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Janus

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To my way of thinking mystical experience and insight, which I think is a very real phenomenon, is so personal that any particular faith or beliefs th...
August 15, 2022 at 20:00
When it comes to religious belief there can be no empirical evidence or inter-subjective confirmation. So faith is, in relations to these kinds of evi...
August 15, 2022 at 05:33
:up: Yes like you I do sometimes see actual pictorial type images, but they are fleeting and it's usually when I'm dreaming, half asleep or under the ...
August 14, 2022 at 21:34
Doesn't it depend on what you mean by "mental Image"? I can visualize quite complex structures and maps, but it is not like staring at an actual stati...
August 14, 2022 at 01:59
I think the problem is more intractable, given the unpopularity of the viable ameliorations, ("ameliorations" because "solutions" would be too unreali...
August 13, 2022 at 23:50
Universal cooperation is a pipe dream. Also the idea that we can quickly de-carbonize is a fantasy it seems. The "political" part of the problem is th...
August 13, 2022 at 23:33
No pressure of course... "Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts." C S Peirce
August 13, 2022 at 00:48
Cool, so it seems reasonable to think that people's experience of pain is similar at least to the extent that they generally find it unpleasant and se...
August 12, 2022 at 23:57
I agree we have and can have no "hard" data. We know at least that people associate the word 'pain' with the word 'unpleasant'. We know people don't l...
August 12, 2022 at 23:47
I don't think linguistic meaning is anchored in something private, but is enabled by both private feeling and experience as well as public expression....
August 12, 2022 at 23:29
The word "pain" would mean nothing to someone incapable of feeling pain. Your feeling of pain is not accessible to me. The word "pain" in its public u...
August 12, 2022 at 23:01
I think the beetle implies that there are private meanings; significant nameless images and feelings, also, that cannot be made public. That is accord...
August 12, 2022 at 22:27
Regarding the beetle in the box: I don't think W denies it, but sees it, in its ineffability as dropping out of the conversation. The others cannot sh...
August 12, 2022 at 22:19
No need to apologize; no offense taken. I'm just a bit impatient at times is all. I imagine Derrida would agree there is no privileged reading of Heid...
August 12, 2022 at 22:12
I'm not saying the subject is more certain than it's objects ("objects" that is taken as "being sensed"). Being in the world consists entirely in sens...
August 12, 2022 at 21:59
We only know those objects as images and sensations. The objects are present "in" the sensations and images. Of course we also think of them as indepe...
August 12, 2022 at 21:34
Right, I didn't have that in mind either.
August 12, 2022 at 21:02
Cheers. I said that my thoughts ,feelings and bodily sensations are what is most immediately present to me, and I should have made explicit that I thi...
August 12, 2022 at 20:57
In my view, rejection of the external world is absurd, and solipsism is absurd. I find the idea that I could be the only mind in the universe, not onl...
August 12, 2022 at 05:55
Controlled experiments are the province of science, not philosophy, in my view. I'm familiar with Kant's version, and I have little argument with it; ...
August 12, 2022 at 05:06
You're not listening. I am open to criticism, but any criticism will be parsed through my own critical filter and accepted or rejected depending on ho...
August 12, 2022 at 05:04
For some of us, right: I can agree with that. Perhaps for all of us, we only believe what we feel we have gotten right. But the feeling of getting it ...
August 12, 2022 at 04:55
Taken literally it is a ridiculous question: how can it be like anything else to be me, or any individual, animal or human? But in common parlance it ...
August 12, 2022 at 04:34
Can we control the thoughts that our minds spontaneously produce? When we write, the words just come to us, don't they? Can we control whether or not ...
August 12, 2022 at 03:38
No, I was saying that I personally find Brandom and Sellar's approaches too anal, too concerned with "getting it right" in some objective fashion. I s...
August 12, 2022 at 02:46
I think it's more plausible that we all understand what "experience" means (in our own unique ways of course, although most likely roughly enough the ...
August 11, 2022 at 21:38
More attempted dismissal by lame ridicule? I thought you were concerned with rational argument. @"Mww" already "tried" it, and it failed...to do what....
August 11, 2022 at 20:42
True, if solipsism is defeated by my lack of omniscience then it is defeated simply by the fact that I don't know what will happen in the future, or e...
August 11, 2022 at 20:19
If nothing exists other than my mind, and I am not conscious of all its contents, then I could be wrong about some things.
August 11, 2022 at 06:10
I think you're falling into some kind of dogma. Sounds ilke you're speaking about religious conversion. And with all this talk about "little ghosts" a...
August 10, 2022 at 20:36
A newly minted category must have been created by an individual initially, no? Or even if it was first thought by a number of individual...simultaneou...
August 10, 2022 at 07:54
I haven't said that sentences are preformulated; that has nothing to do with what I have been arguing. I've been arguing that categories are initially...
August 10, 2022 at 07:44
Don't you agree that mental activity can be thought of as private in the sense that I can be thinking or imagining a whole plethora of things and not ...
August 10, 2022 at 07:28
I have my own understanding of what it means and you won't know what that is unless I tell you. Of course in telling you my understanding will be made...
August 10, 2022 at 07:11
From the fact that 'existence' is a public word it does not follow that existence is a public concept. We each have our own range of associations, int...
August 10, 2022 at 06:56
If I can be mistaken that it is I who am doubting, thinking, feeling; then I can be mistaken that there is doubting, thinking and feeling. I feel my o...
August 09, 2022 at 21:31
Yes, he arrived, after doubting everything he thought he could, at the cogito as the purportedly indubitable, and then (unfortunately not indubitably)...
August 09, 2022 at 20:41
Right. Descartes' project was to prove that "I" exist", not to prove that others don't exist.
August 09, 2022 at 20:23
Yes, true that would be better since we are speaking about proof. On the other hand, evidence can be proof, or proof enough, as I note below. I would ...
August 09, 2022 at 06:58
It seems to me that under the JTB definition of knowledge, even assuming that there are real criteria concerning what counts as justification, that we...
August 08, 2022 at 21:24
I think this is a difficult area to speak about and as I understand it I agree with everything as you've written it there, and right now I can't think...
August 08, 2022 at 19:51
Things must be proven to be known to be true, which is all that is important when it comes to truth. What could it matter that something be true if it...
August 08, 2022 at 19:46
I don't know what you intend by "pure meanings". I don't find that notion in the phenomenological works I am most familiar with (mainly Heidegger, Mer...
August 08, 2022 at 10:01
That's interesting. What do you understand to be the "phenomenological version of the myth of the given"? And how do you see it relating back to Arist...
August 08, 2022 at 07:14
I think we are coming from very different definitions of terms, so we are going to talk past one another. For me what is concrete is what has immediat...
August 08, 2022 at 05:52
:wink: You never had to; so it just depends on whether you're interested in discovering the greater depths or not.
August 08, 2022 at 05:16
I'm glad you approve. It'll be good for your soul to return to your your Hegel, Heidegger and Derrida etc. :wink: : analytic philosophy is too anal, a...
August 07, 2022 at 20:41
You're really good at misunderstanding! I said we have very good reason to think the external world exists, but it cannot be for us, anything more tha...
August 07, 2022 at 08:49
:smile: :cool:
August 07, 2022 at 08:23
You mean this: Where in that have I said the external world is the work of our organs? The world of experience is a world of images, sounds and bodily...
August 07, 2022 at 08:16