Wayfarer

The introduction of the neologism ‘qualia’ into the discourse about the nature of mind was simply a gigantic red herring which eliminative materialist...

Oh good. Sorry, I misinterpreted your remark.

Either that, or it's evidence for the fact that humans are not purely physical beings, but that ideas and impressions, which are mental in nature, can...

Actually the title 'meta-physics' came from an editor of the Aristotelian corpus, who placed those books after the physics books, so in that case 'met...

Very true. But that is different to what Marchesky used to say. :-)

Which is why psycho-somatic effects ought not to exist. Yet, they do.

Sorry. I was replying by phone, I should unpack what I'm saying here. 'Supernatural' is associated with everything that science is not, in other words...

Hey you’re speaking my language. I read that in my twenties and it had a huge influence. At the time I was enrolled in Comparative Religion in which I...

‘Supernatural’ is a boo word. You really ought to look at the Nagel essay I linked to, it’s in no way religious apologetics.

But it does seem to imply a mind or foregoing intelligence. Religion is not all gods and fairies, you know ;-)

That sure cuts both ways.

That is an interesting topic for debate in its own right. In practice, naturalism is suspicious of transcendentals, because by definition they're not ...

I can pack and ship penicillin, whereas beliefs can only be imparted by persuasion or impression or something of that kind. And the placebo is only co...

Now who's begging the question? One thing I will point out is that whilst the cellular and metabolic processes are amazingly complex, the patient - th...

No, it doesn’t. The demarcation between physical and mental is obviously a very slippery question, but the placebo effect is well documented. If a pat...

No, but with respect, I don't think you're conveying an appreciation of it.

You're arguing from the perspective of naive realism. It sounds a pejorative, but it's not intended as such. 'In philosophy of perception and philosop...

It appeared to be what you had written. Physicalism and empiricism are different principles. Besides there are vast areas of conjecture in current phy...

So to believe in the soul is to be creationist?

Science is based on testable theories about observable facts, and on discovering the general principles which govern the behaviour of phenomena. Relig...

HOWEVER, a major caveat with that is, in Aquinas' epistemology, there's a sense in which the intellect receives the form of the object per this blog p...

You do know this is a philosophy forum, right? Not a home electronics or photography forum, right? Because the question here is not about what photogr...

Rather than the Wikipedia article, why not read the original. It's not very long. The second half of the article does propose what would be required t...

I think if you think that, then you don't understand the point of the hard question!

Olivier was commenting on a Michel Bitbol article I had linked to. Of course he can answer for himself, but when he made this remark to me, the answer...

Computers are metaphors for how the mind works, but the mind is not a computer. It doesn’t process bits of data. Conversely, computers don’t make judg...

Glad you liked it, I was introduced to Bitbol on this forum and find his work illuminating. He has an excellent YouTube lecture on Kant and Bohr. It’s...

yeah as Kant pointed out, unless Hume already had the power of reason, he wouldn’t be able to tell what ‘a pattern’ was.

No - that saying there is ‘only one world, the natural world’ contradicts both of those ideas. Doesn’t it?

I can explain it to you, but I can’t understand it for you.

I've never been persuaded by theories of emergence. I don't think Barbieri mentions the term in his paper either. He mentions the work of Hubert Yocke...

Worlds of difference. A camera image is either chemical emulsion if it's old-fashioned film, or patterns of pixels if it's digital photography. It's a...

are you trying to make a point by repeating yourself?

I see you're commenting on the text I quoted above from Thomas Nagel. (Would help the other readers if you made that attribution.) It's not 'a problem...

Added to which, in Descartes there is the tendency to objectify the mind. 'Res cogitans' means 'thinking thing'. It was from that, that the self-contr...

Bad argument - cameras are not aware. Consciousness is an attribute of conscious organisms - devices including cameras, computers and telescopes are n...

I deleted my comment because I said some time back I would stop commenting on Trump. Counting the days......

Yeah, I get that, but ever since I read Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasingha's book Intelligent Universe back in the 1980's, panspermia has appealed ...

Just to try and bring it back to within the bounds of the conversation about Dennett and materialist theories of mind, I'll refer to Thomas Nagel's op...

But it's problem of reflexivity. 'The eye can see another, but not itself. The hand can grasp another, but not itself.' That actually is from the Upan...

Yes I don’t understand how he can still be materialist but he apparently is.

Take it up with Max. Look, the fundamental issue, the basic problem, whatever, is that all modern science - big statement! - relies on objectification...

Look, everyone, get this: you can't explain consciousness, because consciousness is the source of any and all explanation. Get over it, and find somet...

From reading your posts. I could provide examples but please save me the trouble.

Creativity is pursued for its own sake. Otherwise, what's the point? It has no 'survival advantage' whatever, and to seek it is to miss the point. It'...

they're alternative theories. A-biogenesis posits a kind of primeval chemical reaction which spontaneously generates the first living systems, pansper...

I have been reading up on panspermia. It's the theory that life originates from interstellar material that reigns down on the earth through meteorites...

She replied straight out 'no' when asked if the standard model of particle physics can explain the origin of life. So implicitly she's rejecting Sean ...

It takes work, it takes training. Say in your case, you interpret pretty much everything in terms of a scientific framework - objective facts, satisfa...

agree! I've started drafting a post on that. Interesting topic, on which I have an interesting angle.