Janus

Would not "Englishness", if it exists, be some manifest quality or qualities?

That seems right...ice absorbs less, and reflects more, heat than liquid water...the so-called "albedo effect: From here

Sea level rise may show up much more in low-lying areas for obvious reasons, but also it has to be taken into account that it is understood not to be ...

I wasn't referring specifically to Darwin—he certainly has no patent on the idea of evolution. It seems plausible to me that over the course of human ...

I think we can only know what experience, and reflection on the nature of experience tells us. We can also elaborate and extrapolate from formal rule-...

A bit of cool analysis BC... :up:

So you don't believe you have any ability as an educated layperson to critically assess the plausibility of scientific claims?

Why would there be a motivation to believe empirical facts that are of no practical consequence?

So, for you it's all a matter of trust or lack of it, not a matter of exercising your critical intelligence?

Yes, and it's an unjustified generalization to say that models are always wrong in any case.

Which just shows that because something is explicitly agreed to by citizens in a kind of "social contract" sense it doesn't follow that it is morally ...

I agree; the content of experience is endlessly variable, so it is the general character or forms that experience in general takes which is at issue.

I agree with you, but would just repeat that we don't, can't, know what the laws of metaphysics (if there be such) are. Logical possibility informs us...

If the subjective beliefs and emotional states that produce the placebo effect are neural (physical) states, why would they not be expected to have ph...

:cool: Excellent points!

I agree with you in that the way I interpret Kant the a priori is both dependent on and independent of experience. As you say it initially comes, not ...

I have no doubt such deviants would be prosecuted if caught. You would likely be prosecuted for spitting in food if caught. God knows (or maybe he doe...

No objective description of trees, mountains or rivers can capture the nature of trees, mountains or rivers. The physical understanding of a tree, a m...

I've heard that some workers in the Pizza Hut jerk off into the pizza dough. They call it the DNA pizza (the "DNA variously being counted as being sho...

It seems to be no mystery to me. We experience ourselves as causal agents and as being acted upon bodily. We can manipulate things, bend things, break...

Of course, I must agree that physical impossibility is grounded in physical possibility; there is that which is physically possible, and the rest is n...

Defending your society if invaded is a very different matter than conscription to fight in wars that are based on political alliances. The point reall...

The problem I have is that we cannot know if the possibilities we can imagine are actual possibilities or merely logical possibilities. It doesn't see...

All I want is open and reasonable discussion. I don't see the relevance of such counterfactuals as "Janus might have been wearing red shoes" for consi...

Okay I was not thinking of the consent of the child, but of the consent of the majority who implicitly accept the social contract. I could have been c...

It's not that I've not previously understood this, but that I see little philosophical significance in it. This modal notion of possibility, counterfa...

Okay, well I'll rephrase the question: on what grounds, other than sharing the same genome, would any entity in an imagined universe count as being sc...

On what grounds would any entity in some imagined universe count as being schopenhauer1?

If schopenhuaer1 is a biological organism, then he necessarily has the genome he has. This would seem to be an empirical fact about all organisms.

Right, "social contract", but if people living in the society wherein the child is tortured implicitly consent to it via the said contract, then the s...

I would not agree with that; the questions "what things 'in themselves' may be like" and "how could we know that things exist": are two different ques...

Thanks...these are the definitions given there: I see the first as being circular and uninformative, because we don't know what worlds (if any other t...

It seems we may have very different notions of what 'metaphysically possible' means. As I see it, if there is only one world then what is metaphysical...

How do we know that?

I would say it would be difference great enough to make a significant difference to biological "age". We don't know what is metaphysically possible, a...

Yes, if the theory of relativity is in fact correct it operates everywhere. Since the different gravitational forces would not make for much of a diff...

It doesn't seem that there are the same complexities (although determinacy is another matter) when we think about the identity of everyday objects as ...

Why would this not apply to young people who are conscripted (if not to voluntary soldiers)?

Right, but what I was angling at is that the age of the Universe would not vary depending on where you are in it; there would seem to be a sense in wh...

And yet the claim is that the Universe began around 14 billion years ago. Time perhaps does not exist apart from change, and when you think about it t...

I would say there are historical (Earth or chronological) time and phenomenological time. If biological processes would be slowed down, reduced to alm...

I'm not sure what exactly you have in mind by "time paradox". If travel at the speed of light were possible, someone might not age much or even at all...

My take is that what is actually possible is what is physically possible, with reference to this world. If there were other worlds where what is impos...

I think as a society we would, hopefully reluctantly, accept the sacrifice of the child, just as societies generally accept young people being sent to...

Yes, all that...human identity is complex...but to simplify the question: what is it that makes any object or entity an object or entity? Is it an obj...

I could respond that, so far as I can see, there is nothing to rule out the impossibility and no positive evidence to establish possibility. I would a...

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I haven't ruled out its being possible, nor do I rule out its being impossible: we just don't know, which is what I've being trying to get across. The...

I'm well aware that we cannot speak about the nature of what lies outside the scope of our experience and judgement. So neither of you seem to have ca...

Yes, but the judgement that that they may have an existence outside of any perspective is neither demonstrably false nor unintelligible. You seem to b...