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Heh. I like that movie a lot too. Trying to remember . . . doesn't the main character co-inhabit JM's body along with JM? (Though neither can "speak" ...
June 05, 2025 at 21:05
Yes. In fact, maybe we should say, not that the object now has the properties, but rather that those properties (which were always there) are now made...
June 05, 2025 at 17:12
The subjectivity/circularity issue is perhaps even clearer in what Kripke goes on to say here: Pretty clearly, you can't cite the fact that you refer ...
June 05, 2025 at 14:59
You have indeed. And it makes it clear that my question arises around what you call a possible third level "where we seek to understand what we are do...
June 05, 2025 at 12:47
OK. So this harks back to the idea that there might be something constitutive of the experience itself which allows us to ID it as a purported memory....
June 05, 2025 at 12:36
Yes, the quoted passage shows him doing the former. He's trying to lay out the requirements for a consistent picture, not choosing among pictures -- t...
June 05, 2025 at 00:57
Not surprisingly for a thread called "What is real?" this one has taken a lot of detours. How about a new thread?
June 04, 2025 at 19:18
This makes the issue much more precise, thanks. I agree that my question may be, in part, a question about syntax and semantics, about what can be sai...
June 04, 2025 at 17:41
The informal style of N&N does leave this somewhat open, I agree. Kripke certainly talks as if he means not just how we think, but what is in fact the...
June 04, 2025 at 16:23
Kripke asks (of Queen Elizabeth): And at several other places he's clear that what makes a person that person is being born of certain parents. Whethe...
June 04, 2025 at 15:33
That's fair. I was agreeing with Kripke's view here. EDIT: and it raises the interesting question of whether the cogito generates a personal identity....
June 04, 2025 at 15:22
Yes. See the exchange above about "If I were Barack Obama . . . " Taken literally, it can only mean "If I were not I . . . " which can't get off the g...
June 04, 2025 at 14:28
This is fine. I don't think we're disagreeing. That's what I was trying to get at by talking about a "seeming image." All we can do is report what it ...
June 04, 2025 at 13:24
Gee, you really make me want to continue the conversation! :wink: I can see I've pushed your buttons, so I'll let it drop, no hard feelings.
June 04, 2025 at 12:52
And phenomenology was initially meant as a corrective to this tendency. But as many philosophers have argued since, this is very hard to do. In the ac...
June 04, 2025 at 12:38
I would divide this into "the subjective experience," described as neutrally as possible, and "the explanation," in this case a purported direct commu...
June 04, 2025 at 00:53
You know nicer atheists than I do! :smile: I don't think this is the heart of the problem. We routinely accept subjective testimony about all sorts of...
June 03, 2025 at 21:21
Good post, and like you I think epiphenomenalism has to be wrong. The possible descriptions of the psychophysical nexus, however, need to give a clear...
June 03, 2025 at 15:35
I don't reject it, in fact such empathy is very important. I just believe it doesn't count as a genuine possible world for philosophical purposes. Loo...
June 03, 2025 at 15:20
That's a very good way of putting it. Not so sure about this. First of all, I don't take "If I were Barack Obama . . . " as a genuine reference to a p...
June 03, 2025 at 14:02
Right, this is the same question I'm raising about whether something about reference needs to be included in a list of X's properties. (I'm going to s...
June 03, 2025 at 13:09
This, I think, deserves attention. You're saying that, because phenomenology et al. are at least "quasi-empirical," we can reasonably abstract from th...
June 03, 2025 at 12:52
Yes, but let's not forget indexicals. These are rigid designators as well. This seems a little puzzling. Do we want to consider "the fact that I am 'I...
June 02, 2025 at 13:47
This caught my eye. Could you tighten up a couple of things? First, what would strictly empirical evidence be? Do you mean, say, physical evidence tha...
June 02, 2025 at 12:38
No, that's clear. The relevant question is: We can do it by talking about how tigers seem, and how we use that seeming to fix the reference. It's a ki...
