bert1

That depends on your point of view.

Makes sense to me.

Mostly agreed. Maybe when we've run out of worthwhile stuff to do on Earth then there might be an argument for space exploration, but that will never ...

Yes i think that's right. Discrimination is not the same thing as being mean or even prejudiced. It's about unnecessarily disadvantaging someone, and ...

'Truly disabled' and 'lot in life' are suggestive of a medical model. In so far as @Banno is challenging this conception then i heartily agree with hi...

I don't know if anyone like that. Sometimes people exaggerate their disability i guess.

Could the scenario be simplified to this: The difference between Bob and Alice is easy - one is Bob and one is Alice, they look and act differently, t...

Implies by virtue of the meaning of the word 'you', or by virtue of a theory of what it is to be a you?

What physical change would change you from Alice to Bob? (I may have misunderstood your intended meaning)

Great puzzle In terms of structure and function, are the two worlds identical?

Can you give an example of the kind of thing you have in mind?

i maintain that you are confused between a definition and a model. The definition of 'disability' in terms of things people can't do (or unable to do ...

Either that or there is one continuous blob

I'm not sure, i'd just like to point out that we can, and have, replaced rule by a king/Queen/oligarchy with the rule of law subject to democratic alt...

OK, we agree. I see no great difference between 'unable' and 'can't'.

I'm interested in when you think someone needs support. I think it's when they can't do something that they want or need to do without that support. W...

I'm not sure. We seem to broadly agree, but you said my thinking is medical model, and that I delimit people by saying they can't do things, and you s...

Some people certainly do.

Under what circumstances might someone need support?

Good point, I agree. She wants to go kayaking.. So let's continue with your approach. She looks on the internet to find a kayaking club. She can do th...

Practically speaking, that's what happens, yes. It would be odd to put in place supports before one identified a need for them, no? EDIT: Consider Sad...

Well OK, I was just going for conceptual simplicity, but sure, the more disabled someone is in a particular context, the more help they probably need,...

Yes, it is essential - it's the concept of disability. If someone isn't disabled, they don't need help. We have to able to recognise disability for wh...

'P' is the person, not the action. x is the action. It's important for P. Much of my work is helping autistic people do the things they want to do, bu...

Okay, P wants to do x, but they can't without help. P can do x with help. x is the same in both instances. The difference is not in P. The difference ...

They're both the same. An inert autistic person can't get off the sofa. That 'can't' is real, and reality is important. However they might get off the...

Please try. I really don't get it, and this is important to me. How am I delimiting someone? It's very distressing to think that I am. I work with aut...

Can you spell out the problem with that? Does it capture people who are not disabled, and leave out people who are? Let's consider an example: inertia...

Sure, to capture typical usage, we need to add some standard of typicality or normality, so that the disability is noteworthy, or in need of some kind...

Yes. P is disabled in relation to task x if and only if P cannot do x. Are we disagreeing about anything?

I do think there is a difference between a straightforward concept of disability (or definition of 'disability') which is model-neutral, and the vario...

We may just have different concepts, I'm sure we agree on the ethics. Are any of the animals disabled in this scenario? EDIT: I think the definition o...

Ah, I disagree. On strictly the medical model, none of them are disabled. They are all perfect specimens. Only on the social model are they disabled. ...

OK, so to spell it out, in that cartoon, only two of the animals will be able to get up the tree. Five of them are disabled, no?

Another expert psychologist on the forum! What causes materialism? Too much breast milk?

Rubber bands and rocks

Is this about presuppositions of science, or of scientists? I'm not sure the former makes any sense. The latter is an empirical question only answerab...

It's not though. Correlation is, famously, not causation. It might be evidence of causation, but you need an argument.

That's indeed arguable, but that does not address @"Wayfarer"'s point. The point is that there is nothing pre-existing the first experience according ...

I don't think so, although interestingly your view is compatible with the kind of mind-primacy that @"Wayfarer" has been talking about in this thread.

This is interesting, and perhaps coherent. But my mind recoils at the offensive apparent bootstrappyness of it. Some idealists avoid this bootstrappin...

It's a pet niggle of mine - accusing people of purposes, biases etc derails discussions. But complaining about it doesn't help, so I should probably s...

Only a little, your position is that of the majority I suspect. Emergentists, it seems to me, often use many more obscure words to say exactly what yo...

If only I'd thought of that!

Is there a particular question you'd like to focus on from the OP?

I really like this question. One big advantage of a materialist reductive account, say some kind of functionalism, is that it can clearly answer this ...

Everyone on this forum has an agenda, one can feel it behind posts. One can also hallucinate motive, and I think that also happens frequently. Luckily...

It wasn't my intention to sneer at all, and I may have misunderstood your point.

Your original claim was that the existence of consciousness (or absence of it) depends on material conditions. That makes material conditions ontologi...