

Or perhaps most religious believers are not adherents of the sort of hot air suffused word salad that Eagleton spews here. If the typical Christian, s...

Interesting. I wonder how widespread this phenomenon is among the non-congenitally blind. In cases in which this "imagination blindness" occurs, perha...

I'll bet that it's a big hit with the ladies on the bar scene, though. :D

I suspect that there's a failure of imagination on one (or both) of our parts. Consider: and are discrete regions of space. There is no boundary of an...

This still doesn't seem right. That there is zero distance between adjacent locations only seems to entail that there is no boundary of any breadth be...

I wasn't suggesting that you were, and in truth my comment was more of a general proclamation. I should ask, though, as you believe that God's mind is...

Perhaps I'm missing something, but why must there be a finite distance between adjacent locations (assuming that you mean a non-zero finite distance; ...

At least certain types of theists seem pretty confident in their ability to decipher God's wishes, and have historically and currently even been willi...

Please forgive the delay in my reply. I don't necessarily disagree with your claim that people often form beliefs on the basis of aesthetic judgments ...

I don't know that a philosophical thesis is irrational only insofar as it contains (internally) contradictory claims: for instance, I would regard sol...

Conservatives have for years been branding themselves as the "real Americans," exalting the virtue of "small town values" (whatever those might be) ov...

I doubt many philosophers would agree that they subscribe to particular philosophical theses wholly or primarily on the grounds of aesthetics or emoti...

I am curious: does this position apply to white-collar criminals, as well? That is, should Wall Street traders who commit fraud, or people like Bernie...

I think we can not say that, as there is nothing doing the "sentencing" when we die of natural causes at the end of our biological life span. A theist...

Sometimes in such thought experiments or problems it is difficult to know which aspects we can safely abstract away, and which we can sensibly retain....

Yes, your summary is accurate, as far as I recall. From Wiki: But, I believe the point is that the hay bales are not numerically identical, even if th...

This raises an interesting point. I have to brush up on my readings on the identity of indiscernibles (was that one "Leibniz's Law"?), but I seem to r...

Evidently, Question never saw Man of Steel, else he'd know that tapping a planetary core can only lead to disaster.

It seems to me that any such scenario which posits that, in a deterministic universe, the ass physically couldn't select one of the hay bales to eat (...

Francis Fukuyama wrote a book on trust about 20 years ago. I am not very familiar with that particular work, but he touches upon the topic in some of ...

I know, but I had issues with your treatment of both H and K, which i will discuss in more detail below. In the meantime, I offer this correction to o...

Yea. I would imagine it looked something like this: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xaYjcjQtJ9I/UHEJJaSWfzI/AAAAAAAAAEg/5oRGEvHKHbk/s1600/satan_and_demon_ba...

A functioning mind is a not a necessary condition of something's being alive. That's why we draw a distinction between "brain dead" and "dead" simplic...

No, the fetus is not cake. Though I've read that human placenta can be quite delicious when prepared properly.

It gets worse: every egg-sized block of empty space we observe also confirms the hypothesis that "all eggs are white" (again, assuming that we've alre...

Not sure what you're asking here. The apples are no less green because there are white ravens. We can accumulate evidence for a hypothesis which later...

Glad to hear that things are picking up. But, again, the fact that something is dependent upon something else for its survival in no way entails that ...

A hypothesis can be confirmed by evidence but still turn out to be false. "Confirmation" is not equivalent to "verification." The observation of a sin...

Yup. Michael pointed this out fairly early on, IIRC. You said: My original concerns stand. K is a hypothesis which is supposedly compatible with "any ...

Why? Quantum indeterminacy, for instance, surely has at least some bearing on philosophical theses such as the Principle of Sufficient Reason?

Upon further reflection, it occurred to me that my thought experiment (whether or not it presents a valid point) has limited applicability to the rave...

But, that's part of the paradox. Green apples are not unrelated to the universal statement "all ravens are black." It confirms the (logically equivale...

Much has been made in this discussion re: the the objective/subjective distinction, which you seem to think has been muddled in this thread. Do you be...

My problem here is that I don't see how H logically implies E. Setting aside the propositional variables for a moment, I don't understand how this par...

I think he recently threatened via Twitter to deploy federal troops to Chicago to tackle the crime there, so maybe they can take care of this plague i...

I have some questions about this. I don't see how H (hypothesis) logically implies E (evidence). I understand the hypothetico-deductive mode of reason...

Yes, this was pretty much exactly the point of my egg thought experiment. So, if each black raven observed in the absence of white ones decreases the ...

Yes, it does mention the raven paradox (there may even be an entire SEP article devoted to said paradox, though I may be misremembering).

If there are a limited number of ravens in the world (which there almost certainly are), does that change whether observations of black ravens (or non...

A minor terminological point here: in the context of hypothesis testing, "confirmation" generally means "make more likely," and is not to be confused ...

I know they would deny (4). Propositions (1)-(3) were supposed to encompass what substance dualists do believe.

I know. But we're here speaking only of substance dualism, not whether physicalism is true (to claim that if the former is false, then the latter must...

Speaking as a physics layman, my understanding is that theorists have been struggling to reconcile QM and relativity, as the theories work well in the...

People say that Trump is preoccupied with figurative dick-measuring contests such as proclaiming how many people attended his inauguration, while forg...