Srap Tasmaner

Par for the course. Obviously I meant A.

Many hours ago we had a weird exchange, which left me with a vague feeling that I hadn't answered a question or that there was something I meant to co...

I was just thrown because you hadn't said anything suggesting this is where you were headed -- nothing about changing what kind of variables we quanti...

That's exactly the "substitutional interpretation" of quantifiers.

I'm a little confused now, but it's probably my own fault! I put on my "speaking for the received view" hat to address a couple of your questions, and...

No sarcasm -- it's just that, I used to be pretty well-versed in the position I take you to espouse (there's a lot of Quine and Goodman on my bookshel...

Whoa! No. That is not the conclusion you should draw.

So by the time we get to asserting all of modern science every time you ask for the salt, you'll still be fine, because holism, right? But also becaus...

That's right, although in everyday day speech universal statements still tend to carry existential import: from 'Everyone on the ship got sick' you ma...

If you tell me that a dog is barking, are you also telling me there are such things as mammals?

If all you're interested in is truth values, then maybe "A dog is barking" can be rendered into philo-English as "There is something which is a dog an...

Meinongian quantifiers. More fun reading on the existential import of quantifiers.

Yes certainly I should have been clearer that there's a presumption that Method 2 is a refinement of Method 1, motivated by the shortcomings of that m...

I started this thread because I thought of different ways of putting on socks as an analogy for different approaches to problem solving, and thus of d...

Since we're still talking about socks, I guess it's only fair to mention hybrid approaches: you can start at the top and pull only until the resistanc...

Yes, I think your focus on the point of greatest resistance is part of the story. When I suggested that one effect of a mechanical, unreflective appli...

<shrug> Maybe it doesn't come to anything because there's lots of interplay, but if it's interplay -- say, of deduction and abduction -- the distincti...

I certainly will.

I admit I haven't quite figured out the best way to describe or explain the fallacy here, but that it is a fallacy should be clear. Your conclusions m...

Alright, then for both my urn and your urn, we'll say the sample space is { the marble I picked was red, the marble I picked was blue }, so in both ca...

Yes, and that's how I characterized it in the "Evolution of logic" thread, but I wanted to leave that out because I'm not sure it's quite that. But, y...

So stop saying they are.

Well, yeah. The point is not knowing whether P and not knowing anything at all about the likelihood of P are really obviously not the same thing.

Sure. But you can't generally insert male into female starting in the middle, only in this case you can by modifying the shape of the receiving object...

You can imagine following Method 1 but bunching the top a little, not deliberately or at least not as a step toward Method 2, and then seeing that you...

I place 98 red marbles and 2 blue marbles in an urn; then I blindfold you and have you select a marble from the urn. Do you, before removing your blin...

This is the same thing you said before and it's plainly false, so I'll ask again why you think it's true.

What's before "i.e." there doesn't entail what's after. Why do you think it does?

That it is wrong is a fact; it's a bizarre misapplication of the principle of indifference, but a mistake that looks like it's worth understanding. I'...

When I posted this last night, it didn't occur to me that this is really close to the distinction I was making in the "Evolution of Logic" thread abou...

Not even if they're addressed to you! This seems rude at first, okay it is rude, but this is crucial advice for enjoying the site. (As they used to sa...

Wait wait wait -- please tell me this is the probability because either it's real or it's not. Did I get it?

In case the conclusion still isn't clear: if you want to benefit A and not benefit B, you do that by taking from B and giving to A, or by giving A som...

I'm going to try this again. You both claim: 1. White Americans do not benefit from systemic racism in the United States. Perhaps my usage of "systemi...

I think the sentence you quoted is worth thinking about a moment longer. Maybe not much longer, to be honest, but give it another few minutes, maybe s...

I'm going to suggest (again) that folks have a look at Peggy McIntosh's original paper, not because I'm endorsing it -- there's a couple things in the...

1. Some members of society suffer harm because they are not white. 2. Whites may of course suffer harm, but whatever harm they suffer cannot be down t...

I don't think we've talked about causes much at all. I'm not even sure what that looks like. To me -- and I'm willing to be educated -- "systemic raci...

Not marked, marked inconsistently, etc. Think of one-drop laws: only applicable in official contexts with access to records, etc. The rest of the time...

I can tell you all I was really trying to do was give a very broad description of systemic racism, specifically because of @"Pro Hominem"'s position: ...

Forced separation means whatever this is it's certainly not a just society. I'm not sure how to get around that to answer the other question. Specific...

How exactly are we to read (3)? Are we talking about mandating and enforcing separation? In general, are you wondering whether it's possible for a sys...

But this is exactly what's at issue: are 'is white' and 'benefits from systemic racism' equivalent (in whatever sense)? If we look at instances where ...

I think there's some value in treating bias as a necessary but not sufficient condition for racism. A few years ago I explained the idea of "systemic ...

I have some thoughts but I'm going to mull it over and let other people talk. Also reading Peggy McIntosh's white privilege papers that more or less s...

Is that a semantics question? That is, are you trying to decide whether those points are constitutive of being a "segregational and racist" society, s...

Read the stuff on the website. I think the answer is twofold (though I'm no expert): "no" because it's not just a sort of theorized in-group preferenc...

There is a through-line from the practice of chattel slavery in America to contemporary systemic racism. One side of that the story has this form: bla...

I have taken the Harvard implicit bias test, at least the one on race -- I assume everyone here has -- and got more or less exactly the result I expec...