Pierre-Normand

Good points. So, she may have been rather more like Ildefonso (and less like Victor, the feral child) than habitually portrayed. But she may also have...

It isn't bad practice to request clarifications before proceeding to respond "to a whole post", especially when your interlocutor seems to be contradi...

I watched the whole video before posting my first comment in this thread, thanked you for the reference, and commented on it. I even transcribed a bit...

It's very difficult having any sort of a meaningful discussion with you when you keep oscillating back and fort between the stances that your thesis d...

However, you've been consistently arguing that the acquisition of linguistic abilities doesn't change "what is already there" regarding the structure ...

It is very telling. Thanks for the reference to this blog. Thanks also to @"Harry Hindu" for the reference to the documentary. I hadn't heard of Ildef...

Here is another one: "No man ever steps in the same river twice..." ascribed to Heraclitus by Plato. David Wiggins(*) has argued that Heraclitus likel...

Yes, it is misleading but it does have a point, though, which is to warn against the naturalistic fallacy.

As soon as I read your thread title, this is the saying that immediately came to my mind! The next one that I though of is from Schopenhauer: "A man c...

Is this a philosophical question? It has been tested empirically.

I've heard it from a credible source that he was some sort of a Wittgensteinian but I don't know if it's true.

I agree. While the form is brought to bear by the perceiving subject on the content of her experience of an object, it isn't brought to bear on it in ...

You may have misread him, then. What he had written was: "The object informing the subject is identically the subject being informed by the object." (...

That doesn't sound nonsensical to my ears. It might be nonsensical if the 'object' of perception were conceived as the individual (substance) that is ...

Yes, indeed. I am not arguing that the fitness increase is a direct response to the organisms's strivings. That would characterize a Lamarckian proces...

I think I may be in broad agreement, although I understand Kim's principle of the causal closure of the physical to be restricted in scope (further th...

This post is golden. There is much food for thought, and for further study, there. Thanks!

I agree that there are cases, such as this one, where the organism is entirely passive with respect to the natural selection process. But I am also ha...

What I am suggesting is that the selection process is teleological in the very same sense in which the organism's physiological and behavioral activit...

It seems to me that passing off the evidence of teleology in living organisms as mere 'teleonomy' is a mistake. This is an attempt to distinguish irre...

That's a very good post. Thanks for the reference to your paper. I'll read it carefully. I don't quite understand your response to the first objection...

Substitute Canada and Montenegro for France and you might even get Trump to buy your plan.

I think Trump was just making a point about business etiquette. He didn't criticize Obama because he thought the president ought not to bow to the kin...

Yes, and when they fail to do so, then, maybe, they're just passing off linguistics as philosophy of language, or they are falling prey to psychologis...

I sometimes get this feeling too, but have seldom gotten it while reading either Kripke, Putnam, Evans or Wiggins. They are quite adept at navigating ...

I'm talking about Rossi because you're the one who brought his alleged successes up for consideration. Unfortunately, the whole field seems to be a co...

What is not true? Rossi's involvement with 'LENR' is his latest scam. But I was talking about Rossi's previous scam, marketed by his firm Leonardo Tec...

He only has one single customer for his latest scam? Trump University at least managed to defraud 5,000 poor souls. What are the chances, anyway, that...

Indeed. And there are a few more red flags besides those that you mention. There always is an external power supply to Rossi's devices. Rossi never al...

(In response to this post by @"apokrisis") Seconded!

Thanks very much for that. I think this idea, suitably adapted, might dovetail nicely with Wiggins's account of someone's conception of a concept, con...

When we discussed Pattern and Being, it was available online. Truth and Rule Following (which further develops the same ideas) only has been published...

If you don't mind me referring you back to old posts of mine, I've sketched my understanding of the significance of synthetic a priori propositions, h...

Much hangs on what "radically different" means. It could mean that two existing forms of life are incommensurate in such a way that mutual understandi...

It's difficult for me to improve much on @"fdrake"'s summary of Rovelli's argument, earlier in this thread. This is a broadly negative argument, howev...

Maybe I should clarify my reasoning a bit here. Since the frame of the sign is being held by two screws, the force of the wind on the sign will be opp...

I had also highlighted this paragraph from Norton's paper in orange, which is the color that I use to single out arguments that appear incorrect to me...

@"SophistiCat", @"andrewk", I was quite startled when I read the case of the beam, described by Norton as a "statically indeterminate structure", beca...

You mean, of course, the division of zero by zero. (Very good recent exchange between you and andrewk, by the way! I'll comment shortly.)

This is over the top and uncalled for. From where I stand, Wayfarer appears to have made some good and relevant points (which I was planning to commen...

... Just like the material of Michelangelo's David was a smaller part of the whole block of marble, which it was carved out from. Would you say that, ...

Thanks very much for those reminders. That's indeed an important thread of the history of ideas to be reminded of. Maybe Aristotle shares some part of...

I'm glad you like it. I think it has some relevance to the present topic since what is at issue, in Rovelli's polemics against the Platonic thesis tha...

I've edited my response and it may answer your question.

Rather than using a needle, you could also lay a bit of paper towel across the top of the edge of the tube. That would break the surface of the concav...

Of course, the work that is being produced by the falling tube is extracted from the gravitational potential energy of the water that rose into the tu...

The point that @"Michael Ossipoff" was making is that capillary action is a result of molecular attraction between water and the dry surface of a tube...

It's funny that you would mention Gerson's book, since I added it to the Platonism folder in my digital library a few hours ago, having found it thank...

I was alerted to the possibility of the distortion by a handful of scattered remarks on Plato versus Platonism by John McDowell. But I haven't pondere...

There is an undeniable phenomenon of convergence. But there are two mistakes one could make regarding such phenomena. The mistake that animates modern...