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TheWillowOfDarkness

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For me the critical aspect is dropping the idea of "deriving." All the controversy about the meaning of language pivots on the idea of "deriving" what...
November 22, 2015 at 02:42
The problem is the "how" is entirely absence. When we use language, nothing manifests which specifies now word is talking about a particular thing. It...
November 22, 2015 at 02:22
The point is correspondence between language doesn't matter to realism because, as realism is metaphysical, whether or not any use of language (in the...
November 14, 2015 at 12:41
I’m pointing out the error remains even with knowledge of “profound insight.” To know the world is full of suffering or that Will cannot eliminate its...
November 13, 2015 at 05:03
Not boredom per se, it could be any restless state (e.g. boredom, pain, sadness, etc., etc. any time someone gets trapped Willing to be something the ...
November 13, 2015 at 00:27
I know. My point was that his own philosophy works against this by proposing "restlessness" as THE feature of life. Within his understanding of suffer...
November 12, 2015 at 02:17
The problem is that's exactly what language can never do. Since language is always distinct from what it talks about (e.g. my talk about the apple is ...
November 12, 2015 at 01:55
Do you not see the irony here? What is this "pessimism" but a "coping mechanism?" A program of restlessness which is instituted to feel better about t...
November 10, 2015 at 06:00
Oh, it does reduce anxiety in that sense. To see oneself describe is often relaxing- at least one knows what problem is, even if it isn’t resolved. My...
November 10, 2015 at 05:43
The issue is that the (indirect realist) neuroscientists are asking the wrong question. It is not that they are wrong about how experiences are caused...
November 09, 2015 at 03:51
Science doesn't actually perform that task. Realism is a metaphysical position (i.e. about logic) and is shown through the demonstrations of other pos...
November 08, 2015 at 12:35
My point wasn't about how anything was known. It was about what was known. This point is critical because "electromagnetic radiation," such as "~620–7...
November 08, 2015 at 12:25
It isn't (in the sense you are talking about). Electromagnetic radiation is no less known through experience than the colour red. And everything thing...
November 08, 2015 at 01:06
That's not true. The experience of heat (the hot toast I am juggling) is not a representation of the energy at all. It is heat (what appears in my exp...
November 08, 2015 at 00:50
But that's not a problem because the direct realist isn't concerned with what is true in any specific instance. The direct realist doesn't have any pa...
November 08, 2015 at 00:34
But it doesn't. There is no such question. I have the experience the dragon can't eat me. There is no doubt present. I understand the dragon to be loc...
November 08, 2015 at 00:19
Indeed. that's what being "part of the object" means. Same with sight or any other sense. Parts of the object are, for the direct realist, what experi...
November 08, 2015 at 00:16
Direct realism has never argued this. Red is, for direct realism, red. It isn't identical to ~620–740 at all. Electromagnetic radiation at a wavelengt...
November 08, 2015 at 00:10
But it doesn't. Taste and smell, like pain and sight, are merely parts of objects which are only experiences at certain points. The direct realist is ...
November 08, 2015 at 00:06
Nope. We can only show something in an experiment provided we have the experience to do so. The blind person doesn't have the experience to show colou...
November 08, 2015 at 00:01
No more or less then the properties of mass, shape, colour, smell tastiness, etc.,etc. All aspects of an object are only encountered during specific i...
November 07, 2015 at 23:49
Given that, you know, does make sense, it doesn't bode well for your argument. It makes just as much sense as saying an unseen book has pages or that ...
November 07, 2015 at 23:41
Both those objections are incoherent. Obviously, as the blind person doesn't see them, they do not perceive any of the objective colours of an object ...
November 07, 2015 at 23:33
Because it isn't question of showing them. Indeed, the point is about objects when they are no shown: that it doesn't take the showing of a red, tasty...
November 07, 2015 at 23:27
It doesn't. Given that the perception if the tree (a tree experienced) is a mental representation of the tree. They are the same thing: the showing of...
