I'm Not Sure What's Going on Here

Here is a link to a post by Thomas Nadelhoffer on his blog Truth to Power. Following the original post is a series of comments by myself and one Patrick S. O'Donnell. I'm not sure what Patrick is doing. I can see that he is doing a lot of name dropping and skipping around the point but I think that he thinks he is to be taken seriously. Take a look at his two sentence post. It looks to me like someone got mad and gave up. If I am wrong here, which wouldn't be the first time, I would really appreciate it if someone could explain to me what it is I am wrong about and who it is that I am making fun of. Specifics would be nice.

I Can't Believe This Stuff

Here is a link to a discussion of the 'impending apocalypse" on Truth to Power. The religious right is absolutely crazy. It used to be funny to me but after reading so much of their mindless, dangerous, and loony crap I am truly frightened. I know a guy who I would consider a fundamentalist christian. He is the nicest guy in the world when you are talking about normal stuff but he is so indoctrinated that he doesn't think for himself when it comes to spiritual matters (that just so happen to affect millions of people). That scares me. Turning off your brain scares me more than anything, I think. This stuff really freaks me out. Take a look at this and this. This is so crazy it doesn't seem real.

Embryonic Stem Cell Research... Duh, Duh, Duuhh

Here is a link to a post, and my comment, on embryonic stem cell research on Nadelhoffer's new blog Truth to Power. Take a look and feel free to express your opinion in comments on my blog. It is a tough issue and to repeat what I said in my comments on Nadelhoffer's blog, I think everyone could use a little less dogmatism with respect to this issue and really every issue.

Ideally Speaking...(new lemming)

A friend and fellow-student of mine, A.P. Taylor, has relaunched his blog "Ideally Speaking..". I believe that Patrick's newish blog will be along the lemming (language, epistemology, metaphysics, mind) lines. Check it out. I will provide a permanent link soon.

Patrick will be leaving for Buffalo soon to begin his PhD studies at SUNY. Good luck Patrick.

Ad Hockery in Eternalism?

For a brief summary of the positions of Temporalism and Eternalism, with respect to propositions, take a look at my previous post . Some eternalists want to give an account of semantic meaning so that under different time constraints the truth value for these ad hoc sentence components can change. I have a hard time taking the eternalist position seriously. I know that temporalism is the minority view but it seems like eternalists want to account for the fact that something in a sentence/proposition changes its truth value over time, they just don't want to say that it is the proposition.

I have another concern about the eternalist position. It seems arbitrary to me that the eternalist claims that there is an intrinsic time indexical in propositions like 'John is a firefighter'. The eternalist claims that the sentence 'John is a firefighter' is incomplete with out the implicit 'John is a firefighter at t*'. It seems that if the eternalist wants to say that there is an intrinsic time in propositions like 'John is a firefighter' then they should think that there is also an intrinsic world. I guess the eternalist would say that there is an intrinsic world, the actual world where the proposition is expressed. But, if we think of the proposition 'John is a firefighter' to be an abstract proposition, could there be an intrinsic world component to the proposition. I hope to have an answer to this question soon. I will email my professor today because I don't think that I can wait until class next week.

Also, I emailed William Lycan last night about a question I had about the metaphysical/conceptual debate. He emailed me back this morning and answered my question. I thought that it was pretty cool that he took the time to email a student that he has never met and who does not attend the university, or any university, that he teaches/taught at. Not to mention he is a professor at UNC-Chapel Hill, my cinderella school for a PhD.

My First Comment!

Well it has only taken a month but I have received my first comment. Here is a link to the comment. Please feel free to reply to my comment or the anonymous commentor's remarks. Comments are definitely welcome so please don't hesitate to flap your gums.

Worldwide Thought Experiment

I saw this link in a post on Piccinini's blog today. While the poll is interesting it does not do a good job of representing the rigor that goes into forming a well conceived philosophical thought experiment. Nevertheless, it is fun to see what other people would do in 'ethical dilemmas'.