That’s where I part company. I put the blame wholly and solely on the Republican Party. Using the debt ceiling vote as leverage for political purposes...
Sure, they contribute to it, they might re-frame it. But I think as a matter of principle that philosophy demands a kind of insight that relies on qua...
I have noticed your difficulties keeping up. I will explain. The idea that life can be explained with reference only to the laws of physics is physica...
Because philosophy, the 'love of wisdom', or better still 'love~wisdom' ought not to have to rely on the findings of contingent science. Certainly, an...
The 'mediocracy principle' only exists in the minds of those who propose it. The reason that I'm not a physicalist is that matter does not act. It is ...
Of course. The Charles Pinter book incorporates a great deal of neuroscience, as do Donald Hoffman's books challenging scientific realism, and which a...
I was interested to notice that 38% of the respondents accepted the reality of abstract objects (platonic realism). If that is included in the results...
Yes, point taken. As I said, on second reading, it wasn't a terribly impressive essay, but what I got from it was a better sense of where the ordinary...
It's not nearly so black-and-white. It's not a question of whether things exist or don't exist, or whether they're all 'in the mind' (and if so who's ...
Recommend it. Not a philosophy text per se but with many interesting philosophical implications. Something that occurs to me in respect of this argume...
'Ordinary language' philosophy is not, so far as I understand, a form of linguistics. Ordinary language philosophy wants to illuminate philosophical p...
'Analytic' is a method, not a philosophical stance per se. As you know, I frequently cite Thomas Nagel, as he's regarded an exemplary analytic philoso...
I watched a US 60 Minutes segment last night, about rorting and gouging in the US Defense Establishment (below for anyone interested). One of the inte...
That’s the whole point - you can't get outside the appearance to see it as it 'truly is'. But it's a more subtle question that whether an object reall...
It seems to me that at back of modern physicalism/materialism was the conviction that what can be specified in terms of those primary qualities are th...
Maybe Elon should invite him on a rocket launch next. (It’s probably that sense of harbouring a grudge that makes him most like Trump. (He would resen...
What I'm arguing is that 'how the object appears' is dependent on the observer. 'What it is' can be specified in the case of physical objects, in term...
But the object is what appears in experience - what you and I see, touch, hold, carry, and so on. Hence it is designated a 'phenomenal object' existin...
I've thought some more about this. The same principle applies to all phenomenal experiences whatever. Stones move, mountains form, things get taken fr...
But then, one of the factors that has undermined materialism in the 20th Century is that science has not really been able to arrive at a definitive ac...
Thank you. I see that question as the basic issue in this debate. I have a reference which is originally from an essay about Buddhist philosophy but w...
I had in mind something like dharma - which is at once ‘purpose’, ‘law’ and ‘duty’. If described as ‘cosmic’, it is on the basis that human beings are...
Still reckon, depending on the outcome, it's quite possible that McCartney will loose his gavel over it. Those Freedom Caucus types are ruthless ideol...
It might be something engrained in life. It might be like 'fulfilling your destiny' or carrying out the role you have in the grand scheme, even if it ...
This from page 7 of the 'Being No-one' precis. It confirms the same point the Feldman paper makes about the lack of a scientific account of the subjec...
One of the cuts that the GOP are trying to extort is funding for the Inland Revenue Service to hire more tax agents. This is bullshit. 'Treasury Secre...
The paper I quoted about the impossibility of providing a neurological basis for the subjective unity of experience references the science. I'm going ...
Still no resolution. The Freedom Caucus really might push the US into default rather than back down. They are refusing to even consider tax increases ...
The argument is developed that it is the mind which picks out and differentiates things, attributes features to them and idenfities how they interact,...
Furthermore, that underlined passage which I referred to, links to a paper on the neural binding problem: subjective unity of experience. When I say t...
You might explain the distinction between this paragraph in the article you link to about Metzinger's 'self model': And that in my post, which you des...
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