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Janus

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OK, when you say something is immaterial, or non-physical, what exactly do you mean? merely that it is not an object of the senses, or something else?...
December 03, 2017 at 04:52
Yes, certainly it's obvious that we don't "see" information, and that we need to be able to generalize ( in fact we need to be able to do that even to...
December 03, 2017 at 04:12
I believe I understand the issues. I have been trying to address your arguments by asking questions that suggest different hypotheses than yours to ex...
December 03, 2017 at 03:08
It seems the rational act of grasping a number is the mental act of representing it to yourself; what else could it be? How else can you think 'five' ...
December 03, 2017 at 02:45
How do you represent a number to yourself if not by a symbol derived from an auditory or visual representation? The bare "sense datum" might be, in pr...
December 03, 2017 at 02:13
But in the world objects engender other objects in various ways, and the forms those engendered objects take seem to be determined by invariances that...
December 02, 2017 at 23:06
How do you know that? Is it nothing more than a matter of definition?
December 02, 2017 at 22:54
Aaarrrggghhh, no...the wit...
December 02, 2017 at 22:52
How can information be detected if not by means of the senses.? It is true that you cannot "bump into" information; it is not a physical object. You c...
December 02, 2017 at 22:51
Yes, that could well be true; which means YourLeaderSapienta has not acquired control even over himself; he is a helpless victim of modern body image ...
December 01, 2017 at 19:51
No, it is you that is sick...you need help, and not in the way you think.
December 01, 2017 at 19:43
You have forgotten the unlucky lesson number 13: Leader has small dick which creates inferiority complex leading to grandiose fantasies of power and s...
December 01, 2017 at 02:11
You need to try to give a coherent, consistent account, if you want others to understand your standpoint. I don't think you have attempted to address ...
November 30, 2017 at 23:32
Ethics is not determinate, just like aesthetics and metaphysics are not; but that does not stop philosophers from discussing within these disciplines....
November 30, 2017 at 21:31
If we examine the traditional conceptions of God, then we are faced with logical contradictions. Those contradictions cannot be evaded if you want to ...
November 30, 2017 at 21:13
If you allude to your experience, I can respond by saying that I have an idea of the kind of experience you are alluding to. I can only do that if I h...
November 30, 2017 at 21:02
So you impute free will to all entities then? In any case, I would say that even in a case where free will is operating there could be no prior form (...
November 30, 2017 at 20:50
No I was referring to entities that we have imagined, responding to your example of someone making a plan for something. I wasn't referring to determi...
November 30, 2017 at 01:43
I think it is a challenge to the coherence of the idea that being is something over and above the totality of beings. Here, for the sake of not losing...
November 29, 2017 at 22:17
Dawson and his donkey both held views which were identical with mine; and they haven't really changed that much since. I am interested in this topic, ...
November 29, 2017 at 21:25
OK. if you have been taking my critiques of your arguments personally then that explains your failure to address what I have actually said. And your c...
November 29, 2017 at 20:47
I would call that an imagined existence preceding a material existence. Particular Imagined existences are always part of general material existence t...
November 29, 2017 at 20:37
True, it appears I have forfeited my unique privilege to own something pedestrian... :’( :s :-d :)
November 29, 2017 at 20:26
Damn, and such a unique name it was, too!
November 29, 2017 at 20:18
This is not strictly true; trees may reach a maximum sustainable height but unlike us they never stop growing until they die.
November 28, 2017 at 20:37
No, I haven't equated essence with existence at all; what I have said is merely that a thing cannot have an essence if it does not exist, because with...
November 28, 2017 at 20:16
To say that a thing is the same as itself is to utter a vacuous tautology. Conceiving of identity merely in this way does not grant identity any metap...
November 28, 2017 at 02:03
This is a typical example of your apparent inability to deal with objections except by becoming condescending. The fact is that you can't produce a co...
November 28, 2017 at 00:54
Yes, but why are jumping to conclusions that are unwarranted? I didn't say that all others disagree with you. You are jumping to more unjustified conc...
November 28, 2017 at 00:46
The problem is that others disagree with your position regarding the implications of the phenomenon of generalization. It's not clear to me what could...
November 27, 2017 at 20:42
Yes, but even this is a matter of generalization, because there are also different types of triangle: isosceles, equilateral, scalene, right, acute an...
November 27, 2017 at 20:28
No you would have two of the same kind of things, not two of the same things; to say the latter is to abuse language. No two triangles are the same an...
November 27, 2017 at 20:07
There is no absolute sameness, though; it's always a matter of generalization within a context to say that two things are the same.
November 27, 2017 at 20:04
I can see now that an infinitely large number of planets is not needed for the argument, so thanks for correcting me on that. I remained unconvinced, ...
November 26, 2017 at 22:12
Because there is no infinitely large number, just as there can be no infinite distance; the idea is untintelligble.
November 26, 2017 at 20:24
Just that it would seem there could be no actual infinite number of planets, and hence the argument that a finite number of possible planets would lea...
November 26, 2017 at 19:43
I just read through the latter parts of this thread and I must say the degree of irrationality being displayed by those claiming that sexist comments ...
November 26, 2017 at 19:10
I think you misunderstood; the point is that there is no actual infinite distance. Even if you traveled away from Earth, for example, forever you woul...
November 26, 2017 at 06:54
That would not seem to follow, since no distance is infinite.
November 26, 2017 at 03:38
Yes, obviously, so what is it above that? Why is it a ground for thinking that thought is immaterial? Right, so please give an account of the other ve...
November 26, 2017 at 02:08
Don't you mean "what he wrote"?
November 25, 2017 at 23:25
I can't see what being could be (apart from being merely our idea) over and above the totality of beings. Being is comprised of beings I would say, ju...
November 25, 2017 at 23:16
That's not grounds, it is merely what some philosophers thought about the nature of reason in the past. Many modern philosophers think that this way o...
November 25, 2017 at 22:50
It's nonsense to say that Dennett thinks reason is "undermined". If he thought that why would take the trouble to write books that consist in reasoned...
November 25, 2017 at 01:15
Cool. :)
November 24, 2017 at 23:04
That's not what 'transcendental' refers to in Western philosophy, which is what we are dealing with here. In those terms the story about Buddha's purp...
November 24, 2017 at 23:03
Yes, I certainly agree with this sense of transcendence and have argued for it myself in relation to understanding Spinoza's philosophy. This view is ...
November 24, 2017 at 22:55
How can anything at all be said from a "point beyond human experience and understanding" that makes absolutely no sense. And from Dennett's view of th...
November 24, 2017 at 22:42
So, you're a fan of CC? Bit early in the day to listen to that, isn't it? Doug Mulray once ran a faux competition on 2MMM where the prize was a Jimmy ...
November 24, 2017 at 21:42
No Dennet's position just leads to the conclusion that reasoned argument along with all our experience is ultimately illusory. But it is still importa...
November 24, 2017 at 21:36