Wayfarer

Many would say that Plato and Moses were completely different historical types. After all Plato’s dialogues are meticulously rational albeit with some...

I guess you’re right. Still I’m flummoxed as to why Hamas continues to hold those hostages. I can’t see how they’ll gain from it.

I’d suggest that there really isn’t a “classical form” of the law of identity in the sense you seem to mean. Aristotle doesn’t formulate such a law as...

It is a 'thought experiment' intended to impart the idea that the concept of time is inextricably linked to the subjective system of the relevant bein...

Yes, acknowledge that they're not true a priori. Still struggling to see how the laws of motion would dictate that the Earth couldn't have two satelli...

Yes, the law of identity (a=a) is a logical principle—a tautology that belongs to the structure of thought and language. It tells us something about t...

In classical philosophy—especially in Platonic and scholastic traditions—particulars are not intelligible in and of themselves, but only insofar as th...

It’s tempting to draw parallels between Plato’s Forms and modern physics—especially when figures like Heisenberg make explicit reference to Platonic i...

I haven't been following this thread too closely, but like everyone, am appalled by the bloodshed and suffering of the Palestinians we see on news bul...

All due respect, I think you’re complicating the picture a little. John Locke, who was the emblematic British empiricist, was of the view that the min...

‘Such subtle enquiry’, indeed.

Thankyou :pray:

Trump says Putin ‘has gone absolutely CRAZY!’ “Missiles and drones are being shot into Cities in Ukraine, for no reason whatsoever,” Trump says. So DJ...

But the point at issue is, whether time is real independently of any scale or perspective. So a 'mountains' measurement of time will be vastly differe...

Still don't see any justification for the claim that the Earth could have only one moon as 'a matter of natural law'. Just remind me again why Einstei...

You said, 'So if something is mind-dependent, it co-varies with the state of your subjective state of mind.' The 'mountain' thought experiment shows h...

Well, the times surely are a'changing. Something a lot of people don't appreciate, is that around the time David Chalmer's published his famous Facing...

It depends on mind in a different way to that. A thought-experiment I have posed is: imagine that mountains were consciously aware. A mountain has a l...

Ok not ‘seem’. ‘Are’.

Sure—but I think we have to distinguish between how laws are discovered (epistemology) and what they describe about the world (ontology). You're right...

But I think that's a huge assumption. Even if it were true the amount of information one would have to have to calculate how many satellites a given p...

I wonder if he'll have the massed missile launchers and tanks, like his comrade, Putin. ON the OP, the only thing I have to add, is that when an aged ...

Sorry to but in, but surely the number of moons a planet has, and the number of planets a solar system have, is not determined by any laws of nature. ...

The title of this thread—“Does anybody really support mind-independent reality?”—is precisely the issue. You seem to be assuming that we’ve already an...

Werner Heisenberg was a lifelong Platonist. He was known for carrying a copy of the Timeaus with him when a student, and wrote intelligently on philos...

Thanks for that, I only just noticed it now, for some reason it wasn't picked up in Mentions. I think your analysis illustrates the problem Bergson wa...

I will say that your posts reflect a positivist attitude when they do. I could, if I was bothered, find any number of examples of that in our discussi...

:100: :clap:

That same mind which is bracketed out of early modern science with the division of the primary and secondary attributes - primary being those precisel...

Thanks. In positivism’s heyday, this wasn’t obvious. I did a unit on Language Truth and Logic as an undergrad, that and B F Skinner’s Beyond Freedom a...

Of course not, and that was not why I described your views as positivist. It was more in response to posts such as: Which meets the description of pos...

I think the intuition that animated the Greeks was that mathematical reasoning (Dianoia) provided an insight into a higher level of reality than did s...

So touching to see the camaradie amongst the forum positivists.

The problem is with taking scientific realism at face value. I watched Sabine’s presentation on T’Hooft. Likewise Roger Penrose and Albert Einstein sa...

You should really take a look at the article I linked earlier about John Wheeler—it directly challenges the idea that a photon must have had a definit...

It’s been clear from day 1 that Trump rules by decree. ‘Damn these pesky lawmakers with their inconvenient demands for ‘lawfulness’! They should know ...

That sounds close to logical positivism—reducing reality to what our best scientific models can express, and treating everything else as non-serious. ...

Hence the expression ‘true in all possible worlds’?

I put the case as best I can but understand that most people are not going to persuaded by it. The OP asks a rhetorical question, ‘does anyone really ...

So, really, you’re demanding empirical evidence for a philosophical criticism of empiricism. I’d like to oblige, but there’s no such thing, I’m afraid

‘Before’ is a concept. See this explanation.. ‘I referred to his view qua idealist that, really, there was no world per se before the first perceiver,...

‘This dichotomy (of the Page Wooter mechanism) underscores the relational aspect of time in quantum mechanics: the experience of temporal evolution is...

It’s not that phenomenology provides evidence for metaphysical claims in the empirical sense, but rather that it reframes the whole question of metaph...

‘Positivism is a philosophical approach that emphasizes the importance of observable, measurable phenomena and empirical evidence in gaining knowledge...

Your use of 'something ontological' simply means, you believe that time is real in a sense outside of any cognition of it. Even that usage is question...

Of course. A large part of philosophy about managed disagreement. I've learned a ton from disagreeing with contributors here.

vs truculent atheism ;-)

I didn't say 'we'

Or, a philosophical perspective that you can't fathom. Anyway, carry on.

But it does. That is exactly what it means. His profession of respect for religion is out of civility. But, he says, understand that it is subjective,...