Richard B

Is it socially acceptable to hit a machine that is providing medical assistance to a human being? Probably not, and it would be nonsense to assume the...

Your pet does not need a concept of digestion in order for it to digest food. So, please feed your pet if you think it does not have the concept of di...

This is very odd to say that if someone does not have a “private conception of pain” he would not avoid the fire. Animals of all sort have no concepti...

What is the difference between an individual uttering noises or drawing figures on a piece a paper to himself vs an individual uttering sounds or pres...

What would it mean to say “I believe it is raining” when looking outside while it is raining. This is nonsense. There may be circumstances where it mi...

Ok, you "believe the fact is true " is different that "the fact is true." But to say... Does not sound like a belief in this quote.

Not if you refused, but that you never used any colored words correctly to demonstrate to anyone that you can see the colors, discriminate between col...

It seems that you have this position.

If saying "what ever I believe is a fact is a fact" is not ridiculous, I think we should study what "ridiculous" means.

And I would say, I agree with you as long as I can ask you what color your carpet is, and you get it right. But if you are incapable of routinely gett...

Not necessary. If I have a color detecting machine where when I place a colored object in front of it, it will report the color in its display. Howeve...

Exposing a brain to a particular wavelength of light to see how the brain or particles/waves of a brain reacts to the light does not necessitate the n...

But now the metaphysical distinction breaks down between claim 1 and 2 for the indirect realist. Both reduced to talk of particles and waves. And to a...

But you only can say some empty generalization like “it is cause by some mind-independent object.” And that is not saying much of anything. Sort of li...

Ok, let me know if my examples are appropriate for each: 1. I see the tree. 2. I experience “sense data” of a tree. If it got this right, there are pu...

The social group is part of the world not external to it. This artificial distinction seems to be the cause of many philosophical problems. And the us...

This does not seem entirely accurate. Problems have to be articulated and understood. Solutions need to be articulated and understood. With what? Lang...

Some food for thought from Normal Malcolm's "The Privacy of Experience." "Giving the location of one's sensation is not locating it in the space of ph...

This is where it gets interesting. How divergent can someone get with their apparent language of colors where we begin to think that we are not talkin...

But if you said, “I can see that one is green, and one is yellow”, can you be said to being seeing at all.

Why do you say it is a fact and it is true?

You said this is a fact. Is that because you have testified to this, and thus, it is a fact because you say so?

If you do not like verifiability, how does this fact establish its truth or falsity? One can make claims, but we do need to know how to establish whet...

I believe you are saying the following, “Conversely, most realists (specifically, indirect realists) hold that perceptions or sense data are caused by...

But, in principle, this claim cannot be verified as either true or false, so we are not talking about facts here.

This reminds me of how Pythagoreans viewed numbers to such an extent that it could be viewed as a religion. Apparently, they had a prayer to something...

“In the same way” is the mystery. I can picture a hand separated in space from the hand. And I can picture the hand moving to grasp the pencil. But wh...

In what sense is “principles independent of any particular mind”?

Unless we give you an anesthetic, right?

I once heard John Searle say something which I believe prevents one moving down the road to confusion. Words do not refer, but human being use words t...

If you asked me "what the number 7 is?", I may want a little more clarity on what you mean by this question. In different contexts, it could mean diff...

Additionally, if we want to call the "scientific description" of what we call "perception of color" as indirect because it depends on light, how light...

Why would you submit this as an example as a counter to direct realism if you don’t have idea what it is countering?

I have been arguing against the metaphysical positions of indirect realism. But that does not mean have been arguing for the metaphysical position of ...

But there is a difference between these two explanations, one metaphysical and one scientific. The scientific explanation has physical theory behind i...

I set up the following experiment: I put a car in a garage. And ask a group of people, one at a time, please go into this garage, look at the car and ...

Let’s try a little thought experiment showing the relationship between language, experience, and science. Individual A and B live in a world where the...

It is not that we don't have private experience but the language to articulate, like we do in the public sphere.

Animals get around the world without language, and they certainly are experiencing the world. But humans use language to understand and communicate wh...

More like a grammatical fiction. So it is OK to remove it. We will all do just fine with our communication and understanding.

Better yet, to be consistent with Wittgenstein's view of “private language” one should remove the colors inside the heads of the figures. There is no ...

Yes, there is an alternative to praying at the altar of Plato, it is appreciating human’s incredible ability to create a form of life like mathematics...

From Wittgenstein's "Remarks on the Foundation of Mathematic" I 168, "The mathematician is aninventor, not a discoverer." II 2 "But the mathematician ...

I do not understand why some do not see or feel the emptiness of this description. The tone reminds me of negative theology, let us get to “Reality” b...

Interesting question. There is a lot to unravel here when using terms like "facts", "true", and "possible worlds" which will lead to much confusion. 1...

Let us see if we can provide a clearer path to seeing one’s way out of this conceptual muddle. I will use the “2+2=4” example. 1. We needs to recogniz...

And it would be unreal if they’re different for all who think? But this would just be different ideas. Or, someone is thinking the same thing but the ...

Now I am curious, what is an example of something that is conceptually unreal?

This seems problematic to say. Let take a simple scientific definition of color. “Color is that portion of the visible spectrum of light that is refle...

When I enter a room and turn the light switch off, I do not see, “my eyes do not see”, and “my nervous system does not see”. Clearly, there is an inte...