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Count Timothy von Icarus

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So does the redness of the apple disappear when we turn out the lights, or the water solubility of the salt cease when the water it is dissolved in ev...
September 03, 2025 at 12:47
I'm not denying a difference between commands and recommendations and descriptions, just the idea that so descriptions involving values are actually c...
September 03, 2025 at 11:50
Gee, that's tough. I would say that wisdom is like a skill, in that you can develop it through practice and habit. But unlike a skill (like medicine, ...
September 03, 2025 at 02:11
I've thought about this sort of thing for a bit, and I'm trying to put my finger on some patterns. For instance, there is a sort of "perennial problem...
September 03, 2025 at 01:58
Sure, but that isn't new to Hume. The separation of practical and theoretical reason was centuries old. It's precisely the assumption that there are n...
September 02, 2025 at 20:48
Well, I wouldn't want to change the subject to something besides the point. As near as I can see, the only commitment of a "reality versus appearance ...
September 02, 2025 at 20:03
An excellent point. You've put it much better than I, but that's the basic idea I was trying to get across here: "Metaethics" often deals with questio...
September 02, 2025 at 09:58
This topic is very interesting from a sociological perspective because multiverse theories have become very popular as a solution to the Fine Tuning P...
September 02, 2025 at 01:51
I don't think anyone has mentioned God except for you. It seems to me that you are trying to set up the following dichotomy: "Either wisdom is just ad...
September 02, 2025 at 01:28
I'm not sure if it does. That there are ends that people act for seems obvious. If we were wrong about this, it seems we should be wrong about just ab...
September 01, 2025 at 20:39
I don't see how it could be. If ethics is the study of ends, of what is sought, then it seems clear that some ends are not sought merely as a matter o...
September 01, 2025 at 15:16
Indeed, but it seems that memories can be stored in other ways. For instance, Saint Augustine goes on at length about memory in the Confessions but he...
September 01, 2025 at 12:47
We know these states "correspond" to pleasure or pain because people tell us they do. A huge amount of neuroscience in this general area presupposes t...
September 01, 2025 at 11:13
Yet if hurting people isn't bad, why ought we try to prevent it? Even if this responsibility existed, if it isn't good to live up to one's responsibil...
August 31, 2025 at 23:55
If we explain naturalism in terms of "natural" we need to explain what "natural" means, and this is generally where there is equivocation. What makes ...
August 31, 2025 at 23:23
Your original question was: "Is right and wrong just a matter of thinking something is right (e.g. it is right to save and improve lives) and somethin...
August 31, 2025 at 23:12
Anyhow, I believe the correct response here is: "There are more things in heaven and earth... than are dreamt of in your philosophy" - William Shakesp...
August 31, 2025 at 22:05
Different how? Are scientific theories not "mental constructs?" What about understandings of history? Now if morals are "mental constructs" what cause...
August 31, 2025 at 21:54
Ah yes, I mention this. But I think this leads to an unfortunate and common conflation where the second sort of "empiricism" is appealed to in order t...
August 31, 2025 at 21:16
Hamlet is pithy on this point, but I prefer Milton's Satan: A mind not to be changed by place or time. The mind is its own place, and in itself Can ma...
August 31, 2025 at 18:57
Here you go: "Arguments from underdetermination are extremely influential in contemporary philosophy. They have led to many radical, and seemingly ske...
August 31, 2025 at 11:21
That's an interesting point. Yet even in modern "building block ontologies" where things "are what they are composed of," I doubt that you would find ...
August 31, 2025 at 11:12
Ah, I see now, you meant: ...as a criticism. I took it as a recommendation; as in, we need to find dichotomies. I don't think the bolded is true thoug...
August 29, 2025 at 01:14
Well, one interesting thing is that back when the primary goal of philosophical education was existential transformation instead of intellectual speci...
August 28, 2025 at 23:03
That makes sense to me, but it seems like a criteria for "who gets a hearing" not which positions are accepted. So, in the confines of the original ex...
