Janus

I'm not really following you. If you didn't know the reasons for two things being different, then how could you know there are such reasons? Would thi...

I am sympathetic to your position but not so much to your argument MU. An obvious objection to your argument is that unique sets of qualities are suff...

Yes, and that is precisely what you don't seem to have provided. Well, we differ here too; for me the ideas of Spinoza, Heidegger, and the rest of the...

Yeah, well, I think we are all different as much as we are similar, I usually found that after an initial bout with terror, I usually came through...b...

That just made me laugh! :rofl: I saw a really nice looking belt in a shop once and when I looked at the label it read: "Genuine Leatherlon". I guess ...

Well, no matter how "seasoned" he is, he better have someone watching!

Sounds like a really good opportunity!

I'd love to try a Vipassana retreat one day! I have participated in less rigorous retreats and workshops. I think we all face that situation, especial...

Easy to say! I never really knew what 'terrifying' meant until I experienced hallucinogens!

Aphorism 17 is agreeable enough, and contradicts nothing I have said. How are thoughts known to us? By experience just like everything else, no? Have ...

Except that the mineness or ownedness of thought is unquestionable. Thoughts always belong to someone; they do not float around freely.

I took hallucinogens intensively (about once or twice a week) 1970-1971 and into early 1972. Suddenly I just stopped; I knew it was enough. I took the...

From the information I have about the legal status of psychotropics in Australia, I can only conclude that you must have started in late '67 or early ...

I am pretty sure I have experienced doubt when dreaming.

We are all adults here. All I'm asking is how old you were when you first took them. Since you have several times on these forums declared that you we...

Way too much to attempt to describe here!

So you don't remember what year you first took hallucinogens? I could never forget my first experience, including when it occurred and how old I was. ...

It's not logically impossible that I am the only being that exists but do not know it.

Are you certain of that? Or is that just your way of defining solipsism?

Doesn't it only, more modestly, presuppose that you don't know that solipsism is the case?

What year were you taking hallucinogens? They were illegal in Australia (and most of the rest of the world from the information I can find) shortly af...

I think we are coming from quite different assumptions: I am no fan of representational theories of mind. In any case It's not clear whether you want ...

I don't see how it follows that if "our mental states are constructed and given to us, then there is no actual mental states, no rational thought and ...

Yeah, when it turns into discomfort.

These two statements seem contradictory. So. I remain confused. I don't see why it would be impossible to experience doubt when dreaming. I think so, ...

It doesn't seem to me there is any moral imperative to be authentic. Authenticity would seem to be for some and not for others, and perhaps even only ...

Well, the first question was as to how we could know, not about the possibly solipsistic implications of omniscience; a topic which seems, at least on...

Well, not really...I am not seeing how any of your responses are actually related to the questions...might just be me, I guess...

Indeed, who knows such things? And that was the question. Perhaps we cannot question the process of doubt; but to doubt anything requires believing so...

If it were possible in the matrix scenario to know it is a simulation, should we not work from within (return to the Cave, Plato style) to enlighten o...

I guess the question is: how do we come to realize it is all a sham? And how do we know that realization is sound?

Do those in the matrix think about their lives and find themselves being in love or friendship? Is the matrix not just the same as, phenomenologically...

Yeah, no doubt some monks do those kinds of things. Anyway, I was half-joking with my response. The truth is I'm not sure what I'd do. It's a complex ...

True, but so would the monks who stay in the monastery.

If you are a Buddhist and you live in the matrix you will not cause any real beings to suffer, and will therefore not accumulate any bad karma. It's a...

Your response is very disappointing; you haven't even attempted to address any of the arguments I have made; apparently you would rather try to dismis...

This raises the question whether any one cause could ever be sufficient reason for the existence of anything.

Give me an argument to respond to and I'll consider engaging.

Yes, Hume in effect asserts that the PSR is the formulation of human assumptions and may not be true to nature itself; I.e. that it is an epistemologi...

I don't think it matters to the argument whether the PSR is present, as a formulated principle, in the minds of everyday people and scientists; the im...

No, because those events, as I explained in my previous post, are either global (the Big Bang) or statistically invariant. In the case of the Big Bang...

There is certainly a logical distinction between logical truth and substantive truth. One might want to argue, as MO does, that there is no genuine me...

But Spinoza does allow for self-causing substance. In fact according to Spinoza all causation finds its ultimate terminus is "God or Nature" (deus siv...

If it is a fact at all it is a logical or semantic fact. Paris being the capital of France is a substantive fact. See the difference? As I see it is o...

I haven't been denying "stringent requirements for sufficient reasons". But as I pointed out, and as @"MetaphysicsNow" alluded to with the 'tree spiri...

Well, I think that's as it should be. What constitutes "good reasons" is always relative to some overall context, or "paradigm" in Kuhnian terms. It t...

Yes. Looked at another way, if our knowledge is founded on axioms for which demonstrable reasons cannot be given, does that falsify the PSR? I'd say '...

And what is it that determines whether or not any proposition is true? This is where your conflation lies. 'Fact' has two senses; a semantic sense, or...

Your incorrectly calling actualities "if-then facts", when "if-thens" are actually propositions, shows your conflation of soundness and validity. I kn...

Well That is exactly my understanding of kinetic energy; which means that according to you I do understand it. And yet I do not experience "seeing kin...