Recent content by Goethe

I think you may have misunderstood the private language argument. The argument uses memory skepticism to show that a private language is unintelligible even to the person for whom it is supposedly private.

Keep in mind that proving that language is public is only one prong of the argument. Proving that language cannot be private is the important part, as far as solipsism is concerned, and this part does not rely on the existence of other people.

Interesting article, but I don't think it stops the application of the private language argument to solipsism. The article rejects the kind of scepticism that solipsism (and the private language argument, possibly) relies on, whereas the private language argument (as it applies to solipsism)...

The reality we perceive may not be the real reality, but saying that they are completely unconnected is a much stronger claim. Given your arguments to the contrary, why do you believe that there is a real world 'out there'?

The private language argument handles this one nicely. In short: there can be no private language, and if solipsism were true, all the language that I, myself, am acquainted with, would be private. So solipsism is false. If you're in doubt as to whether the premise that there can be no private...

I do not think that being less conscious makes us happy, per se. I think being less self-conscious makes us happy. When you're 'in the zone', you're still very conscious -- in fact, you're hyper-engaged and thus hyper-conscious. But you lack cognizance of your consciousness. , Note that I'm...

What is your motive for staying out of the farming profession? And the motive for that? And so on? Keep doing this until you find the metaphysical assumption (we've all got a set of those) on which it is based. Now ask, "What would it be like if everyone lived by this assumption?" Does it...

Looks like you've put some serious thought into this. I don't get this part though: How do you reconcile 'time is without beginning or end' with 'there is no infinite duration'? Are you saying its duration is entirely dependent on our measurement of it? I'm guessing you have/adhere to a...

I knew something was wrong here. Earlier on I said, Of course it eventually goes back to observation, but sometimes (as in mathematics) we stay in 'mental space' so long we seem to be dealing with a different kind of knowledge. My argument was essentially that 'a priori' is a...

see below :)

I mean whatever definition we agree on. I defaulted to the textual example of 'pencil' because the original context didn't seem to imply anything else. I don't think I clearly understand you. Are you saying that things inferred from definition ('a priori') won't be clear in a discussion...

Precisely. The whole point is that once you have a working definition of something, you can infer things based on that definition. The first paragraph doesn't really disrupt this, because in that case 'pencil' means 'a certain amount of graphite'. Same with the example with clouds earlier in...

Now for me a priori is more or less synonymous with 'by definition', because that just seems like a more useful way to apply the phrase. But this caught my interest: My understanding of empiricism is that it refers solely to things which we observe through our senses. But you've related it to...

Of definition. If I play an A minor triad on a piano, you know that the notes I played were A-C-E. You don't have to walk over and look at my fingers because by definition an A minor triad consists of A-C-E. Granted. But we're going on the assumption that you have two and he's bringing you...

Whoops! Replace 'not do' with 'do nothing'. I can 'not' go outside, but I still did something by choosing not to. Insofar as we attribute intentions to people (can of worms I won't open), I've still made a decision and affected the situation.