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Janus

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If 'an hypothesis' why not 'an hyphen'?
January 25, 2020 at 21:05
Note though, that the term "external world" does not (necessarily) refer to a world beyond human experience, but to an inter-subjectively shared world...
January 19, 2020 at 22:28
That seems true.
January 18, 2020 at 21:07
The very idea of failure of language per se seems incoherent to me. The point for me is that certain ideas may lead "naturally" to unreflective reific...
January 18, 2020 at 20:26
I'd say it fails us insofar as it unreflectively leads to naive realism, which is an unwarranted standpoint, or at least a distorted, because incomple...
January 18, 2020 at 04:14
I didn't say they think they are describing the "world of sensations", whatever that might even mean, but the world of things (which are revealed by s...
January 17, 2020 at 21:05
Right, although the "entirety of our culture" is itself piecemeal...
January 17, 2020 at 05:06
It's true there are several versions of scientific realism, but I doubt that many scientists would deny that they are dealing with the world as percei...
January 16, 2020 at 22:55
Of course things as experienced must "conform to thoughts", but Kant would not say that things in themselves must conform to thoughts; in facts he is ...
January 16, 2020 at 06:42
Firstly the statement I quoted and criticized was pretty straightforward: You are saying that Kant questions the idea that the world exists independen...
January 16, 2020 at 01:25
Kant posits the "in itself" which just is the world existing "completely independently of our perception of it". Your own words "perception of it" sho...
January 15, 2020 at 00:28
Both noumena and things in themselves insofar as they are both considered as being thoughts are obviously "appearance relative". But in terms of what ...
January 08, 2020 at 22:23
I probably didn't explain it that simply after all. The way I understand it is that 'noumenon' is an idea of a limit beyond which sensory experience c...
January 08, 2020 at 05:10
Putting it very simply and in a way that Kant may not have specifically explained it: a noumenon is the idea of an idea; the concept of something beyo...
January 08, 2020 at 01:12
:up: Finally someone sees that, and clearly explains how, Mww gets it right!
January 08, 2020 at 00:49
:up: I also voted overpopulation; from which the others flow...
January 06, 2020 at 00:40
:up: Although it is also true that the meteoric evolution of consumer economics has greatly undermined the traditional familial, communal and religiou...
January 04, 2020 at 23:39
It's true that people most often use the term " a being" as an abbreviated form of "a living being" or "a human being", but this is just an idiomatic ...
January 04, 2020 at 23:20
Living creatures are defined as living beings. Minerals or artifacts are inanimate non-living beings and plants are usually taken to be living, but no...
January 04, 2020 at 00:45
I think the common way of putting it would be that some beings are capable of perceiving and some are not. Is there any good philosophical reason to d...
January 03, 2020 at 03:23
Yes, it is puzzling! For me God (or any other purported being) either exists or does not exist (regardless of our beliefs). And the term "to exist" is...
January 03, 2020 at 00:04
I don't know how to answer this. I try to avoid imputing particular psychological motivations to what people say on forums like this. I presume good f...
January 02, 2020 at 23:59
Well, I was using your terminology. So for you it is not Berkeley's "To be is to be perceived", but rather 'To be is to perceive'? That would be a ver...
January 02, 2020 at 23:52
Of course people will display socially beneficent attitudes and behavior if they are not sociopaths. What would you expect from a social animal?
January 01, 2020 at 22:52
Scientific theories cannot be "disproven" or proven. According to Popper's (still controversial) idea scientific theories can be falsified when the pr...
January 01, 2020 at 22:47
Do animals "have being" according to you?
January 01, 2020 at 22:24
The validity of the response seems to be going over your head. If you want to say that collaboration is not an essential characteristic of (functional...
January 01, 2020 at 01:22
Your stance is self-serving garbage to anyone who sees functional humans as intrinsically social beings.
December 31, 2019 at 23:18
Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change William Catton Read it and weep!
December 26, 2019 at 00:15
So you think the other animals, the plants and the Earth don't matter in their own right? The monstrous irony is that it is precisely that almost univ...
December 25, 2019 at 23:45
Yes, if there is to be continuing production then there must be continuing consumption to keep the machine going. If all the production is mechanized,...
December 19, 2019 at 22:28
https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/article/2162999/consider-alternatives-pangolin-scales-traditional If a statement is to be true,...
December 15, 2019 at 20:29
It's only definitional and contextual; we never know truth or have any knowledge in any absolute sense. Actually, I prefer to think of "knowing that" ...
December 14, 2019 at 20:24
How do you decide whether a belief is justified? Can a belief be justified and yet untrue? Does 'justified' mean, to you, merely something like unders...
December 14, 2019 at 06:16
Note the difference between "he believes a broken clock is working" and " He believes the following: "A broken clock is working"". Of course the latte...
December 14, 2019 at 00:02
I think you are missing the fact that if the clock has stopped working then the belief, although true, is not justified. You might want to say that he...
December 13, 2019 at 23:54
Now here I can agree with you!
December 08, 2019 at 08:02
No, I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that mental grasping, which is enabled by symbolic abstraction, is understood in a way analogous to physica...
December 07, 2019 at 21:17
Symbolic, as distinct from merely signaling, language is a form of mental grasping. The opposable thumb (physical grasping) and symbolic language toge...
December 07, 2019 at 19:41
Yeah, it was fun for a bit, but vacuous claims, no matter how amusing they might be for a while, soon wear thin.
December 06, 2019 at 20:36
No, I should assume neither until I have good evidence to do so. You are fallaciously mounting a kind of "argument from authority" here. Yes, but you ...
December 05, 2019 at 23:37
Yes, there is also the knowing of acquaintance, as in "I know this person". And there is what I call 'knowing with' which consists in the investigatio...
December 05, 2019 at 23:07
Of course it's your assertion I just don't agree with you that reason itself universally "asserts" anything. Even the principles of reason are asserte...
December 03, 2019 at 23:17
It makes no sense to say that reason makes assertions; reason is the basis upon which reasonable assertions are made by persons (or minds, if you want...
December 02, 2019 at 22:39
:smile:
December 02, 2019 at 00:10
If is true, then what happened to your "commonality of human reason"? Fact is, I've read a few of your threads and I can recall no exchanges where you...
December 01, 2019 at 23:50
I hope you mean that Sam. :wink:
December 01, 2019 at 23:47
Your typical response to almost everyone. What exquisite irony! You are either lying to yourself or you know that you are not at all interested in rea...
December 01, 2019 at 23:46
Ironic coming from someone who substantiates none of his own insubstantial claims, but merely continues to insist that they are somehow true. It's als...
December 01, 2019 at 23:42