Janus

The second claim is only that the material existence of the world is independent of our thinking and perceiving of it, not independent of Gods' thinki...

That's true, and that's the difference between this hypothetical deterministic 'entailment' and purely logical entailment. We can't be wrong about log...

I still disagree with this, because I remain unconvinced that anyone can refer to anything without (implicitly, at least) relying on the knowledge of ...

I'm not sure what you mean by the "immaterial universe". It's a long time since I have looked in any detail at Berkeley's philosophy, but my understan...

Of course, it's always good to question things; but it doesn't necessarily follow that what has been thrown into question thereby becomes redundant. I...

When we "re-identify a material particular as being numerically the same at two moments in time" are we not counting its various (changing) temporal m...

But we always already have webs of description about any entity we refer to (unless the entity is present and we point to it), it is never simply 'the...

Every true description of an entity at any time in the form at 'At that time the entity was X' is true at all times.

I don't have time for detailed response just now, so I'll keep it short. The "it" referring to the fresh apple and the "it" referring to the mouldy ap...

Some ideas logically presuppose other ideas; that is all I was saying. As to determinism, if all events since the big bang have been precisely what th...

And, if that is indeed so, you think it has been a good thing? I'll stick with 'I have no idea who you're talking about'. at least beyond the descript...

The definite description of the particular apple you are referring is the one you have given of the whole process of the change from apply freshness t...

Ideas can interact with other ideas purely logically I suppose whereas material objects, although they do interact with one another logically (or at l...

To make it coherent it must be realized that according to this view we are also ideas in the mind of God. Sense data, our sensory apparatuses, our bra...

Yes to be a material thing in Berkeley's view just is to be an idea in the mind of God. Consider the well known limericks which have Berkeley's philos...

The substance of Berkeley's philosophy is well known. What do you think it means to be a concrete thing? To my understanding it means to be a stably p...

I already explained that; it is a concrete existent because it is thought by God. That's just what it means to be a concrete existent for Berkeley. Th...

Yes but it's a very different kind of idea; it is an idea which is a concrete existent. It doesn't accord at all to our limited idea of what an idea i...

According to Berkeley the tree is not your idea or my idea but God's idea. So the tree is a real mind-independent (in the sense of being independent o...

Yes, I agree. So once you go beyond those who knew the man who is called Aristotle personally, descriptions are relied upon for us to have any idea wh...

I'm probably not as familiar with the 'definite description' tradition as you are; not enough to have an opinion about the charitably of Kripke's read...

Learning to drive does not consist solely in learning any set of rules. Much of the learning is simply know-how we learn by doing, just as it is with ...

But if everything about a man who is reputed to have once existed and to be named 'Aristotle' that you think you know, including even the fact of his ...

Is that a statement or a question? Would there not need to be some rule or at least adequate conditions in order to make any distinction between succe...

My "teaching abilities" or the coherence of what I have been saying would be in question if no one, or even the majority of people, could understand i...

OK, well there's not much point continuing if the discussion has exceeded your intellectual capacities. :wink:

If the world were truly random; no conversation would be possible; so in that sense, yes, if there were no determinate possibilities the world would b...

"Regular" if you don't like the term "invariant". You know what that means, don't you? What if there were no regularities at all, even statistical reg...

No, I said that true randomness would be that there are no determinate possibilities at all. Flowers might spontaneously transform into lions; anythin...

You don't have to believe in something to know what it means, do you? Putting it differently do you believe the behavior of particulars (in the broade...

But if nothing occurred "the vast majority of the time" that would be true randomness.

So you don't know what it means to say that natural invariance manifests across all space and time?

Actually that's not true. Their always occurring more or less evenly is a regularity. There not always occurring more or less evenly would be a true r...

Don't be obtuse: it refers to the idea that natural invariance manifests across all space and time.

No, that limited notion of randomness always already presupposes the operation of natural laws. If things were truly random, no such statistical regul...

Each particular has its own regularities or invariances, but there is a universal web of regularity or invariance which seems to unify the individual ...

Random behavior is unregulated (that's what 'random' means); so if there were no laws to regulate the behavior of phenomena, then the behavior of phen...

So, I don't have to have anything specifically in mind when I refer to, say, Aristotle? What about having something in the back of my mind? Surely I h...

If you think that what you said does mean something significant and it is just my failure to find that meaning at play here, then you are welcome to e...

You know it means nothing? Then why not remain silent?

That means nothing to me; it's just words...

But what are those universal regularities if they are anything beyond our conceptions of them? They can't just be the individual things that are regul...

Of course our conceptions of the laws are "derived" from the observed behaviors of phenomena. So, are the laws nothing more than our conceptions of th...

What you have given here is just a bunch of words, a trite formula, that really explains nothing. You think your position is cogently explained, but i...

The idea is that the behavior of things would be random if nothing determined it to be invariant or regular; if there were no universal principles, in...

The "development of their spatio-temporal" relations is their behavior and the laws are usually understood to be what determines their behavior. You s...

So, what is the mass or the charge of an electron if it is something other than the electron itself? And what is the electron itself if it is somethin...

What makes you think I want to hear anything other than your view on the matter? So, you're saying that the laws that govern or determine the behavior...

So, what in physicalist terms would the "properties of the particulars" be? Are the particulars and their properties different from one another?