Marchesk

Well, he's not POTUS yet. But yeah, he needs to take a four year break from those kind of shenanigans.

I always wondered if you ate a meal on the Holodeck at a fine restaurant in 1970s Paris, upon leaving the holodeck, would the food and drink demateria...

Back to this. Perhaps the realist can say the idealist is making a mistake here in insisting that the realist be able to imagine what something is lik...

We die or fail to reproduce if we get it wrong. Dennett's response is that for bacteria, truth isn't relevant. But for a fox, it needs to know what is...

So Wheeler proposes a delayed choice double slit experiment using photons from a distant quasar with gravitational lensing involved by galaxies in bet...

Good reply. 1. Entirely ignores the problem posted in the OP. It's head in the sand philosophy. 3. Deflates to a position indistinguishable from anti-...

No realist discussion is complete without mention of QM, eh? I'll read it here in a minute. Wheeler is also the physicist who proposed it from bit, I ...

So nobody has any thoughts on object oriented realism? It is a form of speculative realism that seeks to answer the sort of post Kantian objections to...

Is the photon from a distant star one minute away not yet perceived real, or only conceptual until we perceive it?

David Chalmers in a conference on consciousness briefly discussed why he rejected idealism. It was because it left the structure of experience unexpla...

Sorry, I wanted to explore the implications of what you posted in it's own thread. It always struck me as the strongest objection to realism. Didn't m...

It's kind of like asking if Jesus can microwave a burrito hotter than he can eat. What would it mean for God to lift a rock? Is the rock supposed to b...

Unless the evil demon has something to gain beyond just keeping you deceived. The Matrix scenario had humans envatted to server as batteries for the m...

Problems: 1. Numerous, ranging from the ancient Skeptics, to Berkeley, to modern science. 2. Science is incomplete. We don't know how far from a compl...

I don't know, but he seems to be saying that being alive is better than being dead, in general, because the dead aren't aware of anything.

I think Solomon is just making some pessimistic observations about life. You're turning it into a Nietzschean overcoming the world thing with a Christ...

I perceive a rock. I perceive you talking about having perceived a rock when I wasn't around. I create a mental model of you perceiving stuff in my ab...

Christians are amazing at reinterpreting the Jewish scriptures to fit Christian theology. Solomon says nothing like that in the full verse you quoted....

But my knowledge of other minds comes from perception, just like my knowledge of rocks. So there is a skeptical problem for the idealist that the soli...

To be is to be perceived. I perceive a rock, so it exists. But it doesn't exist outside being perceive. I perceive you so you exist, at least while I'...

I don't think one life of a few short decades is enough for an eternity of no struggles. Seems to me that the Hindus have a better idea. Reincarnate o...

As a story, anyway. How many couples in love do you suppose want to die young so that their love can be immortalized? A saying comes to mind: "A live ...

What was the plan before Adam & Eve screwed the pooch? Just give people virtue up front and a free ticket straight into paradise?

There is already a lot of hours spent watching screens, and plenty of people still enjoy escaping into a book. If and when we do have a Star Trek Holo...

This is true, and it has been defended many times. But I can't get over the fact that the idealist is making an exception for other minds, epistemolog...

If only we could all endure the holocaust. What titans of virtue we would become. Making a better world than this. Question for you. Why is it that be...

I'm glad you find it to be great. Very Nietzschean of you. Here's a thought, though. Do you ever wonder why we live in such a technological world? It'...

Guess what? In your envatted world, you get to be in charge and ban all such shows. Although, it won't affect any of the other envatted minds, so you ...

I mean more like playing a video game, where you can accomplish goals, or fail to, but one tailored completely to your desire to suffer and overcome. ...

Yeah, The Walking Dead is entertaining to watch, but it would be hell to live.

And if you get to suffer and overcome in the best possible world for doing that as Agustino, instead of this life, with all it's happenstance, would y...

Then you just haven't argued with any of the dream machine advocates yet. They do exist. Their position is basically to hell with truth and reality, e...

Fully automated society = envatting everyone into their ideal world? Was that Marx's true goal???

How do you account for minds inferring that forests existed before minds to think about them as forests? If the world only exists for minds, then why ...

Brain trauma and the sometimes odd disorders which result aren't science fiction. The rest is, for now, but notice how nobody has shown that it's tech...

I don't think he quite succeeded. Consider a possible hinge belief. My left arm belongs to me. I can't doubt that. I can wave my left hand in front of...

Yeah, but a lot those votes come from states like California and New York, which were going heavily Democratic no matter what. Clinton lost in states ...

Yes, especially in theoretical physics.

Except for when it comes to school funding or medical treatments. Then you might want to know whether they are just instrumental utilities or actually...

I can tie this into another thread where the OP asked about aliens. In this story, scientists have gathered their data on the Solarian ocean. However:...

I'm just learning how to use it. You can do a search for factor analysis studies. There's plenty of scientific results and papers.

That's stated as the motivation for the people who invented factor analysis.

Yes, in the model of doing factor analysis. But the fact that it works suggest something more. You can't use the mental construct, as I mentioned abov...

Perhaps often this is the case, but there is exploratory factor analysis, where you might not know which concepts play the role of the factors. You ca...

Why add "unconceived" to the mix? If it's not observed, then it's an unobservable, period. We might conceive of it, but for one reason or another, we ...

I prefer this one (making Earth great again): http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yVK3mSpFIYE/UWfS8giPdWI/AAAAAAAAAxk/PydYfFP5_aE/s400/c55a55ff85a4d5df92f81b664...

So our reason imposes structure on the world? I wonder what happens if we do make contact with Aliens at some point. Who is the measure of what is, us...

Meaning is a loaded word. Ontological structure is better. Does the world have an ontological structure independent of us? Is it differentiated someho...

Mind-independent. The objective world doesn't depend on us perceiving, knowing, or talking about it. It's objective precisely because it doesn't vary ...

Side Note: The Solaris alien is compared to an infantile God at some point in the book. I think it would have served as a decent explanation for the C...