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Metaphysician Undercover

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Suppose that this is the case, that each present moment is not predictable. What does this say about the future? It is impossible that there is physic...
December 05, 2017 at 22:29
Yeah! I hope you're right. I know that the media is full of spin masters, who will edit video to portray whatever they want, but in every clip that I ...
December 05, 2017 at 22:15
Consider that every time your cat comes for food you look at your clock, and calendar, and make a note. After some duration you have a lot of notes. Y...
December 05, 2017 at 22:09
You have noticed that your cat comes for food. That it comes "every morning for food" is an inference. Your sense observations, along with your memory...
December 05, 2017 at 21:23
Have you read Wittgenstein's "Philosophical Investigations", or "On Certainty". If so you ought to recognize what I'm talking about. Your whole quoted...
December 05, 2017 at 21:13
The problem with Wittgenstein's approach is that he misunderstands, and therefore misrepresents the nature of these "behavioral regularities". Behavio...
December 05, 2017 at 13:37
It is necessary to employ such a narrow sense of "observe" in order to understand the nature of the things which you call regularities, and invariance...
December 05, 2017 at 12:37
If time is something real as Lee Smolin suggests in Time Reborn, how could time be something physical? Imagine space for example. If "space" were some...
December 05, 2017 at 02:41
Yeah, this seems to be a statement of the typical physicalist's metaphysical position. "Anything which is real is physical because physics attempts to...
December 05, 2017 at 01:36
Your missing something which is necessary here. You can watch the sun all you want, and not observe any invariance. It is your logical conclusion that...
December 05, 2017 at 01:11
What I meant is that in the phrase "observed invariances" "invariance" does not refer to a property of anything at all, so it is not a description. Th...
December 04, 2017 at 21:45
I don't think that is adequate. If information is the arrangement of physical parts, then there must be a reason for that particular arrangement being...
December 04, 2017 at 12:55
The real question then, concerning the nature of information, is whether "information" refers to the physical representation, or the thing (idea, conc...
December 04, 2017 at 02:29
That's it! That's the solution to the whole problem. Get into the garden and dig the weeds. First, we have to determine what exactly is a weed.
December 03, 2017 at 23:44
Yes, surprisingly enough, I agree with this, but of course, there is a catch. As Aristotle distinguishes two types of knowledge in his Nichomachean Et...
December 03, 2017 at 23:21
I don't think that article really gets to the point. The issue is just what are the matters which were discussed with the Russians, which have most li...
December 03, 2017 at 18:09
How can you be sure that such a proof is actually a proof then, without any understanding? You claim that you can verify the proof to be valid, withou...
December 03, 2017 at 14:26
Yes, I would say that immaterial, and nonphysical, refer to things that are not capable of being sensed, so they don't have what we would call spatial...
December 03, 2017 at 13:22
I think we're loosing objectivity here. Do you agree that understanding is inherently subjective, meaning that it is always a subject which understand...
December 03, 2017 at 04:47
Surely it's not definitions. I don't interpret according to definitions in my mind. I might consult a dictionary if I have difficulty interpreting, bu...
December 03, 2017 at 04:32
How can "how to interpret the representation" be anything other than what is in the mind of the interpreter? And this is non-physical.
December 02, 2017 at 22:52
Judging by our conversations in the past, I don't think you know what "having power" means. So this statement is kind of meaningless.
December 02, 2017 at 22:45
This is a definition, composed of words. Did you read what I said about the relation between the concept, and words? If understanding the form of tria...
December 02, 2017 at 22:15
I don't think "joy'" is the best word to use here. As I explained, what it brings is understanding. And because we desire to understand, then satisfyi...
December 02, 2017 at 18:04
A blind person can understand the concept of colour through definition, description, just like one can understand the concept of triangle in this way....
December 02, 2017 at 13:45
That's a particular triangle you are imagining, not "triangle-ness". I can't imagine triangle-ness without using defining words. And that's the diffic...
December 02, 2017 at 13:39
How can one imagine triangle-ness without any physical properties? Isn't that exactly what triangle-ness is, a physical property? The problem here is ...
December 02, 2017 at 04:30
No, "ostensive" means learning by direct demonstration, and that's what giving examples is, just like drawing triangles is demonstrating the meaning o...
December 02, 2017 at 03:47
OK, I think I understand, if a definition is used, it must be unambiguous. An ambiguous definition would not qualify as a proof because the conclusion...
December 01, 2017 at 14:14
This is exactly the question which Plato addresses in The Timaeus, how eternal Ideas may relate to particulars. The question has arisen as at the hear...
December 01, 2017 at 13:45
Why do you say "certainly, no change means no time". Humans realize time through change. The principle used is simple, If change occurs, then there is...
December 01, 2017 at 13:00
Human beings make categories. Without a human being there is no time category. I'm asking if you think that there could be time without change. Or is ...
December 01, 2017 at 04:03
OK, so the meaning is not numerically the same, then I assume you use "same" in the qualitative sense. This means that there is some difference betwee...
December 01, 2017 at 02:40
I don't claim that the possibility of error invalidates the measurement. I assume that the measurement is accurate. I claim that the extrapolation is ...
November 30, 2017 at 23:49
OK, that's an example of how something which is assumed to be constant from observation on the short term may prove to be less constant on the long te...
November 30, 2017 at 14:32
How can you say that the two ways of using "same" has never been at issue? My argument, from the beginning has been that the conclusion of your argume...
November 30, 2017 at 13:41
Time as a concept is abstracted from change in the universe. But don't you think that change is something real, which is occurring in the universe? An...
November 30, 2017 at 04:07
That's an arbitrary assumption, that the second is constant, and the year is variant. Because of this arbitrary assumption, any, and all discrepancy i...
November 30, 2017 at 03:59
So my description of free will holds then. The nature of future entities is not necessarily determined by their present internal conditions, nor by th...
November 30, 2017 at 03:37
Change takes time, that is self-evident, but why does no change imply no time? Don't you think that it is possible that time could be passing while th...
November 30, 2017 at 03:24
Have you read Plato's Republic? He makes comparisons to breeding dogs, and choosing for favourable characteristics. At one point he puts forth a propo...
November 29, 2017 at 22:53
This doesn't make sense to me. Are you saying that matter has an imagination, and imagines what it will be prior to being that? That's not true. The a...
November 29, 2017 at 22:40
Yes, the second is defined that way, I am fully aware of this. However, the year is defined by the earth's orbit. For fdrake's claim that the caesium ...
November 29, 2017 at 21:43
Interesting, but the point is this. The reason why the frequency is precisely 9,192,631,770 times per second, rather than 5 billion, 10 billion, or so...
November 29, 2017 at 18:04
This is a very good point, to consider the differences between the principles of these great philosophers. A very good example is found in the ontolog...
November 29, 2017 at 14:33
There are faults in this statement. Just like in the case of describing an object, likewise in describing a concept, two people having exact descripti...
November 29, 2017 at 14:13
How would I know? If I knew, then those measuring would know, and you wouldn't be making the claims that you do. Remember, my claim is that error in t...
November 29, 2017 at 13:30
What I'm interested in is how you would relate this description of interconnected systems and cycles to the concept of "growth". Growth appears to be ...
November 29, 2017 at 13:16
I am wondering, are we part of the virtual reality, or are we real? If we are real, then I am real, and you are real, so you cannot be part of my virt...
November 29, 2017 at 03:36
That's irrelevant, because all those other words would need to be defined as well, according to your stated principles of reasoning, which requires de...
November 29, 2017 at 03:31