Janus

This is a poor, conveniently restricted notion of what it is to be an object. It is uncontroversial, both in ordinary and philosophical parlance, that...

Information is pervasive, not confined to words. Words, if they work, activate informed responses. In ordinary language this is called 'conveying info...

I think I may be working with a different notion of "object" than you.

Unfortunately I don't have time to participate on here, except perhaps sporadically and even then, minimally, for a couple of months at least. I'm sel...

Still no examples...or explanations...

This comment is totally unhelpful unless you tell me exactly what I said you think is "exactly that", and exactly why you think it.

How else would we be aware of anything? The distinction between kinds of interoceptive sensing and kinds of exteroceptive sensing is fairly uncontrove...

I don't think it is right to say either if there is no water on the road. What is the reasoning that justifies the distinction between sensing and see...

Why leave it to some "others" you imagine will agree with you? Do you refer to others because you are trying to suggest normatively consensual support...

So you are claiming that we do see water on the road, but we do not sense water on the road, or what? Apart form your mere dismissal by insult of what...

Sure, I haven't said that pain etc are not real or that they are not mental phenomena. The point is that they are not merely mental phenomena. There i...

Yes, thinking thoughts is the same as sensing objects. If we are not aware of our thoughts how would we know what they are?

In the case of a mirage we do not see or sense water on the road, we think we do. What's the problem?

The question as to whether there are mind-independent objective facts is not en empirical question. Empirical questions are decidable by observation a...

You're beginning to sound like creativesoul! :razz: I'm not saying anything like that the existence of the cat is dependent upon our seeing, or sensin...

Have you read Meillassoux' After Finitude. He argues there that the only thing which is necessary is contingency; quite a reversal! I don't find the a...

No I am saying that seeing the cat just is sensation (sensing) of the cat. I mean of course you could say that one has or experiences the sensation of...

I think I see where the confusion lies. The idea of necessary being, the fact that there is an idea of necessary being, and the logic that idea entail...

One sees the cat is equivalent to one senses the cat. Sensing the cat is an act of sensation. Yes, and what exactly is wrong with that?

It wasn't my doing; see what I was adding as you responded. Perhps the confusion was caused by my use of "sensation", but remember that word may be co...

You seem to be introducing an unnecessary "middle man" here. We experience or have "external" objects by sensing them. Similarly, we experience or hav...

It is only via exteroceptive sensation viz. seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting of things, and interoceptive sensation of thoughts, feelings ...

I have been searching for our arm but I couldn't find it; perhaps it is an illusion? :joke: Seriously, though I agree with you that pain is no illusio...

I don't know about you, but I am able to be reflexively aware of (at least some of) what I am presently experiencing, including the sense of experienc...

Yes, it is odd, isn't it, when folk don't think as we do, when what seems self-evident to me apparently does not seem self-evident to others!?

My understanding is that the idea of necessary being as variously understood by Aristotle, the Scholastics and Spinoza is that a necessary being neces...

No, not a historical discussion. I took it that intended the question in the context of the traditional (Aristotelian, Scholastic, Spinozistic) unders...

OK now you're just repeating yourself and ignoring what I wrote, so I've had enough.

And yet you seem to be unable to give an account of them that makes sense to me. So, I haven't "neglected" anything; I have just failed to be convince...

So what? It is enough that some writing may.

Firstly assuming that symbolic thought evolved from non-symbolic thought, says nothing about the determinability of the latter. My own thinking is det...

Right now I can't see how, but of course I could be. If you can convince me that I am wrong then I think I should be humble enough to admit it. On the...

I am not going to keep answering the same question over and over.

I don't know: all I can say is that I have read everything you wrote, and I haven't seen anything that convinces me that you have achieved it. I am sa...

I've already said why I think non-symbolic thinking is indeterminate. To symbolize just is to determine. I know what I think because I can represent i...

I don't know what more I can say about it, beyond repeating what I've already said: that we can speculate about it, but since it's indeterminate we re...

As I already said, I don't favour talking about there being "content" of thought in the absence of language. That is, since there is no determinate "c...

Yes, we can't get into any mind other than our own. But we can communicate, and presuming honesty of reporting we can know what and how others think t...

I have no clear idea what you are asking. You seem to be asking whether you need to respond to the OP "under the rubric of someone else's thought"? We...

Yeah, well if you really were familiar with Spinoza in particular you would understand that that meant something like "insofar as being is thought of ...

What you have been saying seems to indicate that you are not familiar with Scholastic and Spinozistic thought. If you are familiar with those, then I ...

What's the point of this question? Obviously Jesus is supposed to have been a person, and as such would be thought to be physical insofar as persons a...

This way of thinking about necessary being really has little to do with the Scholastic or Spinozistic conceptions of necessary being. For one thing, f...

According to the logic of necessary being there would be no such thing as a being which is "only physical" in any case. This is because contingent bei...

Obviously to say that Jesus is God is to say that Jesus is not merely a physical being. If you were familiar with Spinoza you would know that for him ...

The problem is that I never intended to have a discussion that hinges on claims about explanations, and have not used that criterion at all; it was on...

It has nothing to do with being "patronizing"; I have no idea about your "background". If you are familiar with Spinoza and Aquinas, then why are citi...

Perhaps you could cite a couple of examples of such actual arguments. Say one philosophy of mind and one not. The reason I ask is that I can't see how...

If a being does not exist then it cannot be necessary, because since its being depends on nothing outside itself it must exist or fail the criteria. T...

It should have been obvious that I meant "arguments generally". But even in such special cases as the one you refer to here, it is a matter of interpr...