November 07, 2015 at 23:08
That's not true. The fact it is impossible to tell whether sensation is real or virtual, as phenomenologically speaking, they are identical doesn't pr...
November 07, 2015 at 23:00
Indirect realism merely strawmans direct realism. It falsely thinks direct realism is arguing perception just appears without any causal system, witho...
November 07, 2015 at 22:53
Yes. In any instance where a person sees a colour in response to an object, an objective colour is shown: it is true that the object in question has t...
November 07, 2015 at 22:45
More like: 1) I can tell the difference between vertical and non-verdical experience. It is given in experience which is distinct from the immediate s...
November 07, 2015 at 22:30
Neither. Both experiences are of "real" worlds. Within the Matrix, the person is living out a life where interactions between their body (in the Matri...
November 07, 2015 at 09:43
Insofar as immediate sensations go, yes. Since there is no yet any experience which shows them to be real or a hallucination, no relation of the sensa...
November 07, 2015 at 09:28
The problem is the significance TGW is reading into the question of whether or not we are experiencing an hallucination. Asking that question, having ...
November 06, 2015 at 21:32
It's even worse than that. The timeless world of logic, by definition, cannot be either the state of Pinocchio lying nor his nose growing. Both those ...
November 06, 2015 at 01:59
Yes. The "real" and "virtual difference is about the relation of specific objects to each other. What world is "original" doesn't matter. If I began l...
November 06, 2015 at 01:40
A red-herring. What matters is not whether there are painful consequences for the body. I get frustrated by the outcomes of virtual worlds all the tim...
November 05, 2015 at 23:25
No, they don't. Whether or not something is of a virtual world or a real one makes no difference to them. What they care about is the presence of thin...
November 04, 2015 at 22:46
No more or less than someone who lived in the other world. When someone is "unplugged," there experience is changes to the point where they know their...
November 04, 2015 at 22:23
Conceptual art is, using Thorongil's terms, "aesthetic" too. People have those "timeless" moments when standing in awe of an object which express an i...
November 04, 2015 at 21:51
The problem with this is such video game functions no differently to "real space." We may miss something occurring in virtual space just as readily as...
November 04, 2015 at 06:52
In: Bad Art  — view comment
We can certainly imagine other works which have similarities to the Mona Lisa (even to the point of being an exact replica). Such works are, however, ...
November 02, 2015 at 10:26
The flaw is in the relationship of language to ideas. Here the meaning of the (unspoken) idea/meaning/mental grouping is the same as the associated wo...
November 02, 2015 at 10:15
In: Bad Art  — view comment
The Mona Lisa IS art. It isn’t made art by some idea separate to the painting. It is art ITSELF. No definition for determining what is art and what is...
November 02, 2015 at 09:46
In: Bad Art  — view comment
I, unusually, also agree,with respect to knowing about art. But I don't think there is a problem with articulating the presence of art. We do that all...
November 02, 2015 at 06:00
That sort of isn't a problem if you are fine with reading something, whether it turns out to be rubbish or not. If you've got a prejudice against read...
November 02, 2015 at 05:49
No doubt he gives descriptions of the suffering which is the anxiety about suffering too. In the sense that he is describing this of suffering some pe...
November 02, 2015 at 04:22
My problem isn't with philosophical pessimism per se; I more less agree with that. Suffering is inseparable from life. To create life is to make a per...
November 02, 2015 at 03:05
The direct realist has nothing to be concerned about though, for whether or not they are dreaming is of no consequence. Direct realism is not an argum...
November 01, 2015 at 06:28
Indeed. Realism is a metaphysical point: any object defined itself. This doesn't have any empirical manifestation and so is not visible in perception ...
November 01, 2015 at 03:42
Philosophical pessimism is its own particular state of discourse. It is the existence of a particular experience. An idea in someone's head which is a...
November 01, 2015 at 02:54
For good reason: there isn't a "why." Brains are not a description of explanation of feelings and vice versa. They always fail to account for each oth...
October 31, 2015 at 00:07