T_Clark

The irony being that the popular press itself is among the most decadent and stagnated institutions. It makes it hard to take it seriously.

It’s not clear to me that your criticism is correct. You’ve cherry picked accomplishments from 5000 years and compared them to just a few years now. I...

Descends, ascends - I see it more as a horizontal movement. Also, you’ve misspelled “humor.” That seems to be a problem for many people here on the fo...

I went and checked and you’re right. An hypothesis can be a metaphysical statement or a scientific one. A scientific hypothesis does need to be testab...

It’s not a hypothesis, there is no empirical test that could be performed that would verify or falsify it.

Coincidentally, or perhaps, not so coincidentally, I had fried flounder for dinner tonight.

All flat fishes; e.g. flounder, sole, turbot, halibut; evolved from a single common ancestor.

The world pretty much seems to have an “in here” and “out there.”

I don’t remember where I saw it first, but it’s available online for free on YouTube or something. I actually bought some of the DVDs.

As I noted, I'm repeating myself and we're not getting any closer to a common understanding. I have nothing new to add.

Well, I was pleased to find the hotel I stayed in had indoor toilets. So, there is progress.

My company's Atlanta office was once located in an office building set up like a motel. Each office fronted on an open courtyard and common facilities...

It seems to me, although I am not certain, that logic requires higher mind functions and perhaps self-awareness. I'd say rather that animals think and...

No. As I’ve said previously in this thread, it’s useful to be able to know the difference between a rock and the pain you feel when you drop it on you...

This is from “That Mitchell and Webb Look,” a very funny television show from Britain back in the early 2000s. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTSCppe...

Because it’s a useful distinction.

I didn’t say there was no such thing as truth, I said metaphysical statements are not true or false.

For the same reason we presume a difference between dogs and cats.

Metaphysics is the one philosophical subject that means the most to me. I have spent a lot of time thinking about it and have written about it on the ...

Or perhaps a pragmatic eccentric.

Welcome to the forum, although I see you've been around for a while. This is a really good OP, although it's scope is too big for me to respond to it ...

After all this time I find out you are a pragmatist.

I guess I confused things when I wrote "just as much." I didn't mean sentient animal's minds and behaviors are as complex as human's. I meant their mi...

You're right. I used the wrong word. I should have said "intelligence" instead of "intellect," although you might not like that any better. In a book ...

Yes.

Did I mention that I don’t get it?

As I understand it, there is no controversy about the fact that sentient non-human animals can learn from experience and act based on that learning. H...

That is exactly what Collingwood was saying - not that science is metaphysics, but that metaphysics provides the foundation for science. I’ll say it a...

To start, it’s important to realize that Lorenz wasn’t talking about perception alone, he was talking about our entire cognitive system - not just our...

For the record, I wasn’t really arguing against @"Joshs" point - only that it isn’t clear to me how it is relevant to this specific issue.

Do you think non-human sentient animals don’t also desire to know? Some of them certainly do.

This is not an uncommon problem here on the forum, and I assume in philosophy in general. In this case in particular, we’re not talking metaphysics or...

In this particular case, I thought your statement was ambiguous and needed clarification.

This is a picnic table: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/Picnic_table.jpg In the US, anything eaten at a picnic table is a picnic. ...

That seems like an abrogation of your responsibilities. You'll leave Loblaw and T Clark (no relation) there to show your employees how much you value ...

Yes, although to be clear, as far as we know, there is only one universe.

The quote seems clear and fully wieldy to me. I don't know of any other source who expresses it's point as well as it does. Going back to the quote fr...

He’s a buddy of Ray Kurzweil, who is the creepy king of singularity studies. As I said before, that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s wrong.

After my last post, I went back to Kim's paper. I immediately remembered why I disliked it so much. He seems to have missed the point. He focuses on c...

I still don’t get it. Let’s leave it at that.

Yes, I remember now. After you mentioned Kim’s article, I downloaded it and started reading it. I only got about a quarter of the way through and I wa...

It's a very short book and you should be able to get it free online. It has other good stuff too. The seems like a description of emergence at the lev...

Sorry. I don't get it. In the context of the question at hand, why does it matter whether human cognitive systems evolved in response to the environme...

John Kennedy died before you were born. Be that as it may, you are correct - I am no John Kennedy.

Some perspective perhaps - in 1963 John F. Kennedy estimated that the chance of a nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis was somewhere between 30...

I think this is an over simplistic understanding. This is from William James’ book “What is an Instinct?” “Nothing is commoner than the remark that Ma...

Yudowsky is kind of a putz, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s wrong.

It doesn’t have to, but it does.

A common misunderstanding about artificial intelligence is caused by modern typological fonts. “AI” is not actually an acronym, it’s a guy’s name - Al...

Is this response aimed at my position or his? I don’t see how it’s relevant to mine.