• Entrenched
    For emotional reasons we embraced now-questionable axioms or inferences.R-13

    That's an odd claim.

    Pluto, for instance, used to be a now-questionable 'planet'. Not because of "emotional reasons" but a convention to call such celestial bodies planets. But in 2006 the term 'planet' was formally defined (which it wasn't previously). Pluto and the like were thus re-defined as 'dwarf-planets'.
  • Entrenched
    few who identify with philosophy as a virtuous pursuit are eager to consciously "lie" to themselves or others.R-13

    To change one's opinion is not to lie.


    bias is increased by the threat of humiliation or loss of status.R-13

    One effect of thought is that it tends to change one's opinion along the way, so I don't believe that bias is increased for a thinker to remain entrenched with his/her old opinions. But if you're a thinker at some authoritarian work place, a doctrinarian school, or group, then you typically risk being humiliated or losing your status. Bertrand knows why:

    Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth -- more than ruin -- more even than death.... Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man. — Bertrand Russell (Why Men Fight, 1916)
  • On Quine's first of his "Two Dogmas"
    But in my view, language (and reasoning) is (ultimately) necessarily circular.numberjohnny5

    That's weird. If language and reasoning would be circular, then words would be meaningless (e.g. 'food' would not refer to edible things in the world but only other words), and all reasoning would be invalid.

    Regarding Quine and analyticity: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/analytic-synthetic/
  • What direction is the world heading in?
    Science is overrated and religion is underestimatedTheMadFool

    So what would be examples of medicine being overrated and prayer underestimated?
  • What direction is the world heading in?
    What's the heading or direction of the world when the distance between its galaxies is expanding?
  • Humes scepticism and Ash'ari Response. Sufficient?
    ... If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: For it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion. — David Hume (Enquiry, 12)

    That's a skeptic view of the content of some books or metaphysical claims, not reality.
  • Entrenched
    Some people change opinion, philosophers even, when truth matters more than the appearance or reputation of being right. Entrenchment in public debates, however, is sociological, a matter of defending positions, without giving them the benefit of doubt, and regardless of whether they're true.
  • What is the difference, if any, between philosophy and religion?
    To believe in something is to believe, for example, that for every effect there must be a cause. But is that ietsism? Or is ietsism to be covertly religious/mystic?
  • What is the difference, if any, between philosophy and religion?
    Religious people refer to the alleged words of some authority, whose existence is unverifiable, whereas philosophers refer to the explanatory power of argument. Science additionally refers to tests or the best current explanations. There is little or no explanatory power in referring to the will or capacity of a god. That's a major difference.
  • This forum should use a like option
    Unsurprisingly likes are wanted by those for whom the resposes of people are more interesting than the matters discussed, e.g. trolls and pop psychologists.
  • What are the objections to the representational theory of mind?

    Yes. In the vein of Searle, who was a student of Austin.
  • What are the objections to the representational theory of mind?

    A humean impression is the old version of sense-data. But sense-data is ad-hoc, it does not really exist.
  • What are the objections to the representational theory of mind?
    Once you assume that perception would produce a percept or sense-datum the object of perception will certainly seem representational, just like a thought, belief or statement. Hence the need to quickly sweep the percept under the rug, it simply disappears and is replaced by a thought.

    But the assumption is false, there exists no such thing as a percept, the idea is completely ad-hoc. See, for exmple, Austin's Sense and Sensibilia (1962) in which he pulls apart various sense-data theories. We can also compare some of the properties that set objects of perception apart from representative thoughts.

    Unlike thoughts and beliefs about objects, perceived objects typically change in a continuous flow as they are being perceived. They're changing in the here and now, and the perceiver can't simply detach what s/he perceives, nor reinterpret it by will power. Moreover, objects of perception don't have the disjoint syntax of language, such as in statements or descriptions.

