You are viewing the historical archive of The Philosophy Forum.
For current discussions, visit the live forum.
Go to live forum

Janus

Comments

An inference can be derived from observation alone, but all observation is always already interpretive. Anything that could count as an event is primo...
April 28, 2022 at 09:31
There may indeed be physical necessity. For all we know it could be physically impossible that things could have been different. But logical necessity...
April 28, 2022 at 08:10
Yes I agree, you can think inductively and abductively based on accumulated past experience. However, logical necessity is not inductive or abductive ...
April 28, 2022 at 07:55
You're not alone!
April 28, 2022 at 07:52
Is it logically necessary that spacetime must be always the same?
April 27, 2022 at 20:56
"Logical necessity" in this context implies that for the laws to be different would be a logical contradiction. And yet this is not so. which is why I...
April 27, 2022 at 20:50
That's the spirit!
April 25, 2022 at 20:37
If eternal life transcends all temporal dimensions then it cannot be "after" anything, least of all death.
April 24, 2022 at 22:53
The distinction is between what can be known only contingently on the basis of ongoing events and what can be known as necessary based on reflection a...
April 24, 2022 at 22:24
Would it be possible, though, to unpack "the philosophical implications of physics", without understanding "the debates going on within physics"? (Thi...
April 23, 2022 at 22:37
'Noumenal' is a polemical distinction from 'phenomenal', so I don't know what you are trying to say here, unless it is just the (unquestionable?) trui...
April 23, 2022 at 22:33
I'm not clear on what you're saying; can you explain? I wasn't asserting the idea of strict determinism, just outlining it, and pointing out that ther...
April 23, 2022 at 22:25
That's true of me also; but I think it is good to remain open to the possibility. In my view, "metaphysics proper" would not be some set of true propo...
April 23, 2022 at 06:46
So, the idea here would be that of intellectual intuition; that in virtue of being the noumenal we can somehow directly know it's nature. The possibil...
April 23, 2022 at 00:07
To go back to the beginning of this thread after some derailment, the idea of physical necessity such that given exactly the same causal conditions, e...
April 22, 2022 at 22:39
(W)hol(l)y shit!
April 22, 2022 at 07:21
If the ball lands outside the designated lines, it is called out and the player who last hit the ball loses the point. There is nothing more to unders...
April 21, 2022 at 20:42
Irrelevant. I acknowledged that the rules are established by consensus. If can describe the rules then I understand them; I don't have to play tennis,...
April 21, 2022 at 09:25
Convention establishes rules. It also establishes language, which enables me to understand the rules, without having to implement them. If I couldn't ...
April 21, 2022 at 08:55
If it is the agreement of others that shows what the rules are then my having watched many games and finding an infallible consensus about the way the...
April 21, 2022 at 08:16
The same way I know I understand anything; I experience a state of comprehension. Perhaps nothing I say could convince you about that; but that's fine...
April 21, 2022 at 07:53
That's a stupid question, Isaac. It's obvious, for example think about tennis. The rules of tennis are perfectly comprehensible to me, and yet I haven...
April 21, 2022 at 07:39
Incorrect; you would first have to understand a rule in order to be able to demonstrate that understanding. You are committing the same conflation as ...
April 21, 2022 at 07:12
I think that's a different point, but yeah, whatever...
April 21, 2022 at 07:00
It seems you are conflating understanding a rule with showing that you understand a rule. One could understand a rule without ever implementing it. If...
April 21, 2022 at 06:52
Obviously there are no things-as-perceived absent perceivers; does it logically follow that there are no things at all? You haven't answered the quest...
April 17, 2022 at 23:44
So the 'thing in itself' is completely changeless and amorphous and any "cutting up" we do is totally arbitrary?
April 17, 2022 at 21:06
No big bang, no rapid inflationary period, no galaxy formation, no changes on pre-life earth? :cry:
April 17, 2022 at 20:42
Right, but all that seems to be saying is that intelligible experience itself, and not merely rightness, usefulness and even indispensability for our ...
April 17, 2022 at 02:06
Kant was not a realist about causation. As I understand it Hume claims that on account of "constant conjunctions" of events we come to habitually assu...
April 17, 2022 at 01:32
When you say this it shows the misunderstanding I'm talking about, Scientists don't imagine that observed predictions prove hypotheses, so that is not...
April 16, 2022 at 22:46
You misunderstand the nature of science; hypotheses are never proven, if by proven you mean rendered absolutely certain. Hypotheses, even established ...
April 16, 2022 at 01:49
I agree; all we have are various ideas about what we are able to imagine as possibilities. We can say the whole question is irrelevant, incoherent or ...
April 15, 2022 at 23:45
Kant would agree with you that we have knowledge of the empirical, and analytic and/ or synthetic a priori knowledge in the form of logic and mathemat...
April 15, 2022 at 23:14
But does math really "see into her secrets"? We seem to be able to model things mathematically and make extraordinarily accurate predictions. We accep...
April 15, 2022 at 23:08
Sure, you might say that for phenomenology a thing is the sum of all its possible appearances, and nothing beyond that. On the other hand, it is alway...
April 15, 2022 at 23:02
Science is accepted because it works. We can make observations and measure and model the world as it appears to us. We can think in terms of causation...
April 15, 2022 at 22:39
I don't know whether you meant to say "is not presupposed, but is a derived abstraction". Traditional metaphysics certainly thought in terms of (purpo...
April 15, 2022 at 21:58
Is such knowledge possible without mathematical experience? Right, I misread anthropocentric as anthropomorphic. In any case my point stands re anthro...
April 15, 2022 at 07:39
As Kant says, we cannot acquire discursive metaphysical (in the traditional, not his Synthetic a priori, sense) knowledge, but that it is, nonetheless...
April 15, 2022 at 04:49
Can we access the worm's eye view? Any animal's? Ubermensch's?
April 15, 2022 at 04:06
Why? Epistemology is the inquiry into what we know and how we know anything. It is arguable that we can know, on the basis of reflection, what the ess...
April 15, 2022 at 03:50
If you take that as an "ad hominem attack", then you are probably too overly sensitive for a robust philosophical discussion, so yes, we'd best leave ...
April 15, 2022 at 02:40
You seem to be contradicting yourself. How could the appearance of conscious sentient beings bring the universe into existence if it is not the case "...
April 15, 2022 at 02:37
It wasn't a personal attack. By your irrelevant comments you have demonstrated that you don't understand what Kant was doing. I am not criticizing you...
April 15, 2022 at 02:33
Kant is talking, not about any purported objective characteristics of space and time ( for him they are not objective, but subjective), but about how ...
April 15, 2022 at 02:27
Duration. All experiences must persist for a time. I wasn't thinking of sequence; but that raises a different question: can we understand events witho...
April 15, 2022 at 02:03
What do you mean "determine all possible experiences"? Are you saying we cannot think of the necessary general characteristics of any experience? That...
April 15, 2022 at 01:55
Why do you say that? What about the necessary conditions for any actual experience (which is the same thing expressed differently)?
April 15, 2022 at 01:50
Right, but I would say not since Kant. Or was it epistemology under the guise of (a new kind of) metaphysics or proto-phenomenology? Do you think it i...
April 15, 2022 at 01:44