Comments on: Incoherence

By: Don’t Reject your Experience - Pete Michaud

Don’t Reject your Experience - Pete Michaud — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 13:23:03 +0000

[...] falsified before being ruled out. If it’s not falsifiable, then you should reject it as incoherent. If you want more like this, you should sign up for my updates. If you know someone who would [...]

By: Pete

Pete — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 20:26:30 +0000

I actually had this same conversation with my wife. I stand by what I wrote:

-A 3in chair is actually an object that resembles a full sized chair, but is not a chair itself. It’s a model of a chair.
-A paper chair (I’m guessing you mean one that would collapse if I put weight on it) is also a model.
-A chair’s upside-down suspension is a fact about its environment, not a fact about the chair itself. I guess you could argue that it’s coherent if you add “right now,” i.e.: I have a chair that cannot be sat on, right now.
-Spikes and bombs also are facts about the chair’s environment, and it’s possible (though not desirable) to sit on either. You might be spiked or exploded when you sit, but sitting is possible.

A chair IS something we sit on: that’s a necessary part of the definition. It’s not sufficient to define a chair (since we can sit on other things also), and it also doesn’t limit a chair to just that function (you might also put papers on it), but if you have something that can’t be sat upon under physically reasonable circumstances, I’d argue it’s not a chair at all (which rules out shrink rays, etc.).

All that’s kind of beside the point. The point was to give an example of incoherence. Can you think of a better one?

By: John Baptist

John Baptist — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 20:12:43 +0000

A chair is not “something that we sit on.” We sit on lots of things that are not chairs, and not all chairs are sat on. Beyond the chairs that can be sat on, but are not (like the one that I have where I put my junk mail), what about chairs that are three inches tall? How about chairs that are made of paper? How about a chair that is suspended upside-down? How about chairs covered in spikes, or rigged to a bomb? If a three inch chair is not a chair, what is it? Does a chair cease to be a chair when you connect it to a bomb? An unsittable chair isn’t incoherent; your definition of chair just sucks.

By: Pete

Pete — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 19:31:55 +0000

Thanks for the recommendation Karilee, I’ll add to my Amazon queue 8)

By: Karilee

Karilee — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 19:10:41 +0000

Have you read Harry G. Frankfurt’s essay, “On Bullshit”? If not, I think you’d enjoy it.

And that’s a compliment, not an insult, by the way. Your essay brought it immediately to mind.
.-= Karilee´s last blog ..Tools For Finding Domain Names – Part 2 =-.

By: Incoherence of the Supernatural - Pete Michaud

Incoherence of the Supernatural - Pete Michaud — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 01:17:43 +0000

[...] has an effect on the physical world yet is undetectable is not merely wrong, it’s just not a coherent [...]