Interesting, but I beg to differ. Physicalism is silent on the truth or falsity of determinism. As far as I can see, an indeterministic world could be physicalist, and a deterministic world could be non-physicalist.
We talk about causality involved in macroscopic events in everyday language...
IMHO a much better, more accurate and more concise definition of determinism is:
The universe is governed by determinism if and only if the state of the universe at time t2 is nomologically necessitated by the state of the universe at time t1.
Why? I don't see this is logically necessary at all.
What does it mean to say that something behaves "mathematically" - mathematics is a tool we use to describe how something behaves, not the other way around. Everything behaves "mathematically" - even indeterministic systems.
Define...
Are you really aware of your "freedom of choice", or could it simply be the case that you are NOT aware of precisely how you decide things (ie you are not aware of the precise mechanism in your brain which leads to your choices) - and you simply interpret this "internal transparency" as "freedom...
intuition : the power or faculty of attaining to direct knowledge or cognition without evident rational thought and inference
prejudice : an (adverse) opinion or leaning formed without just grounds or before sufficient evidence
what is the difference?
The problem that Werg22 faces is that, to...
Interesting observation:
Putnam claims that intension determines extension. In other words, that extension is (philosophically) supervenient on intension. If we agree that "meaning" is some combination of intension and/or extension, then to derive the meaning of a word all we need to do is to...
Hi Lord Ping
Agreed there must be some high degree of correlation between the two worlds in question for the comparison to be relevant. But "trans-world identity" between the two Bills? I think that's a whole different thing, and not necessary at all. Correlation does not entail identity...
Yes, I agree with this - but not limited to human agents. In principle a machine could "recognise" a particular design.
Also agreed - and this reinforces the intuition that "meanings are in the head". The important aspect is what the agent (the human in this case) considers to be the design. If...
sorry, Lord Ping, but I think the conclusion is quite the opposite - whichever ship is the ship of Theseus is thus simply "in the head of Theseus" - nothing at all to do with rigid designators! (whatever in fact a rigid designator is). (note that John agrees in this thread that meanings ARE in...
The problem here : At what stage is the transfer effected?
Let's say we move the ship plank by plank over a period of time.
At what point (ie after how many planks) does ship A stop becoming the ship of Theseus? And at what point (ie after how many planks) does ship B become the ship of...
Excellent, I love this kind of stuff. This example shows how ridiculous it is to think of "identity" as being something objective or special, over and above "what we subjectively define it to be".
The example seems to offer a paradox to some, because many of us will intuitively and naively...
Did I ever say it was an argument?
Let me try to summarise the situation. Your position (intuition if you like) is that the "meaning" of the term "water", as far as Oscar is concerned, is not determined by Oscar - there is something external to Oscar which determines that meaning (this would...
(my emphasis) Interesting. Thus (according to you), the extension of a name gives us the meaning; whereas the intension of all other words gives us the meaning, and intension does NOT determine extension. Now, according to Putnam, intension does indeed determine extension. So whilst on the...
I think we need to take a step back and define intension. In my book intension means "any property or quality connoted by a word, phrase or other symbol. In the case of a word, it is often implied by its definition." This applies to all words, not just to "predicates". A noun such as "water"...
Simple.
If A supervenes on B (in the philosophical sense of supervenience, see Wikipedia) then any change in A entails a change in B (definition of supervenience).
Thus, if we reset B to be the same as it was at a previous time, it follows that A will also be reset.
Let B = the physical...