Janus

I'm confused here because you say even fictional entities have essences and then say that no essence can be understood. The first statement seems to s...

Particularly when you consider the absurd presidential power to arbitrarily and with impunity issue pardons.

Tarkovsky made a fascinating movie, Stalker, loosely based on Roadside Picnic. Arkady and Boris Strugatsky wrote the screenplay.

Could that be because the idea of a single unique essence is incoherent? I think of essences as sets of specifying characteristics. So, I would say th...

Are you assuming that God exists? Because if God is merely a human idea, something imaginary, it seems strange to say that it is impossible to underst...

Thanks for your interesting reply. I'm not all that familiar with the various interpretations of and theses about the nature of the quantum realm. Asa...

Did Bunge say the Big Bang did not happen? I haven't encountered such a statement in my readings of Bunge. I doubt that many physicists consider the B...

The answer depends on whether or not the Universe is comprehensively and rigidly deterministic . Current scientific understanding says it is not. But ...

Or maybe the younger Namatjira simply prefers a less polished, grittier style.

As far as I know in all monotheistic traditions God is considered to be an eternal, infinite being that depends on nothing else for its existence. I t...

In all monotheistic traditions God is considered to be a necessary being. Jesus' being God is not necessary, and it is only in one tradition that, in ...

By 'ineffable' I mean our experience cannot be adequately described. Every experience is unique, and giving word to it only generalizes something whic...

:up: I think we are always already back there—and that's the ineffable part of our experience our words cannot capture. Poetry, literature, perhaps co...

I agree that what stands out for humans as well as other animals is probably largely what affords a use. We don't know whether things also stand out f...

I agree, definitely there is interplay, but I give some priority to world over word. After all things first had to stand out for the human in order fo...

Recondite! Closer to home it could be expanded to be Apastimeologist, but I guess we all fall into that category.

:up: Me neither.

Just the kind of pragmatism that Peirce wished to distance himself from! How we should use the word "insect" is not constrained by what seems to count...

:up: Yes, the salient difference between descriptions and "a verifiable definite description".

I actually agree with you on that. I was just trying to unpack the logic employed by Spinoza regarding necessity and contingency. I can't see how we c...

The big picture as I see it is that what has been for decades happening more covertly and to a lesser extent is now beginning to happen more overtly a...

Spinoza has modes, but they are conceptually different to modality in modern logic, as I understand it. The simple point is that Spinoza sees necessit...

Yes, Spinoza was a determinist so in one sense for him everything was necessary, but he also made a distinction between a being (God or Nature) that i...

Is there any logical reason why there could not be just one necessary being? But does the widespread agreement not come about due to many descriptions...

I think the eternalist view enables God to know what we have done. what we have chosen. On that view there is no past, present and future. Could God c...

If I recall correctly Augustine dealt with that argument by pointing out that God who is not in time but in eternity sees all of the past present and ...

OK, I've probably misspoken in the sense of failing to flesh out what I meant and poorly expressing what I did say. I said: "Yes, viewed through the l...

:up:

Of course all of that may well be true. But I see no reason to think the blueness of the ball is not perceptually present even if the dog has no consc...

Yes, viewed through the lens of the human notion of goodness and justice an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent creator seems to be an oxymoron.

I agree they probably don't see the ball as blue if that means they consciously conceive of it as such. Nonetheless I see no reason to think they don'...

Yes, that's why I included "all other things being equal".

:ok:

I am not a mathematician, so no doubt there is something here I am not understanding. Apparently, Cantor has shown that infinities come in different s...

So, you disagree with Cantor?

Omnipotence is the greatest power. It doesn't follow it is the greatest good or knowledge. God is traditionally conceived as being the greatest everyt...

So, if a dog sees something as blue or yellow (apparently dogs lack red receptors) does that count as empirical content? I'm pressed for time right no...

It's very simple to show that infinite sets are not atl the same size. The set of even numbers is infinite. The set of odd numbers is also infinite. T...

If God is "that than which nothing greater can be thought" then he is necessarily omnipotent, from which it would seem to follow that he can meet any ...

This leaves me wondering just what you mean by "empirical content"?

This is a conflation between our ability to discern characteristics of things and the characteristics themselves.

Since we don't create ourselves by fiat so to speak and given that we have no choice given who and what we are as to whether we are convinced by argum...

:up:

We give the name 'matter' to, and arguably derive the idea of matter from, that which we understand to constitute the things encountered by the senses...

What you say raises an interesting issue. On the one hand it seems obvious that a rational argument can either convince or fail to convince. In the ca...

I think you have misunderstood me; I haven't said that the ways we talk about things are arbitrary. Of course they are constrained, if the talk be sen...

Is this and identity in general not simply a matter of the way we speak about things. Take the 'Ship of Theseus' example. Replaced bit by bit, is it t...

The underlined part seems to contradict what you say below it. Also I don't agree that dogs are not rational—I think they are capable of reasoning, al...

If on McDowell's view my acquisition of language including the categories of *cat* and ^mat* along with my self-conception as a being with sense perce...

Well, if we are always and only working with and within the always interpreted world that would seem to dispel any significant difference between Davi...