Ted Sider made me. I had little confidence in my analytical and technical skills until I took his Logic for Philosophy class. After that, I had the confidence to take so many math and computer science classes. Eternally grateful to this guy.
Hi! I’d like to leave a constructive criticism: your video came up on my feed and as this is a subject I’m interested in I checked it out. I went to your channel to find out who you are and discovered no information. I stopped the video and won’t watch it now because I will not invest such significant time if I don’t even know who the person is who made it. What credentials do you have? Why should I listen to you? Are you a professor of political philosophy doing this on the side? A knowledgeable amateur? An eccentric genius working from a basement? Introduce yourself and establish some credibility. Whatever your story is, if you tell it well enough it will help grow your audience.
This was good. It's at least gotten me interested in diving deeper into Plato's work. It feels like an appropriate time, all things considered. The video itself was informative and enjoyable. Hopefully you catch a break and the algorithm puts this in front of more faces. Lord knows we could all take inspiration from the overall message.
I'm not so sure if debate over glass being kind of cup is merely werbal. It can be discussion that matters, for example when we only want something in which we can drink soda, we prefer to call glasses cups. But when we want tea, and we are afraid that glass would broke because of heat, we prefer to distinguish glass from cups. This discussion maybe is over words, but is grounded in facts. I don't believe in pure werbal debates.
As someone who’s both taken an abundance of courses in varied subjects over the years and also dabbled in teaching (classroom, online, and on-field), I consider Ted maybe the most gifted and effective instructor I’ve had the privilege of learning from, among a field including some of the most highly regarded faculty in the world. His ability to take otherwise difficult to assimilate material and make it accessible to students, often through analogy and contemporary cultural reference, is unparalleled and refreshing. And he was always generous with his time whether 5-10 mins before/after class or for indeterminate office hours to chat about anything from your objections (which he never took personally - in contrast to occasional experiences with other professors) of a pluralist’s view of #’s of ‘things’ in a spatially/temporally distinct world to the efficacy of using A.I. (no, not that AI) off the bench as 6th man. As sharp, quick, and as personable as they come. And relevance of philosophical/metaphysical inquiry should be obvious to anyone paying even superficial attention in the present world.
Wtf does that even mean? Do you not realise the massive research methodological implications this kind of subject has? If we solve the problem of skepticism surrounding metaphysical realism we immediately optimise how we extract truth from the real world.
Do we trust our little pea brains to come up with any one thing wisely from nothing without the biblical wisdom as a reference from which to take and distort for to claim our own intelligence.
Yes, being that we can know infallibly that our minds are a contingent entity in reality, we can extend concepts from that kind of basic big T Truth through conceptual and functional analysis. You absolutely can NOT do that by starting from the bible as you're starting from an assumption that isn't epistemologically or metaphysically necessary. [P.S. the only reason I'm responding to a 5 year old comment is because this was sorely needed]
Why the fuck should he invite religious ideologues to "open the minds" of students. Ideologues in very nature do the exact opposite due to vested interests. It's pretty obvious how teaching the concepts and subjects that religion attempts to preach wisdom about by themselves without the bias of personality or ideology is objectively better at achieving the goal of "opening the minds" of students than your dumbass suggestion.
First, what you describe falls under the purview of theology, not philosophy or metaphysics. Suggesting analysis of one obliges the same of another other is conflating discreet subjects. Second, tuition payment usually entitles one to choose which courses they take. So a student interested in studying the Bible (or canonical texts of any other equally plausible cultural belief system, e.g. Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam etc) can be met by their enrolling in the appropriate theology course...that is, if you believe humans have free will. If so, the onus is on them (not you or me or any deity). If not, then the original comment/suggestion/objection/complaint is simply subjective emoting that serves no purpose to anyone outside the internal world of the commenter, except perhaps to draw the attention of other’s in hopes of having their existence be acknowledged - in which case, nice work...maybe you’re not a piano key.
Why does only physics tell us what's real? Does blameworthiness reduce to indispensable entries in whatever laws are fundamental to physics? Is teleology inherent in nature? What of the intentionality of consciousness? This is perhaps for another talk but links with the Determinism debate.
He says there's no one single true up and then proceeds to give a one single true meaning for 'up' - only that space isn't absolute but relative to a coordinate system. The forwards direction of time is relative/reduced to increase in entropy? Isotropy doesn't entail that the relativity of coordinate systems isn't real, only relative. The Euclidean Geometry of Newtonian Mechanics can't get your rover to Mars; Einsteinian Mechanics can. They're not equally good descriptions of the world.
"They're not equally good descriptions of the world." Actually, that's one of his major points, but here he's just giving examples of what philosophers say or have said.
Is anybody else here convinced that change is nothing more than or other than replacement by temporal parts over time? Isn't what changes the same thing differently between the times by comparison?
Reasoning lawlike in ratiocination by logical deduction have conclusions not just coincident with nomological necessity but by logical necessity even without any possible world semantics. Solutions to The Problem of Freewill and Determinism don't track your stipulations on the a/theism distinction, as you'd have Leibniz an atheist despite his theory of Pre-Established Harmony as presented in his Theodicy and Monadology.
Really good lecturer. And interesting that he doesn't take positive theories of causation or personal identity (persistence) seriously. When I read Riddles of Existence, it seemed that he was writing from the standpoint of a fanatic of the opposite extreme.
@ChorGodOfChunder What is bad about metaphysics? Or is it just contemporary metaphysics which you have a problem with while there is some other more archaic form which you approve of?
Well, if we start with the distinction of observer-relative and observer-independent classes of facts, metaphysics is fundamental to try to grasp the former with the (cognitive) equipment we happen to have. Denying this is assuming an egocentric worldview, with is peculiar of most scientific disciplines.
