Srap Tasmaner

I should add: if you don't like my translation of (2), and would prefer it to be something like "It is possible there are no aliens here, in this worl...

"I might be wrong" here means, it is possible that aliens do not exist. That is, there is a possible world in which aliens do not exist. If you add th...

I think that's the converse of what I was at least trying to say. Let's suppose aliens might not exist. Then there is at least one possible world in w...

These premises are not independent. The truth-value of (2) depends on which of (3) and (4) is true. If aliens exist, you cannot be wrong to think they...

If aliens exist, then it follows that you are not wrong to think they do. Not being wrong won't stop you from thinking you might be, but it quite defi...

Except you seem also to want to say that your true belief "might be" false.

Are you trying to equivocate? Why not distinguish the issue of what sort of world you happen to be in from the issue of what sort of world you think y...

If that's a way of saying, I don't know which sort of world I'm in, sure. But if you know aliens are actual, then they are actual, and you know this i...

If aliens don't exist in this world, then this is one of the worlds in which they don't exist, whether you know it or not. If aliens are possible, the...

There are possible worlds in which aliens exist and possible worlds in which they don't. I believe this world is one in which they do, but I don't kno...

Try this: there are possible worlds in which she is 30, and possible worlds in which she is not; if you do not know whether she's 30, you do not know ...

Then you don't get to be deflationary about truth. Which is it?

Possible-worlds semantics makes this all clearer: "Aliens exist" means this world ] "Aliens do not exist" means this world ] "It is possible that alie...

This talk of norms, is it an advance on Plato, or is it sophistry in modern, perhaps even scientific garb?

This is an interesting and valuable enterprise but I would call it "cognitive psychology" rather than "philosophy". A whole lot of what I post, includ...

What, indeed, is the point of it all? Some time back, there was a thread that amounted to attempting to answer this question: Okay, there are some pro...

@"apokrisis" has a charming just-so story about this, which I'm sure he'd be willing to tell: what I call "unnecessary", he'll call "hastening the hea...

And did, practically forever. Should that bother us?

And the answer come back: "Just enough." That looks like fear to me. If we're not careful, we'll all turn into Chidi Anagonye. Henry Miller called it ...

That's awfully close to Dewey's conception, as I understand it. Problems. Problems that are live for us, that engage us, problems that maybe we think ...

Take a week off. Take two. Not just not posting; don't even login to see what's going on. In mil-speak: Do not allow the forum to dictate the tempo of...

Thomas Schelling's Nobel Lecture is interesting viewing. As I recall, he doesn't talk about himself or his work at all, but goes incident-by-incident ...

How the false Russian biolab story came to circulate among the U.S. far right

Maybe there's a difference between having no choice and thinking you have no choice. (For some sorts of analysis, that difference won't show up at all...

Yes, that is an apposite quote. Is it true? If it is true today, must it always be so? Those men on the wall, is what they are doing noble? As members...

@"Baden", @"StreetlightX" Recent posts from you both (you'll forgive me for not quoting) have made undeniably powerful points about power and how thos...

Can you explain how you're using these words? I have seen many responses directly rebutting the claims at issue. I have seen many dismissive non-respo...

I'm surprised that the American and European sympathy for Ukrainians, but not, say, Yemenis, isn't taken at face value, but counted as racist.

Reuters.

<nvm>

Dead Ukrainians, dead Russians, dead Belarusians perhaps. How do all these dead serve Capital? Did Putin invade Ukraine to enrich himself? Someone els...

As I said, in dark moments I wonder if liberal democracy (without scare quotes) is a sham, there is no social contract, and the whole enterprise is pr...

This is a harrowing read: George Packer's piece on the evacuation of Kabul for The Atlantic.

I find him very troubling. His annexation of Crimea seemed to me at the time like thumbing his nose at the liberal world order, calling their bluff. "...

Jesus. Thanks for sharing that.

I'll try a different approach. You propose a hierarchy of existence: light is lesser than material elements; material elements are lesser than living ...

What are we doing here, Joe? First off, if there's an us, folks already hanging around this corner of the internet, and a you, the newcomer -- assumin...

Welcome, brother.

How? How did you discover it? How did you know it was a Metaphysical Principle -- which is what exactly? like the law of identity, that sort of thing?...

People do tend to read that statement taking "language" as the ground term, and deriving the limits of the world from language's limits. But it could ...

I mean ...

I like this answer enough that I have given it myself on this forum several times, and even referred to Feynman in doing so. But I still have some que...

Maybe we could say something like this: (a) The goal of science is to understand everything. (b) The process of science is to separate what you unders...

So precisely because we are so intellectually gifted, our ideas are not to be trusted. Where does that come from? Is that suspicion of the smooth talk...

Your predicament seems to have this structure: reason tells you that color, objects, music, and so on, are things you or we have added to the world, a...

Instead of (one of the versions of) the epistle I could post here, I'll just say this: your principal concern seems to be with the perceived conflict ...

I guess in our context here, the idea is that we can see no reason for the apple to fall, but we have observed the constant conjunction of <apple deta...

Yes, one result of this sort of thing might be a scientific theory that works, whether we exactly understand it or not, or do in some senses but not o...

This is a good point, and one that hadn't occurred to me. But the question seems to be whether we can form a "clear and distinct idea" of what we theo...