Terrapin Station

You're making some assumption that it would have to be done in a particular series of steps, probably. Why are you assuming that?

"Linguistics is the scientific study of language" for example.

Well, sure, those are words, too. So then you'd say that any sentence about language, words in general is self-referential?

Not when it comes to value judgments, including what people should and shouldn't be allowed to do.

You'd probably have some difficulty building a computer with a marine biology textbook, too.

Not words in general?

What part of the sentence might you take to be referring to the sentence itself?

What is the data for that?

Sentences don't literally "express meaning," you assign meaning to them. And sure, that sentence is easy for many of us to assign meanings to, and to ...

Apparently Harry Hindu can see no difference between the two, though. Hopefully when he gets back to the board we can try to figure this out.

If people need to have certain beliefs to have kids, say, and they need to justify a bunch of stuff they want to do in order to be allowed to do it, w...

Why would we assume the firmware designs were present in your mind as mental content prior to you being aware that you had a design in mind? In other ...

Right, though plenty of claims are made--by psychoanalysts, for example--that there are indeed desires and so on that we're not aware of.

Yes, although in this case, primarily just because I see no evidence of an unconscious mind.

Could you explain how, in your view, ideas and external-to-me physical stuff are identical?

Correct, with an emphasis on mind-doings.

I don't understand why you can't understand that ideas and external-to-me physical stuff are not identical.

"It's possible that there is an unconscious mind" isn't wondering if the term exists. It's wondering if what the term is supposed to conventionally pi...

Does that mean that you have any idea what "experience" refers to or not? A simple definition would be something like "Awareness of facts or events."

So you're not sure what we're talking about when we talk about experiencing something? That would be interesting, but I'm just curious if it's what yo...

No--I wasn't "establishing anyting." I was talking about different ways of experiencing the world and/or parsing that experience. It's fine to say tha...

"Experience things as they are" yes, but the difference between realism and idealism is (a) in what each believes the tree is, exactly, and (b) what e...

The way I look at it is this: For most empirical claims (maybe even all of them) it's possible either that p or not-p. For example, it's possible that...

I disagree with it because I think the idea of needing anything like certainty or conclusiveness for beliefs (and knowledge for that matter) is a very...

Yes. I don't believe that there are any good reasons to believe that there are unconscious phenomena that are more or less like thoughts, concepts, de...

But where did I say anything even remotely resembling that? It's difficult to have a discussion if you're not even really listening to what I'm saying...

Thanks. I was just wondering if you had any specific examples in mind.

Where are you getting "conclusive" from? It seems like you're just fishing for other words like "proof," "certainty," etc., and I dont know why.

I wasn't giving my view there, just a possible view. The possible view, again, is this: Someone else might feel, "The more pleasure there is in the wo...

I didn't ask you something that was answerable with sources. The only source for what I asked you would be you.

I don't at all believe that meaning is public. It's not at all possible to make meaning public in my view. Meaning isn't the same thing as a definitio...

You can do this where the probabilities are not the result of reasoning.

What would you say is an example of science positing matter that has no properties or form?

Again, I'm not talking about certainty or proof or anything like that. Just belief and reasons to believe. "It appears that there may be unconscious m...

You've got four options. If the probabilities are equal, each has a 25% chance of being chosen. If the probabilties are unequal, there might be a 40% ...

So you neither believe that there are unconscious mental phenomena nor that there aren't unconscious mental phenomena?

This is nothing about proof. It's just about having (good) reasons to believe something. I don't believe things just randomly or for just any arbitrar...

But you didn't answer my earlier question. Or questions, rather.

If there are no good reasons to believe something, I don't believe it.

I think that the stats mean that: And that's something that I had said that you said was wrong. Do you think the stats mean that? I want to clear this...

That part, for example, is something that I said, that you quoted, and that you responded was wrong.

Because there's no way to have good evidence that it is anything like mental phenomena.

Haha--why would you need to be "amazed" by all of your ideas? Re "why something is the case," you can never answer that, ultimately, because you just ...

Unconscious brain activity you mean? (I wouldn't say that anything is unconscious mental activity) Why wouldn't "unconscious brain activity" be a good...

Well, or you could read the surveys about religious beliefs among scientists. What part, specifically, do you think is wrong in what you're quoting? P...

I think that focusing on moral responsibility simply confuses the issue. We want to know whether choices are even possible. So focus on choices that h...

Aren't we not supposed to be trolling on this board?

Were you addressing this comment above: That has nothing to do with the idea of anyone being deprived of anything.

As I mentioned in my post, you're controlling the unequal probabilities.

Communication doesn't hinge on syntax referring or on reference being something non-mental.