I don't see how having a computer, quantum or otherwise, that can store enormous volumes of information helps in simulating the universe, if the compu...
The main nuance I had in mind is that one can, by using certain higher-order logical languages, formally express a version of the Liar Sentence. Howev...
The extent to which the rules are made by the powerful as opposed to made by the majority depends on how democratic the society is. Either way it's po...
Why should they care? Firstly, they are very likely to care without any encouragement from me, because my dislike of seeing others suffer is very wide...
As Michael said, none of them are in the required form to be a contradiction. The required form is 'L and not-L'. None of those sentences contain an '...
That's the standard presentation of the Principle of Explosion, which is that any well-formed sentence (Q in this case) can be proved from a contradic...
Morals are what a 'moral agent' uses to decide what actions to perform. So all that matters is what each moral agent decides. I am a meta-ethical mora...
I'm not sure I do. Are you just suggesting that we're doomed, because the US right will probably manage to block any effective action from the US? If ...
I think he would have dismissed the second part ('nothing good lies outside him'), which sounds worthy of the most devoted pessimists on this forum. B...
I'm interested to hear from those that claim that governments cannot provide measures that address the problem, as to whether that's because (a) they ...
I agree, we do use it, and I should have included the word 'necessarily' in that sentence you quoted ('does not necessarily a contradiction make ....'...
It's not a contradiction unless one can set the contradiction out as a deduction in a formal logical language. And my point is that, in the process of...
I know that Graham Priest is interested in the problem. He discussed it with some of us on the old forum. Although I think there are a number of great...
It sounds like you think there is a representation of the sentence in a formal logical language. I would be very surprised to see such a thing, and su...
It would be a good idea to change the first sentence of that post, because it reads to me as well as though you are quoting Einstein. The best option ...
Not necessarily. All we can say is 'it feels as though it ought to follow that it is false'. In order to convert that into an unqualified statement li...
It depends what 'futile' means. One possible meaning is 'absurd', in which case the statement is just a less elegant restatement of Camus' famous obse...
There IS a like facility: it is to write a post saying why you liked another post. Because this is a philosophy forum rather than a fan site, that sec...
The question is what is this 'the one' to which the sentence refers. It sounds like the elusive 'persistent self'. Hume searched but couldn't find it....
Just to expand a bit on the answer of Babbeus: 'logical form' is not a standard term, but sounds like it is describing a sentence in a formal logical ...
It seems very much unlike that to me. Everyone that has ever said a kind word to a lonely person has made a valuable contribution. Major technological...
I can't see any need to persuade you back. Virtue ethics is an excellent moral framework that will produce similar ethical conclusions in the vast maj...
Yes, I can't see any ambiguity either. Nor any problem with consistency. Certainly I don't recall encountering problems with consistency in my day-to-...
I don't think it is intuitively accepted amongst the populace, as to accept it implies ascribing rights to a fertilised ovum, and hence being opposed ...
That post argues that any member of the species homo sapiens has moral agency, moral responsibility and rights. Such an assertion is fundamental and o...
Things are getting more confusing. We now have two sentences I don't understand, rather than just one: (1) 'I am opposed to lying in the abstract'; an...
I like that statement of it because, for me, it highlights one of the main problems of the CI, which is that to me this statement either simply means ...
If, in a rights-based ethical framework, moral agency were held to be a necessary condition for having rights, it would seem to follow that it is mora...
We need to go beyond the vague 'What if I were a woman?' as that is not actually a question. We can be more concrete by asking a specific question, su...
There is only one scenario - lookalike impostor murders American presidential candidate named Barack Obama with Kenyan father, takes his place, and no...
I agree that in that situation Obama does not speak Mandarin. That's because the real Obama in that imaginary scenario is the one that was killed, and...
I would say that Obama is a name we give to a process that at least encompasses birth to death. Like most human concepts, it has fuzzy boundaries, so ...
That's where my disagreement with Kripke begins. I don't think we do, or can, speak literally about different Obamas. There is only one POTUS Obama, a...
It looks like you disagreed with everything I wrote in my post, and I disagree with both paragraphs of your last post. Do you think we can at least ag...
I have no problem with taking it as idiomatic. But maybe it is literal if we take what is - for me - the most intuitive interpretation of the verb 'im...
Because BO is a process that has a bunch of known properties, one of which is that it doesn't speak Mandarin. Change any one of those known properties...
Actually when I look back on the post sequence I see that the verb in question in the discussion of BO and Mandarin was 'imagine if', not 'could have'...
I suppose we'll find out if it happens. It didn't happen with my interpretation of what 'BO could have spoken Mandarin' means, because you said that m...
It looks like we're at an impasse then. You believe there is a distinction between the two, but are unable to articulate what the distinction is. I se...
It seems that way to me. That then leads us in the direction of Aristotelian essences. Under that approach Barack Obama is any process in any possible...
Whether or not I agree to that depends on what the 'could' in that sentence means. I think when people say things 'could have turned out differently',...
That makes sense to me. If the notion of 'rigid designator' were confined to 'possible future worlds' then it would be a coherent concept. Statements ...
It refers to me. It can be rendered without the conditional by saying 'I have bought a ticket in this week's lottery, and I am at this point in time u...
I think those are different from the other statements discussed, because they are not counterfactuals. I interpret those statements epistemologically....
I would interpret the claim as follows: I (Michael) can imagine a world that is like this one in almost every respect, except that the person very lik...
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