Comments on: “God” might be great

By: Dhananjay

Dhananjay — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 15:59:17 +0000

There’s no reason to suppose we can’t attach predicates to things to which we have no ontological commitment, fictional or not.

A sentence I take to be true: Phlogiston would explain why things oxidize.

By: Mike Otsuka

Mike Otsuka — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 07:52:38 +0000

Philosophers prove that identical twins can’t possibly exist.

By: Daniel Koffler

Daniel Koffler — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 19:55:39 +0000

I trust you all know what a goy is—- a girl if observed before t, and a boy if perceived after t.

By: ajay

ajay — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 14:58:21 +0000

Partner: “All right then, that one car is identical.”
Chris: (head explodes)

By: Clayton

Clayton — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 14:43:54 +0000

I am one with noen.

By: Clayton

Clayton — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 14:43:28 +0000

You see, for me identical means “Exactly alike; incapable of being perceived as different” This qualitative vs numerical distinction strikes as wrong. If your use of a particular word only leads to misunderstandings then wouldn’t it just be better to use a different word?

My partner and I were driving once and she said “Those two cars are identical”. I said nothing.

Now there is an existential commitment.

By: Crooked Timber » » It looks like I’m an analytic philosopher, after all

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 13:27:30 +0000

[...] I try to deny my nature, but then Chris goes and posts about a conversation in which someone says something silly. And it turns out I used the silly bit [...]

By: Chris Bertram

Chris Bertram — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 07:52:13 +0000

Indeed Shwe – nothing fictional about him either!

By: John Emerson

John Emerson — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 05:46:52 +0000

Oi. And didn’t Heidegger say that no two things can be identical, because if they were, they wouldn’t be two things? Thus, no identity.

Don’t bother to correct me, I don’t care.

By: Phill Hallam-Baker

Phill Hallam-Baker — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 01:43:04 +0000

It works better with the correct punctuation:

God is Not! – GREAT!

By: noen

noen — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 00:30:23 +0000

You see, for me identical means “Exactly alike; incapable of being perceived as different” This qualitative vs numerical distinction strikes as wrong. If your use of a particular word only leads to misunderstandings then wouldn’t it just be better to use a different word?

My partner and I were driving once and she said “Those two cars are identical”. I said nothing.

Now there is an existential commitment.

By: shwe

shwe — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 00:20:50 +0000

But God was great—when he wore the no. 9 shirt for us anyway…

By: Dave Maier

Dave Maier — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 00:16:05 +0000

See, Chris, that’s where we differ. One perfectly good meaning of “identical” is “qualitatively identical”; there’s no reason to think she meant “numerically identical,” or even that she needed to qualify her statement in order to disambiguate. So I wouldn’t have felt a desire to object at all. Does that mean that (although still a pedant – I did, after all, know what you meant!) I’m not an analytic philosopher?

On the other hand, I do agree that the original conversation was funny.

By: Chris Bertram

Chris Bertram — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 23:12:19 +0000

Um no, David, if you think that what I was doing. I am an analytic philosopher and, yes, I think that conversation was funny, and I’m aware that I sometimes say similar things, and think it’s kind of nice (and slightly odd) that we do sometimes talk like that.

My partner and I were driving once and she said “Those two cars are identical”. I said nothing. She then said, “Go on, you wanted to object, didn’t you?” She was right.

Get yourself a copy of Anne Fine’s Taking the Devil’s Advice, and chill out a bit.

By: david

david — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 22:59:37 +0000

I think we all can agree that the merit of an academic field is best evaluated on the basis of the unfunny jokes people make to fill the empty space in a conversation. This is kind of like how you can evaluate whether someone is a total douchebag on the basis of whether he uses a public forum to make unfunny jokes at the expense of other people.