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Isaac

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What the fuck? A system where the rich can basically carry out any crime they like because they're wealthy enough to pay the compensation, while the p...
October 24, 2019 at 10:16
OK, I see what you mean. But if we resort to persuasion, aren't the ones with the most persuasive rhetoric in power? I don't see how, by using persuas...
October 24, 2019 at 09:56
But it seems fundamental that there are not 'resaons' why we prefer things. We do not prefer things for reasons. Can you convince someone to prefer gr...
October 24, 2019 at 07:34
What have 'properties' got to do with measures of the degree to which I find a model to be right? Right. Which is exactly what I'm saying. There is no...
October 23, 2019 at 21:35
The claim is that properties are incoherent without a person to define them thus. Not that they aren't there. You're looking at this as if it were an ...
October 23, 2019 at 19:15
Yes, but a default position that no thing exists that we do not require as a necessary contingent fact is not the same as saying some thing exists whi...
October 23, 2019 at 18:55
We're getting way off topic with fundamental ontology. I want bring you back to the question this whole sideshow seemed to distract from
October 23, 2019 at 18:49
I didn't say the absence of properties wasn't a concept. There's a difference though between positing the absence (or skepticism) of properties and th...
October 23, 2019 at 18:45
See 2-4. I said "to my satisfaction". I prefer consistency, I can't really conceive of a reality that can be two ways at once, so two apparently confl...
October 23, 2019 at 18:42
1. That conception is done in our minds and I can't think of a single reason why we would, by chance, construct the exact properties that somehow real...
October 23, 2019 at 16:59
No, but the stuff they're about doesn't actually have the properties we phenomenological conceive them having, all 'properties' are concepts related t...
October 23, 2019 at 16:32
But 'coin' and 'location' are both concepts. Physical matter is a concept.
October 23, 2019 at 16:25
Nope. There's no coin without a person to decide 'this bit of matter ends here and I shall call it a coin'. There's no location without a person to co...
October 23, 2019 at 16:22
No. I don't see how there can be a frame of reference that is the coin itself. Just identifying it as a coin requires a person. With no one to identif...
October 23, 2019 at 16:18
But where is that perspective if not in "Particular dynamic state of synapses, neurons, etc"? I'm afraid "At various reference points, including the r...
October 23, 2019 at 16:10
But what be would the answer to "what properties does this object have" without anyone to identify them as such?
October 23, 2019 at 16:03
Right, but if "Particular dynamic state of synapses, neurons, etc" is what 'properties' of experience are - in their entirety, then what is missing fr...
October 23, 2019 at 16:02
Well this is where we differ. I don't think it's incoherent at all. I think quite the opposite in fact. I can't think of what a 'property' might be wi...
October 23, 2019 at 15:57
Right, but this now starts to sound physicalist about properties of experience. "Particular dynamic state of synapses, neurons, etc" is definitely som...
October 23, 2019 at 15:53
There's a difference, which is really difficult to maintain, between talk that identifies objects we're all used to distinguishing and talk about the ...
October 23, 2019 at 15:49
Oh, and I'm just referencing here Ramachandran's (slightly) famous experiments with rubber hands, and tables. I have to go out now so can't explain th...
October 23, 2019 at 13:18
Not sure what that post is trying to say (although he sounds pretty damn convinced he's the table!)
October 23, 2019 at 13:12
Not sure what you mean here. Yes, I think I'd grant that. I can see where you might be going - to say that at least something has at least one propert...
October 23, 2019 at 13:11
No, there's no 'we'. That too is just something inside our minds. I quite specifically said I imagine a heterogeneous sea of stuff, not a uniform one....
October 23, 2019 at 13:01
The fact that a "creature" has appeared is again, just a human artefact, as is 'conciousness'. All that has happened is that stuff has interacted with...
October 23, 2019 at 12:55
No, I'm aware it's just a model. I'm trying to get at the arbitrariness of making the distinction on that basis, not present a scientifically accurate...
October 23, 2019 at 12:48
"Water" and "carbon dioxide" are still separations we've imposed, why stop one type and begin another based on the arbitrary shape of its molecules. E...
October 23, 2019 at 12:44
They already have. "comet", "space", "sun". None of these separate things are really separate. We've decided that spatio-temporal patterns are going t...
October 23, 2019 at 12:37
Yes, that's what interests me in the models people have, it's basically how I became (peripherally) interested in philosophy. Yeah, fair enough, it wa...
October 23, 2019 at 12:34
Yeah, so I guess my 'model' is inevitably flawed by being one without me in it, yet without me there'd be no place to put the model. I still find some...
October 23, 2019 at 12:26
'See' as in conceive of, bad choice of words in the circumstances. I can't conceive how matter could not exist at all (what would we base our percepti...
October 23, 2019 at 12:23
Because that's the only way I can see objects being now, and I don't think the absence of people will make any difference. OK, I see what you're sayin...
October 23, 2019 at 12:19
Possibly, yes. But at the moment I'm more inclined to think of reality as a heterogeneous sea of stuff (where maybe that stuff is not matter but whate...
October 23, 2019 at 12:11
Easily, every "way or other" is a judgement we make sufguced with our habits, moods etc. So nothing is some way or other outside of that we perceive i...
October 23, 2019 at 12:03
Yes but a linguistic affectation can't possess properties can it?
October 23, 2019 at 11:31
?
October 23, 2019 at 11:31
Beat me to it (and expressed it better).
October 23, 2019 at 11:24
No, although I could easily be. I think there is external matter. It's the division of some of it into 'table' I think is arbitrary. I think it does. ...
October 23, 2019 at 11:23
I love this. You see things some way, so anyone else simply must be going wrong! Classic. I don't think there is such a thing as a 'table' outside of ...
October 23, 2019 at 11:18
That's not helping I'm afraid, I've no idea what perspective might mean in the visual arts either. It seems you just want to say that some 'properties...
October 23, 2019 at 11:13
Yeah, agreed. I come at this stuff from a very different angle to you, I think, but I feel the same way about this idea that objects (physical or othe...
October 23, 2019 at 11:10
What does "from the perspective of the experience" mean here? The properties of the experience might well be the brain states it instantiates, but tha...
October 23, 2019 at 10:55
So when you said... And... You were referring to any property of experience that isn't a numerical? So the property of judgement (attitudinal properti...
October 23, 2019 at 10:39
The issue here is trying to define in more precise terms what the expression /question "what it's like" is referring to, or being used to communicate....
October 23, 2019 at 10:30
Unfortunately I'm not trying to establish what it's not saying, otherwise that response would have been very helpful. Call me crazy, but that seems li...
October 23, 2019 at 10:12
How? How would the chemical in the drug causing a release of endorphin be 'bottom-up' yet the learnt response from the venrtomedial pre frontal cortex...
October 23, 2019 at 09:35
It is possible to be subjectivist about some matters but not others. Subjectivism is just an empirical conclusion about where a truth-maker might reas...
October 23, 2019 at 08:11
So why don't placebos work on people with Alzheimer's Disease? Is the fact that Alzheimer's damages the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (where learnt i...
October 23, 2019 at 08:04
You said "It's just the qualitative properties of your experiences. You must have qualitative properties to your experiences." In Nagel, Jackson and C...
October 23, 2019 at 07:25
Exactly. All the artefacts we know have been designed are also artefacts of the late Pleistocene, so that puts a limit on the age of the universe too....
October 23, 2019 at 06:51