Janus

Do you really consider that to be a "profound point"? I don't: I would say that surely Einstein would not have been stupid enough to miss something so...

I'm not really much familiar with externalism, beyond a passing acquaintance with Putnam's 'twin-Earth' argument which featured in an undergrad course...

Your statistical assessment is just a guess, and even if it were accurate, you would still have no warrant for classing me with the 'most of' rather t...

What puzzles me is why Nagel thinks anyone would be afraid of something if they had no motivation to concern themselves with it. If I do have a motiva...

My criticism has been that your account, or something like it, could be more adequate, more comprehensive, if it allowed for more distinctions, as I h...

Nah, you're not serious about being unprejudiced, and making a genuine effort to explain and critique your own positions, so it just aint worth the ef...

Yes, I agree with this. The point of all rational inquiry is really critique it seems. I mean the rational part is to keep check on the intuitive part...

Interestingly the BO portrait is more lifelike, in the sense of being a better resemblance, than the MO. Note the 'semblance' in resemblance, though; ...

Demanding does not necessarily include expecting, and not being satisfied does not necessarily include frustration. :)

You know what they say about assumptions? Did I say I that I expected anything or that I was frustrated?

Everything.

Because I demand quality.

No. ;)

For my taste the portrait of MO is terrible, lifeless, wooden. In terms of composition it is irredeemable. The portrait of JK is much more 'living' bu...

Is business the only conceivable form of busy-ness? :s

The interesting point for me here is whether grammar, or calculus, are themselves deductively or intuitively derived. I think they as much the result ...

What about phenomenology or process philosophy? Have they nothing at all to offer to increase our overall understanding of human life and the world in...

I've never been decided about that question; it can depend on what you mean by "tell something about the world". It does seem as though mathematics mu...

So, "there are black swans" is true iff "it is true that there are black swans" is true?

I think apo could say that his metaphysics is true is he were to assert that his metaphysics fairly represents what the community of enquirers will ul...

I would rather say that there is a rational discourse that might reasonably be called induction, a rational discourse that is valid because it can alw...

On the other hand why not simply: "there are black swans" and "this sentence is in English"?

Exactly, that is just the point I have been trying to drive home! Your second point is irrelevant, though, because the dubiousness of premises is irre...

Really? :-} The first premise is deductively redundant, but there would not be any motivation to make the assumption that forms the second premise if ...

Yes and the point is that insofar as the conclusions are contained in the premises of all valid deductive arguments they are all, in a certain sense, ...

WTH??? It's all sighs and irrelevancies with you! I wonder what rich trove of hard won/obsessively cobbled together insights/realisations you are desp...

No it would be the same inference with the premises made explicit. And the point is simply that inductive arguments can be rendered in deductive form ...

All good points!

I'm not sure where you are going with this Banno; could you elaborate?

Go read the recent posts. It always ends like this with you. :-}

I was criticizing your argument by pointing out more and subtler distinctions you could make if your terms were more rigorously used, not being pedant...

So, you reject the dictionary definition, then? Not so bright! Turn up the wattage; you'll gain clarity... :-}

From Google search, here: https://www.google.com.au/search?q=term+definition&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b&gfe_rd=cr&dcr=0&ei=amyCWq6XL83N8gealry...

So, say two lines met a billion parsecs away. In that case do they start out truly parallel? If they do, then at what point do they cease to be parall...

More adequate terms are more precise in that they enable more distinctions and acknowledge more subtle distinctions.

That's right, it's a goad to motivate you to pay attention to suggested refinements.

It's not "petty bullshit" but suggested refinements, for the sake of greater clarity, of your inadequate terms.

No, the term "thought" refers to the process of thinking; it is the noun equiavelnt to the verb "thinking, in other words. The term "a thought" refers...

No, your problem is that you're not interested in anyone else's thoughts and beliefs, even when they are patently more coherent than your own.

Note I said "thoughts" and "beliefs" and you responded using "thought" and "belief". I have been referring to thought as 'thinking' and belief as "bel...

LOL, I'm not really sure what you're wanting to say here. That's twice in a row now, so maybe the problem lies with me. Here's an abductive/ inductive...

This is a very good point. Deduction being a derivative puristic formalization of inductive reasoning can hardly arrogate to itself such a priority. W...

That's an intriguing, yet puzzling, statement: could you flesh it out a bit?

That could be a way; but I was thinking of conjecture just as the 'creative imagination' part of science which then gets worked into hypotheses that m...

But this is not what Kant held. He held that our intuition of space and time represented the world as it is experienced by us. The Euclidean conceptio...

Firstly that is exactly what I was proposing to do "make a case for the viability of inductive inference in general". Determinism can be framed deduct...

Yes, I acknowledge the differences between a deterministic and a probabilistic explanation for the laws of nature; my point was only that we have no a...

I still don't have a lot of time, so since you think this might be the salient point of our disagreement, we probably should focus on defining our ter...

We don't observe light rays or curvature of space in the way we see cells through a microscope, though. We observe other phenomena about which light r...

No, I just mean that there is no viable alternative method. Not really. We have to make assumptions to get started. As I have shown if you make the as...