hypericin

But then you are not explaining how music is able to "directly push emotional buttons". The last time you were saying that it is explained by our resp...

This is just not true. You can plug a simulation into the world, for example a robot, feed it inputs, and it could drive it's body and modify the worl...

Good point, I didn't think about percussion. Note that percussion also serves a spiritual function in primordial cultures. Also it is hard to imagine ...

I really like this elaboration of the predictability theory. Note that it is not exclusive with mine: they can both be true, and modulate each other. ...

I've experienced this :I write black metal music, and my dad heard a song. He knows nothing about the genre, but he said it made him think of a burnin...

All I have to do to tell them apart is to put the real one in my left pocket, and the counterfeit, fresh from the counterfeit machine, in my right.

But if it were irretrievable, from our perspective the situation is identical with that where it doesn't exist.

It doesn't matter if they are indistinguishable, so long as they can be individiually tracked.

Exactly. Suppose there was a universe that consisted of a computer and a super battery. The computer continuously overwrites its hard drive with rando...

It doesn't have to be an identical copy. Merely close enough so that for any conceivable test of genuineness that the real dollar passes, the counterf...

Your thesis does not square with the reality of an absence of army barracks full of peace loving tie-died hippies. Not odd at all. I define the right ...

Quite a lengthy reply from someone who didn't trouble to read past my first sentence!

There is utterly a culture war. I place the blame squarely at the feet of the DEMOCRATIC PARTY. At some point, some democratic strategist had a bright...

Haha, OK. Way to white knight poor helpless old Dennett. I'll tell you what buddy, I'll spare him my sympathy if you spare him your "help". Really, he...

I think of perception as a kind of mathematical transformation, from the raw sensory data received and processed by cells into the purely symbolic dom...

But my "phenomenal aspect of red" is exactly that which we could say is your phenomenal aspect of blue. So if "that's it", and a robot can sort red an...

Since consciousness is internal, not observable, I cannot answer that. I can only infer. I think my dog is conscious. But lacking first hand experienc...

A-Ha! Another Zombie shambles forth from the shadows! :P Again, I am confronted by three possibilities: 1: I'm not getting it. Always an option, and h...

Technology will stop the day that humanity does. Even if desires are ancient and unchanging, they are filtered through cultures, which are not. But ev...

I think the puzzle illustrates the breakdown of the concept of self as transcendent and persistent, absent a soul. If you admit to souls, the problem ...

There is nothing more authoritative available. As this theory is consistent with any given set of evidence, evidence cannot disprove it. With sufficie...

I told you how. If BIV was a simplifying explanation of the way things are, it would be compelling. In fact, it is radically complexifying. The world ...

After considering these responses I would like to weaken my claim. Qualia are abstract symbols. They represent the endpoint of a transformation of sen...

The Brain in the Vat is that it doesn't actually explain anything new. It doesn't answer any questions. It just proposes a scenario which is theoretic...

You misunderstand me. The smell of vanilla is the qualia, which is a symbol. It signifies the airborne vanilla molecules giving rise to the odor. We h...

In your example, it would also be relevant to compare the reporting of this typhoon hitting Japan vs. one with a comparable impact in say the Philippi...

The answer is obvious. Religion operates on the basis of authority; philosophy, reason. That is why people find religion noxious. It is the poster-chi...

Could a quantum computer not complete a supertask? Does this imply that the notion of discrete space is not required for motion, only that quantum rea...

Hi Phillip, welcome, I hope you stick around! My question is this: if experience is the intrinsic nature of brains, then wouldn't it be just as simple...

I don't understand your objection. Can you really not reflect on your own experiences? Either you are suffering from massive brain damage, or you are ...

I view the human species as a bacterium whose population exploded exponentially after discovering a remarkable source of energy, a puddle of oil. This...

If beauty is inherent in nature, how do you account for individual taste? You understand that symmetry is just a surrogate for genetic fitness. So wha...

Um, like, no. Not even close. I'm saying that beauty is a relationship. It is difficult to "prove" such a thing. But beauty certainly does not reside ...

Consider the case of two paintings hanging in a gallery. One is the Mona Lisa; the other is simply a canvas randomly smeared with feces and vomit. A m...

Of course. I am asking why, if time really *is* every process, how is it possible that it's state can be communicable with a single number? For instan...

If time is every process in the universe, then how is a single number sufficient to tell us the current state of time?

A thermometer measures temperature and perhaps represents a conception of temperature, but in no way can you say a thermometer *is* temperature.

That seems over-broad though, like saying that "Time is the universe." What isn't a process, or a part of one?

I don't understand the conflation of the measurement of time and time itself. CBR might be a universal clock. But does it make sense, in response to t...

Then how can a range over all processes have a speed relative to specific processes?

When you said "time is just process.", I took that to mean that you regard time as somehow the abstract essence of processes. If not that, then what?

Thanks for the stimulating reply. I am still stuck though. We can imagine space as a 3D euclidean space, divided into a mesh of invisible little point...

How can Process Itself have a speed relative to actual processes?

You can measure it's average position, the rate of jumping, it's average instantaneous speed between jumps... I'm talking about speed in the sense of ...

That is not an example, that is the topic. I have no faith in your authority as a physicist. And you yourself said that Einstein was an eternalist. I ...

Explain then, or provide an example.

Any dynamic process, a chemical reaction for example, has a speed. "Rate", if you prefer. Time, as you point out, cannot have a speed/rate. Therefore,...

Reality is not colorful, but it is colorful as we perceive it, or in the abstract, as you put it. According to you, this should be impossible. Or is t...

I think the confusion arises because morality is in it's nature both objective and subjective. As you say, mores are not whims of the moment; they per...

Yes... and if one is foolishly brazen enough to issue grand pronouncements on the nature of time, he should at least mention relativity! So yes, time ...