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Metaphysician Undercover

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An "open system" is one with empirically verifiable boundaries, which allow specific materials to cross the boundaries, like a living cell. It is not ...
December 14, 2020 at 13:47
To make a blanket accusation of "election officials" in this way, without a shred of evidence, is extremely defamatory, corrosive, and ought to be pun...
December 14, 2020 at 13:42
Wow, you're really clutching at straws there. Actually, I saw it reported over and over in the media, that any irregularities were insignificant. And,...
December 14, 2020 at 13:23
The problem here is that we're talking about the reliability of scientific observations, not the capacity for common vernacular. In science, "system" ...
December 14, 2020 at 12:50
Ever since Plato introduced the "tripartite soul", there hasn't really been an interaction problem, because the principles are there to resolve it, fo...
December 14, 2020 at 12:14
In: 1 > 2  — view comment
When you list what "individual" means, discrete, separated, distinct, and differentiated, why do you intentionally exclude "unity" and "whole" from th...
December 14, 2020 at 01:56
In: 1 > 2  — view comment
This is not true. "Individual" is defined by unity, not by being differentiated from its environment. That's why the universe, which is supposed to be...
December 13, 2020 at 18:31
In: 1 > 2  — view comment
That might be true, but you'll have a hard time convincing those who believe that an individual is necessarily a part of a group. However, the logic i...
December 13, 2020 at 18:15
Then why do you assert a "high level of confidence"? Are you highly confident that you are unsure? I'll call you Socrates then, you're sure that you'r...
December 13, 2020 at 17:26
This is a failure to adhere to a rigorous definition of "system", which very clearly would lead to faulty observations. The apparatus is not doing wha...
December 13, 2020 at 14:13
If you are truly interested in what Aquinas wrote, then it would be beneficial to read some Aristotle. Much of what Aquinas wrote, was an attempt to m...
December 13, 2020 at 13:51
Not necessarily, that's the point. When the apparatus is faulty, or in some way deficient in its capacity to be what it is supposed to be, it cannot b...
December 13, 2020 at 13:10
So you agree that what it means to be real, or to be true, remains unverified and unproven. Do you also see that the following statement makes no sens...
December 13, 2020 at 01:05
Well, to be honest, I was just answering your question, "why don't we?". My reply was pretty much just a matter of identifying the problem, we can rec...
December 13, 2020 at 00:45
I think this is a bit off, on a number of different levels. First, there is no need to assume "a system". There might be an apparatus, designed for th...
December 12, 2020 at 22:24
Now I think you need to employ that perfect smell to trigger the image of the perfect pitch, as I described here:
December 12, 2020 at 12:58
Now, since this unobservable, unmeasurable, aspect of... (reality?) is causal, as evidenced by the observable and measurable existence of artificial t...
December 12, 2020 at 12:49
Yes, philosophers have been through this mess already, most notably in ancient Greece. The resolution to this dilemma, developed by Plato and Aristotl...
December 12, 2020 at 12:33
He'd pardon himself! Lol.
December 12, 2020 at 12:11
The mentioned things, which are not observable, were "what we want to do", "value", and "meaning", not the symbols. These things are not observable, y...
December 12, 2020 at 03:41
How's this relevant to defining "real"? Is "what we want them to do", or "value", or "meaning", something real? Is "real" confined to what is observab...
December 12, 2020 at 03:08
I think that "will power" refers specifically to the capacity to prevent oneself from acting in a situation where the person is inclined to act. So it...
December 12, 2020 at 02:58
I take that to be an argument that Descartes did not know for sure that he thinks. I can agree with that. Thinking does not necessitate knowing. So in...
December 12, 2020 at 02:49
That's a dubious proposition. I would say it is more of an assertion than an observation. So in the logical argument of Descartes, it serves more as a...
December 11, 2020 at 17:14
Let me give you an example. Let's take the natural numbers. We have numerals, 1,2,3,4, which are symbols, representations of numbers. The numbers them...
December 11, 2020 at 13:45
OK, let's talk about that part of reality which cannot be measured or observed, how is the scientific method the only way to prove that these things a...
December 11, 2020 at 13:06
This is a lesson which the pandemic, and the calls for physical isolation, may teach us, if we look. Each person must do one's own part, make the reso...
December 11, 2020 at 12:54
You have an assumed "us" here. What substantiates the required proposition that what is real for me is the same as what is real for you, to support th...
December 11, 2020 at 12:28
OK, this is a good start. By what means does one "detect" the mind. Surely it's not a sense observation, so the indubitableness of this proposition is...
December 11, 2020 at 12:20
The problem with this claim, as I explained at the beginning of the thread, is that science cannot tell us what constitutes being real, or being true....
December 11, 2020 at 12:02
If this were me, I'd eat myself. Then where would I be? The problem with this approach is that we have only the consciously learned thought habits by ...
December 10, 2020 at 14:02
This does not account for the causation of existence of the physical house. It is clear that the house exists in a non-physical form, "the design of t...
December 10, 2020 at 12:48
That's a good explanation. The category of "physical" has been expanding with the intent of occluding dualism. The result is all sorts of category mis...
December 10, 2020 at 03:20
Nice going, crack open a whole new can of worms. Do you think it would be easier for a person to develop absolute pitch if the person was trained in t...
December 10, 2020 at 02:33
Let's consider the distinction proposed by between cultural consciousness and cultural unconsciousness. There is much that we learn, in institutions l...
December 10, 2020 at 02:10
I never heard of germanium before. But I thought you said geranium miners. Flower power.
December 10, 2020 at 01:16
You cannot proceed logically from the premise of a lack of information, to your conclusion of a similar or larger amount of infections. I see a very c...
December 09, 2020 at 15:22
Are you serious? What do you base that on, the death rate? The first wave swept through the most vulnerable, and exposed, the nursing homes, where the...
December 09, 2020 at 12:57
The point was, that before we can judge a particular piece of work which is presented to us as science, as to whether it gives us truth or not, we nee...
December 09, 2020 at 12:45
The insistence by physicalists, that the supposed non-physical thing is imaginary, is what distinguishes it as non-physical. The supposed thing is inc...
December 09, 2020 at 02:38
For as long as I've been alive, everyone's been spying on each other, they just kind of take it for granted that they're being spied on. "Lower the co...
December 09, 2020 at 00:43
Obviously, I do not agree with the idea of a non-conscious observer. Nor do I agree with the idea of information which is not dependent on consciousne...
December 09, 2020 at 00:12
Say you read the same paragraph over and over again. Reading it won't necessarily cause you to remember it. You need a strategy and put effort into ad...
December 08, 2020 at 22:56
Sorry Isaac, I just don't see the relevance.
December 08, 2020 at 22:45
But the goal is to produce the pitch without the specimen or feedback. Do you have a strategy toward this end?
December 08, 2020 at 22:30
The problem is that science, though it might be capable of delivering the truth, is incapable of determining what constitutes "truth", or the criteria...
December 08, 2020 at 12:32
Make sure it's not red wine because that's been done before. I've seen some pretty colourful margaritas. Maybe try it more than once, with the same ca...
December 08, 2020 at 12:13
I haven't completely grasped your use of "image" in this thread. Surely you are talking about an aural image rather than a visual image, but what meth...
December 08, 2020 at 11:54
His work place was a University. His targets were Universities. So he displays elements of classic 'going postal'. And as a letter bomber he gives the...
December 08, 2020 at 11:26
The writings are anti-societal. The acts were anti-societal. We can ask, which came first, the writings or the acts, to see if the acts were meant to ...
December 08, 2020 at 03:36