J

Very good. And an excellent demonstration of why I never dispute what the term "existence" means! We have a number of candidate construals, including ...

Good, agreed. That there is a distinction is all I insist on. We can be more precise, terminologically, if that suits you. I have no stake in what's c...

OK, I'd forgotten the context of the OP. It's against my religion to dispute about how to use the term "exist". :wink: I'll just point out that if the...

This is all cogent and helpful, very clearly written. Just one thing: To me, this muddles the idea of "world" a bit. As you say, a world without perce...

Possibly, thank you. Consider it dead. OK, the analogy with qualia is clear. In #2, "burj" is like a quale. In #3, "burj" is like a quale that has bee...

This is generally my practice too, both here and elsewhere. You're more charitable than I. Looking at my own behavior, it's apparent that I am often n...

Then, as noted before, we have no real difference. I too think that language permeates human experience, though calling sense perception a "language e...

Good. So the substrate of a numeral would be, e.g., ink on paper.

It seems that @"Philosophim" is thinking of information as requiring the physical substrate, while @"hypericin" believes information is some further i...

Oh hell, nothing in philosophy pleases me! :grin: OK. But how does that turn the world into language? Let's switch the example to something I might re...

OK, here's where I am with this, and please tell me if you think I'm off track: First of all, you're showing that this is not about private language a...

OK, sorry if I'm like a dog with a bone here, but . . . if we dispense with the referent, as Witt suggests we can, are you arguing that the word itsel...

This is what I meant by saying that "our way of constituting the physical world may be simply that -- our way." And I recognize that all kinds of mean...

And if you were a cat, there'd be no story, so there! :joke: OK, I just wrote a post in reply to your "burj" story that was coming along very nicely u...

Very good! And do you never wonder what they're thinking? I find this especially interesting precisely because I doubt they have language, yet I'm qui...

OK, the picture is coming a bit more in focus. Is my role at T-1 mute, though? Am I meant to be understood as simply listening, just as I do with the ...

I guess this would be a spade-turning difference between us. I am fascinated by the inner lives of animals; to me it's the least boring thing in the w...

I hate to rain on a fun thought experiment but . . . what does this actually mean? Could you give just a few examples of how you spoke to yourself usi...

Not sure what that is. But in any case, thinking in language doesn't make the subject of thought also linguistic. Does cutting boards with a saw make ...

Thanks, Hanover, I see your point now, and agree with it. We don't even need to involve cats here; a human infant will do as well. Not so clear to me....

This looks interesting, but I can't relate it back to some previous post or comment. Could you expand? What's the pain/"pain" distinction?

Just to clarify -- Aren't the first two examples descriptions in solely physical terms? Understood thus, they would starkly reveal the limits of such ...

I'd better -- it was pretty ugly, sorry! That's more like it. Yes, that's what I was asking. And as a corollary: Does the aesthetic value change relat...

OK. Though as we've often discussed on this forum: Is "If P then Q; P; therefore Q" about events or propositions -- or both? It can be given either a ...

Yes, I took the more detailed explanation to be part of what a good investigation would uncover. Taken at whatever level of detail seems important, th...

I don't quite see this. Aren't you saying that the statement "{some set of Xs} caused the plane crash" has to be true, in order to be of use? How then...

Sure. It's a thought experiment, really. Nothing of great moment depends on it. What about for a philosopher? Do we want to argue that aesthetic value...

Agreed, but is the explanation nonetheless true, as opposed to merely useful? We can bracket questions about how all bombs behave, and ask whether the...

I think we can make it stronger than "very useful." When an investigation determines the cause of a plane crash, this is of course useful. But I'm con...

I know, but I was pointing out that there's much less difference than at first appears, and suggesting we think about an "accompanying statement" more...

Yes, these are good discriminations. I tend to agree that biographical knowledge about the artist, for instance (hunter or gatherer? :smile: ), might ...

Sure, so do I, but "the culture they originated in" is only one element of what I'm calling the "accompanying statement." My list of what constitutes ...

But this is not only true of post-modernism. There is no such thing as an art work without an "accompanying statement." To suppose otherwise is to sub...

That's a really useful question. Let's see . . . Yes, this is inaccurate. Teach "the computer"? Which computer? Surely they don't mean some actual pie...

Yeah, probably a losing battle on my part. But I'd like to see more pushback against the easy acceptance of the fiction that a program is an entity or...

I'm actually happier with leaving out the whole "talking to" description, partially because if we try to stretch it, as I did, to generously include t...

Interesting. "Form" does seem to be in the neighborhood somewhere. We could perhaps give an ideal description of a particular instance of a game, noti...

Yes, in a way, but it's misleading to think that qualia somehow are consciousness. The Hard Problem asks how consciousness, or subjectivity, arises fr...

That's why it would be striking and significant if a philosopher could show that the promise was impossible to keep, not just "possible in the future....

Good one! At the risk of being a monomaniac, I have to say again: This is an illusion, cleverly encouraged by the programmers of the "machines." We do...

Right, but we don't even need to concede that much. Even a game like football, in which physicality is not optional, cannot be said to be "identical" ...

A possible reply to this is that "ineffable" may be one of Chalmers' "temporary" obstacles, as opposed to a permanent one like biological composition....

Perhaps not always, but children learn at a young age the difference between living and non-living things they encounter, though of course they love t...

Yes, though as I read it, Chalmers is inclined to grant that an LLM+ could be conscious -- within the next decade, "we may well have systems that are ...

Oh, OK, so you're assuming this. I thought your post was aiming to demonstrate it.

But . . . hold on. Let's rearrange. "You cannot have a mental action that exists apart from some physical reality like the brain." OK (so far as we kn...

This would be a key question when it comes to mental events such as thoughts. Our usage is such a mish-mash that it's difficult to find a place to beg...

Yes, we're on the same page. And there are probably a number of even further "outside-art" ways to get in the game, which is good, because we don't wa...

Any chance you could share the relevant parts with us? I'm also going to read the paper @"Banno" cited.

I read this as homing in on a special problem within causation-talk: Whether my thoughts of, e.g., "If p then q" and "p" can be said to then cause the...