Comments

  • Best Arguments for Physicalism
    I think discussing the claim that the next moment supervenes upon this moment could branch in a lot of directions. It doesn't make sense at face value, I agree. But I think you can make some sense of it. In terms of A properties supervening on B properties, there's probably a wiggle room for calling objects zeroth order properties.fdrake

    There's a wiggle room there too I think. The type of ordering between moments is like "less than or equal to", so a reflexive, transitive and asymmetric relation. So presumably any collection of property classes with a supervenience relation (which is comprehensible), if that supervenience relation is reflexive, transitive and asymmetric, is an example of a supervenience relation which is precisely the type of order between moments.

    An example of that would be { biological (supervenes on) chemical (supervenes on) physical }. That's reflexive - no biological changes without biological changes. Asymmetric - every element has a unique predecessor. And transitive - the biological also supervenes upon the physical.

    To be sure, it's possible there are supervenience relations which don't behave like orders, but that is one which does behave like an order.

    So if you wanted to make the claim that {moment 1 (supervenes on) moment 2 (supervenes on) moment 3}, it's the same order relation as {biological (supervenes on) chemical (supervenes on) physical}. So it can't be disqualified on that basis alone.

    Another rejoinder would be that "moments aren't properties", but you can modify the sequence to explicitly make them properties:

    {properties at moment 1 (supervenes on) properties at moment 2 (supervenes on) properties at moment 3}

    Which seems to parry that.

    And as for supervenience changes necessarily being causal? The supervenience relation is reflexive. You get no changes in type A properties without changes in A type properties, but a given change of an A type property is identical with that change, not a cause of that change.

    There might be an angle of criticism regarding the sense of possibility. What are the "possible worlds" for moments which the modal necessity of supervenience would be tested upon? Something I'm still pondering.
    fdrake


    I have had many thoughts on this, and it seems to come down to how we want to parse a logic of time.

    I want to say that the ordered set of events does not rely upon supervenience in ordering those events. Further, in order for a supervenience relationship to hold then there are usually two kinds at work -- the mental supervenes upon the physical, the chemical supervenes upon the physical. What we'd have to do for moments is ensure that the supervenience relationship is between two kinds which still hold.

    I thought about the difference between the A-series and the B-series of time and how, perhaps, the A-series could be claimed to supervene upon the B-series, and also that this would be a kind of support for physicalism. But how that maps -- I'm not sure.

    But I think what I'd say is that the events in the moment defined from 1200 to 1201 do not map in a supervenient relationship to the events in the moment defined from 1201 to 1202. Supposing the same indexical reference then the events could be ordered as before and after, but if moment 1 is the A-properties across all of existence and moment 2 is the B-properties then it seems fairly obvious that if something changes at moment 1 that does not necessitate a change in moment 2, and also it's worth noting that because of the indexical being the same these are the same "kind" of time.

    But that's about as far as I've been able to take it in a day. So I think where I'm still at is that the ordering relationship between moments in the same set of moments will not have supervenient relationships to one another, but something like "is before" on the same index.

    (EDIT: Though it's worth noting that the sets which are within a moment could have supervenient relationships to one another or also to future versions of the same set. It's only the moments themselves, as an object with properties, that I think do not supervene)
  • Best Arguments for Physicalism
    I think we can always resort to "I don't know" or "I am uncertain" or some other sort of negation while simultaneously admitting our strongest beliefs or the ones we think most likely or best supported.

    So the mind-body problem can be made to cohere with physicalism, but what is a persuasive argument such that those who disagree with physicalism will feel the need to respond?
  • Best Arguments for Physicalism
    I agree the ability to imagine pictures in one's mind is not an exception to physicalism.

