Janus

Meaning is of many kinds. Have you ever perceived anything utterly meaningless?

The problem is that to say this amounts to saying there was no nature of the world prior to human life. Or it is to say that there is no uninterpreted...

Yes, I agree that "it is a perception of things"; it could even be said that things just are interpretations. And yet they are not just interpretation...

I disagree with this. Stick with the brain; that is what we have been talking about. We can, not normally, but via either surgery or various sensory a...

Perception is always already meaningful; it is not a matter of "assigning anything". You remain unable to think outside the dualistic box, it seems.

So humans did evolve from animal precursors? And this evolution occurred prior to the advent of the consciousness and reason that, according to you, c...

I'm puzzled as to why you detest naturalistic philosophies of mind so much! Is it because you feel they threaten your religious faith? I don't see why...

I would do the same for "mental", in relation to an idealist claim that the "real as it is in itself" is mental. From an unbiased standpoint physicali...

OK, cool, I was just clarifying that you weren't claiming that knowing how to use the word entailed having the ability to say what the word means. Nic...

Unless I have misunderstood @"StreetlightX", I think the salient question is whether someone, a child in this example, can be proficient in using word...

It depends on what is meant by saying that prior to humans there were asteroids. Something extra-mental (at least in the sense of 'beyond' or 'outside...

I think the clue to the problem lies in Sellar's distinction between the spaces of reasons and causes. Physicalist accounts in terms of quantities and...

Just as in the other thread I have no idea what point you are trying to make here.

I have no idea what you think you are trying to say here.

What do mean "what is your brain like or where does your mind go when you are alone in a dreamless sleep"? Can you explain what you think the relevanc...

Sure, I don't disagree with any of that. But I was asking a different question. If there are no mind-independent existents then how do you explain why...

Culture and language can explain how we talk about things we see in similar ways, or how we see some things and don't see others, but it can't explain...

I get what you're saying, but I don't think it is right to say that consciousness "constructs your lived experience (reality?)". I think it would be m...

It's like the Tardis; bigger on the inside.

I can't see that it does. We can say that conditions back then were such that, if we had been there we would have perceived dinosaurs. It's the same a...

No, it's not; because physical properties are generally well understood within a coherent system of causality-based theory which comprises the science...

What have you found unclear? What "steps" were those?

No I mean attending to what I have actually argued against your claims: "The point is that the things we observe and the things we say about those thi...

It truly amazes me when people are apparently incapable of at least understanding both sides of the argument.

If you mean follow the example of actually attempting to provide cogent arguments, then yes, obviously. But I don't expect you to do that; I have seen...

More insult? Is that all you've got?

How could you answer a question that cannot be coherently formulated? Try this: what exactly does it mean to say that an object exists mind-independen...

What precisely have I said that leads you to think I don't understand the comment? I think it's more the case that you are resorting to innuendo and i...

All of this is true of our situation as we perceive it but says nothing about any purported "reality" above and beyond our perceptions. You can go aro...

This is a strawman having sex with a red herring. Of course we observe all those things; that has never been the point at issue. The point is that the...

There may or may not be "two". The question is whether there is anything there independent of the perception that gives rise to the perception. The an...

My understanding of the "Private Language Argument" is that it would be impossible for a lone individual to create a language if they did not already ...

I don't think this is right. We know the stick that appears bent in water is not "really" bent because when we pull it out of the water it instantly a...

I'm not sure about the "Pilot Wave" theory, but the "many World's Interpretation" would seem to be untestable in principle. And the further point is t...

Right, a quite different conception then, given that Yaldabaoth would seem to be thought of as both sentient and sapient, but deluded.

Perhaps Lovecraft derived this idea from the Gnostic's own "idiot" creator God, Yaldabaoth. "In one of the ironies of mythic history, Yahweh himself b...

Please try to hone those reading and/or attention skills then. It will hopefully make conversing with you less frustrating.

You do realize that is the very point I have been making, right?

Is any thing some way independently of any view? The category error seems to consist in thinking that it could be. I think the best that can be said a...

You say it turns out the atomists were "basically correct", but that conclusion is based on the idea that QM tells us something about the world as it ...

:ok:

So, your comment would have lost some sense without the "really"? Really?

According to the theory something we conceptualize as "collapsing the wave function" is going on. We can only say how that appears to us, and how we a...

What does adding the word "really" do here? :joke: I agree with your point btw!

But don't we only know that due to observations (experience) of the universe? Otherwise how would we know? The wave-function is a theoretical entity, ...

To identify what it is to be "like something" is to identify the qualities of anything as they are experienced. If one tries to apply the question out...

If "we'd have no way of knowing" then the question as to "what anything really is" would seem to be useless at best, incoherent at worst. So why do yo...

It's only in the context of the 'real/ illusion' distinction that the term 'real' has any bite. Regarding the distinctions between being a McCubbin or...

I don't see how it follows from the fact that questions are contextual that they are vacuous. What it is reasonable to say is simply what coheres and ...

:cool: Just as it is said that our biggest problem is what to do about all the things we cannot do anything about, similarly when it comes to knowing ...