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Questions related from David Hirst
This group was started to provide meaningful exchange between serious philosophers and researchers in other scientific fields (I actually managed to write that with a straight face). You'll...
12 December 2010 2,869 43 View
On FB, the good Elliot Bougis - who is of the Theistical stripe - recently remarked most wittily that “glorying in an immense body.... seems to be the gist of naturalism”. Setting aside the...
12 December 2010 349 3 View
04.06.2010 "As an empiricist I continue to think of the conceptual scheme of science as a tool, ultimately, for predicting future experience in the light of past experience. Physical objects...
06 June 2010 6,545 7 View
So, what is "truth" ? Anyone got any ideas ?
03 March 2010 4,080 36 View
[I know we shouldn't really cross-post; though I posted this in the "Bell" thread, I think it's perhaps worth reposting in a new "time and space" topic where we can thrash out the different terms...
01 January 2010 6,126 2 View
Can we - and should we -treat Mind as being primarily a "metaphysical puzzle"? If we do, should our primary domain of investigation be the relation between Mind and other "metaphysical puzzles" -...
01 January 2010 6,275 23 View
The Master of Königsberg famously differentiated between what is given in perception by the senses (the "phenomenon") and the thing-in-itself, the Ding an sich (the "noumenon") – cf....
01 January 2010 6,980 1 View
We need to keep our discussions a little more on-line. Anyone got any suggestions?
12 December 2009 9,179 44 View
The difference between, for example, metaphysics and ethics is the difference between decidiing what "is" the case and deciding what "ought to be" the case. Imagine that John ought to be...
12 December 2009 1,916 87 View
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mysticism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoscience http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudophilosophy
12 December 2009 357 3 View
12 December 2009 4,668 17 View
This group is now a "child" of the Philosophy group. I've opened it to public access as a "seminar room" for more technical discussions of topics in "academic philosophy". The group will be...
12 December 2009 2,058 2 View
Here's a characteristic Shekeris bombshell remark: "the same [that we have no reason for accepting epistemic justification by authority alone] could be said at least about science as an...
12 December 2009 8,223 25 View
Original Topic Title: Does Scientific Naturalism exclude Metaphysics? [Note from NvR: You will see I have grouped this thread discussion with discussions held nearly a year ago on the same...
11 November 2009 9,233 3 View
In the thread on "propositions" on the philosophy group site I remarked that if grammar allows illimitable recombination, it is metaphysically possible to generate an infinite number of sentences...
11 November 2009 2,290 90 View
I'm working on a paper on verbal tense, and at the moment I'm working on a very nice article by Zimmerman : http://fas-philosophy.rutgers.edu/zimmerman/A-Theory.B-Theory.Tense.pdf Like...
11 November 2009 2,307 59 View
What is a proposition? I was reading some Zimmerman, and he gave "a proposition is meant to be something that can be expressed in many different ways. It can be believed by one person and...
11 November 2009 7,174 35 View
Democracy, in its contemporaryform, is the dictatorship of the lowest common denominator. *** I'd suggest we all vote dada - you KNOW it doesn't make sense.
10 October 2009 5,001 88 View
EVERYTHING we do here is dependent on language; this is the sine qua non of all philosophy. In the specific context of a site dedicated to scientific research, what we can offer as philosophers...
10 October 2009 6,142 93 View
What, if any, is the difference between 'believe' and 'believe in'?
09 September 2009 2,210 21 View
Hirst needs help! Can any of you bright chaps help me: is it true to say that the T-sentence disquotational schema - that is, S is T iff p - is insensitive to the internal structure of...
07 July 2009 4,896 12 View
Katherine Hawley has rightly remarked that "analytic metaphysics is in resurgence; there is renewed and vigorous interest in topics such as time, causation, persistence, parthood and possible...
05 May 2009 1,803 100 View
I've started this thread for the sake of completeness (as we've already got physics and chemistry); I've got nothing to say for the moment, but we could - for example - discuss whether structural...
05 May 2009 2,618 7 View
Here's a link to a bloody interesting blog on metaphysics : http://substantialmatters.blogspot.com/
05 May 2009 9,056 2 View
Is it? Can it be? Should it be?
05 May 2009 4,710 34 View
Last night I was musing (as one does) on the compatibility of certain mathematical models of spacetime and the "models of time" we can derive from the temporal structure of natural language, and I...
05 May 2009 7,767 4 View
In the "history of science" group I posted a remark on the apparent parallelism between the "four classical elements" air, water, earth, and fire and the three phases of matter apparent to unaided...
05 May 2009 9,539 0 View
An attempt at giving a seroius, but not too technical, answer to Ven's question on "Epistemology".
03 March 2009 3,905 0 View
A criticism which can possibly be levelled against “relativism” is that, by denying that there are any universal bases for the evaluation of culturally-based accounts of the world, it allows for...
02 February 2009 754 43 View
In the main thread, I remarked that a "logic of opinion" would provide the epistemological (and metaphysical) bases for Orwell's imagined Ingsoc. In the infamous "Ministry of Truth" scenes,...
02 February 2009 4,426 37 View
This is a very long message indeed, and I apologise in advance. But perhaps worth it. The 'scientific' data concerning the specious present allows some interesting speculation; to follow and...
02 February 2009 9,147 2 View
http://publish.uwo.ca/~jbell/New%20lecture%20on%20infinitesimals.pdf
02 February 2009 1,858 45 View
(part two)
02 February 2009 4,720 0 View
If I may quote Roberto : My question is whether there is one single time or many different times. To say the least, internal, psychological time seems to have properties rather different from...
01 January 2009 3,088 10 View
Having mentioned the eminent Professor Tarski, we can perhaps pose a troublesome question: Does the famous "T-schema" i. "Snow is white" is T iff snow is white reduce to ii. "Snow is...
01 January 2009 185 6 View
Natasha's summary marred with some Po-Faced footnotes
01 January 2009 4,945 0 View
Taken to the letter, scientific realism is naïvely, even quaintly, optimistic about the contribution scientific accounts can make to metaphysical speculation. Indeed, while science can have...
12 December 2008 6,712 2 View
I've launched this thread in the hope that we can discuss – if, of course, the gentleman in question is willing - some of the ideas arising from a very interesting paper by Haris. If you...
12 December 2008 9,995 2 View
I know that I'm launching topics like autumn mushrooms at the moment, but if we keep reasonably organised we might be able to attract more comment or speculation... There have already been some...
12 December 2008 8,696 23 View
Ciro - I agree - memory is certainly central to our construction of our intuitive sense of both "space" and "time".
12 December 2008 8,793 4 View
A topic that is so blindingly obvious that we might overlook it... or should I say, "that is so blindingly obvious to philosophers", but then the object of this site is to develop...
12 December 2008 522 36 View
A paper by Haris Shekeris on reductionism...
12 December 2008 9,573 0 View
The object of this thread is to discuss what policies we should promote in the areas of science education and 'popular understanding of science'.
11 November 2008 1,102 14 View
I. Metaphysical naturalism and scientific realism Methodological naturalism – that is, the assumption, for the ends of scientific investigation, that explanations of physical phenomena are only...
11 November 2008 677 4 View
From today's "Guardian" : "It is unfortunate that Richard Dawkins, who is retiring from the Oxford chair in science communication, often, perhaps inadvertently, gave the impression he did not...
11 November 2008 5,403 0 View
