Harry Hindu

Memories and anticipations, AND the process of reasoning, are composed of colors, shapes, sounds, feelings, etc. ie sensory representations. What form...

I don't like the "physical/material" or "mental/idea" terms. I simply call myself a monist, and find no reason to explain it further, or to use terms ...

I don't understand. Your mind is composed of your sensory representations. What is your mind without them? Ideas, knowledge, beliefs, language - all a...

I can agree that "substance" itself is a questionable term. I guess what I'm looking for is the the term we should use to refer to that constant that ...

What would redefining matter (as the materialist defines it) as idea (as the idealist defines it) entail? If it doesn't matter what we call the primar...

For what purpose? What is a "spiritual" substance? How does a spiritual substance differ from a mental substance? I don't think you're paying attentio...

I'll tell you what I told Apo, we don't sense just differences. We sense similarities as well. Have you ever held a piece of wood in your hand? Can yo...

I'm not talking about thinking what the case is. Thinking what the case is could be wrong. What I am asking is if materialism or idealism were the cas...

Why wouldn't an indirect realist be able to say the same thing? Matter may not actually be as it appears to us.

I'm not asking you to tell me what the chair is composed of. I'm merely asking if you can make a distinction between different materials visually - wi...

So is the idealist saying that the primary substance is mind, not ideas? If so, then the question becomes, "what is the difference betweeen mind and m...

It's what things are composed of that we are talking about. For the naive realist, ideas are composed of matter, so for the naive realist it is just m...

So you're telling me that you can't see the difference between a wooden chair and a plastic one? What is imitation wood if not the appearance of wood ...

That's why I asked what difference it makes what we call the thing everything is composed of. How is ideas all the way down different from matter all ...

So you can't observe that the chair is composed of wood or platic, of a seat and legs? Again how do you know that you are looking at a chair if you ca...

When we see a chair, how do we not see what it is composed of? If we can't say what it is composed of, how can we even say that what we see is a chair...

Predictable

No. That's what you implied when you said: Yet we do have ideas about other minds and of God's. If minds are not ideas then minds are objects - materi...

Your explanation of "mind" is inconsistent. We can't be mind independent if we are part of another mind. A better explanation is realism. There is a s...

Others reading his works and debating would all be ideas in his mind. Idealism logically and inexorably leads to solipsism. This explanation isn't any...

You don't even understand what you said. I called it word salad for a reason. You are saying that there are only differences - those that make a diffe...

I was a believer at one time. I remember the feeling I got when thinking about the power of God. It was no different than thinking about a beautiful s...

We were discussing how minds perceive the world - as differences or as categories. I never denied that we make distinctions. What I do disagree with i...

That isn't what I said. Read the ENTIRE post again and respond to the ENTIRE post and we can continue to show that everything is interconnected under ...

Word salad. Yet a cat is similar to a dog. They are both mammals. As a matter of fact, everything is part of just one category - reality, or nature. E...

...therefore I am - what? You don't just individuate or else you could never call yourself a human being. Our minds are not differential machines. The...

How do we recognize things if we only "just" seek differences? Attention is the amplifier or suppressor of sensations depending upon the present goal ...

I don't see how you have explained how consciousness and the material interact. You've basically made consciousness into EM energy and our brains into...

The contents of your mind is part of how things are. Psychology and neurology are scientific fields attempting to get at those parts of how things are...

I tried to make another point there in my post, but I think you missed it. Not only is "direct realism" impossible, it doesn't even make sense to make...

This is simply because effects are not the same as their causes. This would be the case for any being with senses. The effects: conscious experiences,...

What would it mean to directly perceive something? How would you perceive it? It seems to me that "perception" itself entails using real things (color...

Well, being aware of thinking is being aware of your own thoughts, which would entail self-awareness. Thinking about thinking is like being aware of b...

Because one must have a goal to find something useful. My goal was to see whether or not my idea holds up by exposing it to criticism. You have yet to...

Good point. Would you also say that most of the time we aren't self-aware, as that is, in essence, self-reflection? Would you also say that self-aware...

That isn't what I said. I only said that you haven't said anything useful in this thread. You haven't said anything useful regarding my claims, or eve...

and if you weren't falsifying anything I said, then you haven't said anything useful. What is useful is what you haven't said (you haven't falsified a...

Come to think of it, you've used language yet you haven't said anything.

Because that's how you use language.

That isn't a falsification of anything I have said. Try again.

You're coherent when you have an argument to make but become incoherent when you are shown your argument doesn't hold any water. How typical.

All you can do is point to a goal, or knowledge, that they didn't have, or have access to, when making a decision based on the goal at the moment. So ...

Sure, unless you can provide an example where someone would be glad to have to have their goal inhibited, or where they didn't have a goal in the firs...

So you're not going to answer the question.

I just did. Do you not understand how to read posts and answer questions posed to you, either?

No. It was a question you should be asking yourself. You take a position and then, if you truly are objective and want the truth, you would question y...

I did. It was each sentence with a question mark at the end of it. That is how most people ask questions by using language.

Reality and simulations are two directly opposite things. To say that one is the other is making a category mistake. Is it "simulations" all the way d...

No, it was an attempt to clarify your own position by asking a question about your position and you avoided answering it because it would show that yo...

You've been responding too quickly to posts without thinking things through for more than 40 years. Yes, I can see how that could be the case. I expla...