Wayfarer

Could fMRI reveal the meaning of a sentence? I suggest not. One of the dogmas of materialism is that 'brain states' purportedly 'correspond' or 'corre...

:vomit: I'm sorry, but I see this as inhumane. Scientific methodology deliberately brackets out or relegates the qualitative aspects of being (hence t...

No apologies necessary. It's not a matter of placing 'restrictions' on science, but questioning its presuppositions. The issue that I'm outlining, of ...

I understand what you're saying. But allow me to suggest this is a 'post-cartesian' analysis. When you divide things up that way, I think it's because...

That's a nonsense question, although 'alternatives to materialism', is not - but I don't want to derail the very interesting conversation that is deve...

I wasn’t talking about ‘matter’ but about the postulate that ‘everything is physical’ which is physicalism or scientific materialism, depending on who...

I don't think there can be evidence for that. It's a metaphysical attitude, or rather, a methodological postulate that is then interpreted as a metaph...

Well, I was pointing out that 'artefacts' are by definition consciously designed, which suggests that consciousness ought not to be considered an arte...

Reporter (to Louis Armstrong): ‘What exactly is jazz?’ Armstrong: ‘Lady, if you don’t know, I can’t tell you.’

Artefact - an object made by a human being, typically one of cultural or historical interest. "gold and silver artefacts" 2. something observed in a s...

One theory that isn’t represented In the list is Buddhist Abhidharma. I note there is an entry about Advaita, which is related in some ways, but Buddh...

It’s because humans are beings - that is our designation ‘human beings’ - and computers are devices. They’re mechanisms, instruments, great banks of s...

NOT a ‘concept’. Even if there is such a state - not saying there is! - the ‘mind that entertains concepts’ will never know it. (And that’s mainstream...

But, Mad Fool, you’re simply wrong, mistaken, incorrect. When you think, no bits are processed, no switches are flipped. It’s an entirely different th...

Remainder here

I suggest that this element is what is designated by the term 'being' in the compound word 'human being'. But it's a mistake to say that it's 'phenome...

There's an interesting Wikipedia article on the word 'teleonomy' which is a neologism that describes 'the quality of apparent purposefulness and of go...

I think you're basically trying to solve a problem that doesn't really exist. It's a fact of life that scientists speak divergent languages, trying to...

Highlight the text, a small floating 'quote' will come up, click it.

Proper philosophy depends on overcoming egotism, although your OP equates that with 'nihilism'. But many of the classical philosophies, East and West,...

So the entire content of the RNC was: Trump Is The Best. No policy, no ideas, no content other than fear-mongering and a cavalcade of lies and delusio...

Well, it's a much deeper issue. The turning point was the discovery of 'the uncertainty principle' - that you could know the position or the momentum ...

Well, kind of, but talking about wholes and parts in numerical terms is generally absent from Buddhist reasoning. Emptiness . ??nyat? is not non-exist...

Actually - no. I think your OP fails to come to terms with the existential angst behind the question. The original question was posed by Liebniz, thus...

Isn’t that what empathy is? The web definition is ‘ the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.’ Certainly everyone is different, but...

Try this. The question I have about 'thought's power' is like I would have for 'writing's power' or 'speech's power'. Certainly, h. sapiens has the po...

??nyat? has nothing to do with number theory. ‘Nothing’ is only meaningful as the negation of ‘something’. If nothing existed, then ‘nothing’ would be...

Incidentally - while you’re here - that book I cited earlier - The Powers of Pure Reason: Kant and the Idea of Cosmic Philosophy Alfredo Ferrarin - lo...

My regret was that I think it’s obvious that we - Tim Wood and I - are ‘talking past one another’ as so often happens in Internet forums. When that ha...

...those that lack intrinsic reality.

But then, as soon as I entered this, I regretted it; but there’s no ‘delete’ function on this forum.

Dr. Samuel Johnson claimed to disprove Bishop Berkeley's immaterialist philosophy - that there are no material objects, only minds and ideas in those ...

I can see the utilitarian justification for your appeal, especially in a context like CERN. But the problems with translation is not ‘misinformation’....

But, you don't. Discovered logic.

I'm still not sure on why you're asking me that, but I'm inclined to say, as I said, that primitive arithmetical truths will be the case for any mind ...

You ‘suppose ideas to be non-material’ but you say They’re ‘real’, then, in the same sense as opinions or convictions are real - because they’re held ...

That's the materialist view. I don't agree with it, and you're giving me no reason to accept it. The fact that it seems obvious to you is not an argum...

The slogan of the Washington Post is 'democracy dies in darkness'. As one of its columnists pointed out, though, Trump is strangling it in the full li...

There is a saying of a certain class of facts that they must be 'true in all possible worlds'. It's a very broad principle. So take for example, the l...

I don't see how this follows from what I've said. I think, if it helps, that progress in mathematics and logic comprises at least in part in the disco...

'Experience' being the sine qua non in empiricism and arguably in naturalism also. What is real, and what exists, are not necessarily synonymous. Math...

Well, currency, and insurance contracts, among other things.But the point I was simply reinforcing was that made by Mww, about the general meaning of ...

No -Mww is making a distinction. Faith as 'confidence in that for which reason is used' applies perfectly well to currency and to insurance contracts,...

No. Ideas are just as real as the computer you're writing that on. If they weren't, you'd have no computer. So you see, you have a materialist bias th...

I suppose, in a very broad sense, the fact that the Universe exhibits regularities is what makes it amenable to mathematization. After all, regularity...

Kant never claims to know what anything actually is.

Well, I do wonder, then, as Kant's philosophy is described as 'transcendental idealism', what it is transcendental in respect of. The passage in the b...

This is a philosophy forum. I'm drawing attention to some lines that have been drawn on the territory by culture and history. Maybe it's the case that...

An underlying issue in this debate is the relationship between reason, rationality, and naturalism. To quote the SEP entry: The argument I have with t...

Which implies a view close to 'verificationism'. I think Mww's definitions in the post above yours are nearer the mark.