I think that's a point Plato would readily have acknowledged; and a reason why Plato may never have been a Platonist in the modern sense of the term. ...
Yes, so far I have focused on a different part of Rovelli's argument that seems decisive to me but may be less intuitively compelling than his main po...
Talk of the 'external reality' is quite Cartesian sounding. Cartesian materialism may be some sort of a variety of Platonism. But the relationship bet...
This appear close to Russell's theory of concepts, relations and (Russellian) propositions. It is a quite Platonic theory, so, relying on it would als...
Interestingly enough, the fact that they enabled us to exist already begins to establish a conceptual dependence between them and us. This is not to d...
It's a certain way for us because we are co-evolved with our environment, or Umwelt (as Uexküll uses the term in the context of ethology, but as it ca...
That's true, but the recognition that the world is a certain way for us to reason about it already amounts to acknowledging a productive role for the ...
Sure, but what sorts of things are structures and relations? Do they exist in themselves rather like intelligible forms in Platonic heaven? If you ass...
@"StreetlightX" Although I hadn't found the time to comment, I had very much enjoyed the OP. I just now finished reading a paper by Sebastjan Vörös an...
I have Everett's book in my digital library but I am yet to read it too. The case of the Piraha and their (lack of) counting abilities had been a topi...
Let me add that, here on Earth, we have the Pirahas of the Amazon rainforest who don't have any use for natural numbers, not even the number 1, nor of...
Rovelli's argument is compelling to me. His view on natural numbers, in particular, meshes rather well with Frege's construal of them as second order ...
Fair enough. I have a tendency, myself, to try to pay attention to the best in the thought and hidden legacy of influential philosophers. This include...
It's not very new, though. The New Riddle of Induction is the fourth chapter in Goodman's book Fact, Fiction and Forecast, first published in 1955 and...
On the other hand, you are saluting the nominalistic proclivities of Sellars, Quine and Davidson, among others. Let me just focus on Sellars for now. ...
I agree with this. I am indeed stressing the fact that the event doesn't exist -- or can't be thought of, or referred to, as the sort of event that it...
It's true, in a sense, that 'events' have multiple causes. Recent work on the contrastive characters of causation and of explanation highlight this. B...
Yes, because the path of the system in phase space only is branching out at the point representing the particle being at rest at the apex. When the pa...
Apocrisis was talking about a generic force rather than a generic cause, or generic agent. I think is makes sense to speak of a general background con...
It's fine to pick up again a sub-thread when something has been overlooked. What is surprising? The indeterminism is uprising, but the time symmetry i...
I don't understand this comment. The dynamics, in this case, is indeterministic (branching out at the point in phase space representing the particle a...
Well, the fact that there is no force while the ball is initially at rest on the apex of Norton's dome enables it to remain stationary during some arb...
This particular conclusion is convergent with my own. It seems interesting, to me, that the shape of Norton's dome creates a specific condition of ins...
This may not be right. What I should have said (in the case of the hemispheric dome) is that the acceleration in the vicinity of the apex will be such...
Yes, because the way in which we are making our decisions isn't merely a process of instrumental specification from generic or blind desires that we a...
I am in broad agreement with this. I've finished reading Norton's paper, now. It's very good even though the whole discussion presupposes a broadly Hu...
The differential equation that constrains the equation of motion, and, in this case, that has been set up to ensure that Newton's second law is obeyed...
I rather like this purported solution, not because I am especially interested in saving the notion of an omnipotent god, but because it is a useful re...
Yes, it's true that if Her power to create such a stone remains unactualized, then, in that case, Her merely having this power doesn't entail a contra...
There is indeed an analogy to be made with Zeno's dichotomy paradox. When classical mechanics is being portrayed as a picture of the way the world is,...
It is fine not to be bothered by problems that exercise proponents of dubious -isms (such as physicalism). I am not overly bothered by them either. Bu...
I rather agree with that, since I endorse a variety of agent-causation (and rational causation) myself. Many libertarian philosophers, and some compat...
I understand that you intended to raise issues for causality that are more general than those that arise from the peculiar features of Norton's dome. ...
Yes. Although Norton's dome isn't the only shape that allows this, many shapes, such as a spherical dome, or a paraboloid, wouldn't allow it since it ...
So, you are envisioning a spontaneous change in the microscopic shape of the ball. This would break the initial symmetry and move the ball's center of...
I had very much the same thought. I was thinking that God (or whoever thought about herself that she was God) would kick herself for having performed ...
Not sure what molecular decay is. But if you're thinking of thermal molecular motion, yes. It would be a source of fluctuation of the net force, and t...
That's right, although the force at issue, here, is the net force. For sure, you can allege that there ought to be some random force from thermal mole...
The source of the puzzle regarding causality is that the cause of the initial departure from a state of rest is usually (or intuitively) being identif...
The presence of a uniform and constant field of gravity g is assumed in the setup of the problem. It's the source of the weight, mg, of the ball beari...
I had always assumed that the equation of motion of the ball (away from the potential bifurcation point) was as given in Norton's paper. For this solu...
I don't see any reason why a physical system can't have some of its components initially in a state of motion. Velocity is relative to an inertial ref...
I am assuming that the dynamical equations, together with whatever supplementary laws might be posited, which govern the system determine the set of t...
Very well. In that case your law doesn't describe a deterministic system under the time-symmetrical definition of determinism. It allows bifurcations ...
But what happens in the case where the ball is being sent rolling up towards the apex with the requisite speed? Consider the situation at any time T, ...
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