So it's all personal opinion? — Reformed Nihilist
Sorry, but your response seems a little over-simplistic to me.
That's fine, but I'm telling you how people actually use the word in conversations. You can choose to ignore that if you want to, and it's no skin off my nose. — Terrapin Station
Also, the idea that community or social standards aren't personal opinion/taste is ridiculous. — Terrapin Station
Either I'm not understanding you or vice versa, because I have no idea where this response is coming from. I know people use the word in conversations. I'm not sure why you bring that up. — Reformed Nihilist
"Gin is bad" is an opinion. "Walking around naked I public is bad" is a cultural standard. Surely there's a distinction between these. — Reformed Nihilist
I think we'd probably agree that when Bill Clinton protested "It depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is, he was being pedantic. We could, however, also note that figuring out what the meaning of "is" is, is basically shorthand for the whole enterprise of metaphysics. — Reformed Nihilist
More the fact that one is normative and the other isn't. — Reformed Nihilist
"Gin is bad" is just as often meant normatively as "walking around naked in public is bad." — Terrapin Station
I have some thoughts on the matter, but I'd like to see what others have to say on the subject. — Reformed Nihilist
I look forward to hear what your ideas are. — Pierre-Normand
Really? If I say "Gin is bad" I wouldn't expect you to stop drinking it. I would assume you interpreted it as being synonymous with "I don't like gin". I wouldn't have the same expectation about the same sort of utterance about public nudity. — Reformed Nihilist
Having said that, I think there's value in general inquiry, and philosophy is often not guided by practical concerns, so I'm not sure that the normal ways of framing discussion work well in all areas of philosophy. — Reformed Nihilist
You might not have that expectation, but some people would. For example, people who supported prohibition for moral reasons.
Likewise, maybe some people wouldn't think "You shouldn't parade around in public naked" via just saying that they think that is bad. — Terrapin Station
But there are clear analogues to degeneracy and to over-extension. — Pierre-Normand
Could you give me a "for instance"? — Reformed Nihilist
I don't think of those physicists as being pedantic. — Reformed Nihilist
So why do we chide Bill Clinton, yet praise Heraclitus, Spinoza, Frege and Russell? — Reformed Nihilist
Yes, I'm sympathetic to that camp, so it looks more like science subsuming elements of philosophy that were previously not available to science, rather than over reach. If for the sake of argument, I took the opposite position, I'm not sure I'd describe it as pedantry. For instance, I think that particle physicists, the notion that a physicist comes up with an interpretation of QM is overreach, as I think interpretation is exactly a philosophers job. I don't think of those physicists as being pedantic. — Reformed Nihilist
But it seems to me that, for instance, the post-Gettier attempts to analyse knowledge as belief + truth + (internal) justification + 'some complicated missing element' is some sort of a degenerative research programme in contemporary epistemology — Pierre-Normand
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