Philosophy Now Forum

Apologies in advance for the lack of rigor and sophistication I'm about to display. Also for verbosity. I just want to be as clear as possible. tl;dr: If you recognize the impossibility of disproving solipsism, then it should be clear that consciousness is not meaningfully physical. It can be argue...

"A" ( consciousness ) must precede "B" ( the thought) if it caused "B". "A "cannot precede "B", ( because if "A" could precede "B" that would mean that you are aware of a thought before you think it ) therefore " A" can...

Status of verbal reports. That sounds like more philosophy than I know. What's the status of verbal reports that the sun rose in the east today? Can you put that question in context for me so I understand what you mean? Are descriptions of this sort (potentially) part of a formal system having Ches...

Impenitent wrote: ↑Thu Jul 27, 2017 12:58 am why the knight moves funny...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKhEw7nD9C4

-Imp

That's got to be one of the funniest skits ever. I also like the dead parrot and Department of Verbal Abuse (I paraphrase).

We cannot develop a syntax in the dark, we need an intended interpretation to guide us. Yes of course. There is always an intended interpretation. That's why we have "nonstandard" models of some of our axiom systems in math. There is an intended interpretation, and the unintended ones. In...

What is there to "get"? Are the majority being "oppressed" by minorities now? Have you ever been a victim of "political correctness" going overboard? I know I haven't. You have your head in the sand. Google 'college speech codes.' Here is one quick example I pulled: Gr...

I am asking, in this thread (if anyone has read this far), for an interpretation of this logical apparatus. For instance, are the objects of the domain predicate-less simples that exist prior to the formation of atomic sentences? How are the predicates of a particular system chosen? Aren't they cho...

What is there to "get"? Are the majority being "oppressed" by minorities now? Have you ever been a victim of "political correctness" going overboard? I know I haven't. You have your head in the sand. Google 'college speech codes.' Here is one quick example I pulled: Gr...

Let's discuss interpretations (yours and mine) of predicate logic, aka quantificational logic. It is the familiar logical language which includes quantifiers (for all x, there exists an x such that - i.e. (x) and E(x)); the logical connectives of sentence logic (not, and, if..then, or); and then the...

Agree with Skip on this. I think I rather ought to stick up for the bullied than for the bullies. Who's bullying who? I thought PC was mostly about treating each other with dignity. When I was in college in the late 1980s there was quite a bit of mean spirited behavior, pecking on minorities, gays ...

It depends on what your professor is requiring of you. Do you have axioms and rules of inference or are less formal proofs allowed? If you are working with only modus ponens (including conditional proof): Assume A (whatever follows from assuming A will create a conditional, If A then....) Assuming ...

I agree with VT (may be first time) - who's getting bullied?

On their TV series Bullshit!, Penn and Teller, two libertarian magicians, comedians, once discussed the topic of speech bans on college campuses. The video can probably be watched for free on You Tube. On this specific topic of politically-correct speech codes that ban free-speech on college campus...

A ⊃ B, B ⊃ C, C ⊃ D /∴ A ⊃ ~(~C v ~D) I've created the table in order to work through this, but I've no idea what steps to take to create a formal proof (using the proof method) to solve this. Any help would be greatly appreciated. A proof is like obscenity (according to a SC Justice) - you know it...

Name one problem analytical philosophy has solved ... A fair point but in general I'd say analytic philosophy is about clarifying or asking questions rather than answering them and that generally results in the original question being discarded. or one useful application of modal logic. There's a c...