Wayfarer

I've had many a discussion with contributors here who are convinced that ideas are essentially 'brain structures', and that the brain is shaped by evo...

Five of anything is 'five'. We're talking about (among other things) numbers - whether they have any reality outside individual minds, outside of the ...

Is there such a thing as ‘pidgin Wittgenstein?’ The point I’m labouring is that there are real intelligible objects. They comprise an enormous range -...

Most of what you say is based on what seems obvious to you.

'Mathematical realism, like realism in general, holds that mathematical entities exist independently of the human mind. Thus humans do not invent math...

I think the rejection of 'innate ideas' and mathematical intuitions is characteristic of a much wider circle than lumpen materialism. The 'other schol...

no real need for that, it's really a simple point. I think the whole idea of the missing vowels being supplied by guesswork is blst though.

I'm not accusing anyone of anything. The question is, what kind of existence conceptual information has. That is what is at issue. I think that brief ...

I understood that the point is that it is a name that could not be spoken, because to speak the name was to profane it.

I’m not saying that you yourself advocate philosophical materialism but that the general motivation for anti-realism in mathematics is that sans some ...

I asked Banno what is the payoff for this belief. The payoff is, it deflates the argument that number is real but not material. Numbers exist in minds...

Signing out for a few days got a bunch of other stuff to do.

I can't tell you what the motivations are for wanting to believe that maths is made up. You need to answer that yourself. (Anyway, I'm not going to be...

The meta question is, what unwanted implications of the converse do you avoid by believing that?

It’s the philosophical issue which is evading you. But it’s been a clarifying discussion and thank you for it.

But it's a matter of principle, Enrique. Building a violin is not a matter of having enough bricks. You can't build a violin from bricks. You're not t...

:up: Materialist philosophers believe that mind is the output of the fortuitous combination of material substances, which ought to be sufficient to in...

'Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language' - more likely on this forum it's a battle against the bewild...

Yeah sure. The Chesire Cat's grin.

BUT, 'an illusion' can only be had by a subject. That is the whole point of Descartes' argumentWhich, you know, was actually anticipated by Augustine ...

Illusions can only be experienced by a subject, which points back to cogito ergo sum.

There’s is mystical union, theosis, which is said to be non inferential.

*

You're making it more complicated than it is. The fact that the eye can't see itself is very simple, isn't it? I can reflect on myself, I can think ab...

point still holds. You can look at a reflection of your eyes but you don't see yourself seeing. You only see.

The distinction I tried to introduce was the sense in which 'real' is understood as subject to the attainment of insight - grasping meaning or seeing ...

It's not that, and certainly not a matter of prejudice. As it happens, and even though I agree with the thrust of this, I think it could be explained ...

As I said in response to one of your OP's, I honestly don't think you're grasping the problem. It's a matter of perspective - the 'hard problem of con...

:clap: thanks that is a very helpful analysis.

‘There would no fool's gold if there were no gold’ ~ Rumi

I’m just a regular person with no such attainments to speak of.

I’m someone who became very interested in Eastern philosophy through popular books and the like. Actually I’ve encountered Rupert Spira at a new agey ...

I said 'other' - different facets of a unified whole. I can imagine a paramedic saying that a patient is 'conscious and aware of his surroundings'. Or...

the original Greek terms for soul were psyche and pneuma. Psyche is the root of term 'psychology', purportedly 'science of mind'. Pneuma means 'breath...

There’s simply no need to reference it. Meaning inheres in the relationship of symbols, not in ‘brain structures’. What you're not addressing is the '...

Yes indeed he did. Embodied Mind is still the classic book. Still, I don't know if much of the argument depended on neuroscience, or whether it appeal...

neither of which are reliant on the least on neuroscience, unless you've got a neurological disorder.

Socrates, at the Temple of Delphi. Inside, he says, 'hey, I notice your neat slogan, gn?thi seauton, "know thyself". I like it, but there's a problem'...

I don't get that. It's not necessary to map everything against the brain, as if that amounts to an explanation. The neurosciences are vital sciences b...

Still don't understand how he can be allowed to participate when he won't observe the house rules.

Notice how you've begged the question here by inserting 'neurophysiology' as if this is a premise rather than a conclusion. And again, mental images c...

Says which science? What about mathematicians and pure maths? How and in what is that embodied, or even 'correlated'? And with what? Sure, mathematici...

This discussion has nowhere to go then. Although I suppose I could ask you this question: as the 'structure' to which 'meaning' is ostensibly reducibl...

We have discussed the voluminous evidence for children recalling past lives numerous times on this forum. The fact that it’s generally rejected on phi...

On the contrary, consciousness determines 'brain structure', not vice versa. For instance, in patients who suffer brain trauma, the brain is reorganis...

If I asked my dog if I could use him as an example, I'm sure he wouldn't object, provided I didn't hit him (which I never do). In what sense? What do ...

I think a very broad argument can be built along the lines that whenever you assert that something is 'the same as' or 'different from' or 'greater th...

Makes perfect sense to me.

Aha! NOW I see what you were getting at. (Just being polite before.)

Today’s news is that Trump is invoking ‘executive privilege’ in urging his former staffers to ignore subpoenas from the Jan 6th commission. The questi...