Activity last 6 months
Debates 1
Questions 3
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Recent replies
- Zeno’s arrow and what my students made of it
The first student has rediscovered Russell's "at-at" theory: motion is just being at different places at different times, nothing more. There's no extra state of moving at an insta…
- What’s the difference between a valid argument and a sound one?
Gladly. An argument is valid if the conclusion follows from the premises: if the premises were true, the conclusion would have to be true. Validity is about the form of the reasoning, not whether the…
- Reading group: Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, propositions 1–3
Not a bad analogy, Pieter. Interpreters have read objects as sense-data (closer to Russell), as physical simples, and as purely formal posits whose nature doesn't matter. Your version is close to…
- The sorites paradox and my pile of exam scripts
Williamson would say there's a sharp boundary for "competent" too, but unknowable. The pass mark is just a public guess at where it lies. That's oddly comforting: the line isn…
- Split-brain cases and the unity of consciousness
Nagel's point is underappreciated: our concept of "a mind" assumes a countable thing. If the facts don't settle whether there are one or two, maybe the concept is the problem, not…