Amalac

Veganism is an ethical philosophy, not merely a diet. And if your diet finances an industry which is cruel to animals, then you will have to admit tha...

No doubt some people have that irrational and dogmatic reaction , but like I said, those with an open mind will stop doing it. That some people will l...

Leaving them in a “state of nature” is not the only alternative to farming them for food or other products, we can place as many as we can in sanctuar...

Then I don't see why the idea of a sudden change worries you, the chance of everybody turning vegan as soon as you do is practically 0%, so the change...

No serious vegan will deny that they also contribute to the suffering of sentient beings by many of their actions, and it does not follow from this un...

Can stealing be justified ethically if in all other aspects of one's life, one lives honorably and does something worthwhile? Of course not, if one wa...

Here's an interesting video about essentialism, which clarifies some of the topics discussed here further, for those who are interested in this subjec...

Of course, it seems like nothing useful could be gained by defining "Socrates" in that way, but there are other cases where different definitions coul...

Whether the use is “correct” or “incorrect” depends upon how the word “Socrates” is defined or used. Let's use as an illustration the question whether...

Your link didn't show any picture, which is why I answered that there wasn't a triangle. I looked up the Kanizsa "triangle", and my answer as to wheth...

No (if we use the usual definition of triangle), your point being?

This is possible, no doubt, but it's also possible that those properties merely reflect what our minds impose upon what we apprehend: It's curious tha...

If what he means is that we have no sufficient grounds for maintaining that there are “true” or essential definitions, because it seems more plausible...

I'm not sure about that, in the OP he says that rejecting essences only commits one to nominalism, not to psychologism. It's true, however, that unive...

Yes, it's either just an assertion with no argument to support it, or a poor argument. One does see this sort of argument often in philosophy of relig...

Costa Rica Well, I meant excluding those who are completely and utterly insane, like a man who seriously believed that he is a dog. I think those kind...

That’s one option I have contemplated, but I doubt they’ll agree to do it (they’re quite a busy bunch). I’ll ask anyway. I pretty much agree with ever...

Hi tim, thanks for your reply. They may be able to, but they refuse to do it. Not sure why, but it's their policy. Yes, but they told me that they are...

If I recall correctly, you think that the Law of Contradiction is true. However, the Law of Contradiction states that: So if you think contradictions ...

It shouldn't matter whether the therapist cares or not, so long as that doesn't disrupt their job when helping the patient, and they are competent eno...

I see part of the confusion here is purely verbal: I don't consider Foucault or Wittgenstein to be obscurantist at all, unlike Derrida. I don't consid...

It doesn't follow from the fact that someone's work wasn't understood in his time, that future discoveries will show that it was actually important. A...

I never said that if Chomsky and Popper said it, that means it's right. What matters is the content of what someone says, not who says it.

Your post reminded me of a short audio (5 minutes long) I heard a while ago: https://youtu.be/zDNufwtiqdw (From 1:57 onwards) In the case of poststruc...

I know this isn't the main point of Turing and Wittgenstein's dialogue, but: It seems strange to say that we made up numbers like e or ?. We don't kno...

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I bet you would say the same thing if the golden ratio, or any other important mathematical constant, was there instead of pi, and didn’t already know...

“Is there something like artificial stupidity?” Often philosophy is exactly that:

I'd recommend The Analysis of Mind, by Bertrand Russell. Beware though: some parts of it are quite complicated.

Would the violinist die painfully if I unhooked myself? If so, I would consider it my duty to avoid his suffering, since it is within my capabilities ...

But if Russell is correct in pointing out that we can't imagine space with nothing in it, wouldn't that refute Kant's argument that we can imagine not...

There is a reason, namely the limited space in your mind's eye. Unless you mean merely that we can conceive of such a space. Kant isn't saying that we...

I agree, but I'm talking about an imagined object; if it looks like darkness in one's mind's eye, then it looks black, right? And therefore that space...

Then in that space of pure darkness, there's a black object, and therefore that space is not empty, right?

Well, you said it would look like darkness, so wouldn't it be black? Right, and therefore I can't imagine that space that's pure darkness according to...

But can you actually visualize, in your mind's eye, there just being darkness? When I try to do that, I can't help but also imagine space as having ed...

But according to Kant there is only one space, so the space in which the apple is must be the same as the space in which the table is. So if you imagi...

But according to Kant there is only one space. Can you imagine (visualize) there being only one empty space? But didn't you say earlier that you could...

Oh, I didn't know that. I'll check it out soon, thanks.

Of course they are not going to play a game that just assumes without proof that solipsism is false. People can use words however they like, so long a...

When I use it, yes, not when a solipsist does (if that implies other people exist outside their mind). When a solipsist used it, it would be to differ...

No, in fact I can't even prove to you that I exist. I'm talking about a logical proof. My claim is simply that there's nothing logically self-contradi...

Can you prove your mind (and thoughts) isn't the only thing that exists? How?

Of course, from a practical point of view a solipsist would be insane (and has anybody ever really been a solipsist?), but there's no way to refute so...

Took the words out of my mouth. But it's more like we can't refute solipsism, rather than its being the case (if there are no noumena).

I mean, when talking about about perspective, I just used that as shorthand for what I said in my previous post, nothing more and nothing less. Basica...

I only said it was a possibility, but point taken. I thought Russell's point was that the notion of cause applies only to objects (“particular things”...

Well, I just don't see how we can tell whether the universe is a set in the same sense in which we are sets of atoms, or merely a set in the sense in ...

I agree with all that, but when speaking of non human perspective, I meant rather this: either our logic is merely a product of our brain, so that a d...

Kolakowski just says we don't know if psychologism is correct, and cannot ever know, since in order to answer the question we would have to apprehend ...