    It's the "I don't have any idea how it's done" part that raises doubts. Imagining can be made to cohere with physicalism, but coherence isn't exactly persuasive to anyone who disagrees with physicalism. So is it a good argument for physicalism?
  • Best Arguments for Physicalism
    No catch -- just self report. Some people report not being able to imagine things. Aldous Huxley mentions it in his The Doors of Perception -- that mescaline enabled him to understand what people were saying when they said that they imagined things.
  • Best Arguments for Physicalism
    It'd be interesting if there was some causal correlate to this, and other, abilities or tendencies, wouldn't it?

    That might constitute a argument for physicalism -- but to establish supervenience it'd have to be universal (or, for science, pretty universal-ish looking), and we're just too ignorant at this point to be able to make that inference with respect to human being.
  • Best Arguments for Physicalism
    I, personally, can do this -- but not everyone can, though they understand the words.
  • Best Arguments for Physicalism
    Plate class macroscopic properties supervene on chemical structure level properties.fdrake

    Right, that's how I understand supervenience. "The plate" is the object with A-level properties, and "Chemical structure", including relative position, is the set of objects with B-level properties.

    I guess strictly speaking all the events at moment 12:00 could supervene on the set of events at 11:59. If you think of classes of events and objects as properties of the stratum of events and objects which exist at a moment, you would get collections at 12:00 only changing if collections at 11:59 had changed. So assuming the collections are properties, I think that follows.

    But there is something a bit iffy in taking those properties to be extensional? As in, the macroscopic properties of the plate seem specified by understanding a (defining?) intension toward it as a macroscopic object; manipulability, colour, texture... On the level of configurations of atoms and structure. Whereas the "structure" of a moment is just that it is an index.
    fdrake

    ... Yeah, nevermind. Moments do not supervene upon moments. I was sort of thinking that one might work out causation this way, but then the more I thought about it the less sense I could make of it. Causes are events which preceed and necessitate effects -- themselves also events. Perhaps some two-level structure within events could have supervenience, like wars supervening upon soldiers, but there aren't two levels between moments -- they're at the same logical plane, and the before-after structure is an ordering of events to an index rather than a two-level structure.

    ... which is still too general to make a decision either way about physicalism. :D
  • Best Arguments for Physicalism
    This is mostly rambling.fdrake

    :D -- that's when we're digging into the good stuff, in terms of a conversation at least.

    Do you think you can articulate a physicalism without a cause concept?

    I gave it a thought and I can't do so -- but I can imagine the possibility.

    There's an interstice between the above ambiguity and the supervenience discussion we're having. Supervenience isn't explicitly causal, is it. It's about necessary changes. Perhaps that could occur with a necessary correlation rather than a cause.

    As an example, if someone has binge eating disorder, that could cause diabetes and damage to their teeth. Assuming that the only thing that influences that person's diabetes and teeth damage is the binge eating disorder, then you would have no diabetes changes without teeth damage changes, and vice versa [two supervenience relations], but no causal relationship between diabetes and tooth damage for that person.

    Those two phenomena have a common cause as the stipulated only influence on their behaviour, though. If you lived in a world where you haven't seen the common cause [the binge eating disorder], you could still perhaps see that that person's tooth damage changed only when their diabetes changed. So those two would still have an establish-able supervenience relationship without establishing a causal intermediary.
    fdrake

    I think it's interesting to introduce a time-dimension to ideas of supervenience -- the A-level and the B-level can be differentiated time-wise (and note how "time-wise" can mean 1 second, 1 minute, 2 hours, etc.) -- but my understanding of A-level and B-level supervenience is more with respect to objects I think? Moving a plate also moves the number of atoms it's comprised of (though surely at least one atom of silicon or calcium carbonate we had considered "the plate" also rubs off onto our palm? ... the oddity of attempting to use scientific statements in philosophy...) -- but does a moment supervene on the next moment? Maybe, but it seems different. (also I must admit to still struggling with supervenience)
  • Best Arguments for Physicalism
    I wouldn't commit to that statement. It could be both a way of thinking and a thing in the world.

