But you‘re asking, “How I can know where I am?” aren’t you? And that’s another thing entirely. So far we have: (1) Where is everything? (1a*) Where is...
The question itself is “Where is the universe?” and so fails because it’s like asking “Where is everything?” or “Where is everywhere?” and neither of ...
I had forgotten about Olber’s paradox, so thanks for that. I like this question very much, even though it’s clearly incoherent. You could read up on c...
That sounds like you’re invoking the ‘rule’ against explaining something in terms of itself — not so much a rule as a definition of failure — but you’...
Because he said it himself, in “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”, and when asked about it over the years, he shrugged a lot. I think he was kind of drawn to ...
You can defend the existence of the state without accepting some libertarian’s equating of the state with socialism. You can also defend socialism, bu...
I don’t think you did, at least not here. I think it is true that the state can guarantee your ability to advocate for there being no state, among oth...
This ‘genealogical’ critique specifically doesn’t speak to whether libertarianism is a sound political philosophy. If you could show that the ideas of...
Which goes to my point that we often distinguish — and need to distinguish, for conversations to make any sense — the literal, conventional meaning of...
I'll grant you can get that out of §246. But there's a couple peculiarities to that remark I'd like to ask about. One is that Wittgenstein suggests th...
Yes, I wasn't explicit about it, but I meant to imply that when I said I saw this as reinforcing your sense, if this is the right way to put it, that ...
I think it's a good question, but so long as we're speaking very broadly, I'd be tempted to distinguish roughly between before and after Darwin. Newto...
Alright, so imagine I claim I can play the tuba, but there's not one handy to *prove* it. (Have to come back to this.) Suppose someone else says, "No ...
Right. The standard Grice 101 examples are nearby: I ask if you want to stop here to eat and you say, looking at your phone, it's more than two hours ...
I meant it just in the sense of 'has a meaning', 'can be understood', and, for these cases of indicative sentences, 'can be assigned a truth-value'. O...
No, it doesn't, and I'm not wedded to the "necessarily true" bit. I'm not sure how else to characterize sentences that we seem unable or unwilling or ...
Consider saying "2 + 2 = 5". Is that meaningless, is it utterly unclear what someone would mean if they were to say this, or is it just false? Or cons...
As I understand the usual take on LW, if a sentence has a use, if it's useful, if it's a valid move in a language-game, then it's meaningful, because ...
Right. If you can sensibly say one, you ought to be able sensibly to say the other. Negation also comes up here: if you can sensibly say you know you ...
It's not like Wittgenstein had nothing to say about meaning, and he's widely read as endorsing a kind of functionalism: the meaning of a word, perhaps...
Was it meaningless when originally said here a few pages back? Looking in your wallet is how we would verify that you have $5; how would we verify tha...
Except it is a specific claim that you should not have children, isn't it? That to do so would be wrong, would be blameworthy. Benatar does not just s...
I think there's some room for debate there, but let's say you're right about all of that. What I'm more interested in at the moment is this sort of cl...
That's roughly my instinct, that theology is a motor spinning alright but not hooked up to a drivetrain; I just don't really trust that instinct. Thin...
That sounds reasonable, but leaves me wondering why you might think religions and theologies, which @"Janus" had asked about, aren't language-games. W...
Or 'I remembered my own name again,' when filling out a form. Grant that it is pointless to say, 'i know I have a headache'; is there also something w...
I'll just say again that, it seems to me unlikely that Wittgenstein had the same understanding of "language-game" as someone inclined to ask, 'Is such...
Oof. I hope we can aim a little higher than that. Maybe, for comparison, something more like this: You can speak plainly and simply without thereby si...
It's a start. There's little point in speaking Russian to me, for instance. And you need to be mindful of what your audience is likely to know and not...
I think I would include in 'common sense' the precept that an utterance ought to be understood as it was intended and not some other way. On the other...
The word "its" there is odd, though, isn't it? Why isn't it, "our ordinary criteria"? I'm not convinced by this "clinging" image, or by pointing the f...
I think so, yes. If there's uncertainty or confusion, explanations will have to be made, and those will have to come to ground somewhere. There is, it...
Wearing my 'moral sentiments' hat, I would add that doing good for another or preventing harm to them gives rise to a feeling that you have done good....
Flaming is insulting someone in an online discussion, and is much older than social media. As practiced here, I consider it an attempt at bullying rat...
If I'm robbed at gunpoint and pistol-whipped, I feel wronged by the guy that did it but I don't feel wronged by my parents. My parents will sympathize...
Why is context the point of debate here? What does the context in which @"TheMadFool" made the statement 'add' in this case? You agree with TMF that w...
I get that. To you it's like answering "Why didn't you do the dishes?" with "Why are you trying to make me feel bad?" You see it as a rhetorical move ...
I claim that we can and do have a well-founded expectation that a person whose life we start will wish for their life to continue and they will, insof...
(1) Why do the sensations of futurity and pastness become less and more intense in God? Why does their intensity change? Is it so because this just is...
But it's a little more complicated than that. Was it said as a philosophical conclusion, or as an example of the sort of thing someone might say, when...
There's an old story about the committee deciding what to put on Voyager to represent mankind, and a mathematician said, "We could send some Bach, but...
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