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Pierre-Normand

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Has a philosopher ever had a good idea such that Aristotle hadn't already beaten them to the punch ;-) Maybe some Pre-Socratic...
July 14, 2017 at 00:22
This is my view also. Following Elizabeth Anscombe, it has become much more common to view intentions that occur prior to the initiation of actions on...
July 14, 2017 at 00:15
Because it's a fair topic for philosophical discussion? Also, the goal might not be convincing others but rather to test out some ideas in view of rea...
July 14, 2017 at 00:07
Likewise if you would buy a statue of Hermes and it's damaged during transport. And then the seller tells you: "But it's still a statue! Now it has be...
July 13, 2017 at 23:51
The usual way it's told in a paradoxical manner is when the old damaged planks that are being replaced over time are being collected somewhere and eve...
July 13, 2017 at 23:35
One could stash a heap of sand on the deck of the Ship of Theseus and that may make things more interesting ;-) One issue with blobs, heaps and chunks...
July 13, 2017 at 23:25
I think vagueness issues are orthogonal to the question of the mass noun versus count noun distinction. Hence one might ask if a mountain that has two...
July 13, 2017 at 21:28
I agree. Natural scientists aim at carving "nature" at its joints. But the natural joints just are the joints that show up in empirical inquiry when t...
July 13, 2017 at 21:16
Agreed. One is more of an act of theoretical reason while the other is more of an act of practical reason. Either we are seeking to disclose affordanc...
July 13, 2017 at 18:28
It likely remains the same piece of copper but, if it didn't belong to you to start with, that might constitute theft!
July 13, 2017 at 18:22
I don't know. So far, I have mostly been concerned with clarifying possible misunderstandings. If there still is a mystery lurking it's quite possible...
July 13, 2017 at 18:18
I don't think so since the substance-sortals that we use to individuate artifacts or other sorts of objects that we care about aren't merely ad hoc, o...
July 13, 2017 at 18:15
I think what you just said (including the corollary) is good enough a conclusion to be drawn!
July 13, 2017 at 18:08
If you are a mereological essentialist then set membership is sufficient (and furthermore necessary!) But even if you aren't a mereological essentiali...
July 13, 2017 at 18:03
A sortal that isn't a dummy is a sortal that is merely good enough for the job at hand. A similar question could be asked about meanings, generally. A...
July 13, 2017 at 17:43
No contest there. In the case of artifacts, it's very much our own interests that determine what degree of change in material constitution can be tole...
July 13, 2017 at 16:57
Consider the case of material constitution. At a given time, a particular lump of bronze can materially constitute a particular statue of Hermes. Both...
July 13, 2017 at 16:11
Well, of course, I assumed it was indeed implied that those words have reference only in the context of an utterance. Fafner was proposing an analogy ...
July 12, 2017 at 21:47
Ah! Sorry. I thought you were referring to the original post in this thread. Fafner indeed used quotes around Ceasar's murder. I am unsure what it is ...
July 12, 2017 at 21:13
I got involved in this thread when I reacted to what someone said, after the discussion was well on its way. But I just now looked back at the origina...
July 12, 2017 at 20:44
I can't pass quoting another bit from Eric Marcus, Rational Causation. This is footnote 22 on p.195: "Someone might object here that two people (e.g.,...
July 12, 2017 at 19:01
I don't believe that either. You brought up the case of Kripke's a posteriori necessities regarding the essences of natural kinds, specifically. (I'd ...
July 12, 2017 at 17:37
Thanks for this reference. It is Putnam's endorsement of Travis that motivated me to read Unshadowed Thought. Now, I think I may have developed some r...
July 12, 2017 at 17:16
According to the slingshot argument there indeed only is one single fact that all true sentences correspond to. The arguments, though, has also been v...
July 12, 2017 at 15:50
If I may just throw out a suggestion, in passing, regarding the requirement (or lack of a requirement) for there to be a convention in order that comm...
