Metaphysician Undercover

So I'm on the right track with "importance" then. For me, it is important that I have teeth to chew my steaks, so I overcome my fear of the dentist. N...

If stability is the goal, and it is achieved, then instability has been removed. If it is a case of managing instability, then stability is never achi...

It's blatant contradiction that I have difficulty with. You would too if you were a disciplined philosopher. Instead, you make contradictory statement...

You said "life is managed instability". If homeostasis excludes instability, then it excludes life if life is managed instability. Either life is not ...

What is central to homeostasis is stability. So if life is instability, whether that instability is managed or not, this excludes homeostasis, as inst...

My opinion, as I stated, is that "homeostasis" is a false representation of what these living systems are doing. Homeostasis implies equilibrium, but ...

It's not necessarily right or wrong, in the sense of being ethical, it is just a matter of what one determines should or should not be done. In the op...

This is the idea that I think is wrong, and what I was trying to steer us away from, the idea that there is ever a direct and necessary relationship b...

But my point is that the point you are trying to make here is unacceptable and must be rejected. There is no reason to believe that the reason for the...

I hear you, but that really doesn't say very much. And, it is a bit of a deceptive principle, perhaps an oversimplification, because we need to inquir...

I don't understand why you think it is more useful to think of them as two distinct persons rather than to think of them as two distinct parts of one ...

What the tree is doing is not properly described by "reaction". The tree is growing, and growing is not reacting. One is goal oriented activity, the o...

If the grasshopper does not identify, then the grasshopper does not make any choices or decisions either. But this does not mean that the ant and gras...

You know, the "evening person", and the "morning person" are one and the same person don't you? The ant surveys the future, while the grasshopper acts...

To say that it follows the path of least resistance already presupposes telos, because it is going somewhere, and to be going somewhere presupposes te...

I agree. In Plato's work, Socrates laid out these arguments, that virtue is knowledge, as what was professed by the sophists like Protagoras and Gorgi...

What this demonstrates is that deciding to do something, what we call "choosing" something, is not the same as actually willing oneself to do it. Ther...

The issue was whether there is a difference between having decided what to call the thing, and knowing what the thing is.

I don't think so, they could just look at the things which we call "trees" as firewood. That's what we're talking about, calling the same thing by dif...

I don't agree. You do not need to know that it is a tree in order to know that it is firewood. In fact, the knowledge of "what it is" quite possibly b...

In relation to "knowing what it is", it is arbitrary. One can know what it is as "tree", or one could know what it is as "firewood". If you think that...

Your point?

I couldn't count "interaction", because that's what you left out. Look: All you have described is the activity of the whole, and the activity of the p...

I can't see your point. You haven't explained how knowing what something is differs from deciding what to call it. I decide to call it "tree". You dec...

"It" here, being the thing which causes, refers to constraints. So the constraints do more than constrain, they actually cause the existence of the pa...

There is no fundamental difference between deciding what things are, and knowing what things are, because all we can do is decide what something is, a...

That's absolutely correct. My saying this represents a very small portion of what I am thinking about at the moment, which is a very small portion of ...

The Hidden Life of Trees is very informative. Wohlleben is very knowledgeable, and the book offers a vast supply of facts. It appears like a tree is "...

The situation in Syria has been getting worse for a long time, and will most likely continue to get worse for quite some time. What you call "the worl...

So there are "options" which are perceived. These options are non-physical things. If these non-physical things, the options that is, are not real, th...

As it is difficult for you to grasp that non-physical things exist, it is equally difficult for me to grasp that physical things exist. I have extreme...

I think we need to remove the ambiguity from "like" here. I see that babies "like" in a selfish way, such as they like to eat, but to develop this typ...

Now that's not a very loving thing to say Mariner. What if it takes being loved to be able to learn how to love? Consider a child, younger than yours ...

If everything is constantly changing, then there is no such thing as a state of affairs. To assume that everything is changing, and that there are sta...

I expected that you'd recognize that the question was a rhetorical question. You asked me how do non-physical things exist if they have no properties ...

The best approach, I find, is to reverse this position, and look at how things in the conscious realm cause things in the physical realm. The evidence...

What's "theistic necessity"? No, that's incorrect. It's a simple fact that Aristotle's cosmological argument, which appears to be derived from aspects...

The idea that substantial being requires both matter and form is derived from a materialist bias. You start from this materialist bias, and when you t...

Ask yourself what is a property, and maybe you would realize that a property is itself a non-physical thing. Intentionality is a view toward the futur...

Keep it under wraps? Are you suggesting that Mueller would involve himself in a cover up?

Correct, the cosmological argument demonstrates that substantial being may be solely formal. That's why the Neo-Platonists posit independent Forms.

Do you support a separation, and therefore a boundary, between inside thought and outside thought? If so, what could such a boundary consist of? And, ...

This is not good at all. The attempt to reduce the possibility of one or the other, to "definitely both", is obviously a mistaken approach. In the vas...

OK, so to get to the point, I think conventions are essentially non-physical things. As you say, they are based in intentionality. Intentionality is a...

Guilt is definitely an emotion. It is feeling brought on by a recognition that oneself has acted in a way that was not right, "I made a mistake". It m...

This is what I was trying to bring to your attention, the existence of conventions. I don't think it's the case that the meaning you derive "wouldn't ...

So the question is, what do you base this knowledge on, this "knowing that there is no actual boundary"? You perceive a boundary through sensation, bu...

I must be real bad today, the worst, I actually got a reply from you.

Forgiveness inspires confession. Good luck in there.

No we're going around in circles. You claimed that the recognition of things is entirely relational. I claimed that the recognition of myself as a thi...