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Metaphysician Undercover

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Experience is what is gained from action, and intellectual experience appears to be sort of like knowledge in general. Theory appears to be something ...
August 01, 2025 at 10:49
I see that there is a lot said about "theory" in this section. You\ll notice theory mentioned in the latter passage you quoted above. The section ends...
August 01, 2025 at 01:47
Interesting. I'd like to propose another thread, where we can stage ideas which we may or may not want to bring into this thread to discuss whether we...
July 31, 2025 at 23:48
Have you seen the little piggies Crawling in the dirt? And for all the little piggies Life is getting worse, Always having dirt to play around in Have...
July 31, 2025 at 23:20
SymBolism. isn't a novel just a ream of symbolism? But the form of questioning is interesting. Who notices symbols arising from the subconscious, and ...
July 31, 2025 at 21:55
The proposal that "the whole of the organism" is causal in an active sense does not make any sense at all. The concept of "the whole" is just a vague ...
July 31, 2025 at 11:09
The ability to predict how everything will deviate from the proposition doesn't make the proposition true. That everything deviates from the propositi...
July 31, 2025 at 01:31
That's the physicalist misconception of telos. Notice that in O'Callaghan's external telos, it is not the whole itself which gives unity and function ...
July 30, 2025 at 11:53
This would be a subject requiring much discussion and debate. In my understanding, to assume "particulars" is to assume a world already divided. To as...
July 30, 2025 at 02:26
It would just mean that the theory is completely useless. If a necessary condition of the theory is perfect conditions, and it is demonstrated that pe...
July 30, 2025 at 01:42
I think this relates directly to what he says about system thinking. The idea of negative dialectics is not to reject systems thinking, but to determi...
July 29, 2025 at 11:12
I do not think that your claim is reasonable. No experiment has provided 100% conservation, so it is actually unreasonable to say that results are con...
July 29, 2025 at 01:10
It appears like you are not well familiar with Aristotle's "Physics" within which he draws the distinction between formal cause and final cause. Nor, ...
July 28, 2025 at 11:18
What you refer to here, as top-down causation, is what is known in Aristotelian principles as formal cause. Teleology studies final cause which is dis...
July 28, 2025 at 02:13
Well, he is the translator. You wouldn't expect him to be saying that it's impossible for the translator to translate, would you? So what he does is e...
July 28, 2025 at 01:40
I have no disagreement with the idea that the law of conservation of energy is "a very good approximation. But the point is that it is not what is the...
July 28, 2025 at 01:13
Yes, I cherry-picked the part where the difference between external and internal teleology is described, because I believe this is a very important di...
July 27, 2025 at 12:11
Here's a passage from your link distinguishing internal teleology from external: I believe that when we consider the way that internal teleology is 'g...
July 27, 2025 at 02:09
This is not true at all. We've had many discussions in the past, and it is very clear that we have significant common ground. However, when specific p...
July 27, 2025 at 01:34
I read the translator's notes, and they say nothing about what you are claiming. There is no mention of "style", and I do not see the issue with style...
July 27, 2025 at 00:18
I don't see how you draw this conclusion. You've pointed out differences between English and German, but you haven't indicated why you think one is mo...
July 26, 2025 at 11:10
Such blatant refusals to discuss the topic, only indicate that you know that you are wrong so you will not approach the issue. Why twist the facts of ...
July 26, 2025 at 02:13
I think the metaphor works pretty good, even to take it so far as to the expressions of suffering. The use of profanity in language is very often a re...
July 26, 2025 at 01:51
I think it is better, perhaps, to use terms like "agency" rather than "intent". The latter generally gets restricted to consciousness. The former may ...
July 24, 2025 at 11:21
If it can be detected, it is usable. If you are proposing a type of energy which cannot be detected, then that's not really energy, is it? Energy, by ...
July 24, 2025 at 02:19
Don't you think that it is correct to say that the intentionality is intrinsic to the system? If something is made for a specific purpose, isn't that ...
July 23, 2025 at 11:24
I believe we must pay attention to what Adorno says about profundity in philosophy, in the preceding paragraph. Profundity is related to death and rel...
July 23, 2025 at 01:27
Doesn't that require a judgement of whether the change makes a difference or not? Anyway, it appears like you believe that change is not caused, it ju...
July 22, 2025 at 11:12
I don't know, that seems quite trivial. Where's the frightening part?
July 22, 2025 at 01:16
I might be gone for a while. My mind has been corrupted by the thought of, and I have now developed an unquenchable desire for, "hot possibility". I b...
July 22, 2025 at 01:11
We disagree then. I don't. And, I don't think anyone can. But I don't pretend. Do you think that you apprehend inconsistency in what I wrote? If so, p...
July 22, 2025 at 01:00
Each individual member of the army must have the desire to follow the plan, and be a member of the army, or else they go rogue. So final cause must be...
July 21, 2025 at 11:13
The problem with this example, is that ultimately the principles which turn the mob into a battalion, come from the minds of individuals, members of "...
July 21, 2025 at 10:51
Actually "final cause" was intended to put an end to the infinite regress. Any chain of causation would begin from an intentional act. If it wasn't be...
July 21, 2025 at 02:14
Looks like GP just converted a recipe for crack cocaine. How do they get access to that stuff? I'll take that as a compliment. Now, I'll expect the re...
July 20, 2025 at 13:12
This is what I dismiss as incoherent. We know that order does not simply emerge. The second law of thermodynamics supports this knowledge. Therefore w...
July 20, 2025 at 13:02
I am not saying that explicitly. There are a number of different ways in which intention can be the cause of the movements of things, without intentio...
July 20, 2025 at 02:13
A very interesting and important theme I will say. And, when you get to the part about the criteria by which we judge whether specific instances of me...
July 20, 2025 at 01:16
I took a look at the links, and don't see anything new. What is this frighten info that we're supposed to find?
July 20, 2025 at 01:04
Sounds good to me. Let's get @"Mikie", he'll eat anything.
July 20, 2025 at 00:53
Wow, you do a lot of reading.
July 20, 2025 at 00:46
It might be easier for you to say this, but that is a matter of avoiding the point. Instead of acknowledging that the concept which we know as "the un...
July 19, 2025 at 23:58
I think that this re-conception of intentionality is the key to understanding your position. Once we understand that conscious intention is just one f...
July 19, 2025 at 12:32
I agree, but you don't seem to be getting the point. The problem is not with concluding that there was a time with no living beings, the problem is in...
July 19, 2025 at 01:31
This doesn't resolve the issue we were discussing. When we put life in general within the context of purpose, assuming that life is purposeful, then k...
July 17, 2025 at 11:14
The point is that if the concept "the universe" is not representative of what we commonly refer to as the independent objective reality, then this sta...
July 17, 2025 at 01:44
Before hipsters, there was hepcats. I think the word implies a person who's liver is seriously degraded from alcohol.
July 16, 2025 at 02:29
Thank you T Clark, compliments are meaningful. The Bing Bang is just the conventional theory. It's just an aspect of the current model, or conception,...
July 16, 2025 at 02:21
This is the point I take, above. The existence of a physical world requires intentional being. This is because, as a physical world, is how things are...
July 15, 2025 at 11:14
I think we ought to consider that what we know as the Universe, is a construction of human minds, and as such it was created with purpose. What modern...
July 15, 2025 at 01:38