Srap Tasmaner

It's funny how often we (forum denizens) end up having the same discussion spread across several different threads ... What occurs to me is that in a ...

Here's a quickish first response, but figuring this out was the whole point of the thread! (It's not all perfectly clear to me -- just pursuing a hunc...

Here's how I understand your view of (philosophical) discussion: 1. There's the plain language of what people say. Logic has a place here, and truth. ...

"Sending the wrong message" is not just a matter of emotional reactions. But that is not the only issue here. What is the status of Philip Roth's beli...

The natural next step around here is usually to say something like, "The question 'Do I know that's a tree?' is wrongheaded." The problem with that is...

What interests me is that the two choices presented don't come out of the same box at all.

Since a philosophical discussion is a conversation like any other, there are of course norms in play that aren't specifically philosophical. What I'm ...

This only follows if you do not adapt your verbal style to the medium you are using. The studies you cite in the previous paragraph only show that the...

Think of it as a barrier to understanding, if you like. Until I know what's wrong with Zeno's argument, I don't really understand the physics.

Whenever @"StreetlightX" talks about creative concept construction, I always think about this good proof vs. bad proof thing. Good proofs are the ones...

My hunch had been that the logical character of philosophical debate would provide a sort of natural camouflage for moves that are successful or unsuc...

Something we haven't talked about -- and I'd really like to hear your thoughts on -- comes out in the article @"StreetlightX" linked: one reason the p...

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Things I may not have articulated clearly in the OP, if anyone cares: Playing a "winning game" (or a "losing game") means employing a strategy guarant...

I'm totally not following this. Could you take another run at it?

Glad you mentioned the LEM, because after posting I thought of a similar issue. Many decades ago Michael Dummett noticed an uncanny similarity between...

Are you saying that Zeno's argument is sound, and that it shows that if space-time is continuous, then motion is impossible? What about other variants...

Oh I think that's probably true, even though I'm feeling a bit uncertain about how supertasks should be analyzed. (One reason I've been going through ...

You've switched back to talking about movement, where there is a strong intuition that each step in the task of moving from A to B can be subdivided i...

Oh I see -- my spec is "move each time by half the distance remaining to be covered" and that works recursively. Your way makes it impossible to start...

Those are not the same. Moving by half the remaining distance can be specified recursively; doing the rationals between 0 and 1 in order cannot be if ...

Just in the sense that I don't know how to specify that task recursively. Is there a way? If not, is there some other way? And my argument is that you...

I suggested there are two criteria for "having finished a task": (1) Having performed the last step; (2) Having performed all of the steps, in some sp...

But why? Why not reach for "This vocabulary allows me to say things I couldn't say before -- some things true and some things false"? Just over to the...

Suppose Zeus is reciting all of the natural numbers infinitely quickly. What does it mean to say that he never finishes? Does he ever recite the large...

Our views are very close. I have almost irresistible impulses toward naturalism and nominalism. Almost started a thread yesterday on abstract objects ...

I think I'm cool with most of this. (But what's that intuition worth?) We've talked elsewhere about the special use of introspection in linguistics. (...

I was wondering whether it makes sense, yes. I'm not sure your code tests that exactly. I mean, you specify that it runs infinitely fast, but the ques...

At the end of what? When it reaches the largest integer?

If it took me 1 second for each hop, it would take me countably many seconds to do all the rationals, the same number of seconds it would take to hop ...

This is getting confusing, so big thanks to @"Jeremiah"! What you're pointing out now, I think, is that the rationals (or, I guess \{ \frac{1}{2^n}\})...

I'd have to brush up on this to answer properly, but my instinct is that that's an interpretation problem, essentially a matter of labeling. There's t...

Just for clarity's sake: the problem you're pointing up is that the reals are uncountable. You could look at the rationals and say, there is no first ...

You're welcome?!

The whole post was good, really good, but this is my favorite part. Carry on.

Ah. Cool.

Sorry, I don't know Mill, but the way "connotation" is used in ordinary language, it would be the sort of thing Frege calls "coloring", among other th...

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And I agree. (Should have made that clear. The computability approach actually makes more sense.) What's curious is that even in a high school science...

When I was a kid, I was taught, like Jeremiah here, that limits and convergent series and calculus "solve" Zeno's paradox. Greeks just didn't have as ...

Here are two more versions. 1. Multiple Choice: If you choose an answer to this question at random, what is the chance you will be correct? A) 25% B) ...

I mean, without even reading the questions.

See, there could be a point to that. Suppose it were done this way: 16. ... 17. Do not select an answer to this question. 18. ... Then the instructor ...

But we're not asked what the chance is that we've succeeded in answering; we're asked what the chance is that we've answered correctly.

I see two possibilities: (1) I assume you've made a mistake, because the question cannot be answered as posed (Principle of Charity and all that); (2)...

But not answered correctly. And the question is about answering correctly, so it's not like I'm forcing my own preconceptions on it.

That's the definition of a broken question.

By marking all answers as wrong?

The second 25% is obviously a typo that leaves no correct answer as an option. To the student who just bubbles away, there's no difference between a b...

Given a multiple choice test with a fixed format, say, every question having four possible answers, there are two ways to choose randomly: (1) reading...