Metaphysician Undercover

"Intuition", in the traditional sense, does not necessitate truth, that's fundamental, there is good intuition and bad intuition. The person with good...

I know you have no problem with mysticism, but some people presuppose that if something looks like mysticism it's not real philosophy. So "metaphysics...

This idea of "degrees of reality" is probably best formulated by the Neo-Platonists. Plotinus describes an "emanation", and Proclus a "procession". Si...

You've lost me now. I don't see how "concepts coincide with real things" supports your argument. If I remember correctly, you were arguing that concep...

Are you not a "thing in itself"? Do you not know yourself directly, without the medium of sense phenomena? The point is that in the traditional sense ...

It's not a matter of subjective interpretation, it's the question of can we apprehend an object directly with the intellect, without the medium of sen...

I suggest that you consider "substance" in Aristotle's usage as that which substantiates. He introduces it in his logic, to ground logic in the indivi...

I don't know, that's why I was asking. I suppose one might turn to intuition on that matter. Actually I think it's Kant who is wrong on this point. Fr...

So your argument is that we each describe the same thing with different words. But this does not necessitate that the thing we are each describing wit...

What you describe are not properties of space, they are properties of "lines". And lines exist by definition. We can give "space" any properties we wa...

My question was, that if one does not want God, and does not want to go to church, but still wants to turn somewhere for moral direction, where does t...

But I wouldn't make that statement as an assertion, because it would be obvious that it was self-contradicting. It is made as a proposition, a proposa...

If the good ole consumerist society is not going to give us any real standards of worth and meaning, where else is one to find them?

Hi Samuel, nice to hear from you. I'm going to have to refresh my memory on the issue here, it's been a while. I'll be back soon.

It may be that the most fundamental experience of time is as a simple now, but I don't think that is the case. I haven't read a lot of phenomenology, ...

This is what I disagree with, that feelings from the unconscious, are somehow not your own feelings. And the position that the law takes does not vali...

Intuitions are inherently subjective. One intuition says Euclid's fifth is correct, another says it is not. Take a long hard look at the way Kant uses...

Sorry, I thought that the tinted glass argument was more obvious. The point is that if one is looking at (observing) something through a glass, and th...

Evolution has occurred as the result of the actions and interactions of many living beings, along with their interactions with the environment. It is ...

Well, I'm not a mathematician, so I do not fully understand the general theory of relativity, but isn't this why space-time is "curved", to account fo...

Of course. I think we went through this, "evolution" refers to a description of the result, the effect of the actions of living things. Evolution is n...

OK Jonathan, I'm asking, back this up.

Perhaps those acts which appear as throwing the boat off course are actually well thought out intelligently designed acts of a genius. Who would have ...

Paul Manafort and Kellyanne Conway ran a "standard campaign"? Isn't Manafort a prime suspect for "nonstandard" campaign?

This is exactly the issue. That is the nature of an experiment, we do something, and note what happens. We interact with the world and make observatio...

No, it's not a matter of translation, it's a matter of understanding. That we understand ourselves to act with purpose, and we compare the purposeful ...

Yeah, it's necessary to assume something like that as the "agent", but no one really understands it. That's just the facts of life.

What do you mean? What is the soul?

Always. Without an agent there is no activity.

I think that would depend on how you define "agent". I believe that anything which is active, an active cause, is an agent. In the case of a human bei...

Evolution is not an acting thing, so to suggest that it acts with purpose would be a category mistake in the first place. Evolution is not an agent in...

I think this is exactly the point I was making. I wouldn't say that being observed by instruments is being observed, in any unqualified sense. That is...

Here's the point Hanover. Look at what "survive" means. It means little more than to subsist, to remain in existence, and this is what the most simple...

I'll repeat what I said. It is highly doubtful that survival is the purpose of living things:

The Planck time is the limit which is imposed by the accepted physical theories. It is the boundary between observable and unobservable which is the m...

It is interesting that Bergson does not give us an approach to the existence of the future here. He relates present to past, and speaks as if things c...

Banno first said "The point of evolution is its lack of purpose". Now the subject has switched to "intent", and "agency", rather than "purpose". I sup...

Let me see if I understand your claim. We observe that living things act with purpose, but this does not provide us with what we need to conclude that...

Do you not see that there is purpose in each act of every living thing? If every living thing acts with purpose, and evolution is a result of those ac...

I've read that book by Smolin. It's very interesting in the sense that it exposes the problems with the approach to time of physics, but lacking in th...

There are a number of different ways to look at it. First, we might consider that the passage of time is necessary for physical change to occur. But p...

No surprise there.

I believe in free will. Therefore I assert that there is no such thing as the rules governing mental ongoings. Until you prove determinism, your pain ...

The feeling is mutual, it's nice to be engaged in a discussion which motivates constructive thought, and expands one's own ideas. The legal system has...

So how would one have a memory of something which is a possibility?

I don't see how future possibilities could be memories. How could something which hasn't occurred yet exist as a memory? That makes no sense.

All I agreed to, is that you have been using the word "believe" in a way which is different from what I would like. I see your usage as ambiguous and ...

Of course there is a division, the past is substantially different from the future. Therefore there must be a division between the two. You really hav...

Right, and as I explained, there is no justificatory grounds for denying that an agent believes everything which is happening in one's dreams. It's ju...

There really is no feeling of duration. What we feel is the division between past and future. We have memories of the past, and we anticipate the futu...