Janus

You can fly off the dream table, or it could turn into something else. On the other hand you probably cannot choose to do a comprehensive spectroscopi...

Agreed, but I think the same could be said about idealist views. Personally, I don't believe one or the other, per se, is more or less conducive to, o...

If all existence is infinite then you would need to be infinite to inhabit it, or so it would seem. If you inhabit all of existence, and existence is ...

The thought experiment stipulates that people get to live their best imaginable lives. If that includes wanting to make efforts then they would receiv...

Influential to those who take it seriously I suppose. But then does that matter to you? Isn't it a matter just for them?

No one cannot be said to be dead if one continues to exist after death of the body, although it depends on what is meant by "one", but I'm not sure wh...

It's not necessary, though; one could easily imagine one's soul continuing after death, only not in this world. In fact even if the world ceases when ...

I see it as incoherent because it relies on an analogy with a relationship that is meaningful only within a context. And this very context, and hence ...

The problem I see with that is that we don't know what it could mean. Now we might have a mystical vision wherein we see what it means; but we cannot ...

I don't think there is. The 'many' kind of stuff it up.

Oh man, I actually agree with you!!! (L)

Realism is sufficiently justified only insofar as it is implicit in the logic of all our linguistic usages; but not beyond that. Beyond that it is sim...

I agree it is precisely what materialism says; but since we don't know what it could mean for objects to be ultimately materially constituted; I don't...

To say that would be silly I think. I don't think it could have any real meaning. That is one of the problems I have with asserting mind as a constitu...

I disagree strongly with this. I don't think there is any shortage of people who understand very well what idealism is driving at. Or rather, what ide...

Don't be silly; I never said, or even suggested, that.

To be sure testing the water does not actually prove there are drugs in the water. But the more tests ( preferably of different methodology) that you ...

But you don't "feel funny" as you are drinking it. If you did, then the drugged water would be distinguishable from plain water. but you still could n...

Haven't the people who wrote stories about it imagined it?

Smoking dope probably won't help diminish your delusions of grandeur. :-}

The water would have to be subjected to chemical analysis to discover whether there really were drugs present in it. The water may or may not taste di...

But the drug in the water is not experienced; or at least it is not known to subjective experience. Unless the drinker is told she will not know there...

But the action of the drug would not be instantaneous.Only if it were would what you say be true. Also, there is no inconsistency in saying that the e...

So says the arch-pontificator! Maybe the paradigms are so complex today that there is no possibility of such radical shifts as those made by Newton, K...

Yes but all the idealist can acknowledge as 'real' are the experiences of drinking the water (which are, let's say for the sake of argument, subjectiv...

You ignored the possibility that you simply cannot recognize such genius. You are assuming that what your ignorance tells you is the case, is the case...

What would it mean "to perceive drugged water"? You don't perceive the water as being suffused with drugs. Even when you become high you don't perceiv...

Genius often only becomes apparent after a few centuries. Also our culture is so complex compared to Renaissance culture that the kind of universal ge...

Nah, some few people have the natural or God-given talent and most others simply don't. I'm not denying that there are probably many great talents tha...

I don't think you can make yourself into a creative genius; although it is true that effort and discipline, as well as surpassing talent, is required ...

But if you are a truth relativist you believe there is no ultimate truth, and that,concomitantly, there are no ultimate consequences of any actions or...

But in the scenario your life is indistinguishable form your present life except that you are superlatively intelligent, a creative genius, a brillian...

But they would be living the lives that they individually find most desirable; lives that are the expressions of their deepest wishes. Say someone wis...

If Putin feels the need for a pu then he'll ask for a pu tin to put it in. Sorry, very bad joke :-#

Yes, I agree they are related points, but perhaps I was thrown off because it seemed to me that your response was based on thinking that I was agreein...

I wasn't addressing this point though, but something different, (although perhaps somewhat tangentially related). The point I was trying to make to Ca...

I disagree with your definition of "irrational". For me, the term means the same as 'a-rational'. To be irrational is not to attempt to be rational an...

My point though was that if you think of evolution as a structure or process, that has determined the way we see the world; then you must be thinking ...

But if you were a good Humean you would not be wedded to your scientific understanding of the world, since it could be based only on the irrational ha...

I'm saying that if you think there has been a process of "perceptions becoming structured as thought related to utility, to survival" then you are thi...

I have formed the opinion that you subscribe to the Humean idea that anything is possible. Correct me if I am wrong, but if you do subscribe to that t...

You do not know any perception other than yours. You can at least see rocks, you can't see other perceptions; so if you conclude that things only exis...

Oh, right... I should have seen that... :s

Regarding '5', I think the claim is not that we cannot know the Real, but that we cannot know, in any determinable sense, how we know it or exactly wh...

But, if you are claiming that there were evolutionary reasons for how we came to see and think about the world, are you not, implicitly, claiming that...

Well, yeah, I have no argument with that.

People of a Humean persuasion claim that it is not rational to expect anything to be the same in the future as it has in the past. This thought experi...

But if you're already a brain in a vat, then you are merely being offered a better 'brain in a vat' experience. Why not take it?

But there are all kinds of situations in life where there is simply a clash of wills about what should happen, and often over very trivial matters, si...

So you don't think any distinction between things which merely entertain us, things which imbue our lives with a sense of meaning or beauty and things...