Wayfarer

That's a tricky thought-experiment! I don't actually devote a lot of time to 'what if nothing existed?' I take pretty much at face value what science ...

What I have in mind is something that’s been central to my thinking for a long time. The mind-created world essay (this thread sprouted from that one)...

Polysemy is pretty close. I was thinking more in terms of the kinds of 'hinge words' which are central in various domains of discourse. Actually, give...

Thank you once again. This is what snagged Descartes, with his 'complete otherness' of res extensa and res cogitans, and why Cartesian philosophy enge...

Goes to the point of the sense in which the subject can be reflexivly self-aware. Surely the subject can form an image of itself - that is what I thin...

Doesn’t Freud’s discovery of the unconscious (if indeed a discovery it was, as it had been anticipated previously) have some bearing on the question o...

Streetlight, when he was around, alerted me to a book, a very advanced Kant studies book, Konstantin Polok - Kant's Theory of Normativity: Exploring t...

That's a big question! 'Biosemiotics' about which I've learned a lot from this forum, sees living systems in terms of the interpretation of signs (whi...

Information is not a metaphysically basic, because it is not ontologically autonomous. It does not exist in itself, but only as a specification of sta...

Thanks! I notice your musings on that question above. The problem with 'information' is that, as a general term, it doesn't mean anything. It has to s...

Very good. I often repeat this, but the translation of 'ousia' as 'substance' is misleading. In modern usage, substance suggests an objective existent...

I scanned them. But they're artifacts, they're built by human designers, to emulate aspects of biology. Surely even you can spot the difference betwee...

Yes, really, 180. All machines, all systems, computers, and devices are allopoeitic, their organising principles are imposed from the outside by those...

Very much so. You're plainly an expert interlocutor, and I value your contributions.

I think you’re rather over-dramatising my view. My argument isn’t against realism as such, nor against inquiry into it. It’s against the presumption t...

[ I don’t accept the metaphor of the biological machine. Organisms are self organizing in a way no machine can be. Aside from that, I see your point.

A thought-experiment i started a thread with, on this very same topic. There is a sentry in a watchtower, looking through a telescope. The watchtower ...

Not an impasse but a misunderstanding. Of course I am aware of my seeing, and I know that I am knowing, but that is not the point at issue. The point ...

I didn't say that. I said, the subject is not an object, except to another subject. When i look at you, I see another subject as object, although the ...

AI systems can be fully described and specified in terms of information science. They are not in the least conscious. A microbe has a higher degree of...

One of the things that comes to my mind is a discussion I read years ago about 'thick terms' in philosophy. Most of those are those terms with great d...

There is something I'll add, as a long-time forum habitué. There is an unspoken prohibition in much of modern philosophy against expressions and ideas...

I'm not interested in being drawn into comments about debates with 180proof. From time to time I may respond to his comments directed at me. As for AI...

I tossed this to Claude. Read on if you wish.

But surely this construction is made from a perspective outside all three of them! Look, you say, on the one side, the proverbial chair, on the other,...

I’m not claiming that objects are mind-dependent entities. I’m claiming that objecthood is not a property that pre-existing things have independently ...

This post. You’re treating “the experiment” or “the state of affairs” as the object that perdures, so objecthood on this context is not in question. B...

You can’t stipulate your way out of the uncertainty principle.

However

It's one of those ideas that kind of straddles philosophy and science, that we can say. Depending on how you look at it :rofl:

I appreciate the careful thought you've put into this post. But it has to be acknowledged that in these discussions, we're touching on deep questions ...

You’re treating the wavefunction as if it were the state of an object with determinate properties, and then explaining measurement as a change in thos...

If you mean this is the model, then it is falsified by physics. So this: Is post measurement. The point at issue is what exists prior to the act of me...

With what model?

thanks for that clear-sighted analysis :clap:

I've said before, quantum physics demolishes such a Newtonian conception of reality. At the fundamental level, the properties of sub-atomic primitives...

Well, Tao of Physics (1974) is a cultural landmark, notwithstanding that it is written around many weak analogies. But it is a matter of fact that Nei...

I don’t think I’m assigning an ontological status to objects. I’m not saying that objects depend for their existence on minds. I’m saying that objecth...

Again, even though dark matter is undetectable, the putative effects are detectable. A lot of people think it means there’s something really wrong wit...

It might help for me to explain what my argument is against. I’m arguing against the scientistic view, swallowed wholesale by a great many intelligent...

I’ve accessed the original article via Apple News, and it’s an excellent piece of longform journalism. Sacks comes across as a fascinating if tortured...

I don't believe that the transcendental subject is a being in a sense other than the indexical. We can't single out the transcendental subject and say...

My claim is not that cognition knows only ideas, but that “objecthood” itself is a cognitive status — not something that can be meaningfully ascribed ...

And I only wanted to make it clear that I don't think you have. But, sure, let's take them up elsewhere.

I don’t recognise the cogency of “evolutionary morality.” Evolutionary theory explains how biological traits are selected and propagated; it does not ...

And after all these months of conversations, I'm still at a loss to understand what you think physicalism explains, other than in its role as a method...

I'm in agreement with your 'both-and' type of attitude. The 'either-or' dilemma is something stamped firmly into Western consciousness, for mainly his...

Not wanting to pre-empt Relativist's response, but given the current theoretical understanding of cosmology and physics, dark matter and dark energy a...

I had a look at your 'Right Stuff' essay. (As it happens, I wrote an undergrad term paper on Lucretius, under the able tutelage of one Professor Keith...

No, and I fully expect that nothing ever will. It’s not the kind of view which is amendable to falsification, as it is a metaphysical belief. You will...