    It seems fairly clear to me that perception is one counter example to the claim that the mind would be representational.
  • What are the objections to the representational theory of mind?
    since the original percept itself is no longer presentaletheist

    Hold it. Did you not see objects and states of affairs after all but some percept that disappears?
  • What are the objections to the representational theory of mind?
    perceptual judgment, the involuntary (i.e., acritical) representation of the percept in thoughtaletheist
    It is not your judgements that you perceive but objects and states of affairs. Otherwise you would never see the latter, only your own figments of mind, which could then only "represent" eachother.
  • What are the objections to the representational theory of mind?
    If the mind is required or constituitive for beliefs, statements, and perceptions, then it is just too selective and misleading to claim that the mind is representative. Perceptions are not representative, and therefore there is a part of the mind which is not representative. The experience of an object that one perceives does not represent or symbolize some other non-perceptible object; the experience is the presentation of the object that you perceive.
  • Decisions we have to make
    Only A1's death come with a hope.Cavacava

    Don't you mean consolation? Talk of hope or forgiveness seems to already assume a god, yet one may find consolation in a variety of ways: e.g. in knowledge, beauty, melancholy etc.. Religion does not have monopoly on consolation.

    Whence the need to decide whether to blindly believe in god? Priests who exploit people's fear of death should be put in jail, imo.
  • Is everything futile?
    if everything actually is futile, ... then it would be futile to ask "is it all futile?"intrapersona
    So the question is not genuine.
  • Judgment
    Peer pressure, politics etc. might increase the likelihood that people make judgements based on false beliefs (or opportunism regardless of the belief).
  • Inequity
    Inequity is wrong, because that's the meaning of inequity.

    Merry xmas, believers, happy holidays, thinkers :))
  • How can we justify zoos?
    Flying to somewhere in Africa, Central America, Nepal, Siberia, wherever, to drive around, camp, photograph, and so on isn't helping wild animals.Bitter Crank
    We should not selectively look at the flying, driving, and camping when the published films produce acquaintance, knowledge and empathy towards wild animals. If we'd only see Jaws, and other films that exploit our ignorance or selectively show wild animals as monsters, then the situation would be worse for the animals, and there would be little interest to fund organisations who work for animals' rights, preservation and so on. Urban populations would have no clue of the relation between their consumption and the fate of wild animals.
  • How can we justify zoos?
    Nowadays we can see films of the lives of animals in their natural habitat, so the zoo has little reason to capture and lock up animals in cages just to show them to people. The zoo is, however, justified as an institution for education, research, and preservation.
  • Whole is greater than the sum of its parts

    It seems to me that an elementary particle is also a compound of the particle plus some property that it has. Or is that just a property of language imposed on the thing described?

    'all things which have no matter are without qualification essentially unities.' Things with matter are however inescapably matter/form.mcdoodle
    Are there unities without parts?
    The higher order reality has modified the lower order constituent.Wayfarer
    Interesting. So, could an elementary particle exist without having any real properties by itself but getting properties from other things?
  • Whole is greater than the sum of its parts
    Anything which is simple, not compound.Metaphysician Undercover
    What is an example of an existing object which is anything and simple, not compound?
  • Whole is greater than the sum of its parts
    What is an example of an existing object without parts?
  • Why are universals regarded as real things?
    Universals are properties and relations of things. For example, when you identify three things, you may also identify a fourth, such as the sum of the three, or a relation between them which has the shape of a triangle. That's not an approximation of some idea of a perfect triangle but a relation which exists independely of ideas. Its ontological status is that of the things: without three things there is neither their sum nor their relation.
  • Hypocrisy
    We'd vote for a destroyer of the world if it meant more titties and beer prior destruction.
  • Exam question
    Applied logic made more sense to me than symbolic, but they're both formal. Informal logic seems to be a controversial term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informal_logic
  • Can you start philosophy without disproving scepticism?
    Skepticism arises from the dubious assumption that we'd never see the real world, only our own impressions, ideas, or sensed "data". Too many thinkers have been taking that assumption for granted.
  • Exam question
    . . not logical in the sense of formal logic or deductive inference, but rather logical in the wider sense that it is something which can be understood by way of reasoning.Moliere
    What is there to understand, by way of reasoning, in the many unreasonable injustices which partly characterize the human condition?
  • Entailment

    I don't know whether the ability to recognise something requires intuition or insight. To intuit, or see, are modes of perception, and what sets the intentional features of the entailment relation that you intuit might just be the present brute reality of the relation. For example, a sea urchin hardly intuits anything (it has no brain), yet acts as if it would intuit the entailment of present predators (e.g. scoops up gravel to hide).
  • Entailment

    Well, I suppose one could identify entailment (say, as a recognizable pattern, possibility, or state of affairs) regardless of insight on what entails or why. An ability to identify the relation is sufficient.
  • Entailment

    Insight, or rhetorical reason, which precedes the argument that entails. Like a skill that one acquires which enables identification of entailment.
  • Exam question
    Is this some kind of wacky pomo course?Terrapin Station

