Terrapin Station

Why is that strange?

Again, it might matter to people who exist.

You know what you were talking about with "it" when you wrote "Nor would it matter," don't you?

But it might matter to people who do exist. You have to ask them to know.

Whether something matters is up to the people who do exist. So you can't say something doesn't matter in an unqualified way.

Depends on who you ask. Mattering is something each individual will make an assessment about, and they can't be right or wrong about what does or does...

When you get to a point such as that in your reasoning, it's a cue to say, "Oops! I must have f-ed up somewhere, at least in some assumption I made."

You don't know what any individual is going to think about what you consider harms, especially relative to things they consider to be positives.

I'm not in favor of immigration restrictions aside from screening for wanted criminals or people with known terrorism associations. And I'm a free spe...

That doesn't really make sense though. Epistemology looks at what knowledge is, what justification is, etc. Looking at knowledge and/or justification ...

Just to make it clear (I know you're not commenting on this, but I could see things going off track easily), when I use "perspective" in this context,...

In my opinion the questions were kind of a mess in context and every term there would have to be sorted out, which would be a ridiculous amount of wor...

No. The idea wasn't that "you" is a subset of perception. Perception was an example of a mental "mode." The notion of one's self is an example of anot...

No, exactly NOT that. It's not possible to see "everything" about anything. There are a number of simple reasons for this, including that (a) at any g...

So, what's the theory of knowledge of the theory of knowledge? I don't think that makes any sense as a nested question.

I've pointed this out many times over the years, but if you wind up positing that we can't observe what things like trees are really like, if we can't...

See this post of mine from a different thread: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/297414 As I explain there (specifically with respect ...

No. There's no reason to believe that it's perceiving a mental picture of the tree rather than perceiving the tree.

That you never said your perception is representative of the tree is fine. I'm asking what your personal basis is for believing that you're perceiving...

The reason I asked is that you wrote this: "My view is that I'm perceiving whatever has been transmitted from the tree . . ." So for the first part of...

What? You have faith but you lack that faith?

What I'd count as an answer is something that begins like this, "I believe that I'm perceiving something that has been transmitted from a tree because...

So if logic is simply something created by humans to think about reality, then God would not in any way be constrained by logical possibility, right?

Again, this is why I don't like to do more than one thing at a time. What happened to the question I asked prior to what you're quoting?

Consciousness is a general term for mentality, including awareness. Perception is one set of mental "modes." So is the notion of a self or "you." The ...

If you think that the tree itself is unknowable, then why would you believe that you're perceiving something that has been transmitted from a tree? Wh...

Without addressing potential problems in this depiction, let's say those things wind up being the case under an assumption of realism. That, however, ...

This sounds like my comment above: "usually this just devolves into a rather facile disagreement about how folks are pledging to use the term 'languag...

I asked the question I asked you because I was curious about your answer.

Re the more strict Wittgensteinian idea of whether there could be a private language that turns out to be indecipherable to others in perpetuity (I wo...

That part doesn't follow from anything prior to it, and if you're trying to argue that language isn't private, you can't just jump to the conclusion y...

There's no demand for moonshine because alcohol is legal. The same would be the case for weed.

So, if your house catches on fire and you can't escape being burned, is that a consent issue?

How many people buy moonshine now? That's about the same percentage that would buy illegal weed if it were legalized.

If you have a fire in your house and get trapped so that you're burned, it's not a consent issue. The circumstance where you're consenting or not to s...

Right, I agree with that. It's up to each person whether they think something is worthwhile or not. We can't decide that for other people (pro or con)...

But that's nonsensical, because consent can't be an issue in that regard. I don't really buy that consent has to be explicit for everything, although ...

You mean to frame anything in terms of "suffering"?

The idea of any ethical stance hinging on "suffering" isn't at all appealing to me, because I think that "suffering" is both (a) way too vague, and (b...

Okay, but you can't really be selective about it. If you're going to argue that kids need to consent to their situation, you're opening up the door to...

Sure. My opinions on this are fairly controversial, but as I said, the vast majority of people aren't ready to let kids decide whether they want to dr...

Well, typically we don't consider kids to be capable of consent until they're older--until they've gone through puberty, or until they've reached adul...

Phenomenally--in other words, re what's present to mind/experience, there is movement. For example, when we have a fly in the house and we watch it fl...

Ah, okay. It would be interesting if someone is claiming that there can't be phenomenal movement (as part of an illusion if they want to say that), to...

I want you to be clear on whether you're claiming that there is phenomenal movement or not.

So it's claiming that there's no literal phenomenal illusion of movement? "Interpreting the difference as movement" is not supposed to be phenomenal b...

The idea is much simpler in a way: If God exists (something like the typical ideas of God re the Judeo-Christian God), then either: (a) God created lo...

Good(ness): things, including behavior, that you like or prefer, or at least where you like or prefer what you take to be the ultimate consequence or ...

The illusion exists, doesn't it?

Consent is an issue for things that are capable of granting or withholding consent. It can't be an issue for things that are not capable of granting o...