Srap Tasmaner

Not necessarily. From the fact that it‘s raining, you can’t conclude that it might not be; for all you know, it might necessarily be raining. I don’t ...

Forgot to do this part! This is called “perfecting the conditional.” It’s a known thing, that in everyday conversation, conditionals are often taken t...

This isn’t right though, because the p ? q and p are not independent. p ? q is true in cases where p is false, or where both p and q are true. Since w...

Think I was otherwise occupied when you mentioned that. I'll take a look.

Back when I was a tournament chess player, it seemed to me that the style of play of serious players -- that is, who studied, practiced, and played a ...

I am not an economist, but I suspect the principal use of profits is to create new debt. No doubt there is research on this sort of thing.

It's been done before, many, many times. (And whether I discovered it or invented it is exactly the debate.) I suspect it's really selection bias. Out...

Read through the whole discussion. It is the same discussion as this one. Every (philosophical) discussion on TPF becomes the same discussion, if it h...

A hypothetical is a conditional, isn’t it? “Suppose I give you a million dollars” is not me giving you squat.

So the reliance on counterfactual definiteness is here? That perhaps a coin was emitted in an indefinite state but we can’t observe indefinite states,...

Still not getting it, so I'll just ask. Is this the claim? If each coin left box 1 with a definite state, then it would enter box 2 with a definite st...

Before continuing with this, I want to point out that truth is very much the issue at stake in all of these apparent detours. Our customary way of exp...

Of course, and this is what I was trying to show in a roundabout away. It was moderately fun to do, and counterfactuals are interesting, but we don’t ...

You meant “don‘t constitute evidence” right?

Preamble Well, this is humbling. I wrote a rambling, exploratory post last night that I thought ended in a pretty good place, a really interesting pla...

Not about what those people believe -- that's their problem. But we can afford to be nuanced about what we believe, and why we find what they believe ...

Above my paygrade, but statistical mechanics is a thing. I think I learned about it from a book I never got very far into -- but will someday! -- call...

This is very close to what I was saying. People fail to consider the baseline, overestimate how much a single observation should move their prior, all...

For those of you losing patience with all this, I'll jump to the end. What I provided was a sketch of an algorithm, an algorithm that could be instant...

For instance, if there were so many coins in the jar that I would die before I could finish counting them, then I would have to pass this sacred duty ...

I feel like I'm doing something wrong because I keep wanting to refute the examples. (Also, it reminds of my first my earliest experiences in philosop...

If you mean that my argument is only valid in a world very much like ours, I agree. If you wanted to discuss jars of coins in a hypothetical world in ...

I think the mathematical vocabulary is clearer: if they can be counted, then the cardinality of the set of coins in the jar exists and is unique, thou...

In a sense, yes, though I'm not sure it helps with the question at hand. i think we have three options: (1) Tensed language centered on our notional n...

Wasn't trying to lay that at your feet! I'll have to read the rest of Lewis paper to see what he was getting up to. I think I get the intent of this e...

I addressed in my posts a single issue you raised: must the coins in a jar actually be counted, by you, me, God, or anyone, to know that there is a sp...

I wasn't convinced either but it was a really interesting discussion. I'm grateful you brought us your arguments and gave us the opportunity to deal w...

I'm none too solid on the statistics but I think in many cases the mistake people are making is really just exactly a statistical mistake. Every piece...

Agreed. And I just invoked your name in post about Sam's central focus, the evidentiary value of eyewitness accounts. Freaking kismet.

And David Hume. That maxim is not by itself dispositive though. If an eyewitness account comes from someone you are inclined to consider trustworthy, ...

We remember that discussion differently then.

I think this is just too vague. If S knows that p, then S is incapable of knowing that ~p. But S is still capable of mistakenly believing that ~p in v...

I see. No, we needn't take that as a premise. We can argue for it. Suppose a jar containing some coins at a time t0. We agree that we can count the co...

The temporal continuity of what? I don't understand the point you're making here. The procedure I described, if it terminates at all, yields a unique ...

I think it's a perfectly good question. Our experience seems to suggest to many that there is something special, something unique about the present mo...

? "All the fairies on Mars like rice pudding" appears to predicate of these martian fairies but doesn't entail that any exist.

A jar of coins either has no coins in it, or some coins in it. For the moment only, assume there is no other possible state for a jar. (We need neithe...

If S's knowledge that p is infallible, then S "cannot be wrong" that p. If that's just to say it is not possible that S knows that p and yet ~p, sure,...

I just don't see the point of being gnomic when doing philosophy, but you do you. For instance, as you note, and you yourself intend someday to tell a...

There is somewhere that propositions are present?

Do you want to keep truth functions?

Will be reading back through this latest run of posts and maybe commenting. Threw in something else in the meantime.

You seem to be missing the point that @"Metaphysician Undercover" is an anti-realist, and his account of truth is some version of verificationism. (Fo...

@"Isaac" Before you post "pragmatism" and count that as a job well done, plan on explaining exactly how pragmatism answers any of the questions I aske...

I If we have modeled imperfectly some detail of the hidden states, but we never encounter evidence that would encourage us to update our model, were w...

But there will be no one to judge him to be dead, therefore he will not be dead, Oh, and there will be no one to judge him to be alive, therefore he w...

No.

Since we've been trafficking in this thread lately with more than accounts of truth, or even phenomena that are quite nearby, like reference and knowl...

Here's some chitchat about one of his cases, since I can't help it. There are lots of big problems with Hazlett's account, not least his use of Grice....