Metaphysician Undercover

Only chickens with clipped beaks have unpeckable taste.

You've obviously not read Aristotle's Metaphysics. He discusses extensively what kind of existence ideas have. Yes, that is the concept of "man". So, ...

This is completely untrue. I've changed my mind on these issues more times than I can count. And I leave my mind open to further changes, that's why I...

This is unintelligible to me. Motion is a concept. That is why I could give a definition of motion prior to the principle of relativity being produced...

Of course I disagree with that. These are concepts, and concepts do not exist within the things which serve as tokens which display the concept. The c...

I don't see your point. Aristotle shows that the world is not eternal, as I explained above. Therefore your conditional proposition "if the world is e...

So, is this a thread about Aristotle's metaphysics, addressing what he actually wrote, or is this just a thread about our opinions of Aristotle, as a ...

Definitely, he does not. As argued in "On The Heavens", anything composed of matter is corruptible and not eternal. I suggest that you reread Aristotl...

The problem though, is that with each passing moment the actual acorn, along with the potentialities, changes according to the conditions it is expose...

There is nothing to indicate that the world might be eternal. and everything indicates that there is potentiality and actuality. So that possibility, ...

I explained in what sense a system is a material, physical thing (i.e. an engineered artificial creation). I also explained in what sense a system is ...

A "system" is a whole, and as such it requires a boundary, or principle at least, which validates its supposed existence as a united whole. Such princ...

Space and time are conceptual. So "outside of space and time", simply means unable to be apprehended through our current conceptions of space and time...

The problem with something like the ChatGPT is that it tends to represent common, conventional ideas, sort of like Wikipedia, so this is not very usef...

Wikipedia tells me "In information theory and statistics, negentropy is used as a measure of distance to normality." Care to state your case? I think ...

A statement about a single body is not completely "meaningless", because we can still state properties of the body itself, and this is meaningful. Pre...

SLX showed extraordinary will power by completely ignoring me no matter what I posted. Banno is similar, but doesn't demonstrate the same will power, ...

OK, I did not see in the article, how you moved form that definition of soul to your rejection of dualism. All I saw supporting the rejection was the ...

Actually your claim was that Aristotelian conceptual space provides a means for rejecting dualism. You say it in the op, "The article rejects dualism ...

Wow, light passes through the pupil. Where does it go, into the brain? It's very black in there.

I prefer unfiltered open fermented beer, similar yeast content, and similar bacteria (yuck, but force it down, it builds tolerance), along with pleasa...

Sure, when I pick up my tea cup to have a drink, that's an actual example. You might say it was my brain that caused this action, but what caused my b...

Hi D.f., I just finished reading your article. I thought it was quite good, well written, and easy to read. I think you did a very good job of exposin...

What a non-physical cause "looks" like is a freely willed act of intention (final cause as javra explains). We have lots of experience with such non-p...

Learning the history of ideals is a lot different than actually learning the ideas. The former is like memorizing a list of named ideas, in chronologi...

This statement is what is absurd. If there is a multitude of distinct attitudes toward metaphysics, then education in metaphysics is even more importa...

Right, according to these definitions, things are as I said. The agent of change (cause) is gravity. The effect is the falling of the person. Of cours...

I think I should revisit some old posts, and see if anything has mysteriously changed. If so, I'd be seriously spooked. This is a respectable proposit...

A better formulation of this thought experiment is to imagine that there never was any life in the universe, ever. It is better because imagining that...

No it does not. Anytime something is caused to do something by a separate force, the thing doing whatever it is caused to do is not the cause of the a...

Way more acceptable!

Enough time spent with the guitar could lead to a resolution of the Fourier uncertainty. The problem as I understand it is if you posit the lower limi...

So, why not do both? And participate here in his spare time.

Thanks Andrew, I especially like this part: This is completely opposed to what Aristotle presumed himself to have demonstrated, that it is impossible ...

Yes I deny that, and I'm very surprised that you do not understand. It is the person who is doing two different things, walking on the earth in one ca...

Try this: as opposed to this: Notice in Wayfarer's passage "dependent upon the constructive activities of our consciousness", and your quote "not depe...

Idealism, even in its strict sense grants external reality, or else it would be reducible to solipsism. What a strict idealist (like Berkeley) would d...

There was a member here, active a couple years ago, I can't remember the name, but a self-proclaimed physicist who was big on this time reversal stuff...

What do you think this means, to assume numbers which cannot be counted nor computed? To me it's a form of unintelligibility, to say that there are nu...

With respect to what the gravity is doing in the two scenarios, there is no difference. In other words, the cause is the same in the two, but the effe...

Right, what does it mean for something to be in the mind? It makes sense to say it, and everyone understands when it is said, but no one really seems ...

You'd better avoid me then, because I, as the antagonist of Socrates, happen to know everything.

That's why tomatoes enhance everything, especially cheese and beef. Isn't there something about acid and fat together?

That's what I said early, there's a lot of hypocrisy involved when people classify themselves. It's better to judge by a person's actions rather than ...

That idealism is commonly opposed with materialism would be a good indication that idealists are less materialistic. Don't you think?

That's a hell of a lot better than Wikipedia. You clearly have not read any of Galileo's material, and continue to demonstrate that you do not know wh...

It doesn't matter as to whether there is such an objective matter of fact. What matters is that it's a useful distinction which demonstrates your mode...

Sure seems absurd to me, obviously.

All this makes no sense to me. The suicide jumper is acted on by gravity before jumping. And, the "action-at-a-distance" of gravity is understood to n...

That story knocked my socks off. Hey, I've never heard that saying like that ...but I like it. What I'm more used to is something like "knocked me cle...