Michael

And you continue making the same use-mention mistake. How many times do I need to explain it to you?

Why does reason depend on the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent person?

And still a use-mention error. That we determine what "iron" means isn't that we determine what is or isn't iron. The number of protons an element has...

I don't understand the question. My employee expresses that opinion. I don't want to employ someone with that opinion. I have the legal right to fire ...

Fine, then "black people are inferior to white people and do not deserve equal rights or respect." Obviously, but in this case we're assuming that the...

Being used as such in a game of chess. You're making a use-mention mistake again. Joe Biden doesn't stop being President of the United States if he ch...

This is where the "freedom of speech but not freedom of consequences/accountability" comes from. You have the inalienable right not to be imprisoned o...

Why isn't the bigot content with just keeping his mouth shut? It's an irrelevant question really. He wants to call a black person a nigger and I want ...

If I'm not obligated to hire someone then I'm not obligated to retain their employment. Or would you say that if I have to choose between a Nazi and a...

I'll quote Searle: The fact that iron has 26 protons does not depend on human institutions. The statement "iron has 26 protons" does depend on human i...

This is a textbook use-mention distinction error.

You need 5 approved posts before you can post freely. You have that now. :up:

Then I'm not sure who you're arguing against here because most (all?) of us are just saying that even if the government ought not have the power to pr...

And you think that any opinion should be able to be expressed without legal consequences? So employers should not be able to require that their employ...

You count being fired from private employment as a legal consequence?

The use-mention distinction is important. There's a difference between using the word "iron" in the context of saying "iron has 26 protons" and mentio...

What do you believe I had for breakfast this morning? What did you believe I had for breakfast this morning before I asked you the question?

Even Mill allowed for limits on speech. His examples were gambling and alcohol, but a more topical example would be soliciting the interference of cou...

So @"T Clark" asks something like "if my employee tells me to fuck off and die then should I be allowed to fire him?" and you respond by suggesting so...

And when I say that we can't make iron into gold by decree I'm saying that we can't just decide that those elements which have 26 protons now have 53 ...

Do you have examples? The SEP article starts with: You mentioned Mill earlier (and several times in the past), whom the SEP article also mentions:

The stuff we refer to by the word "iron" exists even if we don't use the word "iron" to refer to them. And I'm saying that the things we refer to by t...

Yes, which is beside the point. You continue to fail to understand the use-mention distinction. "iron" is a four letter word but iron isn't a four let...

There's a difference between changing the meaning of the word "gold" such that it includes lead and deciding to use a stone as a bishop. The criteria ...

Probably for another discussion, but I think that the constitutive sense is the sense that gave rise to the disagreement between naive and indirect re...

I'm addressing @"Isaac"'s non sequitur. I claimed that we can't turn lead into gold by decree. He responded by saying that we can change the meaning o...

I don't expect it to.

I have no idea what you mean. The real object(s) referred to by the words "gold" and "cheese" exist and have the properties they do regardless of what...

Again, see the use-mention distinction. We don't just have conversations in a vacuum. Our words refer to things. The word "gold" refers to a chemical ...

I'm saying that just because we can change the meaning of the word "lead" to that of "gold" doesn't mean that "lead isn't gold" isn't a non-institutio...

Yes, but it's still the case that the thing they've chosen is a bishop because that's how they've decided to use it. This contrasts with something lik...

At the moment you're trying to argue that 1 + 1 = 3 because we can change the meaning of the symbols such that the equation would be satisfied.

This is where you're going wrong. It's not about changing the definition of words. Given what the words currently mean, human institutions can't just ...

At the moment your argument is tantamount to saying that there is no distinction between English and French vocabulary because English speakers can ad...

And that's why your arguments against Searle are misplaced. His distinction between institutional and non-institutional facts, and which things are in...

You can disagree with it, but you will be wrong if it is rat poison and does constitute a killing. That we can change the meaning of a word isn't that...

That rat poison will kill me if I drink it is a non-institutional fact.

Drinking rat poison is going to kill me even if I declare that it isn't rat poison.

And as I said, I don't dispute that how things count as things is entirely up to us. I dispute that this has anything to do with Searle's distinction ...

It's not (always) in our power to decide. A starving family can't just make food out of dirt by changing the meaning of the words "food" or "dirt" or ...

Use–mention distinction. There's a difference between saying "gold is (not) gold by virtue of its innate properties" and saying "gold is (not) named '...

Also this misunderstands what I'm saying. I'm not saying that anything can be a bishop; I'm saying that being a bishop is something that human institu...

We don't need the piece to be on the board. We could just have a piece of paper attached to the piece and write the position on it.

And this has no bearing on the distinction Searle makes between institutional and non-institutional facts. Human institutions might determine the mean...

I don't think it needs to be this complicated. There's just the common sense understanding that something is a bishop if we use it as such in a game o...

By "turning lead into gold" I mean changing the chemical composition of an object such that it goes from satisfying what we currently mean by "lead" t...

You and I have already agreed that "I know that there is an apple in the bag" and "there is an apple in the bag" have different propositional content....

We can't turn lead into gold just by deciding that it's gold, but we can turn a stone into a bishop just by using it as such on a chess board.

I agree that how we use words is an institutional fact, but whether or not an object satisfies the meaning of those words might not be. The word "bish...

Then let's use a simpler example; "this is iron" and "this is a bishop." In the case of the former we're describing an object's chemical composition, ...