Right, right. I used to have this argument with @"Isaac", the space of reasons vs the space of causes, that sort of thing. Driving a car isn't just mo...
I think by and large you're taking stories as cultural moves we can make in defense or explanation of our opinions and behavior, and I keep trying to ...
It's doing what the word "true" is actually useful for, which is allowing me to endorse by reference the account denoted by "that". There's a very goo...
The simple argument is that if existence is a defining attribute of a thing, then you can't say the very same thing either exists or doesn't -- you're...
This is an excellent point, but, as you note in the next paragraph, it's not the gay guide book, but a gay guide book. Which is interesting. All of wh...
The part I think is noteworthy is that when you claim that P, my reasons for believing you -- your trustworthiness, reliability, honesty, likelihood o...
Just not clear to me what the word "true" is doing in this story. If a belief is true, there can be no evidence that it's false, so you'll never need ...
It'll mostly do, sure, but the question isn't whether the way we talk is fine, of course it is. I think we ought to have a theory about how we do thin...
Why is it so hard to tell the difference between someone who knows where your socks are and someone who thinks they know? Why is it so hard to tell th...
The trouble is this: Wiki says now we know "the true number", simple as that. But of course that's not exactly true, because there are variations in t...
If you want to convince someone that flying is safer than driving, one of the things you will have to say is, "Yes, you will take action, but your act...
That's quite good. I think my point was actually a little garbled, but another way to say it might be that we have a prejudice in favor of situations ...
Okay, that is roughly where I thought you were. People think driving is safer than flying, simply because they give too much weight to their perceptio...
Certainly, and I didn't mean to suggest otherwise. But that observation will strike American libertarian conservatives as being at odds with this: The...
I share your gut-level disbelief in borders -- though I'm sure your disbelief is better grounded -- but I suspect this skepticism is a luxury. The sov...
I don't share your broad cynicism, but I'm cynical enough to believe that anything I say in response will be met with some variation on "All is vanity...
I recently reread Beowulf, and one of the peculiar features of that society is that there seems to be a prize for honor and heroism and this is why th...
I think we can do better, and I suppose one reason for believing that is that some people do better by their descendants. Whether it will be enough to...
This is an impressive performance, but the force of it comes from your audience recognizing that is wrong, which means we are expected to recognize th...
Certainly. What I had in mind before talking about government. But I was also thinking about the other side. I'm not sure "teaching them a lesson" is ...
That's a nice idea, but as you say below, we might also kind of know these are only useful approximations -- even when they're descriptive not of a pe...
I don't really have much to go on here. I think the structuralist phase of linguistics and anthropology was so thrilled to be able to make sense of th...
Oh I agree. I would never suggest there's just a biological layer that's inherently right or even striving to be right. The lowest level I'm thinking ...
Which I think amounts to saying that there's a sense in which individuals don't own these stories, or the words they use to tell them; 'society' does....
That's a plausible story. I guess I would still say it's an innovation that by and large you no longer need to bring armed guards with you to the mark...
Yeah, that's the thing. I think of this whole thing as giving the lie to the libertarian (or anarcho-capitalist) worldview that trade and commerce and...
Yeah that was part of the motivation here. I was acknowledging my historical preference for Anglo-American philosophy, with its rejection of historica...
I think that just as we seem to have specialized modules for recognizing faces, for noticing mood, for guessing at intent, all these sorts of things, ...
It's one thing to share my own private life, but it's uncool to share someone else's. Pretty simple. Which was kind of you. On the other hand -- and w...
Sure. People push back on the pronouns, but the real flashpoints have been spaces and sports, and that's clearly a matter of negotiation. After many, ...
Honestly there aren't a lot of those and this is probably the only example you're going to get. (Wouldn't have posted what I did except the language i...
If you mean something that could conceivably be negotiated, even if only implicitly, I don't know. Obviously there's something like that going on with...
I have the same concerns, and I have additional concern about defining Alice's speech as per se harmful and dangerous. (I've even argued to my ex, who...
I'll preempt @"Joshs" saying that we creatively 'extend' or re-determine those meanings through this dialogue, rather than them being external to our ...
It's not "according to me" but common usage, at least in mathematics. A line is a curve with constant curvature of 0. It is what mathematicians call t...
"He started it!" Yeah, that's not childish. What kind of person you are is none of my business. I do think you might consider whether your behavior he...
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