jkg20

I suppose I'm trying to approach the issue purely metaphysically, not epistemologically (and therein may lie my confusion). That we might not know eno...

The metaphysical issue concerns distinct realms, not distinct things within realms. You and I are distinct things, perhaps, but we are not in distinct...

You're right, I could be clearer in expressing my concerns. I think the issue I'm worried about has the principle of sufficient reason at its core. I'...

Enjoyed this post, and particularly I ventured into academia a little later than most, and generally got the feeling that many (though not all) of the...

Hi. Discharging assumptions basically means that you are no longer relying on the "fact" that they are true. Let's try putting your proof into "natura...

As an aside, one good general technique when what you are aiming to prove is a conditional statement, you should be looking to make the antecedent of ...

The problem as I see it with your answer is that you have the undischared assumption at line (3) still lingering around by the time you get to line 7....

Thanks ArguingWArisotleTiff - I like logic, so it was a pleasure to try to help!

If by that you mean "we as conscious beings are deluded about the true nature of reality" then that is certainly better than "consciousness is an illu...

I'm still not so sure why you are apparently so closed-minded about the role of conscious observers in QM. Adrian Kent - by all accounts an exceptiona...

Consciousness cannot, whatever it is, be an illusion. The very notion of an illusion requires that there be something conscious that is being deluded....

Ah, okay, so you were just laying down a challenge to fill out the content of the term rather than stating point blank that the task could not be acco...

A realist interpretation (quantum or otherwise) may be coherent, but this comment sounds like you are suggesting that anything other than a realist in...

You're welcome - actually enjoyed dredging up memories of undergraduate mathematical logic (I was pretty good at it back in the day :wink: ). If you a...

Could always be 133,000,000 pieces of drivel :wink:

Sure, people might not be able to agree about a definition, but - unless you are a cranky eliminative materialist - there is something being disagreed...

I suppose the issue is this: if you are a realist about mental phenomena and a realist about physical phenomena, then - because we know from our own c...

Couldn't agree more - in fact I think I wrote somewhere at the beginning of this thread that idealism can be argued for entirely independently of QM. ...

Allow be to be a little clearer. If one accepts that the wave function does collapse, then that it collapses in different ways in different circumstan...

Interpretations of QM have a lot to say about realism or idealism. Interpretations don't prove realism or idealism, of course, which is perhaps what y...

I'm not quite sure I follow you. I thought we were at least all agreed that one of the interesting questions QM invites is how to explain the so-calle...

I'm not familiar with James's wedding ring analogy, but if the idea is that a physical description of the world is incomplete, and a subjective descri...

Mea culpa - apologies. My first comment was in fact directed at Kym, not you:

Indeed, if you think there are two realms - the physical and the mental, the subjective and the objective, the inner and the outer - you are likely to...

For instance Churchland, of course, denies that there are any such facts.

Reread "What it is like to be a bat" - Nagel expressly draws a connection between subjectivity "the what it is like of experience" and having a point ...

Regarding the part of your intial argument about points of view, I think Nagel's issue is not that there is just one point of view that a person takes...

OK, Eros, first thing is that after taking a quick look at the way Forbes gives his answers, each line of your answers need to be structured in the fo...

So, up to (8) everything is fine (except you forgot to close the brace at (2) - I know its nitpicking, but that's what formal logic requires). After (...

You discharge assumption (4) at step (6) by relying on assumption (5). You discharge assumption (8) at your step (10) but again you should be relying ...

I'm not trying to substitute science with anything, let alone elementary school English. I'm a scientist by profession, and I like my pay packet. I do...

Wow, that's expensive - I had no idea. I don't have a copy of that work, but did pick up a version of his The Case for Idealism secondhand for 20 poun...

I think you are probably on to something that idealism tends to be regarded suspiciously because of its links with theism of one form or another. Howe...

One difference to note is that Berkeley didn't believe in platonic ideas at all, he held (at least, it seems to me he held) a pretty extreme form of n...

Quite right - QM may or may not challenge mind-independent realism, but Kastrup certainly hasn't given us any reasons for thinking so.

:up: I, for one, am criticising him on the basis that he is a bad philosopher.

Nobody - well certainly not me in any case - is saying that the formal aspects of QM include reference to conscious observers. That's not the point. T...

From where do you derive your certainty concerning the meaning to be given to terms like "observation" and "measurement" in QM? Heisenberg and Bohr ad...

I'm all for thinking outside academic boxes, and materialsim is very definitely one of those boxes. We have no disagreement there. I just think Kastru...

And in any case, idealism doesn't require support from the philosophically naive Kastrup, and it can be argued for entirely independently of any inter...

At the risk of being accused of sophism: If the event caused is an appearance (or a disjunction of appearances) then we still seem to have "observatio...

I'm not sure that this is right - or at least it is part of the problem under discussion. Suppose we neutrally define "observer" as whatever takes mea...

Perhaps I am being a little harsh, although I did also describe him as an excellent scientist. The problem scientists have when they venture into phil...

The existence of free will, and its compatibility or otherwise with causal determinism, is a philosophical mine field, which Kant also tried to negoti...

Even Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason thought proofs of God were a conceit - he specifically argues that it is impossible to prove that God exists ...

Perhaps I'm being a little harsh - although I did describe him as an excellent scientist. But even in the more reasonably argued artice Waferer talks ...

Agreed. Although as far as I am concerned he is probably on the side of the angels, he is a very good example of an excellent scientist and execrable ...

Which it clear doesn't :wink: OK, I thought maybe there was a known argument that takes deflationism as a premise and reaches realism as a conclusion ...

I agree, to some extent at least. It's the adverbialist that puts the emphasis on logical form and I introduced the problem in an "adverbialist-friend...

I completely agree - if you want to argue for idealism then you need to do a lot more work, and that's not what I'm doing here. The main idea I'm tryi...