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Count Timothy von Icarus

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:lol: I think you hit the nail on the head in that post. But this is a tough one for me because I see a lot in favor of systematic philosophy, of havi...
May 21, 2024 at 01:21
To be fair, is this obvious? I think for most "naturalists," there is going to be a path between "how the world is," and "what exists" and human logic...
May 21, 2024 at 01:09
I would say it is generally taking arguments in the strongest, most compelling sense possible. However, if one starts to think that the most compellin...
May 20, 2024 at 22:55
I have used Stack Exchange for math, physics, and biology. It seemed pretty good. Used the theology one a few times; it was bad. The ubiquitous proble...
May 20, 2024 at 21:18
:up: yeah, you're right. I wrote that during a bout of insomnia. My thinking was, if you assume QV, then when people who embrace those sorts of system...
May 20, 2024 at 20:39
The guy who does the Great Courses' modern phil survey course makes this point. He is talking about Hegel, but the two were contemporaries and even ta...
May 20, 2024 at 19:19
The core idea surrounding negation is very reminiscent of Hegel's Logic. A core idea there is that sheer, indeterminate being itself collapses into no...
May 20, 2024 at 18:35
BTW, here might be a helpful example. Consider the panentheistic view that underscores Eriugena, Ulrich, etc. /uploads/files/9f/aea4egen470fuwxq.png T...
May 20, 2024 at 14:38
I think you're right, although there also is a sense in which Newton's Laws are only an answer to a certain sort of question. Something like: "given w...
May 20, 2024 at 12:51
Consider the ubiquitous maxim: quidquid recipitur ad modum recipientis recipitur, "whatever is received is received according to the manner of the rec...
May 20, 2024 at 12:06
Anyhow, on the original topic, the idea that QV is a sort extension of the principle of charity seems wrong. Why? Because many individual thinkers arg...
May 20, 2024 at 11:45
BTW, aside from finding a lot in PI to like myself, I don't think we should undersell Wittgenstein's value as someone within the analytical camp who c...
May 20, 2024 at 03:49
Do you mean "evolved" in terms of man's ability to use language overall, or in terms of how individual languages evolve? I agree with what you're sayi...
May 20, 2024 at 02:40
I think it might be fair to say of the "anti-metaphysical movement," more broadly that it was the most dogmatic since late scholasticism, or at least ...
May 20, 2024 at 01:53
One thought I've had on "philosophy is largely problems of language," is if this might be more of a "which came first, the chicken or the egg," issue....
May 20, 2024 at 01:12
:up: I totally agree on that front. Although the phrasing does get at the suitability of chess as an analogy for mathematics and language, brought up ...
May 20, 2024 at 01:00
Whoops, I forgot the link to Rorty: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://humstatic.uchicago.edu/philosophy/conant...
May 19, 2024 at 22:55
I would question whether this is a particularly helpful or good faith way to pose the question. Second, clearly Nietzsche is the king when it comes to...
May 19, 2024 at 21:20
Right, this would be the equivalent of refusing to consider use. Arguably, an analysis of "use" should already bring in the rest of the world. But the...
May 19, 2024 at 13:24
Funny enough, international bodies tried, and then gave up on developing a single canonical set of rules for chess, finding it too difficult. Differen...
May 18, 2024 at 18:51
I think we are largely on common ground then. Where we differ might be on this assumption: I would say that "what we do" depends upon and evolves acco...
May 18, 2024 at 15:54
Power grabs by elites are often a source of civil wars but they are by no means the only way such wars start. Ethnic conflict is a pretty common cause...
May 17, 2024 at 18:14
:up: I do not think this is a vicious circle though. There is only one Being, and it includes both sides of the Nature/Geist distinction. As Heidegger...
May 17, 2024 at 18:08
Absolutely, that's one of the great difficulties in philosophy. This sort of problem crops up even with normal exemplars of terms, e.g. "the Problem o...
May 17, 2024 at 13:00
Right, because there are eight berries that exist. But if eight "just is" the act of counting, then there are only 8 berries when one counts them as s...
