Olivier5

Yes, they put themselves in what Bateson called a "double bind", i.e. a self-contradictory injunction, which is actually dangerous for one's mental he...

That's a strawman. Dualism only implies that he who does the empirical observing recognises said observing to be 1) fundamentally different from the o...

No, I am not a panpsychist. Panpsychism is a form of idealism; doesn't cut my cake. You said that dualism can be proven false a priori. Would you mind...

Thanks. It's a pretty obvious point I am making. Either people can see the obvious or they can't. Luck has nothing to do with it. The critical factor ...

I am actually arguing against materialism, aka the idea that ideas don't exist.

The spontaneous appearance of living organisms in some sort of inanimate chemical soup would constitute pretty definitive evidence of abiogenesis, I t...

If minds matter, then mental events are important and potentially effective. They are not necessarily illusions or mere noise. The role of neuroscienc...

I know, you keep failing to see things. Even when you deny the reality of your own thoughts, you fail to see the contradiction. I think your condition...

Not completely or all thoughts, of course. But a scientist must believe in the capacity of the human mind to understand something about the world. Oth...

My point is simply that science is a form of human thinking about the world. Science happens in the human mind. It is dualist by nature. Therefore a l...

I suppose that's the draw of substance dualism: contrary to a process or an activity, a substance is conserved over time. So substance dualism implies...

You are quite good at avoiding questions. I repeat: Are you denying the reality of your subjective feelings? Yes or no? Consider that, if you cannot t...

A. You'd be surprised. B. Are you denying the reality of your subjective feelings? See point A above.

You asked a question: why is the mind so hard to understand, and I answered you. Now you say that you are in agreement with my answer. But that makes ...

Not at all. A metaphor is simply an illustration, a comparison. It is not to be taken literally. Do I really need to explain such ultra basic literary...

It was a metaphor... :groan:

How would your brain know that?

Science happens in the mind. This may be why science finds it difficult to look at the mind, or even to conceive of it. The eye cannot see itself.

Ok so bad thinking comes from bad thinking structures. You presumably have your own brain in mind. So dualists just have a poorly functioning brain? I...

What I wonder is where does your distinction between good and bad thinking originates from? If them gluons (or neurotransmitters for that matter) make...

Yes of course, the process of adopting a new idea is often subconscious, especially when the conscious person comes with an attitude, a negative a pri...

Agreed. If you write a post, try to make it convincing. But don't assume that anyone will actually be convinced, at least immediately. Even if they ar...

I know, but that's a bit of a detail. It doesn't alter the argument.

I am not personally in the business of trying to convince others, but more into trying to understand what they say, whether it means anything, whether...

There is no burden of proof in metaphysical discussions, though.

Are you saying that your gluons can think better than mine?

All this talk of getting old It's getting me down, my love Like a cat in a bag waiting to drown This time I'm coming down And I hope you're thinking o...

I don't know about you, but I'm certainly not a gluon...

:-) The world was on fire And no one could save me but you It's strange what desire Will make foolish people do I never dreamed that I'd meet somebody...

If reasoning is an activity of gluons, that'd be their fault, not ours.

It's always true, whether they know it or not. A scientist worth his mettle tries to understand the world, or some part of it. If he doesn't do that, ...

How can an activity lose anything?

Ok then.

This is a logical mistake. In fact, without dualism, there could be no such thing as epistemology. So dualism underpins epistemology and science. It i...

What sort of material stuff is reason made of, in your view? Or are you arguing vice versa, that all matter is made of reason?

I would say it emerged naturally, because it was possible.

No, certainly not "matter". To me it comes from the fact that in our indeterministic world, anything that can happen will happen.

More precisely, scientists operate on the assumption of an objectively real physical universe, understandable by human minds.

I would contest that. Life is already transcendental vis-à-vis inanimate matter. Life is already a manner of thinking at biochemical level, and this m...

So what? You operate (at least as a default position) under the assumption that other scientists don't lie to you about this, when they say that, e.g....

Exactly. The validation you seek is from other minds. Science is fundamentally dualist, it's always about minds understanding matter. And it has been ...

Why yes, science is based on a dualist framework (empiricism + rationalism), so a logical form of scientism or physicalism would include the mind as t...

Not to my mind. It is dualist in that it postulates the existence of minds and bodies as two different things, provides a possible reason why bodies m...

There's the argument that the mind is something the brain _does_ and vice versa, the brain is something the mind does. The idea that it's a two-way st...

In any case, that was (I think) what Pop meant by: That'd be why sense-deprivation is a mode of torture.

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Sure, you could try and become a hermit or a monk, or just throw yourself under the bus if survival is of absolutely no interest to you. I found it a ...

:100:

Well yes, Rousseau basically assumed that good was natural to men (within limits). And I went along with that in a humanist world view. A bit like Fre...