Michael

What counts as computation?

I'm not really sure how your response follows from @"Marchesk"'s suggestion. Isn't he just asking if brute facts can be contingent?

Same with sex with multiple partners. Or celibacy. And gay sex, straight sex, group sex, BDSM, and so on. Different people want and enjoy different th...

You drunk?

Again, you're conflating use and mention. When we say "I don't know P" we're saying something about the proposition P, not asserting it. We're not say...

Then "P is false" would be a contradiction. So for any proposition P, P must be true. But that doesn't work. We're quite correct in saying "P is false...

I think the problem is with these two premises: 2. Proposition P is a truth 3. Assume proposition Q: P is unknown If we take P to be "my hair is red" ...

I think your grammar is confusing you (consider the apparent difference between "I don't know that aliens exist" and "I don't know if aliens exist"). ...

No it doesn't. Do you know what my hair colour is? No. Do you know that you don't know what my hair colour is? Yes. Therefore you know what my hair co...

This is a peculiar consideration, really, because if we don't have free will then whether or not I hold you responsible/punish you is also determined ...

That doesn't follow. If we know that we don't know that the USA has 1 president then we don't know that the USA has 1 president, and so we don't know ...

To know that P is to know that P is true. If P is "there is life on other worlds" and if Q is "the truth of P is unknown" then to know that Q is true ...

How do you get "P is known" from "Assume proposition Q: P is unknown" and "Assume Q is known"?

Sometimes we have strict rules, and sometimes the rules are vague. What difference does that make? So? That I can say "nothing's wrong" to someone and...

Consider a game of chess. The role of each chess piece is its use; its movement to and occupation of particular squares. But even though their role is...

Because not everyone subscribes to the notion that pornography is "so low in regards to morality".

Nozick would disagree:

So prior physical events randomly causing me to behave in this way counts as free will but prior physical events determinately causing me to behave in...

Is free will compatible with random causation, e.g. A could cause either B or C to happen, or with spontaneity, e.g. B (or C) happened without a cause...

From that passage the closest we have to the quote "I know that I know nothing" is either "I neither know nor think that I know" or "I was conscious t...

Has it really been 2 years? Doesn't feel like it.

So how do we understand each other when talking on the phone, or when posting on the internet?

There's no record of Socrates ever saying that. The closest thing we have to that quote is Diogenes Laërtius saying that Socrates used to say "that he...

As I have repeatedly said, that we often use the word "mean" to refer to intent does not refute Wittgenstein's claim that the meaning of a word is its...

I agree.

You might want to read The Selfish Gene. It's where the term "meme" originates:

Exactly. Our intentions can be at odds with the meaning of our words. That we can say things we don't intend is exactly why it is wrong to say that a ...

Also interweb.

What's the difference between saying "it was logically possible" and "it was 10 billion years ago"? If you want to say that the former requires there ...

Phone must have internets though.

That's why I used ?A ? ?B, not ?A ? ?B. Although, to be more proper, it's ?A ? ?B (exclusive or).

If one of them is possible then ?A ? ?B is true. So the rest follows.

A determinist wouldn't accept ?A ? ?B. But they must accept ?A ? ?B (or accept that both are impossible – but for the sake of argument we're accepting...

I don't see how that follows. Maybe it's philosophically relevant even if it cannot be experienced?

From later in that article: The IEP article on hedonism draws a distinction between value and prudential hedonism, which seems to be the type talked a...

Looks like you had this page open for a while before replying. I edited my post a few minutes ago (you weren't showing as online so I didn't think it ...

Might be clearer if I change ¬? to IMPOSSIBLE. That gives us: IMPOSSIBLE(A) ? IMPOSSIBLE(B) which entails IMPOSSIBLE(A ? B). Although ¬(?A ? ?B) also ...

So ¬?A ? ¬?B. Which, again using De Morgan's theorem, just entails ¬?(A ? B), but then nobody's arguing that. But presumably what you would accept is ...

So unless De Morgan's theorem doesn't apply this way to modal logic, to avoid this consequence you have to abandon your claim "It is not possible for ...

You must be missing something. Let's say that A is "I will pick up the cup" and B is "I will not pick up the cup". So ¬?A ? ¬?B means "it is not possi...

How would you describe this in modal logic? "It is not possible for A or B to have obtained". ¬?(A ? B) Now, I'm not particularly knowledgable of moda...

Is it possible that I have a brother? It's a yes-no question.

Is it possible that I have a brother?

But not me, so not everyone. You can get a boxer without getting a dog.

Non-referring words can have a meaning (e.g. the word "and"), and words can mean different things but refer to the same thing, e.g. "the father of Eli...

But not only intent. Again, I'll repeat his actual words: "For a large class of cases--though not for all --in which we employ the word "meaning" it c...

Again you're conflating on the word "meaning". Wittgenstein wasn't saying that a speaker's intent is his use of words (whatever that would mean). He w...

His intent in using those words is not the same thing as the meaning of those words. The sentence "when a Harry spurge psychic dilemma because five si...

I said I've heard of it but never seen it.

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