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RussellA

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metaphysician - names I agree. When we observe, for example, a post-box, we can know two different things at the same time. We know that we are observ...
April 22, 2021 at 13:19
I am going out on a limb here, but hopefully sensibly reasoned. I cannot know the meaning of a word through its use in language Wittgenstein wrote in ...
April 21, 2021 at 17:14
As Wittgensein's language game is a model for ordinary language rather than a literal reproduction of it, the term "hinge proposition" has a different...
April 20, 2021 at 17:41
Your post gets to the core of my continuing problem with Wittgenstein's language game, illustrated by the fact that whilst we both understand the phra...
April 19, 2021 at 19:44
It looks as if I made an assumption that has turned out incorrect. I took the passage from www.newworldencyclopedia.org: "Thus, Wittgenstein argued th...
April 18, 2021 at 19:32
In linguistics, syntax is the set of rules, principles, and processes that govern the structure of sentences (sentence structure) in a given language,...
April 18, 2021 at 19:23
I believe that incommensurability is in large part a mereological problem of relationships Wittgenstein wrote that as the meaning of a term or concept...
April 17, 2021 at 17:04
Language game is a metaphor for having rules, and rules are needed in order to cope with the raging white-water confusion of the world. People literal...
April 17, 2021 at 16:55
As I see it, hinge propositions are inventions and therefore knowable without reference to the world. They are true by definition and therefore exempt...
April 16, 2021 at 19:38
I agree - as Grayling wrote in section III "As OC stands, it stands defeated"
April 16, 2021 at 14:53
To my understanding, within a particular Wittgensteinian language game are beliefs, foundational beliefs and the logic that ties them together. Wittge...
April 16, 2021 at 14:09
Grayling points out the two types of scepticism: scepticism within the foundationalism of OC1 and scepticism within the relativism of OC2
April 15, 2021 at 08:25
When an author uses a critical word that they know can be interpreted in more than one way, then, as a general principle, they should somehow make it ...
April 15, 2021 at 08:22
If someone says "I see a post-box, and it exists in a world external to me", the sceptic is justified in asking the speaker, first, how they know ther...
April 13, 2021 at 16:39
Introduction The truth of the statement "One's belief may be false, not so one's knowledge" depends on the meaning of "knowledge". The nature of knowl...
April 13, 2021 at 16:23
The enclosed article may do a better job of what I am trying to say. https://www.uh.edu/engines/epi3161.htm
April 13, 2021 at 15:29
The problem with the English language is that many of its' words have several meanings, such as the word "know". Context does not always make it clear...
April 13, 2021 at 15:25
Whilst watching TV, I see a figure waving a hand. As the figure has a green face, I know it is more likely to be Shrek than Moore. However, the scepti...
April 13, 2021 at 12:43
A person can know several different things at the same time. The person can know that the publicly accepted word for the colour of the post-box is "re...
April 13, 2021 at 12:40
No - they will both paint it red.
April 12, 2021 at 20:48
Light having a wavelength of 750nm travels the 10m from the post-box to our brain through our eyes. There is no information within light having a wave...
April 12, 2021 at 17:47
When someone looks at a post-box and says "I know the post-box is red", what they really mean is that when looking at the post-box they have the sense...
April 12, 2021 at 15:39
Whilst reading Part II of Philosophical Investigations, I see a "picture-face" on the pages, and as Wittgenstein wrote: "In some respects I stand towa...
April 12, 2021 at 11:21
The truth of Moore's "here is one hand" must be considered both as part of language and outside of language (pre-language). Davidson's T-sentence "her...
April 11, 2021 at 14:32
Grayling in section I wrote that OC1 states that scepticism gets no purchase because our beliefs inhere in a system which rests upon foundational beli...
April 10, 2021 at 16:23
I am sure that it was the same for Moore, in that Moore knew with certainty that he had one hand, which was personal subjective knowledge that he coul...
