I think the title of your post obscures the meaning of Sellars's statement, which is really that to attribute knowledge to an agent is not to provide ...
Your original claim was that Being is identical to becoming. I am trying to undermine that claim by showing that becoming (change) presupposes somethi...
But there is presumably some stable entity that has a temperature, which endures through fluctuations in its temperature. I'm not concerned with absol...
Is there any sense in which we can say that there are unities, identities and wholes "out there" in nature? Must we not say, then, that there is some ...
What are your thoughts on the claim that Being and Nothingness are identical? Being is not a being. But if Being is not itself a being - if it is not ...
By "indivisibility" I simply meant that you couldn't take someone's consciousness and split it into pieces. At least, I am not aware of any phenomenol...
Oh, and I forgot to mention - you still haven't addressed the problem, which is the disanalogy between superconductivity and consciousness. The former...
Do you think that the state of superconductivity is something over and above the concrete material substrates that exemplify it? If yes, then you're n...
I agree that materialism faces massive conceptual difficulties when it comes to explaining the mind, but dualism faces many vexing problems as well. W...
Identity is typically expressed in terms of properties - X and Y are identical just in case they have all of the same properties. From this perspectiv...
No, I was undermining your analogy between the mind/body problem and the problem of super-fluid states. No, but in the case of high-temp superconducto...
The difference is that we have a model that explains how the properties of a superfluid state arise from the dynamics of the underlying substrate, but...
, basically what you are saying is that, within a given context, the proposition "I have hands" is either true or it is false. In other words, either ...
The trilemma overlooks the possibility of self-justifying acts. The norms of rationality seem to fit the bill here because one cannot question them wi...
Well, honestly I'm not sure if I really know what you are asking for. You asked for a reliable method that yields realist beliefs about macroscopic ob...
The difference is that the idealist accepts beliefs that prima facie contradict the assumptions made in the model itself. The realist will argue that ...
But wait, you asked for a reliable method regardless of whether it could be proven to anyone or not. Now that one's been provided you're backpedalling...
Do you consider the scientific method to be "reliable" in the sense you describe above? If yes, then it seems you could stake a claim to "knowing" tha...
Quite right. The justification for the assumptions built into the model is the empirical adequacy of the model as a whole. This is a pragmatic rather ...
I'd be interested to get your thoughts on what constitutes a "good reason" for believing that objects continue to exist when they are not perceived. Y...
Indeed, that is one of the arguments that is often given. I was trying to steer us away from that particular line of thought because it takes us prett...
Right, but I don't believe that this is what is being called into question. What is in question is whether there is a real distinction between essence...
If the essence of being a lion included its existence, then lions could never cease to exist. What you are arguing implies that lions have always exis...
Sorry for yet another delayed reply. This is where the real distinction between essence and existence in the order of finite being again comes to the ...
I read Feser's chapter and I was wrong: he is talking about the actualization of a substance's existence, not just the actualization of its potencies....
That every being participates in Being does not imply that Being is identical with the totality of beings, nor that beings are "part of" (in the compo...
In some cases, perhaps. In many cases people are legitimately perplexed by non-naturalist claims and genuinely don't see how they could possibly be tr...
Mostly in that everything that we encounter via sensual experience is finite, changeable and essentially relative. One could say that the very nature ...
Sorry, Janus, I overlooked your reply somehow. It's hard to answer your question because there are so many different forms of naturalism. I've encount...
But in this case the potentials belong to the other substances, not to the unactualized actualizer. If the unactualized actualizer, even if it were to...
So I wonder if we're mixing up a couple of different concepts here: conservation and creation. My understanding is that Feser's argument concerns cons...
In Aristotelean metaphysics matter is potency. Therefore, something that is purely actual is immaterial by definition. Furthermore, change is defined ...
Correct. Mathematical objects are not material substances. They exist only as a nexus of relations (i.e. signs) initially abstracted from sense percep...
God is the only exception. My understanding is that just as matter is potency with respect for form, so form is potency with respect esse, which is th...
Wayfarer, you are correct to assert that the A-T tradition accepts the mind-independent existence of forms, but only insofar as they are the immanent ...
Ok, I think our conversation is going to dead end since you can’t seem to keep your claims straight. Did you not say just a few posts back that we can...
@"Wayfarer", you're not addressing the criticism that's being leveled at you. If you think that third person knowledge of experience is impossible the...
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