    Though I think if causation is real it would be a relation rather than a thing, if I'm going to be picky.
  • Best Arguments for Physicalism
    I'm not sure I understand this. How is science supposed to work if we can't count on past observations to tell us anything about the future? We've been testing Newton's laws for centuries, but can we accept them now as, in some imperfect way, describing how the world works and will work in the future? We can't if Hume is right (and then he has the whole part about burning all the books that claimed to have knowledge based on past observations, which I did think was a good joke on his part).Count Timothy von Icarus

    Short version: Not only can we count on past observations, we can't not think in terms of causation by our very nature.


    Quote from Hume:

    Should it here be asked me, whether I sincerely assent to this argument, which I seem to take such pains to inculcate, and whether I be really one of those sceptics, who hold that all is uncertain, and that our judgment is not in any thing possest of any measures of truth and falshood; I should reply, that this question is entirely superfluous, and that neither I, nor any other person was ever sincerely and constantly of that opinion. Nature, by an absolute and uncontroulable necessity has determined us to judge as well as to breathe and feel; nor can we any more forbear viewing certain objects in a stronger and fuller light, upon account of their customary connexion with a present impression, than we can hinder ourselves from thinking as long, as we are awake, or seeing the surrounding bodies, when we turn our eyes towards them in broad sunshine. Whoever has taken the pains to refute the cavils of this total scepticism, has really disputed without an antagonist, and endeavoured by arguments to establish a faculty, which nature has antecedently implanted in the mind, and rendered unavoidable.

    But any more would just totally derail the thread, I think.

    Popper is worth bringing up in relation to the topic of physicalism because that's another philosophical position which would divorce metaphysics from science.

    You are correct. I can't think of the right term for it. But I can frame it in a question to Hume: "what would it look like to observe causation?" There are all sorts of complex, nuanced issues with causation that have cropped up since Hume's day, but let's ignore those and just focus on billiard balls bouncing or dominoes falling or what have you. When we see one domino topple another, Hume says we aren't seeing cause. But what conceivable observation would qualify as "observing cause" in those cases?

    It seems to me that, if one domino hitting another really does cause the second domino to fall, what we see is exactly what cause might look like.
    Count Timothy von Icarus

    I think I'd say that I see a domino hitting another domino, and that is real -- it's the bit when we start saying cause that gets funny.

    But, also, since we've agreed causation doesn't support physicalism, I think I'd say this is worthy of another thread. Causation has been popping up.
  • Best Arguments for Physicalism
    I don't think science needs to claim that what appear to be the invariances of nature must of necessity forever remain invariant.Janus
    I agree -- I don't think scientists are prone to claim this, or that it's necessary for scientific knowledge.

    As far as science knows they have up until now remained invariant, so it can proceed on the basis of "if such and such law remains invariant, we can expect to observe this and that or whatever".

    Even if the laws remained the same forever and ever it's always the case that there could be some other intervening cause or a conjunction of causes that's unknown and grouped under a single name to the effect.

    While I eschew falsificationism I think Popper captured something in positing it as a criteria for science which is that while we have some good beliefs what makes them scientific is that they can be defeated by evidence rather than supported by evidence -- there's always the possibility of finding something later which undermines our theory. So rather than assuming that laws are invariant I think the more common assumption is that they are good enough for now until someone comes along and points out where we messed up, and on and on the scientific project will go.
  • Best Arguments for Physicalism
    I agree with all that, particularly that cause alone cannot act as support for physicalism.Count Timothy von Icarus

    Cool.


    The question of science re Hume as a whole is sort of interesting, as his attack on induction would seem to cut the legs out from underneath the entire scientific project.

    Another way to read him is to say that if both Hume is right and science works, then science must not proceed by induction.

    One of the things I've considered about Hume's position on cause is that it seems to be somewhat guilty of begging the question. If one billiard ball really does cause another to move, then watching them collide is observing cause. His position on cause then ends up being heavily reliant on his position on induction holding up.

    I don't think he's guilty of begging the question, though yes I think that his position on skepticism follows from previous positions in the book -- he doesn't start with skepticism but ends the first part of his treatise with it.

