Wayfarer

Right. So if you were asked 'what does 2 + 2 equal', would you answer, 'depends on what you mean by "2" '?

There are two things that Terrapin Station claims: meaning is subjective, and only particulars are real. I think the implication of that is: discussio...

That is to be expected in a world where only particulars exist. Really it ought to be clear that it makes discussion pointless.

Actually the title of this thread is misleading from the outset. To say that a universal is a 'thing' is the exact definition of reification or hypost...

I think what you're sensing is the consequence of the philosophy of individualism which is so characteristic of modern liberal democracies. This is th...

I think I understand that account, but it's still too mechanist for my liking. I will just have to keep meditating on the 'fundamental principle' unti...

It seems to me that the concept of 'elementary particle' can't really be sustained any more. The original idea of the atom was literally an 'indivisib...

The nucleus of an atom is comprised of protons and neutrons. This basic model of the atom was developed in the early-twentieth century when protons an...

Right. Correct, but calling it 'pure anything' is speculation. Again it is the mind trying to grasp itself. The right way is to know that we don't kno...

Oh, I get it. This is one of those arguments, where you get to define the meanings of the terms as we go along, as 'meaning is subjective', right? Tha...

My general approach to this question is that, whatever the self is, it is never an object of perception, nor amongst the objects of perception. If you...

The statement at issue was: I am saying that if two cars are both Fords, then that is an instance of 'identity'. Put 100 cars in a parking lot, only t...

@Terrapin Station - a snippet from the wikipedia entry on Universals:

Something like 'the form something must take in order to exist', right?

That's because they're on the borderline between potentiality and actuality, as noted prevoiusly, in relation to Heisenberg's comment on same.

I did read it. And to deny that multiple things have the same property, is to deny that A=A. You only have 'that instance of A over there', and 'anoth...

A fundamental task in philosophy, surely. Hume's scepticism was precisely the subject of Kant's criticism, which I think was effective. So long as we'...

But they can't deny the 'law of identity'. Without it you wouldn't even be able to write that sentence. So surely they're saying that identity is in t...

I thnk the objection to nominalism is much deeper than that. This is because the similarities, likenesses and common attributes shared by like things,...

It's a perfectly good question, but the point I'm trying to make is that 'religious belief' is ultimately about something real. OK, you will say, if y...

I think of belief as instrumental - to motivate one to right action. It has been turned into a rather artificial construction, perhaps through the for...

in such cases belief is not necessary, practice is sufficient. Were everyone to treat others equally, care for the poor and sick, and so on, then beli...

Person B must believe in it to the extent that she/he commits herself to practising it. That implicitly means that it is worth practicing. So to that ...

Weather forecasting; however nobody can predict the exact configuration of a particular snowflake.

No, that's instrumentalism, which is an epistemic attitude. Strict physicalism says that the only real substance is matter, which is indeed an ontolog...

Physics is expressed via equations that quantify mass, energy, momentum and so on. Physicalism proper says that the things that are described in those...

'Physicalism is the thesis that everything is physical, or as contemporary philosophers sometimes put it, that everything supervenes on the physical. ...

This means nothing. You're re-stating the law of identity. To elaborate the point I'm making - universal characteristics or attributes are those by vi...

Would that include fields? Fields are studied by physicists, their effects can be detected by instruments, but they have nothing in common with physic...

The whole difficulty is that the concept 'triangle' doesn't exist anywhere, yet triangles are quite real - what a triangle is can be specified and com...

Have a read of this blog post by Ed Feser which discusses triangles as an example. The gist of it is: One point is that a triangle is the same for any...

It's not so clear-cut. Buddhists don't think there is a god, but their ethical philosophy has a lot in common with those who do.

I don't think that was necessarily true in times past; the co-existence of the various global religions is in many ways an historical novelty. But awa...

With respect to Pascal's Wager, one thing to consider is this: from the viewpoint of 'the atheist', there's nothing to gain, and nothing to lose - by ...

I don't believe that Socrates despaired at the end. Also, recall that he was condemned for (among other things) atheism. When I first studied philosop...

The problem that I see, is that religion is presented as a set of dogmatic beliefs, inherited from tradition, to which one assents, or doesn't, and th...

A consequence of the influence of materialism is that whole classes of ideas - including many of the kinds of ideas associated with theology, which in...

'Physical principles' are matters for ontology, our knowledge of them matters for epistemology. It's precisely the ability to represent physical princ...

Thanks for the recommendations. I will try and borrow the book I mentioned first (Peirce and the Threat of Nominalism, although I like the look of tha...

What you consider prejudice, I consider philosophy, and vice versa. //ps// don't you like that quote about Peirce? I am trying to see if I can borrow ...

People are attributing that quotation to me, but I was quoting a passage from the BBC article that was the subject of the original post. And, hey, Lam...

The question is, how much of Aristoteleanism remains without a 'first cause'? If you retain some notion of telos then indeed many of the issues around...

From the various musings on the 'naturalness problem in physics' which is closely related to, or might be simply a perspective on, the 'fine-tuning pr...

Well, I don't think it succeeds in so doing, I think it looks a lot less likely to be able to do that now, than it did at the beginning of the 20th Ce...

But I think the kinds of explanations that can be expected of a biological theory of speciation - that is what evolution is - are different in kind to...

So, a Darwinist account of order. I guess that would be passed without comment by a lot of people, but I am dubious in the extreme. This is because it...

But, you can't say that any of the above really explains universals, can you? Were there not such constants as Planck's constant and so on, then there...

...having been dragged in front of hostile congressional committees for months on end, who were able to find no evidence of corruption or wrongdoing w...

Regrettably for Calvin, Heisenberg discovered that God does indeed play dice.

The whole Syria situation is plainly catastrophic. But recall when it started, it was the so-called 'Arab Spring', and many Republicans were criticizi...