Emil O. W. Kirkegaard blog
Examples: 1. I cannot find my socks. / I couldn’t find my socks. 2. I cannot find a counter-example to the theory. / I couldn’t find a counter-example to the theory. The word “cannot” is usually taken to express impossibility and be somewhat equivalent in meaning with the word “impossible”, thought they cannot be used…
Continue ReadingConsider the phrase in the title in this paragraph: “each has a thumb, followed in order by four fingers: the index (or forefinger), the middle, the third, and the so-called little finger.” (Swartz, Beyond Experience, pp. 204-205) What are the conditions for its correct use? (Correct use is how it is commonly used by fluent…
Continue ReadingFrom Beyond Experience, p. 157: “The term “ things ” here is meant in a very broad, inclusive sense. On this interpretation, “ things ” will include, of course, the most familiar things of all, namely physical objects, but will include as well all sorts of nonphysical things, e.g. minds (if indeed they are nonphysical),…
Continue Reading“Participants in a recent psychological study will probably never a look at mannequins – or their own bodies – in quite the same way again. Before the study, they knew their ar ms belonged to them and synthetic ones didn ’t, simply because seeing is believing. Now they ’re not so sure. Researchers at Car…
Continue ReadingIt seems to me that the formulas: 1. ◊P 2. (∃x)(Fx) and: 3. □P 4. (∀x)(Fx) are quite similar, if we translate the modal propositional ones into PWS. Here is the result: 1*. (∃w)(Pw) 3*. (∀w)(Pw) Translated into a formal-ish english language, they should be read as: 1*. There exists a possible world, w, such…
Continue ReadingJoyce does a rather strange interpretation in The Myth of Morality p. 121. He writes: However, I doubt we even need concede that much. These “conditional reasons” are very shady customers. Take what seems to be a straightforward one mentioned above: one’s reason to save a drowning child if one exists. There are two readings:…
Continue ReadingBecause of their shortity I will replicate them here. Letter 70: “1. After a long space of time I have seen your beloved Pompeii.[1] I was thus brought again face to face with the days of my youth. And it seemed to me that I could still do, nay, had only done a short time…
Continue ReadingI once thought of a bridge scenario. It went like this: There is a bridge. Someone, a man, wants to find out whether it will break down in the future. So he keeps driving his car over it. It doesn’t break. So he rents a larger car which weighs more, but still the bridge does…
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