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Janus

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I don't personally find the distinction between individual and collective evolution confusing, but for those who do, your suggestion might indeed be h...
March 30, 2018 at 20:42
Is that a fact? :rofl:
March 30, 2018 at 20:36
That's the difference between biological and non-biological evolution; there is no self-organization involved in the formation of hurricanes, rivers a...
March 30, 2018 at 19:59
Biological evolution is obviously a partially inorganic process insofar as it involves interactions between the organic and the inorganic. Nonetheless...
March 30, 2018 at 00:06
If a physical object is defined as 'what is described by physics" then that is circular and is really no definition at all. In the current understandi...
March 29, 2018 at 21:28
Well, I do think the idea of geographical isolation is the most (and perhaps the only) plausible explanation we can presently come up with for the obs...
March 28, 2018 at 20:32
It's true there are different species, and the evidence certainly appears to show that evolution (in the sense of a changing and progressive series of...
March 28, 2018 at 20:09
True enough, and if the very notion of species is not clear cut then the notion of speciation would be all the less so.
March 28, 2018 at 20:01
Not so clear cut: http://www.macroevolution.net/bonobo-chimpanzee-hybrids.html https://evolutionnews.org/2014/03/nature_galapago/
March 28, 2018 at 19:50
I would say that living bodies, whether plant, animal or human are not merely objects. I mean, what exactly is an object anyway?
March 28, 2018 at 07:33
Apparently I was adding text while you were responding; but be that as it may, you still haven't offered any actual argument. So, unless you do offer ...
March 27, 2018 at 23:22
But that was not what I asked you to provide an argument for; which you will soon see if you go back and read carefully.
March 27, 2018 at 22:48
I have no idea what you are talking about here.
March 27, 2018 at 22:30
Why not? Why cannot the intuition that awareness is ontologically different than physicality be a subjective epiphenomenal illusion? You haven't prese...
March 27, 2018 at 22:25
"Enjoy" was used in sense of 'experience'; I used the former instead of the latter, though, because it seems clumsy to speak of experiencing experienc...
March 27, 2018 at 22:24
I am not an eliminativist, and I'm not accusing you of anything other than that whatever perspective you support, it will not, cannot, be free of pres...
March 27, 2018 at 22:16
So you believe that insects do enjoy subjective experience, and make judgements and decisions? I think it's safe to say that this is not required; and...
March 27, 2018 at 22:08
From the eliminativist point of view the first person point of view is not ontic, but epiphenomenal. This is a form of monism; but it is not neutral m...
March 27, 2018 at 21:46
Yes, I do agree with you that it is wrong; but I also acknowledge that my agreement is based on presuppositions. So it would seem that from the perspe...
March 27, 2018 at 21:26
Whether or not that proposition is considered foundational will depend on starting presumptions. If you take phenomenology as fundamental, as ontology...
March 27, 2018 at 21:11
What about the illusions used by carnivorous plants, and flowering plants to attract pollinators. Will you claim that the insects that are fooled are ...
March 27, 2018 at 21:07
I can't see how I am being rationalistic "by definition". I don't deny that we know of our thoughts by being aware of them, and I can't see how that f...
March 27, 2018 at 08:31
But thinking of illusions in terms of "first person points of view" is already to assume that first person points of view are not themselves illusions...
March 27, 2018 at 08:15
What we think of as 'the subject of experience', the "one who is subject to the illusion", could simply be the physical body. You might not be able to...
March 27, 2018 at 08:10
I'm not trying to argue that an eliminativist POV is rationally justifiable or even merely sustainable. I am just trying to get at precisely why it wo...
March 27, 2018 at 06:52
I came across this passage,written in 2008, in my journal. It seems somewhat relevant, so I am posting it here: If I say that mind does not really exi...
March 27, 2018 at 05:43
In: Word game  — view comment
What if all humanity ran after Agustino? Oh, sorry, I broke the sequence. I think Stormy Daniels will bow to Donald Trump, and so show her naked inten...
March 27, 2018 at 01:03
Entertain for a moment the idea that all mental states have physical correlates. This would mean that all mental processes; coming to understand somet...
March 26, 2018 at 22:12
Why not? I would not agree that immanence and transcendence are polemical. For me It is all a matter of context. As I said a few posts ago, if I were ...
March 25, 2018 at 23:43
We can certainly say what it is to exist in the phenomenal sense. But metaphysics is always attempting to go beyond the merely phenomenal. You are agr...
March 25, 2018 at 23:07
I have always understood the term to be a polemic against the notion that it is the dialectical logic of consciousness which determines the unfolding ...
March 23, 2018 at 21:19
It's not clear what you "don't necessarily believe". Are you saying that we do have an exhaustive understanding of what it means to be physical? Regar...
March 23, 2018 at 21:12
From the review, speaking about the "consciousness" deniers: The problem is not that they take naturalism to entail materialism—they’re right to do so...
March 23, 2018 at 20:20
Yes sure, a discrete entity can be composed of smaller discrete entities. The point is that if a discrete entity is active then that activity can only...
March 17, 2018 at 21:43
The problem for this is if a moment is active it cannot be fundamentally discrete, because if it is active then there will be change, process, within ...
March 16, 2018 at 21:20
Philosophies are critiqued by other philosophies. If you are looking for an absolute standard of critique such as the scientific method (enshrined in ...
March 16, 2018 at 21:03
I think the difference is that what you think of as "higher knowledge" I think of as "heightened consciousness" or "elevated feeling". And I do see th...
March 16, 2018 at 20:36
Well, no I don't think what you are calling "private ineffable experience" is really in every sense private or ineffable. I mean, all experiences are ...
March 16, 2018 at 20:24
Like any diverse activity, as Wittgenstein pointed out, it cannot be precisely defined in some essentialist manner. But we all can recognize art in te...
March 16, 2018 at 01:29
I think you are still conflating the content of religious experience with the fact of religious experience. I*n any case the content is not subjective...
March 16, 2018 at 01:21
Positions in science may be able to fulfil this requirement, but not all, or even many, positions in philosophy can. This is evidenced by the fact tha...
March 16, 2018 at 01:12
Again, you're assuming 'exhaustive' when that was not what you intended. 'Reality' is a very plastic term; the forces are assumed to be part of realit...
March 16, 2018 at 01:01
Two questions; in what way precisely are they necessarily Protestant? And how do you propose that inter-subjective corroboration (which is the term I ...
March 16, 2018 at 00:52
As you no doubt know; I am also interested in "the spiritual". The problem is, and we have touched on this before, that spiritual experience doesn't c...
March 15, 2018 at 23:22
In: Belief  — view comment
OK, I get it: it's beneath you. The irony is that if you have a good argument or objection to make it should only take a handful of sentences to prese...
March 15, 2018 at 23:00
It seems to me that not just science, but all human discourses, inevitably have this dualism of knower and known, self and other; and that this is jus...
March 15, 2018 at 22:57
In: Belief  — view comment
Sure, the thread is about the term 'belief' and what would be its most useful ambit of application. And you have provided no argument as to why you se...
March 15, 2018 at 22:31
The "vitriol" is a phantom projection of your own defensiveness, I would say. I certainly haven't felt any vitriol. Impatience is all I have felt in t...
March 15, 2018 at 21:59
Which is of course true in the context of science; but more or less irrelevant when it comes to philosophy, except in those restricted areas where the...
March 15, 2018 at 21:50