Bartricks

I do not voluntarily pay tax. I am taxed and if I refuse to pay I will be kidnapped. It is unjust. Voting on it won't make it just. And there is no co...

so it's okay to mug me and to give the proceeds to the hungry person if there's been a vote on it?? What moral planet are you on?

If there is a starving person in the street, am I entitled to mug you and give what I take from you to the starving person? Obviously not. I could poi...

No, you're just confused. The claim that material entities can only causally interact with other material entities is a substantial (and false) claim....

I find Goff's questions perplexing/confused. You quote him asking: I am an immaterialist on the basis of the evidence. That is, I believe there are ep...

Yes, there can be complex conscious states that can be broken down into their more basic component states, but one can't have half a conscious state. ...

I'm not disputing that he doesn't say this, I am saying that it is the upshot of his position! Again, return to shape - there's shape and then there a...

Let's just be clear. Your 'evidence' that the mind is material was initially that doing things to the brain has affects on the mind. That is a very po...

What you have described is radical emergence by another name. I have not read Strawson on this, so I am relying on your characterisation of his positi...

Communicate what, exactly? I can only assume that you think Strawson is not committed to attributing conscious states to everything. Okay. Why not? Ag...

And I was addressing his view, not yours, and refuting it. He has to hold that everything has conscious states. So my cupboard has them. And so do ato...

Yes, a proper philosopher is here. Arrrgh, now the SEP regurgitations won't work - run for the hills, the nasty reasoning man has come to town. Scienc...

Your comment makes no sense.

If it is an emergent property, then how does it help explain Strawson's view given he does not think consciousness can be an emergent property? Or did...

What are you on about? Maybe try reading Descartes himself rather than this Chumpsky guy. Note too that as a general rule the mention of quantum mecha...

I don't have a clue what a quantum field is. But the concept of materialism predates any such notion. It's not a boundary condition in materialism tha...

Eliminativism is more absurd than panpsychism. For instance, I take it universal Eliminativism is absurd? That is, I take it we can all agree that the...

I think it is a non starter. It addresses itself to a minor problem, not a major one. And its 'solution' is prima facie absurd and clearly raises more...

Most of the arguments for the immateriality of the mind do not suppose materialism to be false. That is, they do not depend upon rejecting the existen...

Liquidity - is it an emergent property or not? You tell me. Tell me what the property is exactly, and then whether it is emergent. If it is not emerge...

This is not about the meanings of words. This is a matter of substance. I am an idealist. So I think everything that exists is either a mind or a stat...

you don't seem to understand what I am doing. I am 'refuting' Strawson's view. I describe his view. I present it with a dilemma. Here it is again: eit...

Panpsychism and unconsciousness. I take it that I am sometimes unconscious. How's that possible on Strawson's view? I take it as well that Strawson th...

By 'faith' I mean believing something irrespective of whether it has any support from reason. That does not mean that all views have an element of fai...

I argued that Strawson's argument is that everything is conscious. So my cupboard is, as are the atoms composing it, and whatever they are composed of...

The premise you've added to get to the conclusion is that there cannot be causation between different kinds of object. There's nothing to be said for ...

I think we can distinguish between two distinct 'problems' where materialism and consciousness are concerned. The first is the fact that material obje...

So, your reasoning seems to be that if A affects B, then A 'is' B. Otherwise I don't see how you get from 'damage to the brain damages the mind" to 't...

I don't see the relevance of the distinction. For anything to be experience-involving, an experience would need to be realized, surely. And it is that...

I don't really know what you mean by 'information'. But if something 'possesses' information, then the information is a property of the thing, not a t...

But an experience is a conscious state - to be experiencing something is to be in a state of consciousness. Indeed, that's why I can just as well say ...

I agree that panpsychism is implausible. But it seems that it is not an attempt to deal with the supposed problem of interaction. Rather, it seems - g...

I fail to see how they're not conscious. They'd surely need to be in order to avoid having to posit a new emergent property of consciousness? If consc...

So if materialism is true, then everything must be conscious if anything is? What possible reason is there to be a materialist given it has such absur...

I still do not see what problem it solves. If the 'problem'is something to do with material entities having conscious states, then how does assuming t...

What is the problem to which panpsychism is the solution? I don't want to be told 'the mind body problem'. I want specifics.

A thought experiment. Imagine two families both think they have booked a particular table at a restaurant, but the restaurant has a policy of double-b...

It is self evident that the mind cannot be divided. One cannot, for instance, attribute half a mind to someone. Thus, the mind has no parts (for if it...

Just to be clear then, your view is that premise 2 in this argument Is false. You think that if you approve of raping Jane, then necessarily it is mor...

Reason is the only source of knowledge (sense perception can only provide one with evidence of something insofar as our reason tells us to take such s...

The mind is the self. I am my mind I am my self. So if Buddhists deny the self, then they are either denying the mind, or playing fast and loose with ...

But it is rather pointless if what we are interested in is what's true. I mean, don't we want to know whether we have actually lived before and will l...

I gave three arguments in support of the thesis. Are our minds divisible? No. Would they be divisible if they had parts? Yes. Therefore they lack part...

The mind is the object that has mental states. Consciousness is such a state. It is not itself the mind. Otherwise an 'unconscious mind' is a contradi...

What an angry Hugh you are! You think that freezing water divides it, yes? It doesn't. It just changes its state. That's obvious. Now baby steps: chan...

So, just to be clear, if I said to you 'I want half that cup of water' you would freeze all of it and give it all to me and then be very surprised and...

My analogy was a good one - indeed it is not 'mine' at all, but a standard one used to show those capable of being shown such things that minds and me...

Some people are too confused to reason with. I knew the instant I mentioned ice that someone would say 'er, but a block of ice can be divided'. The po...

You shouldn't follow the confused masses here and conflate consciousness with the mind. The mind is the object that is conscious. That is, it 'has' co...

But the arguments - two of them anyway - establish that our minds exist with aseity. That is, they exist without having been caused to exist. That ent...