Dfpolis

Yes, I know the difference. The distinction does not depend on who uses "identity," but what they mean in using it. Numerically identity refers to the...

The first sentence is simply an example of the well-known identity of action and passion -- which differ not in their being, but only in how we concei...

You are welcome.

Thank you for reflecting on my position. No, I said what I mean. I am not discussing mappings, but dynamics. The tree acts on me by scattering light i...

Theism does not enter into grasping that any perception is the perception of some object by some subject. Atheists can understand that as easily as th...

Of course light is an essential means of seeing the tree -- but means facilitate, rather than being a barrier to, the end of seeing the tree. The obje...

No, it was late, and I confused you with Tim Wood. (Mea culpa!) I meant these: I do not think that the more sympathetic reading, which I am willing to...

Exactly! So, the whole idea of an unknowable noumenal reality is not only superfluous, but literally meaningless. I don't understand what you are sayi...

I find your claim utterly incoherent. If I see this tree, necessarily, I see this tree. What I do not see is the exhaustive nature of the tree. I have...

If the ancients had nothing to say on the issues we're discussing, I wouldn't be citing them. Robert Grosseteste (1175-1253) explicitly laid out the s...

I am not discussing it as a concept, but as a mode of explanation -- and that makes its great extension very useful. The fact that every existent is i...

Yes, I have. Wayfarer brought it up in the 6th post of this tread and we discussed it. I suggest you read that discussion so that I don't have to go o...

As I've pointed out, everything can't be perceptions because a perception is always perception of an object by a subject. To say "everything is a perc...

I was telling what happened, not boasting. The facts are what they are. It doesn't bother me that I am "idiosyncratic." It would bother me if I contra...

I have no problem with this as a view of reality. My problem lies with the claim that we have no knowledge of noumena -- and that is a widely held int...

As I read Kant, the noumenal chair cannot be the phenomenal chair because in knowing the phenomenal chair, we know nothing of the noumenal chair. If t...

Thank you, but you still did not explain why there is anything other than the phenomenological chair. Why should there be a separate, unknowable, chai...

It was a question, not a statement. I'm not a positivist. We can know some things with more certitude than the hypothetico-deductive method can ever p...

Thank you for the reference, but note that it is not the conclusion, only a step in a two chapter analysis of the nature of time. The conclusion at th...

I do not pretend to be an expert on Kant. I read the Prolegomena, notThe Critique of Pure Reason, so I rely on secondary sources. I note that what is ...

The point in question was special pleading by naturalists on the principle of sufficient reason. My position, stated by Freud in The Psychopathology o...

I am sorry for offending you. My remark was not personal. It was based on my experience of discussions with naturalists. Some have even rejected the f...

I don't recall such a statement, which seems very unaristotelian. Do you have a reference? No, what is measured is some change, like the apparent moti...

That makes a lot of sense. I think there are strains of modern thought that reject this "axiom" -- such as the "collapse on awareness" interpretation ...

First, as regard Kant's text, Aristotelian moderate realists do not fit the straw man definition of "transcendental realism, which regards space and t...

Then you will not mind explaining how what Kant thought to be literally unthinkable (alternate views of space, time and causality) were thought and ac...

As Aristotle points out, potencies are known by analogy. We don't see the potential. If we did it would not be potential, but actual. Still, we've see...

A description is a fiction unless it is adequate to some reality. Are not humans part of nature? If we have real ends, then ends exist in nature, and ...

I think this confuses purpose and conscious purpose. Aristotelian teleology is not limited to conscious purpose. The telos of a seed is the mature pla...

Actually, my brother Gary was a world-famous biologist (and philosophical naturalist), and we had many detailed discussions on these issues. By not en...

Talk about fighting straw men! Aristotle never claimed ends were efficient causes. The author lacks the most rudimentary understanding of Aristotle's ...

It seems that you are offering no argument, merely a claim. If humans are part of nature (and why should we not be?) then goal orientation is part of ...

As the teleological nature of biology is baked into the laws of nature, there is no question of going outside of the natural order. So, again, this is...

Thank you for the kind words. Yes, I see teleology as compatible with physical determinism, which says, essentially, that ends are implicit is present...

How does it establish primacy? Human beings are part of nature and are clearly goal-seeking organisms. In us, goals have a clear primacy. I first deci...

Please, define "ultimately real." If you are talking about God as the ultimate reality, then I would agree..

How can you offer an argument from authority, when you do not even believe the authority is real? We have an idea <reality> which we form as a result ...

If the angst has a rational basis, philosophy can deal with it. Usually it has a neurochemical basis that is more likely to yield to cognitive therapy...

Despite the negative phrasing, you are claiming "your life and experience are ... your hypothetical life-experience-story." By refusing to provide an ...

Since the the time of the Greeks, people have recognized invariant principles explaining changing phenomena. I think that is what Sarvepalli Radhakris...

There is a vast difference between being real, and being the ultimate reality. To be real, something need only be able o act in some way -- any way --...

My real question is:

Not quite. I, for example, am a lucid dreamer. I know when I am dreaming, and if I do not like how a dream is going, I wake myself up. So, when we are...

What you are talking about is not knowing the present. It is making predictions about the future.

We do know. I know what dreams are. They span but a short time. What is an illusion except something that is not real, but what we mean by "real" is t...

But,we do know! "Knowing" names a human activity. To say we do not know is an abuse of language. It is effectively saying that we do not do what we do...

Why would you believe that? It seems to me that if we are informed, there must be something adequate to informing us at work.

But don't we experience it as it occurs within us?

Yes, time reflects the continuity of the change it measures.

I think that few, if any, who claim to know what is, claim that we know it exhaustively. We all realize that there is a delay between the emission of ...