    But what vindicates him is that we do, in fact, change our beliefs about causation as we learn more, especially in the sciences. The overturning and re-overturning of belief gets along with his epistemology, at least insofar that science has anything to say about causation.
  • Best Arguments for Physicalism


    Notice the difference between "smoking causes cancer" and "The assassination of Franz Ferdinand caused World War I" What is the same between these such that we should say that they're both using "causation"?

    There's a difference between making a distinction between correlation and causation, which I agree with, and making the metaphysical case for the reality of causation. One is a bit of scientific pedagogy that points out that it's too easy to see patterns so make sure you get a good one (and what a good one is depends upon the particular science, experiment, task). The other is the philosophy of metaphysics. I think that it's a good thing to look at science in thinking of metaphysics, but we shouldn't assume they are one and the same. We'd need some basis of judgment to go from science to metaphysics.

    Hume's argument regarding causation should be understood to put it in the place of custom and habit as opposed to saying we cannot use it. It's not that we cannot use causation -- as a human we have no choice but to think this way. It's just not a demonstrative science where the rules are certain and infallible. Rather we are accustomed to believe in causation, but our fallibility makes this an uncertainty. Further the only means which we have to correct belief is the same means we had in forming the belief -- an appeal to reason or the senses. But since our reasoning is fallible even this correction can be incorrect, and so we are forced to concede that cause -- being a non-demonstrative science, but a case of probabilistic reasoning -- is a habit of thought that cannot be justified to the level of necessity we are habituated to think it has.

    Also I'll reiterate the point that even if we grant causation as a metaphysical reality that this won't secure physicalism given the Kantian frame for causation -- if causation is necessary and universal then that could be seen as a reason to believe in Transcendental Idealism.
  • Best Arguments for Physicalism
    Read the words of Hume and awake from your slumbers! You have nothing to lose but your chains! :D

    Supposing science uses cause, that does not then in turn mean that causation is real. Further if cause is real then that could even be read as a strike against physicalism given the Transcendental Idealist interpretation of causation -- even if cause is real it could be that physicalism is false.
  • Best Arguments for Physicalism
    Curious. I'd taken reductionism within the sciences as granted - that physicalism would consider all the sciences variations on physics; after all, the crux of physicalism is that everything is just physics.Banno

    I think that it's the generally desired path, but that in terms of science texts that relationship is still being worked out. Not that it's an unreasonable belief that they cohere, even -- but there's no deduction of natural selection from physics, at least, so we'd have to specify this coherence in spelling out a physicalism.

    But you perhaps can't derive society behaviour from atom behaviour. Even though you can argue persuasively that every societal change must be associated to a change in the chemical constituents of entities within that society... And if no constituents changed there could have been no societal change. That's an absence of a "bridge law" reduction, but within the scope of a supervenience physicalism.fdrake

    Nice. That's very clear.
  • Best Arguments for Physicalism
    Yes, it's a matter of perspective—I see it more as a case of those being better understand as physical, material or natural processes than as being "reduced to explained away" by that understanding. It doesn't seem to me that anything important is being lost or diminished by thinking that way.Janus

    I agree nothing is lost. Though I want to highlight the possibility of eliminative materialism. This is where the use of texts will become a little tricky, and controversial: if we were to set up a gradient between positions from the eliminative materialist to the non-reductive physicalist, what does the eliminative materialist eliminate? My thought is the non-reductive physicalist would accept at least some anthropology as worthy of ontological thought.
  • Best Arguments for Physicalism
    That was a hesitation for myself as well, so upon understanding that we're including those (and, I'm guessing, others like it) that works as a place to begin. There's a rich body of texts which serve as examples, and it's not like they're arbitrarily chosen -- generally if we're a physicalist we'll think that those texts are the most likely to be true, or that they're the best descriptions we have right now, or something like that.

