andrewk

I feel the same. But I can see no other distinction between the assertion 'P1: If X is a bachelor then X is not married' and 'P2: 7+5=12' Statements s...

'Bachelor --> Unmarried' is NOT true in virtue of the words. The definition of bachelor is not 'an object that is unmarried'. It is something like 'An...

I find the 'synthetic/analytic' distinction impossibly woolly. I have never encountered a definition that can achieve both clarity and internal consis...

For me it can be summed up as 'try to be kind'. I'm not saying I'm particularly good at following that principle. But that's my aspiration.

I'd just like to point out that Hume never said those words. What he said was So he's not saying it can't be done. He just says that if you do it, you...

I really like that. It's like the converse of Kant's important 'Ought implies can' This one says 'Ought implies can not' 'can not' here has a very dif...

The OP can easily accomplish what you are talking about here. What he can't do is what he was talking about in the OP. There's a critical difference b...

The biggest problem is not with the predicate, it is with the subject - 'this sentence'. The problem is that, when one tries to formally state the sen...

Under my analysis, that's where it falls apart. It is a sentence, but not a proposition. Propositions have truth values. Sentences only have truth val...

Did Hume say it 'ought to be slave'? I thought he just observed that it is - or at least appears to be - a slave. I'd be surprised if he said 'ought t...

I think you know me well enough by now to not be surprised that I don't believe that that, or anything else, can be proven beyond doubt. All of everyb...

I am sympathetic to Nietzsche's adage 'There are no facts, only interpretations', which might suggest believing that mathematical facts are no less su...

I didn't notice anybody saying that Jews don't exist, but I don't think it can be defined solely in terms of religion. One difficulty with trying to d...

I think it is possible to accept that 'racist' is a meaningful term without also accepting that 'race' is a meaningful concept. In recent years I have...

Not at all. The Calvinist view is that good works play no role whatsoever in salvation. Luther also argued vehemently that only faith mattered - his d...

I mostly avoid pro or anti god-belief arguments these days, as I find the m pointless. But this one was refreshingly different, on account of taking a...

The hypothetical killer's thread reminds me of the very-real-life threads that are occasionally started on philosophy forums by people who sound suici...

Do you have a credible source for that? The wikipedia article on 4chan lists various threats of violence and one actual murder but in all cases the th...

Then it is a question pertaining to ethical systems of another universe, not this one. With that condition insisted upon, the question (as with so man...

My understanding is that, if they were public message boards - rather than transient websites such as are operated by terrorists and other criminals -...

It depends, as (nearly) always, on context. That statement actually has two time inputs, but they are hidden, making the statement ambiguous. Let us d...

For me it's getting a little far from common usage to say that Pluto was not a planet and now is. I think a more accurate rendering of how the words a...

It worked pretty well for General Motors. They bought metropolitan public transit systems and then wrecked them so that they could sell more cars. The...

Several years ago, I tried to define a planet. Maybe it was inspired by the Pluto issue, or maybe by something else. I can't remember. I started off c...

I see no conflict between these two statements. In other words I agree with them both except that I see no need for the 'But' at the beginning of the ...

It's not difficult to grasp. It's just impossibly vague. What does the 'and so on' mean? Walking sticks perhaps? If it was clear, it wouldn't need the...

The claim is yours, not mine (although I am a little perplexed as to exactly what you are claiming bats don't do. It started off as 'think', then chan...

Would it be correct to infer that your definition is that there is a 'difference in kind' between two species if one of them does at least one of the ...

I gave no indication of whether I believe that bats have language or not. What I do believe is that you don't know the answer to that question.

Are you then the first person to ever know what it is like to be a bat? As for unarguable differences - nobody disputes that there are differences bet...

First, you and I, and everybody else, have no idea what all non-human animals know. We don't even know what most other humans know. Secondly, even if ...

This isn't limited to humans. No life form can be comprehended through biology, because what we know of biology is so little of what might be out ther...

...my philosophical view is that h. sapiens crossed a threshhold at some time in its development, at which point it becamedifferent in kind to other a...

Are you morally deficient for not donating a significant, if not a majority, of your income to charities? I prefer to be 'glass half full' about it. I...

There's another angle that can be taken on this, that is of interest to mathematicians, although perhaps to nobody else. That is that Premise 2 is a s...

No, don't be put off! You have set off an interesting discussion on philosophy of religion that, unlike almost all such discussions on philosophy foru...

I can see what the story is trying to say, and I can see what the younger man in the story was trying to communicate, which is a deep and important me...

None of those things have to do with climate change. Neither do terrorists, so why did you bring them up?

Greens, and human beings in general, face being literally impaled by a nut screaming Allahu Akbar, which is much more imminent than whatever is suppos...

Greens are impaled on the horns of a dilemma: Honest descriptions of the problems and the solutions amount to doomsday preaching, and people don't lik...

I've a feeling this one may prompt you to have an even bigger rant. Pass. I'm open-minded, but not silly. I gave him his chance, with five minutes of ...

Wow, I got an email saying you replied. I tried for years to persuade PF to do that, with no success, other than an email at the end of the week sayin...

I read the article and found it a good case study in why right-wing people - like the author presumably - find it so hard to be funny. The article was...

I am a huge fan of Wikipedia, which it sounds like the author of that article is not. SEP is very good in its way, but I have learned far more from Wi...

But the anatman teaching was an argument against the then-current idea that there was a true or higher self that lived in solitary unity beyond the fl...

The PF site is up but still throws frequent errors, and there's no up to date communication from the site owners either on the site or on the facebook...

Hello everybody. I decided to join here so as to keep in contact with the people whose posts I have enjoyed over the years who no longer post on PF. I...