andrewk

I agree. I regard people, and objects more generally, as processes. So the event that is the human called BO doing POTUS things in 2016 is a part of t...

If Barack Obama were different he would not be Barack Obama. It's the law of identity: A=A. I can imagine somebody that is very similar to Barack Obam...

To disagree with TGW is to lack some basic cognitive capacity or linguistic competence? OK, if you say so.

I'm interested in your thoughts on my post, as I think the perspective of someone that is not committed to a materialist ontology (which (being uncomm...

Last time I checked, saying. 'I assert P. I can't believe you don't understand that P' did not amount to a proof of P.

Hooray, a polite interlocutor! Excellent, and a good day to you John! To your question: it is the former I was thinking of. Now that you mention it, I...

Of course not. A courteous retraction of the 'fallacy' accusation would be perfectly sufficient.

I don't, and this is close to the heart of why I have never been able to make any sense of Kripke's approach. In my view, 'Barack Obama' is a name tha...

No. Evolution explains q, while p explains evolution. q is the proposition 'Humans can't help but use logic' p is 'Logic' p=/= q

I don't know if I agree with it in general. I am dubious about words like 'anchoring'. But in this case it seems an OK question, the answer to which, ...

I used to puzzle over this quite a lot - assuming that what you're actually asking is about the meaning of logic. In the end I dissolved the puzzle by...

Are you trying to argue that therefore no omniscient, powerful God exists? That is easily countered by the 'God works in mysterious ways' defence, whi...

I'm all in favour of a discussion of what you said. One of my pet hates is the (in my view) lazy assumption that if some semblance of a notional conti...

I think I can accept that interpretation. But it still doesn't apply to me. I have closely examined the thought processes, the emotions and the habits...

I have no interest in being a good Humean. I admire the man, but it's not a religion, and I can differ from him where I like. For instance I never rea...

Although I generally reject all labels and classifications of philosophies, I readily admit that I greatly admire David Hume and find myself more in a...

Any person that could be in a position to have that choice could not be the person that is writing this post. So it does not mean anything to ask me w...

For me this is a null question. I could never be in the position to make that choice because for the choice to be possible the world would have to be ...

A few thoughts: The first is to ask 'what is the point of the thought experiment?' It is so far removed from anything that could be possible in this w...

By what definition? I don't know any definition that says if one feels 'icky' (squeamish? uncomfortable?) about something that they consider it unacce...

Nice analogy. I'd never thought of it like that. I feel uncomfortable around obviously transgender people in the same way I feel uncomfortable when I ...

Unless you live in Germany - where very special historical considerations come into play - that is unlikely to be the case where you live. Most Wester...

David Hume was a skeptic throughout his career, yet he wrote a lot of great philosophy in that time. The vast majority of philosophy isn't about provi...

The two scenarios are unlikely but conceivable in the same way that the scenarios of a mosquito bite being wrongfully sentenced to 30 years in prison ...

Because the claim started with 'obviously' and it is an inductive fact that 99.873% of claims that begin with 'obviously' are false (and the percentag...

I classify any living organism that has a nervous system as sentient. I have not yet made up my mind about living organisms without nervous systems - ...

The reasons typically given for holding human life, even pre-sentience, more valuable than that of a highly sentient non-human animal, are founded in ...

For some reason I seem to think you're Australian - perhaps something you wrote once at the old place. If you are, then what do you think of Philip Ad...

Really? Does it then follow that Ohio Quakers who hid fugitive slaves in 1850 were acting immorally because they were acting illegally?

To get a fix on that we can turn to that famous non-idealist philosopher Donald Rumsfeld (I'm deliberately misusing the word 'idealist' here, but why ...

'Ipse dixit' - my new Fancy Foreign Frase for the day. I love it! I can't believe I've been hanging around philosophy forums for years and never come ...

It's not a philosophical question until a particular factor analysis has been performed. Then one can have a philosophical discussion about the interp...

You appear to have been thinking along the same lines as I was when I wrote that sentence. It started out as saying 'All of our current theories are w...

Newton's theory of gravity is wrong in the sense that it makes predictions that are demonstrably incorrect - for instance about the precession of the ...

"Does physics admit to the possibility of making a perpetual motion machine at some point in the future, or is it ruled out as impossible?" The curren...

Correct! I would not think, or say, such a thing, because the word 'literally' has a metaphysical odour about it and I avoid making (or thinking) meta...

This Humean can't see any problem, because we don't know that we can't do those things. All we know is that nobody has managed to do them so far - fro...

The point is that, at any time, it is possible, that the world may be radically different. But that doesn't mean that it it is. — TheWillowOfDarkness ...

"If we believe that nature is governed by laws then I would say we have very good reason to think it is actually impossible for those laws to suddenly...

Yes, the problem with long debates in very long threads like this is that it's very hard to get, and keep, a fix on what exactly the claim and counter...

What is the 'visual field' to which you refer? I know what those words mean from a practical point of view, but from that viewpoint, other than the ef...

"Which is why it is only probable, as opposed to certain, that the boiling point of water will be 100 degrees Celsius, the same as it has been innumer...

"Aggressive counter-argument and clear, vivid, fair presentation of the target argument are not mutually exclusive. " Subject to replacing 'aggressive...

The OP looks to me like a reboot of the old 'indirect realism' argument, but just using different words. If you want to think you are seeing the objec...

If nobody has said it about him then it would seem that it's a standard that he does not live up to himself. I have a feeling that many Christians and...

It's not clear to me how that's a lesson from Harris. Has any of his opponents ever said that about something he wrote about their arguments or belief...

It is not possible to repeat an experiment under the same conditions. There will always be some conditions that differ. The best that can be done is t...

The question is not well-defined. In the first sentence he says it is 'suicide', by which I presume he means the question 'Shall I commit suicide?'. I...

Perhaps one could change the boiling temperature of water at normal sea level pressure (approx. 106 kPa) by adding salt. Since salty water freezes at ...

Gosh there are a lot of critics around today aren't there! Your philosophy sounds like a decent starting point to me. As an attempt at a constructive ...