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I think I know what you're getting at, but . . . if you use a word like "seeming," you're inevitably faced with the question, "Then what is it really?...
April 05, 2025 at 12:35
That's a good way of making the distinction -- "reasonings" for the particular mental events, "reasons" for the content of those events. And yeah, "co...
April 05, 2025 at 00:43
Very true. And part of what I think Continental phil is better at, is recognizing that the objective/subjective pair is not nearly as straightforward ...
April 04, 2025 at 12:59
Yes, all this is plausible, because we've allowed ourselves the placeholder term "correlated". But what else can we do? We don't know the right word y...
April 04, 2025 at 12:50
To say this better: We can talk about what causes consciousness in toto, as a phenomenon, without committing ourselves to the thesis that every indivi...
April 04, 2025 at 01:27
Yes, good statement of the problem. When we have a scientific way of filling out the phrase "give rise to," we may be a lot closer to understanding al...
April 04, 2025 at 01:15
I think the nature of consciousness is a largely scientific question, one that we're far from answering. If/when we do answer it, it will be in the sa...
April 03, 2025 at 23:04
:gasp: Yeah, I see that! I think we need supervenience in our lexicon, but as you say, that's another thread.
April 03, 2025 at 22:53
A huge question, but it boils down to whether there's anything at all that can properly be called "objective." In the conversation about mental/physic...
April 03, 2025 at 22:20
Definitely. I'd urge anyone interested in supervenience and/or a reasonable version of physicalism to start with Kim. Do you know Galen Strawson's wor...
April 03, 2025 at 15:14
Yes, that's the idea. With my usual caveats about how little we really know about consciousness as a biological phenomenon, I think some kind of dual-...
April 03, 2025 at 14:20
That's how it looks to me, though I'm no scientist. And two cheers for Penrose, by the way -- he may be way off base with microtubules, but he has ext...
April 03, 2025 at 12:33
I'm not sure Spinoza had the last word on this, but yes, supervenience involves different levels of description. Where it gets tricky is to give an ac...
April 03, 2025 at 12:24
How I wish this was established science. But no, Hameroff is the same guy Roger Penrose partnered with when exploring the "microtubule" theory of cons...
April 03, 2025 at 00:26
Well put. I prefer keeping a boundary between reasons and causes, but I know what you mean. It's just a question of how far we're willing to stretch "...
April 02, 2025 at 23:00
Yay! :grin: And here too, no problem -- because we're both saying that being choice-worthy depends on something else. We can't use choice-worthiness i...
April 02, 2025 at 22:16
Let's try this. Find an online version of the Euthyphro and copy from 10a - 11c. Then replace "piety," "loved by the gods," etc. with the various form...
April 02, 2025 at 21:16
Strong OP, thanks. As I thought over your questions, I realized that I don't often use "substance" in my philosophical thoughts because, as you pointe...
April 02, 2025 at 13:43
Thank you for this thorough response, and for taking my plea for enlightenment seriously! I think your argument has two primary thrusts -- first, that...
April 02, 2025 at 13:05
Not at all, as far as I'm concerned. It's the agora! This seems like a good window onto virtue ethics, and the way you go on to elaborate it also make...
April 01, 2025 at 22:25
I've never understood this. How is it different from the "dormative power" of a sleeping pill? What makes something worthy of being chosen? Isn't what...
April 01, 2025 at 21:23
Sure, didn't mean to butt in. Just a suggestion to avoid getting too hung up on a "proper" use of the term.
April 01, 2025 at 20:58
Dennett's particular flavor of physicalism is strongly epistemological. He's not so much trying to say that there are no experiences that correspond t...
April 01, 2025 at 14:44
May I make a suggestion? This looks like a classic case of a disagreement about how to use a term, "ethics" in this case. Why don't the two of you agr...
April 01, 2025 at 13:13
I prefer specific examples too. But let me say two things about this one: First, we might indeed delve into Coleridge's life and world to come up with...
April 01, 2025 at 13:01
In the introduction to Brainstorms, an early work, Dennett says this: This doesn't quite answer your question, but it was the first passage I came acr...
April 01, 2025 at 00:56
I think this is the hardest question for someone like Dennett to answer. At best, he can say that awareness is not at all like what we think it's like...
March 31, 2025 at 22:46
Yes. What I meant was, if we object on the grounds that what's being asked for is a scientific explanation, and that's not appropriate, our interlocut...
March 31, 2025 at 21:10
True, or even in regular life. It's extremely common to confuse correlation with causation, with the result that predictions may be 100% correct but h...
March 31, 2025 at 19:21
I don't think so. I deliberately said that we know "just about nothing, scientifically, concerning the phenomenon of consciousness" because a) I belie...
March 31, 2025 at 17:23
Lots to chew on here, thanks. I'm mostly in agreement, though less concerned than you are with science/empiricism as a foe of other modes of cognition...
March 31, 2025 at 14:15
I don't remember reading this, thanks.
March 31, 2025 at 00:37
I used to be quite fond of that passage too, and while I still think there's a lot of truth in it (equating "it's sublime" with "I have sublime feelin...
March 30, 2025 at 20:52
Oh, I see. So he's pointing out possible extremes of divergence from our human nature -- not literally "beast" and "god." Makes sense. Interesting, to...
March 29, 2025 at 22:27
This fits with what I (think I) know about classical Greek culture -- there really wasn't a concept of "civilization" or "humanity" (as a non-scientif...
March 29, 2025 at 21:35
Right. Or, in the opposite direction, aggressive cancer treatments might not be in your best interest (as you conceive it) but be medically helpful.
March 29, 2025 at 20:06
Yes, that's a useful distinction. We've all run into the individual who seems to believe that their taste is the automatic arbiter of what counts as g...
March 29, 2025 at 20:04
Couple of things: Within a given practice or style, there are indeed objective measures of whether a piece of music is aesthetically better. But no do...
March 29, 2025 at 15:32
As you know, this is the "virtue ethics" side of the coin -- the "good life for me" side -- while the "deontological ethics" side emphasizes the good ...
March 29, 2025 at 15:22
Sorry, could you translate that? :wink:
March 29, 2025 at 14:00
This passage suggests that, for Aristotle, the state is a "whole" with parts comprising households and individuals. Do you know whether he ever consid...
March 29, 2025 at 13:57
Certainly. And have often preached them, though a philosophy forum isn't the place for that, IMO. Not quite sure what "inclusive of the apostles" woul...
March 29, 2025 at 00:45
I like a lot of Foucault but he wouldn't be my go-to guy for Jesus scholarship. Try Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth by Reza Aslan, ver...
March 28, 2025 at 23:05
That would have been news to his followers! :lol: Many of his later interpreters, including Paul, could be read as doing that, but not Jesus himself. ...
March 28, 2025 at 21:23
The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, 1989. He is hard, or at any rate not a brilliant stylist, but I've always found him more than wort...
March 28, 2025 at 20:30
Glad it struck a chord for you. And -- again, not to get too sidetracked on Habermas -- but he started out being very critical of the public sphere in...
March 28, 2025 at 18:23
Actually, I believe the Project 2025 citation puts "facts" in quotes.
March 28, 2025 at 17:11
I hope so! I wasn't sure how closely you wanted to adhere to Aristotle's conceptions here. The public/private question is extremely interesting. You m...
March 28, 2025 at 17:07