    Perhaps physicalism is the belief that these texts not only can, but should serve as a basis for metaphysical theses.
  • Best Arguments for Physicalism
    It's pretty clear isn't it? Evolutionary biology replaced the Biblical creation mythology, but it also elbowed aside a great deal of philosophy which had become attached to it as part of the cultural milieu. So it seems obvious to anyone here that mind evolves as part of the same overall process through which everything else evolves. And it's then easy to take the step that the human mind is a product of evolutionary processes in just the same way as are claws and teeth. Easy! What could be wrong with that? (That's why I'm an advocate of 'the argument from reason', although it's about as popular on this forum as a parachute in a submarine.)Wayfarer

    Oh, no, I wouldn't say it's clear. It seems to me that there are materialisms, even though there's a theme that runs through them. So instead of evolutionary biology replacing Biblical mythology we could say that the industrial revolution enabled human beings to recognize economic relationships in all things be it the church, state, or work -- just to contrast the two materialisms that I'm thinking through here.

    With respect to the mind-body problem what makes it unclear is what that reduction is between, I think. It's not only hard to specify the relationship, it's even hard to specify what the relationship is between. Further we have a temptation to rely upon our own experiences when thinking about minds, but this has been shown repeatedly to be false, so on top of the ambiguity there is our own weakness in thinking through difficult problems that makes it a little unclear, at least.

    Though if the theme holds that might be the beginnings to some clarity.
  • Best Arguments for Physicalism
    the idea is that the Universe was not planned or intentionally created and that mind emerged much later in the pictureJanus

    That seems to me to be a uniting theme on materialism -- something, be it qualia, intentionality, mind, or spiritual things, is somehow reduced to or explained away as a physical, material, or natural process of things. (I'd include supervenience as a kind of reduction, so I mean that term broadly)
  • Best Arguments for Physicalism
    No worries, it's a weird idea to wrap your head around.

    The economic form was different then so reality was different then.

    The part that gets weird is before humanity, if you want to think of this in a common-sense way. For Marx I'd say that the dialectic plays out in nature as well, or at least this what I think is consistent in reading him. The economic is invoked because of our species-being.

    The notion of a species-being is something which I think separates Darwin from Marx, though they also have some similar parallels. But come to think of the titular question Darwin is a good justification for materialism, I think: what was formally thought to have a spiritual force was reduced to the mechanisms of nature.
  • Best Arguments for Physicalism
    This notion of the mind not have effects, of the spiritual being reduced to cash-exchanges -- that's what makes this a kind of materialism, I think. Marx wants to reduce these things to the economic form, too.
  • Best Arguments for Physicalism
    Or the other way to read it would be more Marxist -- that you moving to Alaska to be a hunter-gatherer changes nothing about the economic form that allowed you to move to Alaska to become a hunter-gatherer which continues on.
  • Best Arguments for Physicalism
    Nope. Reality changed, but that's not a lift off from reality.
  • Best Arguments for Physicalism
    The material is the social, and the social is the economic. So the material is the economic. Whether you conceive of that like Marx does or whether you conceive of it like USians do that's the core idea I'm putting forward. It makes sense as a better priority for the real because it cannot be ignored in the same way that the mind-body problem can.
  • Best Arguments for Physicalism
    I think a little more than that. Not only that it has multiple meanings, but that this meaning is better than the one set out by the mind-body problem, which is basically intractable from my sights. I don't think there's a good argument to be had for materialism if you begin with the mind-body problem.
  • Best Arguments for Physicalism
    Ehhh... not quite. Rather that materialism can be defined by more than the mind-body problem, as can philosophy. Marx was, after all, a philosopher.
  • Best Arguments for Physicalism
    It only has a meaning within a context or a background of some sort. One context is the mind-body problem, and there the contrast is with mind, where the material is associated with the body. In Marx the material is dialectical, though different readings of Marx will emphasize different aspects. The reading I'm putting forward here is the one which reads Marx as a Base-Superstructure theorist such that the economy forms the base for all the social forms that we see. It's only because we're typing on computers which are produced by an economy that this discussion can take place -- it's by having jobs and paying bills and participating in the economic form that we are able to have a philosophical conversation at all, and so it takes the priority of the real. It's these visceral sorts of appeals that make Marx's idea more defensible than variants based upon the mind-body problem; epiphenomenalism is easy to consider from afar, but I've got bills to pay and a job to do, and that's real regardless.

