bert1

I'm not sure what it would mean for an inductive argument to be sound. Strong or weak, yes. Soundness and validity are properties of deductive argumen...

This is almost certainly wrong, but my current formulation as a panpsychist (and if I want to try to make sense of the word 'soul') is this: A soul is...

Indeed. You can still have the intuitive 'physical' causation we ordinarily see all the time, say in machines. It's just it would be reducible to the ...

I was considering starting a thread about this. I'm doubtful about whether there is any physical causation. I think it all might be mental. There are ...

Not much I suspect. If two people experience the same token quale, they're not two people.

I was taught by Williamson as an undergrad for a year. Don't remember a thing. I'd be much more interested now.

I'd have to do an awful lot of work to properly understand the article in much detail. It's quite meta.

Yes I think you are probably right. Perhaps it would be better to say that empathy has two components, both of which are necessary for empathy to occu...

Vera seemed sane. Not that I think everyone else on here is insane. Vera seemed like she could view a topic both from a distance and close up, perhaps...

That's a shock. I enjoyed her posts.

The view that autistic people lack theory of mind any more than anyone else presented with another creature different from themselves, is out of date....

Quite possibly, but what decision exactly? Was the decision to like cakes (in the cases of Geraldine and Ursula especially) made by them? Or was it ma...

I see what you mean. The OP wasn't intended to be a total refutation of determinism. The idea is that our choices are determined, but the thing that d...

Interesting topic. Drive-by quote from the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy (or one of the books maybe the second): Ruler of the Universe: "How can I t...

Yeah I guess so.

Yes there is arbitrariness in the things we choose to count. Very interesting. I'll get back to your earlier posts as well asap.

I'll respond to this quickly and then get back to earlier replies (sorry to everyone for the delays). Yes, I think I agree with you. I was speaking ve...

You can change the order they go into the shop if you like. Could any of them have done otherwise than they did? Part of the point of the OP is to loo...

I think I'm pretty much happy with that. Makes sense to me. It seems to me that particular desires just are will-vectors, no? And it occurs to me that...

Maybe yes. Pete's choice might change his nature perhaps.

Cool, that's very interesting, thanks. I'll come back to it later.

I don't immediately understand this. Could you elaborate a little?

Sure, but my artificial universe is intended to be a simplified version of this one, and therefore meaningfully critiquable. I'm happy for people to c...

That is indeed the intuition, yes. For the avoidance of doubt, I do think that rapists should be prevented from raping, but perhaps not that they shou...

Yes and no, it's relative. Geraldine, for example, is chained by her desire for a cake, but is not chained by her indifference to which Eccles cake sh...

Sure, I'm trying to keep the universe simple to make it easier to think about. But these other reasons, are they anything other than competing prefere...

I've set it up that way I guess! This universe consists of a cake shop, three cakes, and four people. What else is there to do? If Pete chooses not to...

How can we help you?

Therefore, what? Men aren't very good at marriage?

The difficulty with your OP is that there's too much in it. This paragraph alone would take weeks to conceptually clarify. There is putative evidence ...

Were they all dwarfs?

Why is that different from saying: "Let 'Fido' mean 'the dog whose existence is necessary,' therefore Fido exists." Have I just created Fido? Or did F...

Does your mind cause anything? Are there such things as physical causes?

Yes, but that won't tell you which things are conscious, or will it?

I think it's very helpful. The dictionary definitions of consciousness bring out two usages, one for content and one for the fact of awareness

The closest I've come to a forceful proof of panpsychism is the argument from the non-vagueness of consciousness. Michael Antony and Philip Goff both ...

That's a good question. I can find no coherent difference. If something experiences anything, however 'proto', it's fully and totally conscious in the...

You've set out your view well. What do you want us to talk about? Anything in the OP?

So does a zombie kitten

Yes indeed. I was trying to make clear an argument I have heard a few times which attempts to derive a contradiction from moral relativism or meta-eth...

An objectivist reductio: 1) Good and evil are relative to a point of view 2) From A's point of view, x is good 3) From B's point of view, x is not-goo...

It's terminological mess, and I'm not overly bothered what term I settle on. I'm a substance monist, and I think there is more than one fundamental pr...

I've recently become aware of Harris. I'm impressed so far. Quite a few panpsychists call themselves physicalists (most famously Galen Strawson), and ...

Anxiety, neurotic instability, something like that, at a wild guess. A sentient pre-big-bang substance can't cease to exist, but it can act. Not actin...

Oh fair enough. I'm wondering if I was taught slightly different stuff from others.

It's an example of the &-elimination rule, a valid inference in the simple sentential logic I did ages ago. I don't think it's a tautology, it's not s...

Not usually but it can do. e.g. "Water is wet and wobbly. Therefore water is wet." Not very interesting admittedly, but it is an inference.

Maybe. It might be that suffering is a necessary consequence of creation that God cannot avoid, if God chooses to create. Or it may be that the suffer...

You have to be the one causing the suffering to show mercy, no? So it is the cruel and hateful who are in a position to show mercy. God might still be...

Thanks, I didn't know most of that.