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To turn the page for the moment, here's some Plotinus I like. Kojeve also mentions satisfaction as proof of the wisdom that philosophy seeks. What als...

I was thinking earlier that philosophy for me at least was largely phenomenology. Words can simply point out and summon our attention to what is alrea...

I never said I swim only in reason, and are you really setting me up as knee-deep in scientism? I'm just saying that I can't catch my own tail. If I r...

I agree. It seems to be our nature to try and integrate our beliefs, scientific and otherwise. More generally, I like this attitude:

Well I can't help but use reason. I swim in it. So I wouldn't use 'undermined.' But I do think that reason is thereby demoted in some sense, and not f...

Of course this is reasonable. I think that's largely what beliefs are for. We only care about whether they are 'true' or not in terms of consequences....

Of course that's plausible. I don't see how we could test, however. Let's say we could pluck out a sequence of ancestors with a time machine. We'd hav...

That's a good point, but Nietzsche comes to mind. Is what helps us survive therefore the truth? I'm not against pragmatism's 'truth,' but I think it's...

I agree that it allows us to think deductively about nature. We can still be wrong. We can postulate some necessity (the quantity of matter is constan...

This is a great issue. We might as well bring out the text: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4280/4280-h/4280-h.htm#chap08 Kant made a strong case (agai...

What do you make of quarks, atoms, waves? These are mental in some sense (concepts) and yet applied to objects in the world. If the redness of the app...

Me too. I do like the 'non-mental' as the other to the mental. I like the lens metaphor. The mental is aimed at and reveals the non-mental. Or at leas...

No. Having good beliefs is absolutely central, hence philosophy and science. I guess I think having beliefs about beliefs is uncontroversial. We talk ...

Fair enough. So you acknowledge the experience of redness? A what-it-is-like to be a human being?

Perhaps because it didn't seem important to them? I confess: I'm still not seeing why the distinction is so important.

It seems to me that they use the distinction constantly. Isn't philosophy largely beliefs about beliefs? I don't claim that any philosopher is adequat...

I think I agree with that. That's where anti-realism continues with Hegel, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, etc. The 'lens' (framework) is liquid and historic...

Indeed, and the passage on geometry in Hume suggests that Hume was aware of what Kant called synthetic a priori truths. http://www.humesociety.org/hs/...

I agree very much that we need the categories of the understanding. This is being 'in' a language. And I have read about both of their conceptions of ...

That's a good distinction, if not perfect. I suggest that we pretty much have only good-not-perfect distinctions.

This is fascinating page: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-hume-causality/ Yes, what exactly does it mean?

You have the context, though: And of course: How are these conceptually structured intuitions so different from Hume's impressions? Compare that with:...

And I say not justification/explanation for 'too much baggage,' especially since common-sense realism is almost the minimal, pre-philosophical positio...

Of course, but why do you think Kant doesn't know that? Here's how the CPR opens. And reason deals with beliefs: Sure, me too. Or an adequate account ...

I like to see more textual evidence that empiricists Kant is great, and he added to the empiricists. But what is the spirit of his work? The preface o...

I don't think so. I do think we have something like a human nature, and that would serve your purpose. But I don't think we pop out of mother with a s...

Hi. I like this. Yes, the world is made of stories...and atoms and windmills and smiles and toothaches and mothers and trapezoids and... Yup. I agree....

Well I agree that Cartesian dualism, like IMV every exact metaphysical system, falls apart upon close examination. It gets something right at the cost...

Isn't it more complicated than that? {\displaystyle i\hbar {\frac {d}{dt}}\vert \Psi (t)\rangle ={\hat {H}}\vert \Psi (t)\rangle } Hypotheses are ofte...

I've held a theory like this for quite a while, and it's not far from Feuerbach's humanism. But clearly we don't have consensus about this norm. This ...

OK, yes I see the difference. But I had the impression that you liked both forms of dualism. In James and Mach we have elements of informed matter but...

First, to argue for the continuity I mentioned, I quote from Locke and Kant. As for the blank slate, let's look closer: I recently read Locke for the ...

I think it gets quite a bit right. One of the classic neural network problems is deciding whether an image contains a cat or not. This task was out of...

I find dualism to be roughly true. On the one hand we perceive redness. On the other we determine the radiation associated with this perception to hav...

I agree with you in a common sense way, but I think this misses James' point. For him the 'mind' is one more object in a nexus of objects. Objects are...

This is a great issue. I'm not a mathematical Platonist, but I experience a shared realm. For me it's plausibly explained as a blend of subitizing, sp...

It really was a work of genius. To me the mystique of physics in particular is still connected to this. Even those who don't want to learn physics sti...

Objective means something like : not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts. Subjective means something lik...

Fair enough. But... I think it's also called 'common sense realism' for a reason. I don't usually experience my car or my bed as a projection of my mi...

What is his monism but a metaphysics? He was powerfully influenced by Kant. The way I understand Mach, there are 'elements.' If the ego is a useful fi...

To me scientism is an awkward attempt to be detached and objective. I think good philosophy and bad philosophy chase the same ideal, and we call that ...

I agree with all of this, and I look forward to you returning when you have time to other issues we've touched on. I think we share a cosmic sense of ...

Well I do relate to the sense that anti-realism has its problems. I argue against the strong reading of Nietzsche, Rorty, and others. I agree with you...

I think we can meet in our appreciation of scientists that are also philosophers. There are indeed philosophically naive scientists who don't realize ...

Yes that's how I remember it also. It reminds me of Cantor being given hell, especially by Kronecker. Cantor irrationally hated infinitesimals, which ...

Hi. I agree that other perspectives have merit. I'm not so sure that humans have ever used it as their one and only tool or that they ever could.

I like to use the typical definition of 'objective' as (roughly) unbiased. Can't knowledge be a belief? What if my opinion is relatively unbiased? Bec...

Well I think I agree with you. To me the subject/object distinction indeed breaks down. But I even embrace naive realism as the mundane pre-philosophy...

I agree. It's a faculty. I believe that Hegel called it the 'understanding,' which tears organic unities to shreds. Well I agree. But I don't see too ...

But what can it mean for you to say what you said above? About what is it true? Is it meaningless for us to talk about a single reality? Or just for y...