Janus

The simpler explanation is that those five other people see you raising your arm. There are not five arms being raised but one arm seen from five diff...

Easy mistake, man. :)

A vague representation cannot adequately express the general characteristics of a form, certainly not of a complex form. No vague representation can e...

Yes, that seems to be your opinion...I get that... What you don't seem to get is that it is merely an opinion (a not very helpful one at that) and tha...

Perhaps with simple shapes, but I don't believe it's true when it comes to complex shapes, even if they are only as complex as the maple leaf. In any ...

Logical reasoning, per se, cannot establish anything. What is believed to be established by valid logical reasoning is only ever as good as its starti...

Sure, but I have already said that myself. I have also said that the fact that the lines appear straight is sufficient for it to serve as a representa...

Spinoza does not posit an "infinity of substances" but on the contrary argues that there can be only one.

This is a psychological explanation which may or may not turn out to be true in a majority of cases. I think Hegel's point is a more phenomenological ...

I agree with Wayfarer in this. Postmodernism is a very small part of the problem, because very few people involved in practical life take it seriously...

No, that's plainly wrong. From a drawing of any triangle, I can see immediately that it has three straight sides and three angles; and that is precise...

All that "each and every one has in common" is that they approximate the perfect (that is ideal) form. So, for example if all the edges of the leaves ...

No worries mate.

I didn't say that a group of particulars is a universal. Nor did I say that an average is the same as a universal. But to express the most general cha...

I don't know, but the questions not relevant since I'm not being disingenuous. I genuinely cannot make any sense at all of your objection to the thoug...

Nietzsche was a disturbed, but nonetheless brilliant, idiot.

It's inevitable that authority must be respected. Nearly everything any individual believes is taken on authority. Of course I am not suggesting that ...

I don't know if you are aware of Hegel's 'Master/ Slave' dialectic? Only the slave can work his way to freedom; for Hegel the master can never be free...

I am not going to respond unless you stop with the relentless bullshit. :-}

My main interest has been to use this kind of thought experiment to expose some of he commitments of the different ethical models; which I think would...

No, you are certainly not making yourself clear. :-}

It sounds more like you exist to objectify with slave-like efficiency. ;)

What do you say; do we exist to redeem the universe, or do we exist to make plastic? Or do we just exist?

The general form is just an 'averaging out' of the particular forms. If all of the edges of the dissections of the leaves vary one or the other from s...

I'm indicating that I don't think there's any explanation, of the kind you appear to be after, either available or needed. Which you could take to mea...

Because that's just the way things work out??? :s

That doesn't sound like Tolstoy (who was a Christian) at all. Can you cite a source for that? Consider this: Letter on Suicide by Leo Tolstoy The ques...

How do you know that you will never suffer again if you suicide? That seems a rather large presumption to make.

For Berkeley it is God's perception of objects, not our perception of them, that holds them in existence. So they really do, for Berkeley, have an exi...

Of course it is a particular, but it is not a particular leaf, it is a particular drawing of the generalized form of the maple leaf.

How many times do I have to repeat that from the perspective of your present life you can tell the difference, And it's from there that the decision, ...

I think you meant to say The point is that we can't experience both at the same time; so of course there is no possibility of comparing them one to ot...

I don"the know if this post is addressed to me, but this thread has now taken up what was being argued in the BIV thread. In any case, I don't argue t...

I have absolutely no idea what you think you are trying to argue here.

I can't see any reason to think that. The fact remains that we can, in principle, make an ethical decision about whether to choose to enter conditions...

But the imaginer (me) can tell the difference, and choose accordingly whether or not to enter the condition where I can no longer tell the difference....

But to distinguish between the real world and the mateix always remains possible, only not from within the matrix. To distinguish you would have to le...

I don't think this objection works, because people could, if such a thing were available, choose to enter a simulation where they believed they would ...

Strange synchronicities; I've just started reading it again this week: and loving it so far.

I don't believe we can visualize extremely complex objects except to kind of mentally traverse the charateristic features we are familiar with that ma...

Yes, true that! I mean, the fact that it seems the way you outline probably explains why the idea of the eyes as windows of the soul arose. If it had ...

I'd say that when it comes to visual forms at least, to grasp something just is to form a visual image of it. So, I guess I disagree with Feser. Also ...

Things are known intuitively by means of the senses, or intuitively by means of thought, no? A rational argument could never convince if you didn't 'g...

By 'strong metaphysical sense' I am referring to something which cannot be coherently spelled out; the naive realist's imagining that objects really e...

Understanding a complex logical argument results from the associating of its parts, The parts consist of immediately apprehended insights and the asso...

I think the truth about Trump is not a scientific truth. That he is a reprehensible character or not cannot be empirically established, it is a judgem...

If it is not intuited, then how do you know that one thing follows from another? The form of maple leaves for example is a general form that can only ...

I actually think all understanding is intuitive. But, be that as it may, this conversation started off about the forms of objects, not about numbers o...

But I have said I don't think they are intelligible as forms if they cannot be intuitively grasped as such. That's exactly why the warping of four-dim...

I think when it comes to the natural world what is there is "the domain of sensory phenomena". It is there for us as surely and reliably as we ourselv...