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Metaphysician Undercover

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May I suggest, shopping carts? Clearly necessary for a good life. Until Amazon came along and it all went to hell.
April 20, 2023 at 12:01
A careful analysis of the two principle forms of causation reveals that the necessity of "because of physical law" is reducible to a form of the neces...
April 20, 2023 at 11:53
Watch "Trailer Park Boys" for all sorts of ideas as to what to do with those 'unwanted' shopping carts.
April 20, 2023 at 10:52
I really do not think that change can be said to be a property, because change is the process whereby something loses or gains a property. So, you mus...
April 20, 2023 at 10:26
Really?
April 20, 2023 at 01:51
Is that an offer? Why don't you go for it, title a thread with that offer? I bet you'd get some takers.
April 20, 2023 at 00:47
As you wish, simpleton. What's wrong with the idea of free will choices occurring spontaneously? That looks like an adequate descriptive word for libe...
April 20, 2023 at 00:41
I think that's a good quality, and in itself could provide you with a whole lot of purpose.
April 19, 2023 at 23:50
No, no, no, javi. There are two sides to every story. It's the best invention for the food preparers, and the worst invention for the food eaters. For...
April 19, 2023 at 12:04
Why would you think that free will, the capacity to make a choice, is superstition? Do you really believe that you do not have the capacity to choose?...
April 19, 2023 at 11:36
This is consistent with Aristotle's description, but the issue which necessitates dualism logically, comes down to what we might call the first living...
April 19, 2023 at 01:29
There is a 'compromise' to this problem with "rational insight" which allows for both of these positions, it's called dualism. This is the position pr...
April 18, 2023 at 12:14
I told you earlier in the thread, this is a reference to Plato's "the good", which he compared to the light of the sun. What "seeing the light" means ...
April 18, 2023 at 00:52
The reason is produced by logic, not by empirical observation. I went through that already. You wrongfully apply a requirement of "empirical observati...
April 17, 2023 at 13:15
Our understanding of change is based in empirical observations which are always of past time, observations are memories. We have no observations of th...
April 17, 2023 at 01:10
You referred to an "inferential nexus". The "largely tacit norms that govern" the use of this term "inferential", generally dictate that "Inference" r...
April 16, 2023 at 12:21
Thermostats don't seek and avoid. Any categorizing involved with a thermostat is done by the engineers who produce the design. Categorizing is a disti...
April 16, 2023 at 11:47
A whole lot of reality we cannot make sense of, as physicists have found out. The principles of modal logic fail to make a true separation between wha...
April 16, 2023 at 11:35
If they can afford to feed you from a fancy pancake machine, what's the need for pitchers of syrup? Why not just pull the tap and load up? Everyone lo...
April 16, 2023 at 02:02
To distinguish between what is to be sought, and what is to be avoided, is to make a distinction of kind, which is to categorize, and this is a qualia...
April 16, 2023 at 01:46
I believe this is a basic problem with Kant's metaphysics. We can see this with his phenomena/noumena distinction. It seems that we cannot have any re...
April 16, 2023 at 01:38
Very good, this is why I was arguing in some other thread, that 'judgement' is fundamental to living systems. This perspective gives us a different wa...
April 16, 2023 at 01:10
Any idea what the advertised "one-touch pancake machine" is? I wonder if those pitchers of syrup are maple.
April 16, 2023 at 00:45
Augustine is Neo-Platonist, and "the Light" referred to by him is "the good" of Plato's "Republic". "The good" Plato says is what makes intelligible o...
April 15, 2023 at 11:31
Are you aware that the future is radically different from the past? We might say that the past consists of what has actually occurred, and the future ...
April 15, 2023 at 11:14
Take the drug option.
April 15, 2023 at 00:29
Any shots to go along with that practise?
April 15, 2023 at 00:27
I've explained to you already, the decision-making process is not empirically observable. You can witness all sorts of different things, and people do...
April 15, 2023 at 00:12
Doesn't "different kinds of knowing" imply different senses of "knowing"? Therefore equivocating uses would be a requirement. So what sense does your ...
April 13, 2023 at 14:31
Would you consider giving misbehaving members the option of drugs to calm them, instead of banning? I'll provide the misbehaviour if you'll provide th...
April 13, 2023 at 14:27
Anxiety is good, it's nature's way of keeping you on your toes... and that's good of course. That's why so many of the people who go into the performi...
April 13, 2023 at 14:20
Some time back, I made a proposal at TPF for real time debates. In this format the debaters would be given very strict time regulations, to better rep...
April 13, 2023 at 12:02
The problem with this type of reductionism is that nothing ever gets 'reduced to...' in any absolute way. The attempt at reduction always leads off in...
April 13, 2023 at 11:41
To say it's not impossible, is to miss the reality that it is logically necessary. It's not impossible that the earth orbits the sun, but to say that ...
April 13, 2023 at 01:58
I would say, that context provides the most significant aspect of meaning in most cases. But a lot of people don't want to deal with context when disc...
April 13, 2023 at 00:18
I suggest used motor oil. It's inexpensive and contains the heavy metals required for sunblock. Then again, if you were self-conscious about smelling ...
April 12, 2023 at 11:54
So, the sophistry of persuasive definition extends right into mathematics as well. Set theory provides a very good example of this. Or, you could do l...
April 12, 2023 at 11:45
If you include technicalities, I have quite a few bottles of motor oil, especially used stuff. I rarely dip into them for breakfast though, saving the...
April 12, 2023 at 11:11
"Change" is incompatible with "stable property"
April 12, 2023 at 01:44
Ok, so we'll say that the object of perception is that which is perceived. So the question is what chooses the aspects of reality which will be repres...
April 12, 2023 at 00:19
Altering language is the ultimate corruption and deeply forbidden. Have you heard of The Inquisition? It all began in Languedoc with the infiltration ...
April 10, 2023 at 11:08
That's what the representation is, an object of perception. The "object" is not what the representation represents. The object is the phenomenon, the ...
April 09, 2023 at 12:36
I think the more appropriate representation is "the belief held by most people, as to what constitutes 'all of reality', is a prison". Once we dismiss...
April 08, 2023 at 11:28
I'm talking about meaning. Do you accept that the same physical thing, the sign itself, might mean something different to me as compared to what it me...
April 08, 2023 at 11:21
We're going to have to discuss these boundaries. I think your proposal of a purely logical system is untenable. There is no way to free ourselves from...
April 08, 2023 at 02:16
Of course it sounds like relativity. Your premise is an equation derived from relativity, so your conclusion will be relativistic as well. To get a di...
April 07, 2023 at 11:32
What Wayfarer shows is that this proposal, the view from anywhere, does not make any sense. It is incoherent, an oxymoron, because a view must be from...
April 07, 2023 at 10:36
The deeper metaphysical issue here is that in order to say that what hurts us is real, we must assume that the hurt itself is real, because the hurt h...
April 07, 2023 at 10:16
Ok, I'll be clear. I do not know exactly where, within me, this system lies. I know it must exist because the premises I've presented produce the logi...
April 06, 2023 at 02:29
A "thing" is what is involved in the event, as what engages in the activity. There is not matter to a described event unless an independent thing (a t...
April 05, 2023 at 13:00