April 09, 2021 at 08:13
As we can communicate with others the concept of blueness of objects around us, even though we can only ever observe particular blues, it seems to me ...
April 08, 2021 at 15:01
Have been busy starting to replace the 80 year-old electric junction boxes in my attic, and having to learn about lighting wiring circuits, but now un...
April 07, 2021 at 08:42
Moore wrote that when he says "Here is one hand", it follows that "How absurd it would be to suggest that I did not know it, but only believed it, and...
April 05, 2021 at 14:32
In Tractatus 1.1 Wittgenstein wrote - "The world is the totality of facts, not of things" An explanation of what Wittgenstein meant may be found in Ru...
April 03, 2021 at 16:23
I am trying to understand Wittgenstein's objection to Moore's use of the word "know". My current understanding is as follows, and I would be intereste...
April 03, 2021 at 13:32
I think that coherence and correspondence are useful concepts when discussing Wittgenstein's language games, in that it would be relatively easy to in...
April 02, 2021 at 12:58
I agree that in On Certainty Wittgenstein did not use the words "the language game corresponds to a reality", but it seems to me that the inference wi...
March 31, 2021 at 15:10
The radical sceptic makes a valid point in pointing out that whilst Wittgenstein argues that each language game has its own set of hinge propositions,...
March 31, 2021 at 15:03
Wittgenstein's proposal of the hinge proposition may close down one route for the sceptic, but opens another. Wittgenstein said that language has mean...
March 30, 2021 at 10:47
Yes, even a sceptic needs something, such as a set of rules, about which they can be sceptical. Moore said that these rules are the rules of common se...
March 26, 2021 at 16:29
In considering the proposition "here is one hand", Moore's common sense approach of Direct Realism does not stand a chance against the sceptics, in th...
March 25, 2021 at 11:22
According to the Wikipedia article on Qualia, qualia are defined as individual instances of subjective conscious experiences, where an example of a qu...
March 21, 2021 at 11:35
There are two different situations. First, having a complex thought such as "woman in red" and second, having a simple impression such as "colour red"...
November 24, 2020 at 11:23
Can memory be distinguished from imagination ? John Locke (1632-1704) and David Hume (1711-1776) have made the argument that the basic building blocks...
November 23, 2020 at 16:30
It may help to add in the distinction between the whole and its parts. The relationship between the whole and its parts has been discussed since at le...
November 20, 2020 at 09:34
In: Platonism  — view comment
I agree that I may not have used the standard philosophical structure of thesis, antithesis, synthesis, and not made clear the difference between my u...
October 24, 2020 at 16:29
In: Platonism  — view comment
From the viewpoint of the machine - internally it is determined - but external forces acting upon it that possibly cause internal change are undetermi...
October 24, 2020 at 16:08
In: Platonism  — view comment
In a deterministic world where all events are completely determined by previously existing causes, the question is whether a simple machine can self-e...
October 24, 2020 at 11:50
In: Platonism  — view comment
In a deterministic world where all events are completely determined by previously existing causes, when light anywhere between 640nm and 680nm is shon...
October 23, 2020 at 16:06
In: Platonism  — view comment
My post was based on Kant's concept of transcendental idealism as described in his Critique of Pure Reason 1781. Kant wrote, "Since, then, the recepti...
October 23, 2020 at 15:57
In: Platonism  — view comment
I am with Kant when he wrote in The Critique of Reason "Since, then, the receptivity of the subject, its capacity to be affected by objects, must nece...
October 23, 2020 at 15:52
In: Platonism  — view comment
I believe that Kant's "synthetic a priori" judgements gives an insight into the apparent circular problem of the fact that I am only able to recognize...
October 22, 2020 at 16:05
In: Platonism  — view comment
What is language for ? There are two aspects to our need for language. The first aspect is about our survival within the world. The second aspect is a...
October 21, 2020 at 16:24
In: Platonism  — view comment
I agree that a language using analytic propositions might be semantically determinate, though I would argue that any language using synthetic proposit...
October 19, 2020 at 16:34