So, what is your approach towards having a discussion with a philosopher that doesn’t think the implication of his position is counterintuitive?
Also, what implications are you willing to accept that most philosophers are not willing to accept?
Whenever this happens, it usually seems to be because there is a more fundamental disagreement regarding principles at work here . For instance, if your opponent bites the bullet on the unintuitive utilitarian implications, then most likely the real issue here is more structural than ethical theory. So what I normally do is take a step back and try to get at the fundamental tenets of my opponents worldview. — Alvin Capello
I also believe that the naive semantic account of truth, i.e. the truth of declarative sentences is dependent upon objects having properties, is the correct view. Therefore, I am forced to conclude that nonexistent objects can really have properties — Alvin Capello
Would you mind giving me an example of a non-existent object having a property? I’m somewhat under-educated on this topic but my initial thought is that fictional entities could have properties. For example, I could make a declarative statement that “Homer Simpson has yellow skin”. Obviously, Homer Simpson doesn’t actually exist as an object but it might seem intuitive to interpret the statement as being true because the term “Homer Simpson” typically denotes the character from the cartoon and that character is portrayed with yellow skin. But, Homer Simpson seems to be a concept rather than an object. What exactly is a non-existent object then? Is there a difference between concepts and objects?
That’s a pretty good approach since you may find that your opponent holds an inconsistent epistemic criteria when he goes about judging other people’s bullet biting. For example, the utilitarian might think that the implications of utilitarianism provide no good reason to reject utilitarianism while also thinking that the implications of Kantian ethics such as the insistence that one ought to never lie even when there’s lives at stake is an undeniable refutation of Kantian ethics. You would want to ask that utilitarian why he is willing to bite the bullet on the utilitarian implications but not the Kantian ones. More educated utilitarians would probably appeal to some deeper axiological viewpoint that morally relevant value can only lie in state of affairs and that only one particular aspect of state of affairs such as valences felt by sentient beings or the facts about preferences of various value bearers and their satisfaction status is relevant to morality. Other utilitarians might not have a good reason to give for thinking that utilitarianism is more plausible than Kantian deontology.
I would say that Homer Simpson and the concept of Homer Simpson are two very different things. For one thing, the concept of Homer Simpson does not have yellow skin, while Homer Simpson himself does have yellow skin. The difference between concepts and objects is this: all concepts are objects, but not all objects are concepts. I'm not a concept, for instance, but I am still an object. — Alvin Capello
In your viewpoint, are there any problems with drawing the distinction between these 2 concepts on the criteria that only objects have a spatiotemporal dimension.
Well, my issue with drawing this distinction is that I think only some objects have a spatiotemporal dimension, many do not.
Since I tend to take an object-oriented approach in my philosophy, I consider “object” to be the most general category. Everything is an object, on my view. — Alvin Capello
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