    But others would say that this reality is not material, which is why I think you need Marx to call this a kind of materialism.
  • Best Arguments for Physicalism
    Mkay. Focus on the big-picture idea then. "dialectical materialism" because the main perspective thus far has been from the mind-body problem, and I'm attempting to point out that we can think of "materialism" in terms aside from the mind-body problem, such as the terms Marx presents. He's pretty much as die-hard materialist as you can be, but the problem of consciousness is not one for him.
  • Best Arguments for Physicalism
    Between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.
  • Best Arguments for Physicalism
    The big-picture idea is that the material is the social world we inhabit. So, given that this is a materialism, no immaterial. "dialectical" because the idea that the social world is the economy is Marx's, and so credit where due.
  • Best Arguments for Physicalism
    I think it's easier to defend a version of "dialectical materialism" over "physicalism" -- the physical is the social space we inhabit. We can speculate about the nature of mind and matter but what enables us to live our lives, the economy, is the material reality which these speculations do not touch.

    According to this belief we're embedded in an economy, and that economy is material, and that it takes priority to the mind-body problem in determining what's real.
  • The Necessity of Genetic Components in Personal Identity
    Started a thread I started reading today with a link to this Anscomb paper titled Causality and Determination

    What's your take?
  • The Necessity of Genetic Components in Personal Identity
    Ok. So we have an end to this part of the discussion?Banno

    Yup.

    Miracles really are true, we managed to close a thread of thought.

    Relating this back to the topic, If someone is identical to their genetics, then (arguably) they are neceisarrily identical to their genetics.

    If.

    The same answer the Spartans gave Athens
    Banno

    What say you @schopenhauer1?

    I'm wondering if the premises from causation could act as a kind of support for the implication.
  • The Necessity of Genetic Components in Personal Identity
    It is very unlikely to be pure H2O.Janus

    Yes, I agree.

    And normally I wouldn't bother to make a distinction.

    But then there's the part of me that thinks "Well, I know this is persnickity, but if we're talking about necessity..."

    You could make an argument that because water commonly contains all sorts of solutes and is yet still referred to as "water" that 'water' is therefore not equivalent to H2O. The truth or falsity of such an argument would depend on perspective, though, so perhaps there is no unequivocal fact of the matter there.Janus

    :D That is the argument I'm making, basically, with the acid example, although it has a stronger rhetorical force because we have a different name for it. I'm wondering if it's just too silly. With acid we have a name that differentiates it so the percent composition ought not matter even though most of the molecules aren't H3O but H2O, but then that's exactly it -- a reference for "H2O" that is not water..

    But then it seems a bit too clever. It's not like I don't understand what people mean by these terms even though these distinctions can be brought up.

    But now we find that water is H₂O, and we decide to only call things "water" if they have the atomic structure H₂O. So we decide that "water = H₂O" is true, and add that ☐water = H₂O. In doing this we remove access to those possible worlds in which water is not H₂O, effectively pruning the tree of possible worlds.

    But only if.

    So I don't see a problem with your syllogism as such; it's just that if we take water = H₂O, the second premise is false, and if not, it isn't.
    Banno

    Actually this is making more sense. It's not a reductio -- it's just that you can flip the truth-values depending upon what you believe. And actually the conclusion makes a good deal of sense if we accept premise 2 -- it's basically just making a distinction between ways of using "water" and "H2O", and as long as we understand these distinctions together we can continue to refer to the same individual.