May 16, 2024 at 02:48
Yup. Robert Sokolowski's "The Phenomenology of the Human Person," is one of my favorites and it "builds a bridge," with Husserl and Aristotle. Nathan ...
May 16, 2024 at 01:56
But if it isn't arbitrary and arithmetic must be the same for all peoples, what explains this? Plenty of other practices do vary widely across culture...
May 16, 2024 at 01:51
Right, exactly my point. If some society somehow stipulated that 8/2 = 5, we tend to feel we could give them a good demonstration of why this is not t...
May 16, 2024 at 01:02
Absolutely, I didn't mean to suggest otherwise. What I was correcting was the idea that the notion that the subject-dependent nature of objective expe...
May 15, 2024 at 20:08
He didn't really need to leap that far. The assertion that only extension in space truly exists goes back to the Ionian materialists and concerns over...
May 15, 2024 at 19:02
Well first, the Hebrews as an Asian people, so obviously it is defacto an Asian creation narrative. There are certainly similarities between Genesis a...
May 15, 2024 at 17:16
I agree that uses of "should" such as, "if you add two odds together the result should be an even," leave something to be desired as to clarity. But t...
May 15, 2024 at 16:08
:up: It's an interesting area because it ties in with the radical transformation of views on freedom. Freedom goes from primarily being defined in ter...
May 15, 2024 at 12:50
I think you might have an equivocation with your use of "should" here. "Should" can mean "ought," or "it would be good to..." but it can also be used ...
May 15, 2024 at 12:20
I really don't think this is the case at all. For one, Aquinas pretty much constructs Locke's arguments re primary/secondary qualities and Berkeley's ...
May 15, 2024 at 11:56
Yes, these are all dealt with in detail in the book I mentioned. Wheeler's stuff on "many fingered time," and retrocausality would be another relevant...
May 15, 2024 at 11:29
I think that is vastly overstating the case. Often, a Newtonian version of presentism is hauled out as a strawman to make this case, but there is noth...
May 15, 2024 at 11:08
These are good questions. I would say they lie at the center of modern philosophy with its focus on the "escape from subjectivism," or contemporary ph...
May 15, 2024 at 10:40
Generally speaking, the classical/scholastic view would be that God is both "inside" and "outside" the system. God is not a participant in being, some...
May 13, 2024 at 18:14
Presumably, humans in disparate environments did not have the idea of numbers spring into their minds out of the aether uncaused. Likewise, animals pr...
May 13, 2024 at 12:12
Precisely, although arguments of this sort, made from contemporary physics, tend to also have a bit of Heraclitus too. Even "fundemental particles" ar...
May 13, 2024 at 12:01
How does this square with this? Do you mean numbers as abstracted from any particular instantiation if them? What do you think of the claim that discr...
May 12, 2024 at 03:48
:up: I think if you're going to argue for something more along the lines of "mathematics is invented/arbitrary," a compelling argument at least needs ...
May 12, 2024 at 03:18
Just an FYI, because popular understanding of this issue is often cloudy at best: indulgences go back to the ancient Church and still exist today (e.g...
May 10, 2024 at 19:45
"Numbers are something we do," suggests the question: "why are numbers something we (and animals) do?" All activities have causes, right? IMO, attempt...
May 10, 2024 at 17:53
Economic growth doesn't just come from population growth or increased resources consumption. Increased human capital (e.g., education), new technologi...
May 10, 2024 at 17:16
Which makes me think, who would you draft for your five man starting lineup for your philosophy super team? Nietzsche has the will to power, and would...
May 10, 2024 at 15:16
A beautiful image of philosophy as transcendence and ascent. Reminds me Dante getting to talk to all the Pagan philosophers in the early Cantos. /uplo...
May 10, 2024 at 13:57
I'm not really sure what you're trying to say here. Maybe an example would help: I go for a job interview. For whatever reason, I am confident that I ...
May 10, 2024 at 01:48
I think you are on the right track. Subjectivism tends to entail problems with dualism akin to Kant's two "stances/worlds" (noumenal/phenomenal). Yet,...
May 09, 2024 at 18:35