As I said in the answer above; it seems we have al least some motivation to ask the question of bats, since there is every indication that they are pe...
Probably because we know that bats have brains and central nervous systems which are not too dissimilar to our own; whereas computers have nothing ana...
He's asking what the subjective experience of a bat is like; which obviously cannot be answered since we are not bats. But really the question is "is ...
But then we cannot explain how it is that we all experience the same world of things, given that our experience tells us that our minds are not direct...
What kind of "access" do you expect? How could we have any kind of access that wouldn't be dismissed by you as not being "real" access insofar as bein...
Exactly, and what kind of "depth" should we expect over and above our usual physical explanations? Do we have any actual intellectual justification fo...
The physical processes involved in bringing about the seeing of colour are well understood. What you seem to be asking for is an explanation in physic...
What do you think he means by that? In the ordinary sense of course many thoughts are spoken, so surely you can't be taking @"Merkwurdichliebe" to be ...
Seeing of colour is not exclusively reliant on "the human perspective". Animals see colour too, although in different ways depending on their (in some...
Thinking of philosophy as a science, as knowledge, opens the question as to what counts as knowledge. There is the old etymological definition of phil...
If consciousness is a physical phenomenon (assuming that what counts as being physical is understood and defined well enough) then what could the illu...
I agree with you here. I can think about doing anything at all, for example, eating my dinner, without saying a single word, even to myself. It seems ...
If I didn't perceive colour then how could I, for example, peruse colour charts and match and choose colours to paint my house? To deny that just seem...
What is meant by "real" may be debatable, but according to any ordinary definition colour is real and not merely a mental phenomenon, since some at le...
You present a lot of verbiage and no substantiating quote form Einstein. If you want to claim that Einstein definitely thought this or that then you s...
Please provide a quote from Einstein where he says that the aim of science is to see "things as they are in themselves" in the kind of sense that you ...
There are two ways of thinking about the human perspective embedded in this issue. Of course everything humans do is a manifestation of the human pers...
I agree it is also a matter of perspective, but nonetheless I maintain that knowing as familiarity is basic and comes first, and that knowing-how and ...
I understand your concern, but I don't see familiarity as being subjective. I would say I am familiar with something or someone when I interact or dea...
Yes, I also understand all cases of knowing anything as being examples of familiarity. You know your wife your dog, your friends simply insofar as you...
To me that just seems like stating the obvious, stating what we always already knew. There may be some value in that if someone has forgotten to take ...
No, it just looks like that because the form of the former sentence is similar to sentences that do attribute predicates. The semantic contnet is real...
The justification for saying that I know a picture of someone is a picture of that person is my well-tested faith in being able to remember what that ...
Saying that something has existence is not attributing a predicate; it is simply saying that something exists. It is perfectly reasonable to say that ...
I regret using the term "entertain". What I meant is that thought passes through while constantly moving, the animal mind, but that the thought does n...
If you cannot have a thought whenever you wish then you cannot hold that thought. I understand holding a thought to consist in stabilising it, 'fixing...
Where have I attributed existence as a predicate to anything? Things exist, that is basic; but their existence is not a predicate like other predicate...
I've explained several times what I mean by saying that some one can hold thoughts. Another aspect of this is being able to grasp what a thought means...
You simply think repeatedly anything you have previously thought. You don't need to think about the thought itself or about your re-thinking it in ord...
Kant did not argue against talking in terms of existence tout court but against imagining that existence is a property which something may either poss...
Perhaps you can, depending on what you mean by "predicate' but I don't believe you can dispense with the category. When Kant said that existence is no...
The only way to show that you are having a specific thought is to to be able to repeat it; to be able to have it in mind again and again at will. That...
Yes, but my point was that the thoughts animals may momentarily entertain cannot be held or had in the sense that they cannot deliberately bring it ba...
We cannot say what existence or being is in some more fundamental terms, but it is an indispensable idea. We can conceive of different kinds of existe...
Depends on what you mean by "having thoughts". I haven't denied that they think. If by 'having thoughts" you just mean that they think, then I have no...
The only way I can understand having or holding a thought or belief is that we do it by deliberately formulating thoughts and beliefs into determinate...
Yes, pretty much, language allows us to store and transmit thoughts in more or less precisely determinate forms, and written language even more so. We...
I'm not saying philosophy is competition. I agree it should be cooperative learning. Cooperative learning necessarily involves critique, because witho...
I guess so, for if there were no humans to imagine them they would have no kind of existence at all. This seems pretty much right to me. I tend to agr...
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