August 28, 2025 at 18:08
Ah, gotcha. That makes sense. Sorry, that got shifted out of place. That was a reply to @"Banno" who thought I had Wittgenstein with the "skeptics." I...
August 28, 2025 at 16:06
Everyone is me. Everywhere is here. Every when is now. :smile:
August 28, 2025 at 15:59
This is a misreading. See the summary I provided above for Moliere. That particular response is offered as merelyone example of why the form of the ar...
August 28, 2025 at 14:55
If nonsense is limited to statements on a level of "justice is a fish," then it seems to keep out very little though, right? But "nonsense" was origin...
August 28, 2025 at 14:21
I'm confused, how is "good and bad" (or "beautiful and ugly," "true or false," or "one and many" for that matter) not "dichotomous?" Is it impossible ...
August 28, 2025 at 12:26
Where have I done that? The only mention of definitions was @"J"'s usual straw man to the effect that if one mentions knowledge of the relevant subjec...
August 28, 2025 at 11:58
Have you read the New Athiests? This isn't anything new. Consider Nietzsche's invective or that Russell writes that the reason Nietzsche made his more...
August 28, 2025 at 01:48
In older writings properties are often called "predicables." How are there "predictions" without anything to predicate? This is what I mean by: "we wi...
August 28, 2025 at 00:07
This is red herring, like the "definition of justice in the Great Dictionary of Philosophical Terms." I said "knowledge of health" (or "knowledge of j...
August 27, 2025 at 22:33
That's one of the key points of Saint Augustine's autobiography. In his thirties, after a very different sort of life, Augustine became a celibate, ga...
August 27, 2025 at 20:52
Sure, in a broad sense. Practical wisdom aims at making the choices that are best, and at properly valuing ends and means to those ends. There is noth...
August 27, 2025 at 20:31
The Disembodied Criminal: This is the last section of background before we get to the media analysis. Landa argues that Nietzsche and Stirner exclude ...
August 27, 2025 at 20:05
Wouldn't it be "by virtue of what is known through study and practice?" If study and practice are justificatory of themselves, I'd observe that the le...
August 27, 2025 at 17:27
It's also interesting because, while the body is a locus of activity, it is not sufficient to generate a mind. Place a healthy human body in most of t...
August 27, 2025 at 16:07
I am just explaining how the term is used in metaphysics. Properties are not unique to realism or theories of "abstract objects." Depending on how one...
August 27, 2025 at 16:00
Right, so wisdom isn't equivalent with what appears to be wise or is said to be wise by others. In this case, the individuals, and perhaps the society...
August 27, 2025 at 15:30
Nothing in your source seems to indicate what you are saying. It is silent on the rates at which trans individuals are perpetrators of violent crime. ...
August 27, 2025 at 13:43
Yes, but you are conflating arguments from underdetermination and skepticism. The examples you listed are given as examples of the former, not the lat...
August 27, 2025 at 11:31
All a property, in the broadest sense, is just an attribute or quality possessed by something. So, Socrates is a man, a rose is red, etc. The rose is ...
August 27, 2025 at 01:36
I think it's pretty easy to identify red things. Color can be explained in various ways. Likewise, triangular things are those things with three sides...
August 27, 2025 at 01:04
If there are no properties, in virtue of what would some things be members of "the set of red things" but not others? Or in virtue of what would diffe...
August 26, 2025 at 23:33
In virtue of what would: -resisting absorption into dominant systems -resisting commodification and turning into marketable lifestyles -being able to ...
August 26, 2025 at 23:29
The more obvious objection, to my mind, ties into the modal caveat in the OP: Isn't it possible that people might consider properties all sorts of rid...
August 26, 2025 at 23:13
It's been used in some novel ways. For example: Sure, arguably it is "underdetermined." Maybe, but it's a not unpopular opinion that the existence of ...
August 26, 2025 at 23:07
Gotcha. I was thinking of "identifying" (verb), which made me think of the epistemological questions. But doesn't this mean that there would be many d...
August 26, 2025 at 22:49