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Christopher Burke

['Member']Joined: September 05, 2023 at 13:55Last active: May 23, 2024 at 23:33None discussions18 comments

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I agree about the agreement. I hope that doesn't happen too often. There's no fun in that! But thankfully you've raised several interesting points. I ...
September 17, 2023 at 13:30
I agree with that ... even coherent theories can be wrong, but only empirically based ones. Mathematical and logical theorems are, by definition, cohe...
September 16, 2023 at 15:23
I would prefer to say that it is not possible to know what-it-is-like-to-be a different bit of reality because we only know what-it-is-like-to-be the ...
September 16, 2023 at 12:39
I'm afraid this "separate ontological being" makes no sense to me. If you do believe in such a realm, surely you are back to something like a Cartesia...
September 16, 2023 at 12:22
Re your version of : Can processes per se account for anything? I agree with Hume that causation is essentially epistemic. We can have a useful accoun...
September 15, 2023 at 18:16
Then surely they are not physicalists. They are people like us who think that physical representations are extremely effective with much of life, but ...
September 15, 2023 at 17:45
Indeed, all conceptual representations may be flawed ... but some are more flawed than others. Physical concepts (from folk physics to quantum fields)...
September 15, 2023 at 13:51
I think it's fair enough to distinguish differences between human, animal and AI sensing, but they do share the common function of detecting the prese...
September 14, 2023 at 14:22
How could we ever know?
September 13, 2023 at 18:20
Yes, maybe I was a bit careless there. The trouble here is that we are paddling around at the bottom of the epistemic well. There are no sub-concepts ...
September 13, 2023 at 18:19
I agree with Corvus. I think 'reducing' should be confined to when one is accounting for a thing by referring to that thing's subparts. Eg an atom is ...
September 13, 2023 at 16:40
Yes, that's a good point. Meta-representation ... an essential iteration for selfhood. And of course what philosophy is actually about: meta-theorisat...
September 11, 2023 at 18:01
Thanks for that. The baboon research is particularly interesting and I will have to abandon my proposition that analogical thinking is uniquely human....
September 11, 2023 at 13:59
I do sympathise with that sentiment and obviously human cognition has evolved from the same conditions as all other species which intramentally repres...
September 10, 2023 at 12:08
Yes, that's a good point. Although I doubt that question (what a quantum field really is?) makes any sense. I was trying to say that there comes a poi...
September 10, 2023 at 11:55
Thanks for that. I wonder if the cat's would be as grateful! But does their reaction show analogical thinking ... or merely an inherent or learned rea...
September 09, 2023 at 18:26
Is there any meaning to asking 'what the "what it is like" really is'? Is it not like asking what a quantum field really is? Doesn't there necessarily...
September 09, 2023 at 18:04
That is a very big claim. It obviously can't be proved, but what aspects of animal behaviour make you think that is plausible? I believe that analogic...
September 09, 2023 at 17:27
If we accept a Representationalist paradigm (which I believe is the only coherent metaphysical stance) then how is it possible to know "what trees in ...
September 08, 2023 at 12:59