I understand that, and I continue to see the appeal of the idea. But I still think there's a problem at the branching of the nodes. If I define a word...
I probably said something like 'if we look to use for meaning,..." I understand myself to be criticizing the sharpness of the distinction between use ...
And it's dark at night. Unless we dismiss them at dead ends or as not really being contradictions. We decide all the time (implicitly at least) what i...
Right. But what comes to my mind is this use of 'really.' If a poet or an engineer is functioning at the highest level and then a bum like Socrates co...
Sure. But I'd also say that we don't even have to look closely, even if that's advisable. Pain and pleasure will sculpt some kind of understanding in ...
I agree, except with the that last part. If we are criticizing the use of a word, then it has a use, namely the one we are criticizing. Then, if we lo...
I think this is near the heart of lots of philosophical issues. We know how to use words without being able to conclusively describe how or what that ...
Right. But in the science of formal systems we discover the relationships of categories/symbols/tokens and not of the marks we need to aid memory and ...
I agree that possible actions are at the center of our concern, but the future is also the background of possible actions, their context. Certain acti...
I'm not sure that we have a problem. We can distinguish between the individual marks and then categorize these marks. For instance, let A = {s2e, 2rt,...
I see that you are pointing out a fascinating phenomenon. I'm a little uneasy about calling lower level replication goal-directed and selfish, but tha...
I remember that there's a ripe avocado on the counter downstairs. It wasn't ripe enough last night, so I left it there. I'm likely to make my way down...
That is of course their primary hope. But I think they associate the likelihood of success with the trustworthiness or lack thereof of the discipline....
Right. That's my understanding, too. That makes sense. It definitely reminds me of the conscious intention of human individuals. Philosophy, for insta...
Are you familiar with Hume's thoughts on the self? Or Sartre's on consciousness and intentionality? If they aren't already familiar to you, then you m...
I agree that it doesn't make much sense to speak of the mind having physical places. But are you familiar with the expression 'on the tip of my tongue...
I think everyone cares when they are on that operating table. They sure hope that there is a right way to transplant a heart, for instance. And folks ...
OK, I don't deny a kind of pure creativity. But I think our imaginations mostly manifest influence, and that's what I had in mind. To be more exact, I...
If you are saying that humans are biased, then of course. Objectivity is something we pursue. In the case of formal systems there is very little room ...
I have only capitalized 'objective' recently as a joke, just to make that clear. For me philosophy is largely about demystification. The demystificati...
If objectivity doesn't exist, then the word is meaningless. Moreover, if objectivity does not exist, then you are just spouting opinion and bias above...
Are you familiar with formal systems? Or chess? We can discover objective truths about formal systems. I gave you a simple one. But I can even answer ...
Thanks for the polite response. I think you might be reading too much into the symbolic similarity between 'object' and 'objectivity.' If you look up ...
Sure, I won't argue with that. For me there is the 'false' doubt of and then what I'd call genuine doubt. The notion of (infinitely) strong objectivit...
I'm not so sure about this. I think we learn what's possible from the past. We learn a set of acceptable desires. If we have nonconforming desires, we...
That's true, but I had the 'anxiety of influence' in mind. I don't think we like to be boring or cliche. I'll grant that especially fearful types migh...
The meaninglessness of the symbols is one of the reasons that it is objective. There are truths about the game of chess that follow from the rules of ...
Economically I've specialized in science, but I've read many philosophers. I try to avoid name-dropping and an addiction to any particular jargon and ...
I see what you mean, but I also think logic is impossible without this first step. In other words, the logic you think is violated by the many-to-one ...
Is the language that is 'printable' (as I like to think of it) by a right linear grammar a 'regular' language (recognizable by a deterministic finite ...
I suppose what I especially mean by 'objective' here is 'not a matter of opinion.' If physics is objective, this depends on the uniformity of nature, ...
I agree that this is theoretically possible. At times, I read Sartre to be saying something like that. Consciousness is pure freedom, so I can't reall...
Right. In fact our character recognition is imperfect, but it's not practically a problem. I suppose I would just comment that justifying or making ex...
But what is mind if not the is-ness or presence of creatively evolving information? What, in other words, is the mind apart from its contents? We migh...
Yes, I agree. Creative evolution is a good description of personality. It can reasonably be extended to a description of reality itself, which (especi...
Right. 'Habits' is a nice word. We think of the universe as habitual and therefore in terms of laws. In the human case, however, we see that humans ha...
I think it figures into certain religious and political visions. Sartre believed in something like free will or pure consciousness, at least earlier i...
I would say that we largely figure out what it is by detecting regularities in experience (determining it more sharply, finding tighter constraints). ...
You can say that. I'm not that attached to the word. But 'free will' also vanishes. Roughly, soft determinism is the same as soft free will, and IMV t...
Indeed, and we approve of such mitigation precisely because we are soft determinists, I'd say. We are also less impressed by the success of a child wi...
I think you have a scarecrow in your target here. I'm not arguing for strict or exact determinism. I'm making the smaller point that we already behave...
As I mentioned before, 'soft' free will strikes me as equivalent to 'soft' determinism. I understand soft determinism simply as a constraint on the fu...
If believing in free will only means believing that the future is not exactly determined, then I believe in free will. But I'm not sure that that's ho...
I think we should distinguish between random and unpredictable. As science progresses, the once unpredictable becomes predictable. We can then project...
Of course. When I calculate how others will likely react to prompts, for instance, these prompts will tend to be my actions in pursuit of a goal. If I...
Ah, but it already is, I'd argue. Don't we think that badly raised (abused, neglected, ill-fed) children in bad neighborhoods are more likely to be in...
I made it up, and, yes, a 'completely random decision' is about all the sense I can make of free will. (Randomness is its own fascinating concept. Inc...
Let's imagine an extra-terrestial with a superior brain and/or technology who can calculate future individual human behavior with pretty good reliabil...
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