Why is "unlearning self-immiserating habits" so important? — Shawn
It may be a metaphysical statement which, as I've said many times, are not true or false, only useful or not. — T Clark
Being true is what makes a statement a fact, assented to or not. — Banno
What's your favourite thing about the Sistine chapel ceiling? That it keeps the rain out? — Bartricks
Thank you for addressing the example I gave. Since you claim it to be plausible, you didn’t give me much to argue against, for I too find it quite plausible. — javra
BTW, do you by “homunculus” simply intend a euphemism for “consciousness”? The little person within the total person that itself has a littler person within, and so on ad infinitum, is not something I can fathom anyone believing in.
At the moment, don’t have much interest in arguing one way or another about the reality of consciousnesses. But I thought I’d ask, since I am curious. — javra
In a sense. In another sense a belief is just a statement that is held to be true. BOth are fine so long as we keep one eye on which we are using. — Banno
The wild animal metaphor is apt; for the rest, I'll await the details. — Banno
In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.
Facts are always provisional. — T Clark
If, in general, you don't respect the quality of the thinking or writing on the forum, what are you doing here? — T Clark
Maybe that answers Athena's question - Facts don't exist. There are only beliefs. — T Clark
Yep. That's the difference between facts and beliefs. Facts cannot turn out the be false. Beliefs can. — Banno
You seem to be riding on your own pompous hobbyhorse. — T Clark
Are toothache's immaterial? That's a confused question. An 'ache' is a sensation - it is something felt - and feelings are states of mind, not things. Minds are immaterial and feelings are states of immaterial minds. But you weren't actually asking, were you? — Bartricks
What the blue blazes are you blithering on about?? — Bartricks
I don't think you need to overthink this. I don't think blind people have lesser minds than sighted. — RogueAI
you are not less of a mind when you're not smelling anything or seeing anything.
Are you disputing this? Isn't the answer obvious? — RogueAI
Each of these examples shows how intelligence could be judged by a particular agenda. — frank
Reasoned reflection will tell you that your mind is immaterial in all manner of ways. You just have to listen to it and not decide in advance that you already know what your mind is. — Bartricks
All material objects are divisible - which you can recognize just by thinking (material objects are extended in space - well, any region of space is capable of infinite division, and thus any and all material objects are capable of infinite division). — Bartricks
Philosophy is about using reasoned reflection to figure out what's true (as opposed to just making stuff up or just believing whatever there's a tradition of believing). — Bartricks
One issue I have with Wittgenstein's claim that meaning is use is that even definitions viewed in terms of essences is, after all, use of a word to stand for a certain idea or object. I don't recall anyone attempting to clarify how Wittgenstein's theory differs in a significant way from essence-based definitions which are, bottom line, also use. — TheMadFool
Er, no. My mind is not a material thing - so it is not located in space. It is not my body. Not my brain, not my hands, not my spine. — Bartricks
There’s no point to disputing poetry. — praxis
This seems indisputable.
....
Are you less of a mind if you're not smelling or seeing anything? That seems easy to answer: no. Do you think the answer is yes? — RogueAI
But I'm attracted to the idea that there is a grounding of the effects in nature that are non-representational in nature, which we can't access. A bit like trying to understand how the brain works by thinking about it.
So I entirely concede that I may be masquerading here, at least in part. — Manuel
Right, so it's a matter of identity. — frank
As one example, the pain or pleasure I might at one moment associate with a given color due to my own idiosyncratic experiences - with this color momentarily leading my thoughts to a certain outcome of affect and, in so governing my thoughts' intentionality, granting this color a momentary meaning to me - will be a fully private occurrence. That the color orange momentarily means putrid to me on grounds that it vividly reminds me of an orange I one ate that was spoiled will be a meaning of the color orange that is fully private to me. — javra
I don't find a tension in these ideas. But I do have a "metaphysical itch", so that may be why. I could imagine a different intelligent species from us being able to cognize the world in a deeper manner, perhaps perceiving more than we could, in some respects. So I don't see a problem with this idea in principle — Manuel
But I imagine Wittgenstein asking, is not ‘rule’ also a word? — Joshs
There is no such thing as a word outside of some particular use; but that is a different claim from saying, with Baker & Hacker, that words belong to a type of use. For a word to be is for a word to be used. Language does not exist external to its use by us in the world.” — Joshs
The writer seems particularly stuck with the idea philosophy is always worried about what foundation it does or does not have. — Antony Nickles
The point is that the extension or range of application of any word is a fiction, continually up for negotiation. What distinguishes the 'mathematical' from the 'ordinary' is the reasonable expectation that, however one's own utterances are interpreted (e.g. as plus or as quus), the consequent discourse will be well behaved in maintaining the distinction between distinct extensions, whatever they 'truly' are. This may or may not depend on those extensions being, like tunes, mutually exclusive. — bongo fury
As I noted earlier, however, Wittgenstein was not a mathematical Platonist, so this could be the cause of some confusion. — Luke
You draw an interesting connection here between mathematics and Platonism. I wonder if this is what Antony means by “mathematical” in the thread title. — Luke
In short, a language does not strictly exist in my head, no. Yet meaning - or, what is intended via symbols - does. — javra
It would be interesting to be able to have knowledge of the actual thing or phenomena that produces these effects in us, that is, what grounds the effects that we perceive as laws of nature or even ordinary perception. — Manuel
There was a time in which this was the aim of science, roughly Descartes' time up until Newton. The Universe was comprehended as a universal machine - like a giant clock - if you can build it, you can understand it. It appears to be our innate way of understanding our given common sense world. — Manuel
Thus science was forced to reduce it aims: from understanding the world to understanding theories of the world. That type of knowledge Descartes and others wanted, would be nice to be able to access. But is beyond our comprehension. — Manuel
But when you go to observe clouds and rocks, don't you think you might be influenced by your worldview? If you saw an indication of intelligence in rocks, wouldn't you speed to explain that away? — frank
The essay we are debating is in Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome. — Antony Nickles
https://www.academia.edu/45638569/Review_of_Stanley_Cavells_Conditions_Handsome_and_UnhandsomePursuing a theme that will be familiar to readers of Cavell's earlier writing, he does not dispute the skeptic's claim that rules lack absolute grounds but laments the skeptic's cure. The cure, associated with Kripke, strips rules of their pretense of resting on an independent reality but then restores a demystified, antifoundationalist version of rules in which they ground themselves not in truth but in consent. Cavell claims that skepticism rejects one justification of conformity to existing rules only to endorse a more sustainable conformity. Skepticism, in this light, encourages conformity to community consensus. This argument about the politics of antifoundationalism should prompt further discussion of the links between liberalism's antifoundationalist update and the ongoing crisis of conformity in US democracy.
So ask a simple question: "what is gravity?", "what is a particle?", "what is magnetism?". The answers given are only the effects we can perceive of the phenomena. As to what these things are, we don't know. — Manuel
In some ways, I think that knowledge is socially constructed and is not absolute. — Jack Cummins
its meaning is unambiguous in the given context and situation. — Cidat
...the idea that our mastery of the use of the word ‘chair’ consists in knowledge of a rule that settles the truth-value of ‘There is a chair’ in every conceivable circumstance is confused... — Baker and Hacker, exegesis of PI 80
Obligatory plug for David Lewis's Convention: either side of the road is an equilibrium, a stable solution to the coordination problem. — Srap Tasmaner