June 01, 2025 at 22:54
Depends what counts as part of "everything we know" about X. Does it include "how to fix the reference of X"? If it does, then no, we can't discover t...
June 01, 2025 at 19:17
Yes, this highlights an important fact about memory, which is its peculiar status as both present and past. We can bracket "a memory" or we can bracke...
June 01, 2025 at 12:26
Thanks for this thoughtful answer. I understand better what you mean now. But I'm going to take issue with it. It's possible that I haven't succeeded ...
May 31, 2025 at 12:10
I'm using that term to describe an image that doesn't come to me as a memory -- the snark would be a good example -- but which, as you point out, stil...
May 30, 2025 at 20:35
I do. When we interrogate "memory" in this way, all the questions you raise are important. Are they phenomenological questions, though? I think the ac...
May 30, 2025 at 14:45
Yes. I'm getting a lot from what you and @"Richard B" and your interlocutors are discussing. I'm plucking this phrase out of its context because of wh...
May 30, 2025 at 13:18
I'm going to stay with my simple-minded question, because I genuinely don't understand what this means. When an image of my bedroom as a 5-year-old co...
May 30, 2025 at 12:44
That's what I want to say too, intuitively. And what this thread is showing is that this idea encounters (at least) two major problems: 1. Whatever th...
May 29, 2025 at 21:13
This is really interesting. Could I ask a simple-minded question? When you say: are you denying that there is any mental representation at all? Or onl...
May 29, 2025 at 13:32
Rhetoric aside, and sorry for mine, this comes down to how you think of racism. If "objective racism" means "espouses/acts on consciously held racist ...
May 29, 2025 at 13:18
I like Gallagher's perspective, and what you write in your post is reasonable and interesting. It falls under the category that both @"Srap Tasmaner" ...
May 28, 2025 at 13:37
Your posts overlap nicely, and are both extremely interesting. I'll just select a few things to highlight. Yes, and this is what you'd expect to be th...
May 27, 2025 at 21:12
Kubrick undoubtedly knew that the music he selected for the monolith's appearance was from "Also Sprach Zarathustra", Strauss's tone-poem based on Nie...
May 27, 2025 at 14:31
Exactly. And this. "A = A" can tell us nothing about what we ought to substitute for A. It's not about being or ontology at all.
May 27, 2025 at 13:52
Thanks for going into all this. You're a good writer and you make it vivid and understandable. Yes, good observation.
May 27, 2025 at 13:04
Yeah, that was the direction of my wondering, but I'm definitely out of my depth when it comes to how chemists and mathematicians regard questions of ...
May 27, 2025 at 12:58
This is fascinating, because it's so contrary to my own experience. Yes, I'm familiar with the idea of a conscious "remembering" when we try to rememb...
May 27, 2025 at 12:50
Pardon my math deficiencies, but I assume this means we can isolate T on the right side of the equation, giving a description of temperature in terms ...
May 26, 2025 at 16:35
Great. I'll watch for any comments you may post to that thread. I don't really understand that. It's a metaphor, yes? So, truth is "in" the intellect,...
May 26, 2025 at 15:51
Fair enough. The difference I'm seeing between "yellow," on the one hand, and "self" or "past" or "true event" may not be genuine. But shouldn't the f...
May 26, 2025 at 15:29
OK. If there is a "sense" of recollection, though, the philosophical/phenomenological part would be: What is it? What does this actually mean, experie...
May 26, 2025 at 15:24
Wow. You describe this very well. If you don't mind my asking into it some more: Has this created problems for you in your interactions with people, o...
May 26, 2025 at 15:07
He unquestionably will. And I'll bet good money that he'll have the parade route lined with large portraits of himself (held by "private individuals,"...
May 26, 2025 at 14:56
Very good. You're right to press me on this. Let me see if I can respond. My question here would be: If this is already a theory, could there ever be ...
May 26, 2025 at 14:45
But that's just what I'm questioning. It's precisely our interpretation of what "Jill" is going to encompass that will tell us what the "real thing" i...
May 26, 2025 at 13:07