Audio recording of the Plantinga-Dennett exchange

I am ecstatic this was recorded. Link.

Dennett vs. Plantinga (the minutes)

An anonymous gentleman was kind enough to take some notes during the recent Plantinga/Dennett exchange. It sounds a little disappointing, but I still would have sacrificed my gall-bladder to have been there. Read more here.

Is male-ness a physical property?

Recall my previous discussion of Descartes’ possible version of the replacement argument. Let’s take this premise: The mind and body do not have the same essential properties. And modify it slightly to a specific property (if existence is a property at all, which we will just suppose): Possibly, I exist and my body does not. [...]

Daily Analysis: Rigid Designator

Kripke’s term for an expression that has the same referent in every possibly world. This includes proper names and natural-kinds. Example: “The 44th president of the United States” designates Barack Obama in the actual world, but it does not rigidly designate him because in some possible world John McCain is the 44th President of the [...]

This is too good to pass up

Descartes on the Replacement Argument?

(You can read the context here, but I’m taking the translation from the IEP) [T]here is a great difference between the mind and the body, inasmuch as the body is by its very nature always divisible, while the mind is utterly indivisible. For when I consider the mind, or myself in so far as I [...]

Daily Analysis: Trope

Trope: An unrepeatable, simple property that stands in contrast with a ‘universal’. Tropes do not exemplify universals like particulars which are complex events, but belong to the subject alone. An example would be the basketball skills of Michael Jordan or Beethoven’s musical talent. It should not be confused with the linguistic speech act that carries [...]

More Derridean nonsense

Ok, I don’t know how to turn ‘Derrida’ into an adjective, but how this man can talk so long about nothing is beyond me. Derrida and his minions are enemies of clarity and analysis as Jack makes quite clear in this interview. He will be one of those philosophers that remains a topic of discussion [...]

Plantinga’s Replacement Argument

*Just a friendly warning* I’m going to take a few days (or so) looking at Plantinga’s replacement argument along with related issues (Kripke, van Inwangen). I’ll have something by tomorrow afternoon. Carry on.

Clear thinking on auto-bailouts

There is no reason that American’s should be forced to subsidize losses for a car company we don’t buy from anymore. The alleged “3 million” people that would go jobless from the collapse of the big three need to find productive jobs.