Jamesk

How do you experience mass? Can you see it directly?

but surely direct realism the perception of the object as it is. We cannot see matter only material objects, according to Locke and so their true natu...

Objects are real for Berkeley too, they just are not material.

You oversimplify it with your partial definition. mat·ter /?mad?r noun 1. physical substance in general, as distinct from mind and spirit; (in physics...

He is an empiricist, no doubt. Why do you say he theory is not direct realism? By refuting abstract ideas and the primary / secondary quality distinct...

Thanks but look again at the title of the thread and the questions asked. I clearly state that I want to compare between the two theories and see whet...

Firstly observation and perception are mind dependent. A mind must be present in order to do these things. Mind independent perception is a contradict...

You are positing their mind independent existence. You posit their existence when they are not being perceived. So they exist as part of a material su...

All that exist are minds and ideas. The metaphysics of our minds and of God are beyond our understanding but Berkeley doesn't seem to imply that our m...

Finally we are getting somewhere. The question is does positing a magic genie provide a better explanation than positing a material substratum that ha...

You miss the point. God acts as the guarantor of all ideas. Objects exist independent of YOUR mind because they are always held in Gods mind.Again, in...

No you are not an idea, you are a mind / spirit. Thinking beings are different to unthinking objects. I still haven't worked out which category Terrap...

Are you going to engage in a constructive argument or are you happy with just trolling?

You do realize that Berkeley is proposing a form of naive realism? He is actually giving you theory to justify your belief and refute Locke's veil of ...

Ok so I will take a definitive position and disagree with your argument. No the world would not necessarily be a better place if killing and jealousy ...

Which is quite an extreme view really when you think that incompatibilism has been largely abandoned.

Which is an interesting point when you consider the nominalist argument Berkeley uses to attack abstract ideas, Locke is also a nominalist btw apparen...

You have the argumentative skills of child which is why I am not answering you.Do you even know what a rational argument looks like when stated philos...

My question doesn't ask if Berkeley is right or not. My question is does his theory properly undermine Locke? Also does he undermine Locke fairly, mea...

Could we not also bias deterministic influences as well? Using freewill to make uniform types of determined choices (not all choices are black or whit...

We still cannot accurately prove which brain processes relate to which mental states so even if we accept mental states we don't really understand the...

We don't need to defend compatibilism against hard determinism such as Strawson's. The libertarian argument needs to justify why freewill makes us mor...

One problem with your theory is proving that mental states exist at all. Most recent research shows that on average our sub-conscious sends the messag...

There is a difference between causation and explanation. I believe that we can choose between different deterministic influences and that possibly the...

Nice essay but I see an immediate problem with your original scenario. Parental example is not the only causal influence that the child is under. Ther...

We cannot have a philosophical discussion without fully qualifying what you mean by your argument. I already gave you my opinion that your argument is...

If there are exceptions to your universal law that killing is evil then it is not a universal law. Would it have been evil to kill Hitler in 1938? How...

Humans are social animals Humans have developed the concept of morality and responsibility Therefore all social animals will develop the same concept....

"Thou shalt not kill (except for when it is an unintended side-effect of self-defense)" So it is ok to accidentally kill in self defense? What about a...

I was not claiming that killing can be good, only that it is not always evil. I thought that your point was that it is always evil. With self defense,...

Honor killings are rare but not unheard of, every society has it's share of fanatics and nut jobs, remember how much senseless family violence and abu...

Hive society animals have a completely different form than our own so I feel your comparison is unfair. You use hive insects as the example for all so...

In self defense. In order to ensure the survival of the society. As punishment for truly heinous crimes. Those are the immediate instances where I can...

Our modern times are definitely a challenge. The societies I was referring to tend to marry in. The husband would have been a first or second cousin a...

When we justify it.

Killing is not the same thing as murder.

It really isn't relevant if I agree or not. I probably do agree with the second one, at least to some degree, however to say that all killing is wrong...

However, this doesn't change the fact that they violated two universal rules of good and evil: "Thou shalt not kill" and "Thou shalt not covet thy nei...

Reason is highly overrated and only Hume had the guts to stand up and make the point. We are an irrational species because we are not ruled by reason.

Trouble, death and taxes.

Forming beliefs in the absence of any proof or evidence is never the greatest idea. Both W.K Clifford and Bertram Russell made this point. I believe t...

We may not technically responsible in the sense you are seeking, however our position in the group 'holds' us (and all of the groups members) responsi...

Our choice to live in societies is an evolutionary one. Survival is of prime importance and we survive better in groups, it is not a choice made of fr...

Sounds like an outright attack on morality to me.

None of us have freewill. We are 'all in it together' fate believes in equality. We choose to live in societies. Societies need rules to function. Rul...

We don't need to (and it is probably wrong to) reduce freewill to mental states in order to to refute it. Firstly we operate much of the time on 'auto...

We can still have moral responsibility in the absence of freewill in the Libertarian sense. Strawson's approach is interesting, I haven't read the pap...

As long as we accept the Cartesian premise that we can rely on our thoughts and self-knowledge and as long as we don't press Berkeley on his metaphysi...

ask the liar if they are an elephant

I think that what we call morals are more of a pragmatic code for survival. As people develop into societies and congregated to live in ever larger gr...