Pattern-chaser

Crowds are very wise, for some types of problem, and very stupid for others. The trick is to know which is which, I suspect. :wink: Corrupt aristocrat...

My solution is to deny the existence of a paradox. Every form of government has benefits and shortcomings. This applies to aristocracy and democracy j...

I wonder if, when you write "brain", you mean "mind"? It looks that way.... :chin: As for the rest, I'm not quite clear what you're getting at. I thin...

There are no "underlying principles" behind reality. Reality is the master, the reference, and the principles you refer to are simply the results of h...

No, they are part of a hypothetical physical (as in 'physics') system. Metaphysics, as I understand it, is not what you think.

I am not separate from my experience, but I am not only my experience. I am not passive, like a rock, or something. I respond to the things I experien...

I'm sorry. I thought you meant metaphysical in a philosophical sense. It seems you mean something closer to the everyday, something along the lines of...

Yes indeed. As I already said: They arise within nonconsciousness too. I.e. memory takes part in nonconscious thinking. Memory is not exclusive to con...

I rather think metaphysics is what its etymology suggests, something upon which physics is founded or based. In the case of physics as we understand i...

From nowhere, or from a part of your mind that operates outside your consciousness, and therefore outside your conscious awareness? Thoughts that orig...

No, I agree, I am not separate from my experience(s); they become part of me as they happen. But I don't think I am only those experiences. My identit...

The title of this topic is "holistic learning", and I think this is the only way to achieve a useful and (hopefully) complete understanding of somethi...

I can't disagree with any of this, but I would observe that it seems to address only some types or forms of learning. When it comes to learning diffic...

Yes, we do. :up: But we still need, in practice, to start with the details and expand from there. Once we're going, we switch from top-down to bottom-...

I would prefer the big picture first, but in practice I need to start with the details and move toward the big picture as my understanding grows. It c...

There are many, many, useful responses to your question. Of them all, the most valuable is this: If I told you, I'd have to kill you.

I look forward to it. :smile: This looks interesting, but I can't quite see what you're getting at. Care to expand?

I wonder if you over-estimate your own importance in this? A thing exists only if you perceive it? Are there no things that have human-independent exi...

Well I can't argue with that, as I'm putting the human-centric view, and "cold" is a very human reaction to what you say. :smile: But I do not critici...

No, I don't think so. As you say, she has never experienced the seeing of something that is red. And as for Harry and Sherlock, I have many times (not...

:up: The autistic community gets impatient with ablism too. Thanks for your words. :smile:

But your constrained results have already ignored all other meanings and uses to which humans put the term "red". The results from your limited and co...

The vocabulary mandated (by all Americans) for discussions of this type requires that you call it "dependence", I know. But "support" would do as well...

Then your constrained researches will return constrained results. :up:

I know this view is prevalent in America, a country that has never had, or even aspired to, a socialist government. Some countries who have actually t...

And I think it is anything but illusory, because (as you say) "It is simply a line that separates those who think that wealth should be shared to a gr...

The Amazon write-up implies that socialism seeks to "insert the authority of the state into every nook and cranny of daily life", which I believe to b...

I don't see why not. Actually, I do, for pedantic reasons: we can't criticise logic; it is what it is. But we can criticise the use of logic, which I ...

Yes. If you remove all the authoritarian aspects of an authoritarian political position, what's left (next to nothing?) is more or less acceptable. Yo...

I don't think their choice of name reflected their ideology as well as we might hope. Perhaps they intended to disguise their true aspirations? :chin:...

I rather think it isn't (irony). That's the joy of an extreme ideology: every perceived problem is solved with an application of authoritarian brutali...

Funny, that. :wink: I always thought that socialism was a left-wing political movement, while fascism exists at the other, right-wing, end of the poli...

Sorry, my mistake. :blush: I meant to convey that perhaps consciousness and neural activity could be linked and 'reversible', in the same way as the t...

You think, then, that we can easily - intuitively and usefully - express human experience(s) in terms of neural activity? How is that? If I experience...

It seems to me you're the one who does most of the 'veering'. First it's red and redness, then it's that red is an external thing, and now ... what? A...

In the sense that a mind is ordered, and counters entropy in some simple and temporary way, I would agree that it is strictly true. But that the purpo...

My best guess - and I am happy to observe that this is not proven, just a summary of our current beliefs - is that neural activity eventually gives ri...

I'm not sure. But you could ask Helen Keller (if she was still alive), who managed to teach deaf, dumb and blind subjects to communicate and interact ...

Yes, the whole process of human perception, starting with sensation, and including all the other stuff that comes with perception, is pre-conscious, c...

This is a difficult one. To the extent that neural activity gives rise to consciousness, and thereby experience, it is correct to observe that experie...

This is like saying that Harry Potter and Sherlock Holmes exist in the real world, because the books and films that represent their adventures exist i...

This isn't a surprise; it isn't incompatible with my beliefs either. But that wasn't the point. I'm sure I said that. Oh yes, I did. :up: :wink: Assum...

This reminds me of Pirsig's rephrasing, whereby "A causes B" becomes "B values pre-condition A". Both are valid expressions of the same thing. Perhaps...

I think this might be too restrictive. For a start, almost all English words have more than one meaning: they are (nearly) all ambiguous. It is imprac...

In this matter, I wonder if your view on reality might be blinkered by your reliance on "scientific facts" in an area where there is (I think) more th...

OK, so direct realists did this, not you. My point stands. The definition you use for "red" is unusual, and does not include many or most of the shade...

emboldening.] Read what Harry said again. Carefully. The cause does not assign meaning to the effect. Harry defines meaning to be the relationship bet...

Ask a blind man. He knows the meaning, but cannot appreciate that meaning as you (a sighted person) can. I know the meaning of X-ray, although I will ...

Really? :chin: A being is a living thing; a thing may be living or not. As you say, "thing" is the most general term, while being is more constrained ...

I gained a worthwhile understanding of the nonconscious mind from "Hare brain, tortoise mind" by Guy Claxton. But I wonder if a simpler observation mi...