Wayfarer

It's worth noting that the OP refers to one part of one video, which is part of a series of video presentations comprising an entire course on 'analyt...

Beings have the capacity for experience - often the adjective 'sentient' is also added. Inanimate objects do not. In fact it suggests what I think is ...

Very clever experiments but I did notice It's not a valid analogy, though. The strangeness of the observer problem in physics is that the act of obser...

Show me a macroscopic entity existing in superposition.

As I thought had been established, the interference pattern in the double-slit experiments is independent of time and space (shown by its rate indepen...

I think I might have introduced a red herring, but I was objecting to: by trying to point out a philosophical distinction between 'being' and 'existen...

Isn't there always a presumed link between virtue and ethical behaviour throughout the Platonic-Aristotelian corpus? Put another way, practical wisdom...

Yes - Lantana is a South American climbing vine that forms large patches sprawling over hundreds of square meters displacing native species and is ext...

Yes! Another omnibus consciousness thread. They're like lantana.

It would be prudent to avoid that presumption. I hope you awoke flush with happiness.

Ever wonder about why humans are, in fact, designated as 'beings'? What significance does that term have? And to what category does the word 'being' a...

Thanks for taking the time to look. I had the idea that the wave function literally is ‘the degrees of probability’. The reason that seems daft to man...

Sure, picked that up too, and often paired with metaphysics.

Probably I did mean that. What I was trying to differentiate was the philosophical sense of ontology as distinct from its modern conception of ‘study ...

Whereas I see it in terms of the quest. (Take a look at the poem currently pinned to my profile page.) Might be easier to explain them to dinosaurs, a...

I know! That's the point! The objection to idealism will frequently be raised 'how can you claim that "mind creates world" when we know the world is f...

There used to be an explicit statement that 'ontology' was derived from the first-person participle of 'to be' (i.e. 'I am') on one of the online dict...

My knowledge of Aristotle is slight but I've been impressed by the way that Aristotelian-Thomist philosophy preserves metaphysics. Accordingly, I don'...

Excellent response. I shall read and reflect on that.

Now a few more words about @"Dfpolis"' essay. I generally agree with his diagnosis of the malady of the 'post-Cartesian conceptual space'. I don't exa...

Kahn's essay mentions Aristotle in a few places. I've gone back and looked at the passages I highlighted. My original contention is that there is a di...

I'd be interested if you could see what I was driving at in this OP on Physics forum particularly #11 and #14. I was trying to argue that the probabil...

And what is the nature of this chain?

Even the mighty Rupert abases himself for the holy $.

‘Donald Trump has attacked Rupert Murdoch in a blistering statement, accusing him of betraying his Fox News television hosts by admitting that he doub...

The relativity of simultaneity is not at issue in this discussion.

I am saying that the fact there was a time before humans existed is an empirical fact supported by the fossil record and an abundance of geological an...

I said earlier in this thread, my main aim is to argue that humans are intrinsic to the universe, not an accidental byproduct.. That remains the case....

I tried to give as direct an answer as possible to this question: I said that it is a matter of empirical fact. But in a philosophical sense, taking t...

Which would be a great question, and one which I am in no way qualified to answer. I will find the passages I thought significant a little later when ...

It's not a trivial matter. There was a time before humans existed, as is well attested by empirical science. But the entire framework within which emp...

I was referring to Descartes' use of the term 'res' in 'res cogitans'. The Latin term 'res' is translated as thing or object. You claimed not to be ab...

Again I submit a passage from Paul Davie's book about the sense in which time itself is a projection of the observing mind, to wit: I submit that this...

That 'bigger picture' is something that only h.sapiens can be made aware of, as far as we know. So you're scaring yourself.

It emphatically does not mean, 'being'. It means a thing, matter, or object., and is also the root of 'reality'. So in answer to the question, how did...

What is the direct translation of ‘res’ in ‘res cogitans’ (Descartes)?

You could see it as another milestone in the gradual erosion of faith in reason. After all reason and causation are you would think intimately linked....

That’s ok you’re asking good questions but I’ll leave others to tackle that one.

:cool: :lol:

Basically the problem was that this particular mod hated my guts and would initiate or join any pile-on concerning myself. All water under the bridge.

See e.g. this post and subsequent criticism. SLX posted a link to an apparently classic article by Charles Kahn, which I read pretty carefully, and wh...

That is what I took this to mean:

I am of the view that the word 'ontology' refers to exploration the nature of being, as distinct from the study of phenomena or the analysis of what k...

Whenever I mentioned my take on the meaning of 'ontology', SLX would go completely ballistic, but he's not around any more.

In my taxonomy, beings are differentiated from things precisely because they are animated (by soul, in Aristotle’s terms.) And you can see it in that ...

The ‘hard problem’ argument is aimed at a specific audience namely those reductionists who claim there is or can be a physical explanation for the nat...

hopefully they’ll get their just desserts at this forthcoming trial.

No physical laws accurately describe sentient beings except insofar as sentient beings are subject to physical laws such as the law of gravity. But se...

Without reference to Spinoza in particular, let's recall that substance in philosophy has a meaning nearer to 'being' or 'subject', whereas 'substance...

You have been affected by an idea, not by anything physical, so it is quite a different matter to physical causation.