What motivates the internal realist to be an internal realist as opposed to a phenomenalist? Why think there is some sort of mind-independent machiner...
The realist just needs to show that their conception of mind-independence isn't such that it requires an ideal theory to be completely untrue. To put ...
I'm providing an argument against one of the criticisms of realism, which is that an ideal theory could be completely untrue. It's a move available fo...
You need to add "entirely unlike appearance" to make that work. If reality is entirely unlike anything we perceive or conceive or talk about, then we ...
It follows that we can't make an argument that A depends on B if we don't understand anything about B. It's like saying we could be BIVs, but the brai...
What gives the skeptical scenarios of being a BIV or in the Matrix, it's all a dream, or Descartes's demon power is that we understand well what those...
In which case I would just deny the thought experiment as being incoherent, since it can't even say what being envatted means. That coincides nicely w...
Let's say that BIVs are possible. What could an ideal theory say about the world outside the vat? Well, it could say a lot, actually. Consider that th...
Right, but it's important because it means that our thoughts about the world can't be entirely different from the world, on a realist account. Which m...
Okay fine, but that doesn't mean the same thing. Anyway, I was responding to one critique of realism, which is that and ideal theory could still be fa...
The realist is certainly free to use "reality" to mean mind-independence, or verification transcendence, or whatever to mean that the world is indepen...
But in context of metaphysical realism, the realist does get ownership over the word "real', because they are espousing realism. Even if they don't, i...
No, that's not the disagreement! The disagreement is over whether the tree can be mind-independent, and if so, if realists we warranted in maintaining...
But in context of metaphysical realism, realists mean mind-independence when talking about reality. Anti-realists mean something different if/when the...
But they're not real, as in they're not mind-independent. Which is what real means in context of this discussion. If the real world is what appears, a...
But that's abusing language in context of a discussion over metaphysical realism. The realist thinks the distinction between appearances and reality i...
Yeah, sure, dreams are real too, in that people do have dreams. But they're also not real, as in the things I dream about aren't part of the world. Th...
They're denying that there is a real world, only the world as it appears to us. This is a philosophical discussion, and as such, it's important to not...
But the anti-realist is denying that things are real, in the metaphysical or ontological sense, thus it's confusing to use that language. Ant-realists...
I think the fundamental position of a metaphysical realist is the existence of a mind-independent world, regardless of whether we can truly depict or ...
Sure, and I agree that everything I see is mediated by seeing. As for real access, thoughts are real. People have them, presumably because they have b...
Not really. Which would be the real access. You can't appeal to the real world to undermine real access. If everything is a mental construct, then tha...
True. I guess I just disagree with this. I think pleasure or pain are only good or bad insofar as the context makes them good or bad. I can feel pain ...
No, not remotely. That sounds like a god, not a real human. Are there such people? That sounds positively transcendent. I mean, we can all be some of ...
Or they might find such questions fascinating. It's interesting that you frame it in terms of anxiety or tradition, leaving out the obvious motivation...
But for some people, the thing that gives their life purpose is pursuing such questions. There was a mathematician who cared about nothing other than ...
And I'm not denying that living well or ethics are an important philosophical project, I'm just questioning that they are the central project of philo...
I wouldn't call that gorgeous. Interesting and different, certainly. It sort of reminds me of the Borg. Or beehives. It sort of looks like a forgotten...
What would that look like today, and what sort of values would foster that kind of community? Is this the kind of commitment Jesus demanded of his dis...
Sure, but I guess the question is what do we mean we talk about the world using universals? If the universals are false, then what are we talking abou...
As for antinatalism, the reality is that people are going to keep having kids, despite any philosophical arguments to the contrary. Some people here o...
The good thing about nukes is that they're hard to come by. A nasty designer virus might have a downloadable genome that you can 3D print in the futur...
I don't think you can end suffering in a generation. I don't know that it can be ended. Maybe the posthuman stuff is pie in the sky. Maybe not. I'm so...
Well, you still need to account for why we have such concepts, and how they map onto particulars. I assume we use concepts such as redness because it ...
Focusing on what's doable in the shorter term, I'm guessing that over the next century, things like mental illness will be much more treatable as drug...
Well, do you think that an alien civilization 1 million years older than our own would still have suffering members? Will we, if human civilization la...
Well, there have been more than a few societies who decided that imposing their way on others was not only okay, but necessary. The Romans weren't exa...
Usually it is wrong to impose things from the outside (although, is that an absolute or something?). And it often has bad consequences, because nobody...
That sounds good and reasonable and all, and it is for many things. But then you have things like female circumcision, child soldiers, genocide someti...
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