Pierre-Normand

Numerical identity is a relation that holds between something and itself. If A and B are numerically identical, this means that "A" and "B" are two na...

Pragmatics makes a distinction between speaker meaning and conventional meaning ("Utterer's meaning" and "timeless meaning" in Grice). For Kripke it d...

It doesn't matter how very qualitatively different France might by in counterfactual scenarios that we imagine; It still will be numerically identical...

Sure. Kripke is necessarily human iff he's human in all the possible worlds in which he exists. The possible worlds in which Kripke doesn't exist aren...

Sure, something is necessarily true iff it can't possibly be false, and it is possibly true iff it isn't necessarily false. If "the context" defines t...

The possibility of Napoleon having won at Waterloo has little bearing on the possibility of Paris not being the capital of France at that time. Furthe...

It's not a different category. France could possibly have had another capital city than Paris just in the same sense (quite plain and uncontroversial)...

If you are going to stipulate that some accidental properties of France are essential to it, then it isn't France anymore that you are talking about, ...

Mongrel is right that it is a matter of stipulation whether or not this alternative France is or isn't France. Actually, merely calling it an alternat...

Yes, France could be swallowed up by the European Union in such a way that it would cease to be an independent nation state. Maybe this new province w...

I have no idea what "the" (unique) essence of France is. It falls under the sortal concept 'country' or 'nation state'. So, maybe, falling under such ...

Agreed. Kripke's general argument regarding rigidity or metaphysical necessity cut across natural and institutional facts. For one U.S dollar bill to ...

I did already in the first post from mine that you quoted. I explained where you may have gone wrong, though I may have mistargeted my comment at John...

I own and have read the two volumes of his Philosophical Analysis in the 20th Century, as well as several of his papers. Although I disagree with Soam...

Everything TGW says about Kripke in this thread seems about right to me (and I've read N&N twice, and tons of secondary literature). Most disagreement...

Thompson would certainly agree. On his view, the validation of ethical principles is internal to practical reason. This is why he agrees with McDowell...

Here is a suggestion: Although 'mammal' may be viewed as a (purely) empirical rather than a formal concept, it can't be applied in experience autonomo...

"As you're using Kant's phrasing, shouldn't this be the other way around?" For sure. I caught and fixed this mistake while you were typing your early ...

Hi Jamalrob, I don't have time for a lengthy reply now, but I may make a few tentative suggestions and maybe elaborate later on. I anticipated that mo...

Don't take the Thompson paper (Apprehending Human Form) off the list please! It is a masterpiece: accessible and deep. The Anscombe paper would be my ...

The OP was posted in the other forum a few days ago. I'll just reproduce my comment here since my outlook contrasts with with Bitter Crank's, and it d...

You are telling a story about complexity and unpredictability, and then suddenly transition ("...At some point...") to talking about control. I certai...

That's right. The person being punished needs to understand that her action was unacceptable. The point of the punishment may be to coax her into buil...

If the argument sketched in your first paragraph is sound, then the claim in your last paragraph (with which I agree) is false. It would rather follow...

The view that people (and things) don't have the power to do differently than they actually do has been called "actualism". It is the view that there ...

This seems to imply that, on your view, some people's choice not to suffer and die miserably is wrong because their only means to avoiding an undeserv...

Suppose there would be a 20 years prescription period (maybe assorted with some other restrictions, such as the lack of a criminal record, say). It se...

I also wish there would be interest for a broader range of topics, but lets hope it's a temporary lull. Maybe the current American primaries mobilise ...

So long as the penalty produces the desired deterrence effect, there is no need to increase its severity further than that, except maybe as a means fo...

Some law may be deemed "just" only in the sense that it proscribes an action that can reasonably be considered unjust on independent grounds (and/or b...

Justice is a concept that is more fundamental than the bare idea of respecting the law; for if justice reduced to that, then the very idea of an unjus...

If one can loosen up, surely one can also relax up.

The determinist and the indeterminist both agree that only one outcome will be realized. The determinist claims, in addition to this, that there is on...

Actually, I never thought about defining freedom in that way. I merely accept the idea that freedom requires the ability to have done otherwise in the...

If the candidate leader is to have absolute power, then, assuming "psychopathy," as potentially suffered by an individual, is a unified syndrome, such...

Real numbers, pretty much by definition, can't form an orderly queue. That would mean that they are countable, which they aren't. But it Cantor's nigh...

You may be overly pessimistic. So long as Vermin Supreme still is in the race, there is hope for America.

That's not quite my argument. I am not relying on an essential limitation of the knowledge that an agent would face regarding her own cognitive state ...

If a new set of guests arrives that represents the real numbers, then, in that case, Hilbert's Hotel won't be able to accommodate them all.

Since the result merely is counterintuitive, but doesn't generate an actual contradiction, I don't think it militates against the idea of actual infin...

You may be referring to Aristotle's distinction between actual and potential infinity?

Everyone indeed already is in a room both before and after they all are moved to a new room all at once. But after the move (where, e.g. everyone in r...

I don't get your argument at all. What make you think that there is "a number in the end"? (Although Pi is both irrational and transcendental, that is...

Yes. It is precisely this categorical feature of a representative currency (or of a fiat currency -- the difference is inessential for my purpose) tha...

That is, of course, no coincidence since Haugeland was McDowell's colleague at Pittsburgh and he offered two graduate courses on the philosophy of Joh...

I just lost a bet that I made some 12 to 15 years ago with a friend. I used to be confident, back then, that we weren't very far away from the develop...

What is it then, in the version of compatibilism that I have sketched in my recent posts, that you find unsatisfying? Is it just a matter of it merely...

I think it is presupposed by society, not by me, rather in the way being married also is a categorical status rather than a measure of the closeness o...

Apart from having senses, which is a form of embodiment shared with other animals, none of the things that you mention constitute embodiment, but rath...

Here I am going to agree with the compatibilist for the sake of argument. I don't know, myself, what to make of the claim that there is one well defin...