Adam's Off Ox

I don't follow your conclusion. If it's hopeless to try to universally justify our values, doesn't the nihilist escape tension by rejecting universal ...

But what good is a theory of rationality if any account of so-called inner logic leads to the same observable outcome. From the consequential perspect...

But if we only observe human behavior in this life, the sentences you have written above don't necessarily translate to better predictions of what act...

So social constructs keep the nihilist's behavior in check with regards to the continuing "success" of the society. How is that any different from the...

In my experience, entrepreneurs who continue to own successful businesses also continue to spend 50, 60, 70+ hours a week nurturing their business.

It's still likely that a nihilist will have preferences that translate into what is considered moral behavior, partly due to the nature of human biolo...

Entrepreneurship consumes an incredible amount of time. Philosophy can consume a large amount of time. The two pursuits don't directly contribute to b...

I read two words in the OP, happiness and meaning. Is happiness a feeling you pursue? Then why does it require meaning or purpose. Happiness, it seems...

Could you walk through the logic that helped you reject non-cognitive approaches? It seems you take the Wikipedia article as an exhaustive list of non...

I like your version better than mine. If I were to re-write the bullets, I would include your version instead. (Though I would still find myself not g...

I think where we differ in opinion is that you seem to believe at least some of the bullets below. Words have meanings A definition is a word's meanin...

Thank you for the explanation, and in the end, I believe we don't disagree on that much. I may continue to avoid words like objective or reality, mayb...

Thank you for explaining. While I'm not trying to disagree, I believe I still don't fully understand. It may come off as a disagreement. Are the objec...

So you are saying words have objective meanings, in a given context, and those meanings are determined democratically or by consensus? And if two peop...

I will contest every single definition you come up with for any given word as the universal and objective definition for that word. You may consider m...

It depends on if you are looking to describe how you choose to use a word, or if you are trying to define a new concept. For the former, a style of sa...

When I say "horse" I don't refer to the thing-as-it-is as some object nature has prepared for my consumption whole-hog. Rather I say "horse" in conjun...

If all that we were saying reduced to the same outcomes (which is not what you are saying, I know) this discussion would be pointless. You and I would...

I don't go along with this sentence. When I use the word "horse", I don't assume my audience has the same exact intuition about horse-ness that I do. ...

I'm not sure you've refuted the method of global skepticism here, though. One could take the approach that the assumptions Welkin Rogue mentions are t...

The asking of the question presupposes that some answer will satisfy the inquiry. But it does even more than that. It not only assumes that an appropr...

Fair enough. I've never worked in a quantum-physics lab, so I fear I'd get in over my head if I got into the hairy details of everything that goes int...

... where hypercharge and decay are both model representations of other phenomena or data points. When we look at hypercharge and decay, we find they ...

But that's not how I model. That's also not what the mathematical methods I employ do. If anything, mathematical modeling works to reduce the expectat...

But I fear you are treating "scientists" as too broad a class. Sure, there are some scientists who still employ the variable of "putative reality" in ...

What differs between your concept and the mathematical concept is seriously important though. In mathematics, the quantitative nature of the concept o...

It is interesting you bring up the idea of limit. I'm not sure if you mean this as a metaphor, or as a literal model of what you are trying to convey....

So do you take objectivity to be a scale as opposed to binary — in that a claim can be more or less objective than another claim? Does it become more ...

So is the claim, "Everyone ought to agree that there is a lake there," also an objective moral claim, since it includes an ought (and you have already...

When I think of postmodern philosophical approaches, I consider deconstruction and the moving away from a meta-narrative. While deconstruction may be ...

You reference postmodernism with respect to aesthetics and culture. You speak of an association with 'subjective truth' as wrongheaded trash. Do you f...

What you say is interesting. Personally I find the philosophies of Pyrrho and Hume to be appealing. I even follow what Sextus Empiricus says. I suspec...

In your opinion, what is the demarcation between healthy doubt and the kind of most radical forms of doubt that must be rejected? Do you find my quest...

Would you be willing to expand on this? Specifically could you explain what 'everything' refers to? Also can you explain how you use the phrase "every...

I agree that the lines of inquiry you mention lead to moral nihilism. Without some initial assumption of at least one kind of claim "I ought _____," o...

I don't understand what you are saying in this paragraph. What makes a question best versus worst? I understand what you are saying about a question c...

If moral law does not reflect something that can be observed or described, then how is it any different than rules for the sake of rules?

Why is physicality a requirement of an experiment. Why don't mental phenomena constitute that which can be studied by science?

That statement assumes, with the verb "would enable", that the reason we have different experiences of moral claims have similar attributes with why o...

I see you write about objective reality. Could you comment on what part of reality gets described as objective? Are you referring to the physical obje...

When you speak of first principles, I think of first-order logic. Mathematical objects focus on definitions, concepts, axioms, and proofs. But we may ...

I think there is some desire to separate the condition of mental illness from other physical illness because of how we come to understand agency for o...

While I don't fully subscribe to the order of the history of the concepts you have laid out, I also don't deny that some subbranches of older discipli...

Would it be fair to say the ontology of things encountered in mathematical study do not all correspond to physical objects which are seen, felt, heard...

I'll give it my best shot. It's been a while since I absorbed myself in the style that brings about consistency. Some of what I write will get called,...

The things I write still get themselves believed or denied, but they appeal much less to a body of truth (as an existing thing). Other than "none of w...

But you are still referencing your preference. The 'your' in the preceding sentence justifies the use of the word subjective. It is no nonsense to say...

But the way you select your framing, the units, scales, and relationships you choose to quantify come about as a result of the way you intend to use t...

You are lying to yourself about certainty.

It's like you are in denial. We happen to use some words in common, but we use them differently, say different things, come from different backgrounds...