Michael

I agree, but that's a point of grammar rather than metaphysics. The metaphysical issue is on whether or not the features present in the experience (th...

How things are defined is irrelevant. What matters is whether or not the object's features when seen are also its features when not seen. Can you show...

I think his point is that if colours X and Y are phenomenologically indistinguishable then how can one say that they are two colours and not one?

How does the perception of a tree differ from a mental representation of a tree? How does a blind person experimentally show that there are objective ...

You don't need to worry about TV channels when you have the Internet. ;)

Except that gun deaths are nil where nobody owns guns.

She's on Family Guy.

Can one experimentally show that there are objective colours?

Of course there are good reasons to believe this. We describe an apple as round and hardish and red and sweet. But this isn't how we describe the mind...

That's why your claim that "If is deemed to be fake, it will ultimately be deemed so on the basis of some story about how our sensory apparatuses are ...

I'm not saying that the micro-physical is all that counts and that everyday objects can be dismissed. I'm saying that for direct realism to work with ...

Does anyone else ever find themselves saying "shut up Meg" whenever Mila Kunis is on TV?

By "found himself" I meant to suggest that this is what he experienced. One person experiences himself waking up in a post apocalyptic world and anoth...

I didn't say that the other world is a computer simulation. I moved away from the Matrix example for the reason I explained. It's exactly because a tr...

I don't know much about his attack of dialetheism, but I assume he's not saying that logical impossibility entails ontological impossibility; I assume...

No, the paradox, as first discussed in The Pinocchio paradox, was intended to be a variation of the liar paradox that overcomes some of the traditiona...

I'm not really interested in discussing the merits or faults of dialetheism. I'm considering the paradox whilst employing the traditional logical axio...

Where the claim refers to the consequence of the rule which governs the growth of his nose. That we want to is irrelevant. It's necessarily false. Whe...

Isn't G ? ¬G a semantic contradiction? How can "X exist" be true if "X" is logically-impossible? It's less a case of logical impossibility imposing it...

To the extent that fictional worlds can contain logical impossibilities, perhaps. But then I might as well say that there is a fictional world where t...

If you only just found out then why haven't you spent every minute of your time here asking where I was? ;)

It's declared a contradiction because where x is G the given rule ?x: G ? C(x) ? ¬x becomes G ? C(G) ? ¬G. There's no paradox here. It's just a contra...

But there isn't a world in which Pinocchio exists. The very condition that his nose grows if and only if he claims any falsehood is logically impossib...

That's a very good point. Perhaps the claim could be amended to "my nose grows because of this claim"? That makes it clearer.

I'd have thought that quantum mechanics has already shown that our sensory apparatuses are not causally related to anything like the objects we take o...

You can just drag the images into the reply box.

Interesting screenshot from Google: /uploads/resized/files/v3/aulknzbnp01piu0m.png And Bing: /uploads/resized/files/y2/wxoy4s943miyhljz.png Go @"180 P...

I don't think that counts as an ostensive definition. An ostensive definition is where you point at something and say "that's a chair", "that's the co...

But obligations aren't the sort of things that can be shown, like cars or cups. I can point out a knife and a person, but I can't point out an obligat...

How does one ostensively learn the meaning of "obligation"?

I moved it for you.

Having a child would make me suffer, though. ;)

That consciousness plays a large role in the behaviour of conscious things is not that such behaviour is (necessarily) unique among conscious things. ...

That'd delete other people's comments, though, so it wouldn't be fair on them. Maybe another mod or admin will feel differently.

What discussion do you want to delete?

Looks like an empty skull.

I'm not sure about this idea. I think it's too likely to turn people away. If I sign up to a forum I expect to be able to use it right away, not wait ...

If you want really short there's always Is Justified True Belief Knowledge by Gettier. Or for something a little longer, What is it like to be a bat? ...

What I'm talking about is that I enjoy life, in the same way that some people enjoy reading or playing sport or listening to music, and so on. It's an...

It's not that thinking life good makes it good but that some people find that life is good, just as it's not that thinking liquorice tasty makes it ta...

Highlighted discussions have new comments that you haven't read yet.

No I'm not. I'm discussing the truth of "the tree exists". The anti-realist argues that the statement is only true if certain experiential, conceptual...

That really depends on the deontological rule. The rule might be "do not kill people", in which case turning on the stove is the wrong thing to do. It...

One can still talk about where the dance stops and the rest of the world begins. The dance happens within the ballroom, for example (and to be more sp...

But consider that the consequentialist claim "one ought to do X because it has beneficial consequences" seems to imply the deontological claim "one ha...

To be a realist about an existing tree is to argue that the truth of "the tree exists" is independent of experience, conception, and language. To be a...

Of course one can be a realist about one thing and an anti-realist about another. There are plenty who are realists about trees but anti-realists abou...

Of course it's semantics. You're talking about how things are defined. Yes, that's what I said. To be a realist about chairs is to argue that the trut...

That accurately describes how I want to live my life. Childless and immortal.

Could you be more specific? Are you suggesting that it's less formal? Perhaps you've been reading the discussions in The Lounge or Feedback (i.e. off ...