Log in  
Sign up

Play online chess!

Pages:  « Previous 1 2
From	Message
jkg20 17-Nov-07, 04:56	Fallacies Ribbleton, I certainly didn't mean to accuse you of having anything personal against biggie in general, my issue was with your interpretation of his remarks, which I found to be unwarranted. I then gave a somewhat more sympathetic interpretation. That's all. Perhaps the way I expressed myself lacked a little clarity, and in which case, I apologise for the ambiguity. I'm also not suggesting you shouldn't be a moderator, and I'm sure you do valuable work in being one. However, if you accuse someone of having done something in a forum, I'm sure you'll agree that that person has the right within that forum to respond (at least, that seems reasonable). In that spirit: You wrote: "I think you yourself argue fallaciously that if 'possible world theory' implies a view of personal identity against your personal taste it must suggest that at least there is something wrong with it or more strongly that is false statement" Now, that could easily be taken to imply that I have actually presented an argument like this: 1) Possible worlds theory entails a view of personal identity I don't like 2) Therefore possible worlds theory is false I never presented any such argument and challenge you to provide proof that I did, otherwise we will be left thinking that you have completely misunderstood what I did say. An argument I did present, in the thread on proof for god's existence, and which you might have completely misunderstood to be based on 'my personal preference', was this one: 1) The 'many-worlds' view of quantum mechanics entails a view of personal identity as consisting in multiple selves existing for indefinitely small amounts of time, all connected in some way (to be explained by its proponents) 2) There are mental phenomena which require, for their correct analysis, a subject that persists in time for much more than an indefintiely small amount. 3) Consequently, the 'many-worlds' view of quantum mechanics is false. I then said that I had more to say about (2) if any one was interested, and I do - and just to get things started, you can start to think about the experience of seeing a Necker cube shifting back and forth from one perspective to another, and ask yourself how that experience is to be analysed without assuming a subject of experience that endures more than for an instant. However, in any case, not one of the premises of the argument I actually gave mentioned my personal preferences about personal identity, nor implied that I had any such personal preferences. Furthermore, the argument doesn't deal - and I never said it did deal - with 'possible-worlds' theories in general: it is specifically targetted at the 'many-worlds' view of quantum mechanics, which one might reasonably think of as a kind of possible worlds theory but, as I have also clearly expressed elsewhere, it is not the only kind of possible worlds theory. Are you sure you have a grasp of possible worlds theories in general? If you like you can start a thread on that topic and I can do my best to clarify the issues for you (including Kripke's view).
ribbleton 17-Nov-07, 10:15	Schopenhauer and the notion of Being-in-itself The scientific mind protests against idealism by saying, “Surely there was a world, and a greater universe, before living creatures evolved to behold it. Mind is a creation of matter, not vice-versa.” But Schopenhauer points out that even if we agree with this, Berkeley’s argument remains vexingly irrefutable: when we imagine the world existing prior to the evolution of minds, we are covertly presupposing a subject apprehending and categorizing that world. As Schopenhauer puts it: …animals existed before men, fishes before land animals, plants before fishes, and the inorganic before the organic; consequently, the original mass had to go through a long series of changes before the first eye could be opened. And yet the existence of this whole world remains forever dependent on that first eye that opened, were it even that of an insect. For such an eye necessarily brings about knowledge, for which and in which alone the whole world is, and without which it is not even conceivable. Schopenhauer calls this (the equal irrefutability of both scientific naturalism and Berkelean idealism) “an antinomy in our faculty of knowledge.” The only way out of the contradiction, according to Schopenhauer, is to embrace Kant’s doctrine. Time, space, and causality are forms of appearance; they belong only to phenomena, not to things-in-themselves. In other words, Schopenhauer holds that something (a thing-in-itself) exists eternally. This something, however, is non-spatial, non-temporal, and prior to the law of cause and effect (all causal explanations presuppose it).
Pages:  « Previous 1 2

GameKnot: play chess online, monthly chess tournaments, Internet chess league, chess teams, chess clubs, online chess puzzles, free online chess games database and more.