    Yeah I thought the same, the "ingredients" seem to be there: e.g. an all-encompassing assertion, a lack of argument, the misuse of scientific terminology, and some wilfully constructed absurdity or conundrum in order to make the whole thing appear deep or advanced. The medieval dark ages were probably brighter and intellectually more honest and prosperous.
  • Exam question
    The human condition is partly characterized by hypocrisy, irrational beliefs, and misapplied logic. How could something alogical be a logical entity?
  • Meaning of life
    What do people mean when they say: "what is the meaning of life?" or "life has no meaning."Emptyheady

    They first seem to assume that life should have one primary or all-encompassing meaning, and since there can be no such monstrosity some get stuck asking what that meaning is without ever finding an answer. Others therefore conclude, but incorrectly, that life has no meaning (a conclusion that arises from an incorrect assumption).

    I'd say life consists of uncountable meanings, or varieties of meanings: some are found, others created.
  • What is realism?
    It seems clear that thought about things in a manner of signs and signified is presupposed in representation.

    Yet an overwhelming amount of the things in our environment are not signs, they don't represent something else. We identify trees and pictures whose coloured shapes resemble trees because we have a background capacity to perceive and identify things in our environment and their properties, including differences and resemblances. In this sense resemblance is psychologically more primitive than representation.

    For example, you see what a bundle of coloured shapes on a photograph resembles, but you've got to learn what a traffic sign represents. It seems clear that in order to know what something represents we need more than a capacity for identifying things: we need a symbol system, a language, and thus thought about the thing in a manner of sign and signified.


    (clarified some parts, deleted others)
  • What is realism?
    Here's an example of signs and realism.

    A photograph of Ghandi signifies its object, the man, by resemblance between some of his visual features and some of the visual features of the photo. The photo may also represent the man, or what he stood for. But as a representation the photo is used as a symbol, and in order to represent the man or what he stood for we could substitute the photo with his name without changing the representation relation. From the logical difference between resemblance and representation it follows that if a portrait resembles, then it cannot represent in the same respect.

    For someone who does not know of Ghandi the photo may still signify by resemblance between some of its visual features and visual features of men, whereas its possible use as a representation of Ghandi or what he stood for remains unknown. Unlike what the photo resembles, what it represents does not depend on the photo but on symbolic convention. Someone who has never seen a photo, nor a half-naked man, could arguably still see a symmetric relation between colour patches on the photo and the visual features of the man.
  • Dreaming of Direct Realism
    It's the perception of the photo which is direct, neither more nor less. Likewise, one perceives the light of a distant star directly despite that the star "died" millions of years ago.
  • What is realism?
    You are not adhering to the definitions that I am using, which come from Peirce and are well-established in semiotics, so we are just talking past each other.aletheist
    There is no good reason to exclusively adhere to the terminology of a 19th century theory of signs. It is fairly easy to see that representation is an asymmetric relation whereas resemblance is symmetric. That's what sets portraits apart from representational symbols, e.g. traffic signs or words.

    In particular, you seem to have a very narrow concept of representation. If "the portrait signifies primarily by resemblance," then it represents its object by resemblance--it is an icon.aletheist
    Granted that a portrait can both resemble and represent its object, but if resemblance is the predominant relation which determines how a portrait signifies its object, then in this respect (i.e. as in how it predominantly signifies its object) it cannot represent its object, because representation is asymmetric whereas resemblance is symmetric. The portrait may, of course, represent its object in other respects by way of convention, for instance. *

    Would it make sense to say that the portrait primarily signifies its object symmetrically (by resemblance) and therefore "represents it" (i.e. signifies the object asymmetrically)? I don't think so.

    The weather vane represents (i.e., indicates) the direction of the wind, regardless of whether anyone interprets it as doing so--it is an index.aletheist
    But the question is how, recall. A tumbling dust ball is also connected to the direction of the wind, but that does not make it a representation of it, does it?


    If the photo "presents certain features which are recognizable as the face," then it represents the face--iconically due to the resemblance, and indexically due to the causal process that placed the image on the film. Now, just about every sign has all three aspects--iconic, indexical, and symbolic; but I am focusing on the predominant relation of the sign to its object.aletheist
    I'm also focusing on the predominant relation, but the mere application of semiotic terminology is not an argument for "HOW a particular sign represents its object".

    (*some clarification the day after my original post)