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Magnus Anderson

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Hume's view does not lead to skepticism and it does not make science impossible. Hume's view is merely a very accurate description of what was already...
November 15, 2017 at 20:43
That's exactly how I feel about what you're saying.
November 15, 2017 at 20:28
It is according to your misconception of my conception of what counts as a lie. In your example, you are describing reality before proceeding to use t...
November 15, 2017 at 15:13
History does not constrain possibility other than in the epistemological sense i.e. our method of reasoning relies on history to tell us what is most ...
November 15, 2017 at 14:37
You don't understand what the question "why the sun would rise hundreds of billions of times in a row?" means. That's the problem. When you ask a ques...
November 15, 2017 at 13:42
Perhaps you find it impoverished because you are used to thinking that causality is something that it is not? See, I think that sounds perfectly sane....
November 14, 2017 at 21:51
That's a horribly shallow understanding of what a lie is. What is a lie? Any declared description of reality that has been formed with the purpose to ...
November 14, 2017 at 14:11
More accurately, democracy is a system where the rabble is in power.
November 14, 2017 at 13:56
Dogmatists do not even start a conversation ;)
November 14, 2017 at 13:54
If people are unequal it is only fair to treat them unequally. If someone is wrong, you don't want to treat them in the same way that you treat someon...
November 14, 2017 at 12:15
That's why you should use your intelligence to pick the best candidate for the job instead of throwing a dice to pick any. Also, once you pick the bes...
November 14, 2017 at 12:01
In other words, it is expertise.
November 14, 2017 at 11:51
The point is that people are unequal. Some people are better at certain things than others. This applies to legislature too. Some people have a better...
November 14, 2017 at 00:17
You think that legislature requires no expertise? Anyone can create laws? It's that easy?
November 13, 2017 at 23:45
I think that the idea of random selection is childish. I can't believe that someone can say that governance does not require expertise. We don't choos...
November 13, 2017 at 22:55
Why would anyone want a system in which every cook can govern? Why would anyone want a random selection?
November 13, 2017 at 20:33
That's not true. Beliefs that have been formed with the aim to deceive others are lies regardless of whether the deceiver believes in them or not. Tha...
November 13, 2017 at 12:12
The opinions of deceivers were formed with the goal to deceive other people. Self-deception is when these opinions that were formed with the goal to d...
November 12, 2017 at 21:28
You are nitpicking. Noone cares what THEY are aware of. What matters is that WE are aware of that the beliefs that they currently hold to be true were...
November 12, 2017 at 14:40
Conscious intent is simply one's own intent one is conscious or aware of. There are intents whether we are conscious of them or not. Why? Is it becaus...
November 09, 2017 at 15:17
So when you say "that's a tree" that is just as precise as saying "that's a red tree" which is just as precise as saying "that's a trunk with a number...
November 06, 2017 at 11:09
You don't have to describe Game of Thrones in terms of pixels unless it is necessary to do so. For most purposes, it is unnecessary to do so. You desc...
November 06, 2017 at 10:27
It's not merely about talking. It's about which one of the two descriptions is more concrete or precise. When I say that a tree is a single object rat...
November 05, 2017 at 11:36
Nate Robinson is short. LeBron James is tall. Pixels are simple. Computer images are complex. Words are simple. Sentences are complex. Bricks are simp...
November 05, 2017 at 11:32
Even the tree itself as it appears to one individual isn't a single object but a multiplicity of objects.
November 05, 2017 at 10:16
Yes. The question is what makes that difference. How do we differentiate between the two? What is the logic behind this process of differentiation? Wh...
November 05, 2017 at 10:06
There may remain a difference, I don't disagree with that, the question is what would make the difference. For example, is it something within the VR ...
November 05, 2017 at 09:47
For example, you don't think that video game graphics can ever become perfectly realistic? Even if you had all of the resources in the world, there is...
November 05, 2017 at 09:30
So you don't think there can be a VR experience that has the same degree of fidelity that normal experience has?
November 05, 2017 at 09:19
But there is no VR headset. You are not getting your VR experience from some kind of physical screen. The process is entirely biological. You took a V...
November 05, 2017 at 09:00
Maybe one day I will wake up and realize that this forum discussion was only a dream. But until then, I have no reason to think that this is the case....
November 04, 2017 at 23:01
The experience of seeing a tree when we're awake is not mental. The experience of seeing a tree in a virtual reality that is so realistic that it is i...
November 04, 2017 at 22:49
Again, I agree that there is a physical world that exists in space and time regardless of whether or not human beings are around to perceive it. My qu...
November 03, 2017 at 09:34
I think that most people would agree with that. I am not a realist, I am a phenomenalist. And I agree with what you're saying. I agree that there is a...
November 03, 2017 at 09:19
The God's eye view would be the all-encompassing view i.e. the view that allows us to see everything there is in the universe. That's quite different ...
November 03, 2017 at 08:58
A fundamental particle would also be an object of experience. Even if fundamental particles were unobserved they would still be potential, or at the v...
November 02, 2017 at 19:36
What is this tree that is causally responsible for tree-experience if not some sort of tree-experience? I think this might be the place where our reas...
November 02, 2017 at 19:10
I agree with Michael. Even if the two experiences, the experience of seeing a tree with your own eyes and the experience of hallucinating a tree, were...
November 02, 2017 at 17:52
That's simply what prediction (and also retrodiction) is. It concerns itself with what we did not experience, or at the very least, what is not within...
November 02, 2017 at 14:57
What does it mean for a thing to have certain properties when noone is looking at it? I can and I will give you my answer. But I am interested in your...
November 02, 2017 at 14:35
I disagree. The universe isn't a mechanism. Its particulars, or facts if you will, are not produced according to some set of rules. Rather, the univer...
November 02, 2017 at 11:40
The problem is that people confuse actual experience (i.e. sense-data that we possess) with potential experience (i.e. sense-data that we expect.) Eve...
November 02, 2017 at 11:27
It applies to any kind of experience. When two men look at a wheel and agree that its shape is circular what that means is that their "shape" experien...
November 02, 2017 at 11:22
The word "external" means "outside of (some set)". Similarly, the word "internal" means "within (some set)". The set (or more accurately, category) al...
November 02, 2017 at 11:10
Each one of us has his own experiences. When we say that we both perceive something (e.g. that the sky is blue) what we mean is that we have similar e...
November 02, 2017 at 11:03
Reasoning is by its nature indirect. The purpose of reasoning is to make guesses regarding something that is unknown (i.e. something that hasn't been ...
November 02, 2017 at 10:41
Without concepts, you cannot make predictions. You can only live in the moment. Roughly speaking, to conceptualize the visible (i.e. what you have exp...
November 02, 2017 at 09:38
That's true. But we do the same when we're dreaming. When we fall asleep and start dreaming we forget that we fell asleep and started dreaming. Instea...
November 02, 2017 at 05:11
I agree that there is such a thing as an instantenous classification of sensory information the mechanism of which we are largely unconscious (e.g. fa...
November 01, 2017 at 13:57
The purpose of reasoning is to make guesses regarding something that is unknown (i.e. something that hasn't been experienced or at the very least memo...
November 01, 2017 at 11:41