    All good questions. I think we are getting into accessibility relations. So in our natural language we would like to say that it's possible that water is not H₂O, and hence in some possible worlds water is not H₂O, and this does not seem outlandish. We can picture these possible worlds as related to the actual world.Banno

    Right, that's basically what I mean.
  • The Necessity of Genetic Components in Personal Identity
    Well, the contention is that if water = H₂O then ☐water =H₂O.Banno

    With the lectern this makes a lot of sense to me because I can't honestly think of how an individual under discussion could possibly be made of ice from the beginning of time, or other outlandish predicates -- it would be like a zygote turning into a bus through the process of birth, just absolutely not on my radar as a possibility though it is a possible sentence. But with the case of water I get hesitant because it's a kind, and because we're also equating it to the chemical composition. On one hand I know of many classifications of water in the technical sense, but on the other I know we don't identify water by these technical classifications -- it's not like I detect that the liquid has two hydrogens and one oxygen, but rather, I see the clear odorless liquid coming out of the faucet and presume it's H₂O

    In addition I think that it's still possible, right now, for water to not be H₂O, which gets into the silly syllogism I put up yesterday. But this is in a forward-looking sense, and not by fiat -- I'm thinking "Scientific knowledge is always provisional, and so it is possible for water to not be H₂O" -- but this may be the technical, scientific side that I'm trying to avoid falling into in thinking about the identity of objects from a philosophical perspective. Does it matter that scientists might change the classification later on? Pluto was recently reclassified, but I don't believe that Pluto changed -- just our categories did. So perhaps the categorization isn't as important because right now we treat H₂O as water and water as H₂O in an extensionally equivalent manner.

    But my thought is that the scientist does not treat H₂O in an extensionally equivalent manner. A beaker of 1 M Hydrochloric acid is comprised primarily of H₂O molecules, and in keeping track of the acid-base reaction you'd definitely refer to H₂O, but you would not call the beaker water. This strikes me as a better case than the others, but let me know what you think.

    I wouldn't characterise what you said as a misuse. There is a difference in sense between "water" and "H₂O". John can believe that liquid water is wet but not that liquid H₂O is wet... Or protest against those evil moguls who put dihydrogen monoxide in his drinking water.Banno

    True. Could there not also be a difference in reference?

    Although I don't know how I'd demonstrate such a thing. Sort of like @Ludwig V pointing out how what someone really means is entirely obscure.
  • The Necessity of Genetic Components in Personal Identity
    Heh. I'd say I'm confused and trying to figure things out. :D But thank you for the vote of confidence.

    The advantage of possible world semantics is that it provides a way of talking about counterfactuals that we know to be consistent. It is important to note that possible world semantics is extensional. There will be intensional word uses not captured by an extensional system.

    Superman is Clark Kent, and extensionally Superman sometimes wears glasses - when he is dressed as Clark Kent.

    A glass of pure H₂O just is a glass of pure water, and an impure glass of water just is an impure glass of H₂O. The lone water molecule floating through space is not wet. Moliere, you are drawing out intensional differences, and so far as they go that is fine, but extensionally these differences are simply dropped. ↪Janus already made this point. B ut I can see no reason to supose that there are not free individual water molecules.
    Banno

    Cool, so I'm misusing "extension" then -- though if it can be shown that "H₂O" and "water" have different extensions then you'd accept that they are different individuals?

    Moliere, ice is also water, but not wet.Banno

    :D -- good point. I retract using "...is wet" as a basis for differentiating H₂O from water.
  • The Necessity of Genetic Components in Personal Identity
    I think there's been some wires crossed as I don't understand whats being implied here.Apustimelogist

    I was thinking that:

    I think the concept of idealization always strengthens this kind of direction you are going in since at the very least it questions or complicates the idea that people are actually referring to what they say they are referring to when they use particular terms or phrases.Apustimelogist

    Meant I should reconsider some things because I think people are actually referring to what they say they are referring to. The difference between "water" and "H2O", in a technical sense, seems to depend on this. If what people really mean by "water" is "H2O" then I have no case at all.
  • The Necessity of Genetic Components in Personal Identity
    Hah. OK I did use "lone molecule of water" though.