July 12, 2017 at 15:13
I think this is just a misunderstanding, so let me try and clear that up separately. On my view, which is indebted to Evans's and Wiggins's neo-Fregea...
July 12, 2017 at 14:37
Before responding to this, and also to Fafner's most recent reply to me, I wanted to read again chapter 5 -- Events and States -- in Eric Marcus, Rati...
July 11, 2017 at 14:57
No, of course not. First I was talking about the references of the predicates -- "...died" and "...was murdered" -- and not the references of the sing...
July 10, 2017 at 16:01
I think this proposal raises a few problematic issues. First, through attempting to do away with the multiple realizability of coarse-grainedly specif...
July 10, 2017 at 15:18
Seconded. This is a paper that ought to figure in any anthology on the philosophy of mind.
July 10, 2017 at 09:27
Quite possibly. I think cognitive science, by an large, has not kept up with J. J. Gibson, among other anti anti-representationalist pioneers; althoug...
July 10, 2017 at 09:06
You mean the event she is thinking about and the reference of her utterance? On edit: I think it's entirely possible that she means to be referring to...
July 09, 2017 at 20:27
Let me just make a mention of the elephant in the room. Caesar's murder was an action whereas his death wasn't. Intentional actions have a principle o...
July 09, 2017 at 20:19
That would be a valid objection if my criterion for saying that 'x' and 'y' refer to two distinct events is for them to have different Fregean senses....
July 09, 2017 at 19:44
Well, "the son of..." and "the father of..." will only have the same reference if you fill them up with singular terms in such a way as to turn them i...
July 09, 2017 at 17:15
That doesn't seem to be quite the same since in the case of the earlier two examples (regarding the state of the weather, or George VI) the respective...
July 09, 2017 at 16:25
Exactly. That's my main point. But then when you suggest that x and y are numerically the same 'event' you are conflating the physical movements where...
July 09, 2017 at 00:39
Not at all. Part of the point is that events are particulars whereas being murdered (or being killed) are general concepts expressed by predicates. Cl...
July 09, 2017 at 00:22
If x is the event of Caesar's dying and y is the event of Caesar's being murdered, then what makes x being a case of murder isn't the same thing as wh...
July 08, 2017 at 23:53
Precisely. In my post I only considered the actual world, not any alternative possibilities. And I assumed that Caesar was indeed murdered, and that x...
July 08, 2017 at 23:31
Maybe one way to explain what Fafner is driving at is this: If in the actual world A corresponds to x and B corresponds to y, where A is the claim tha...
July 08, 2017 at 23:12
tl;dr
July 08, 2017 at 22:45
The object of agreement seems to me to be the same sort of thing as the understanding Wittgenstein talked about when he said that there is a way to un...
July 08, 2017 at 16:20
And then there is the "presidential" wedding. http://i2.cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/161110200609-melania-trump-social-media-post-01-super-169.jpg
July 07, 2017 at 22:05
It really sounds to me like whenever the tea pot gets warm prime numbers above 17 suddenly get significantly heavier (except for 883, of course!). How...
July 07, 2017 at 16:11
Well, it doesn't make sense to me. Saying stuff that makes sense rather than stuff that doesn't is generally considered a desideratum in philosophical...
July 07, 2017 at 15:27
I did not make it a specifically moral issue. "Responsible'' has a non-moral agent-causal (or substance-causal) attribution sense: The lightning strik...
July 07, 2017 at 15:16
Let me grant that there is no fact of the matter. Very well then. My suggestion was unhelpful. The concept of strict liabilities seems to be of no use...
July 07, 2017 at 14:53
I just presented a standard argument for incompatibilism (and also a standard argument for compatibilism). It's not a fully developed account of incom...
July 07, 2017 at 14:40
When one holds an agent responsible for her actions it's because for her to have chosen to act in this way (or recklessly let something happen) reflec...
July 07, 2017 at 10:37