Janus

I am not able to simultaneously focus on what I am looking at and the idea that I am looking at it. Could just be me but I doubt it. It doesn't make c...

Interesting OP! As I see it methodological naturalism is the counterpart to the phenomenological epoché. It is simply a methodologically driven bracke...

I don't believe it is possible for you to look at your blue shirt and be reflectively aware of yourself doing so in the same instant. Observing my own...

Its not an assumption but rather a conclusion based on what I think is most plausible given the evidence (or lack of evidence). I'm the first to admit...

I would still say you cannot see something and be reflectively aware of seeing it in the same moment. Self-awareness seems to me to be always post hoc...

So you think I am missing the point when I describe abstract objects as abstract objects? :roll: I don't think I am missing any point. Abstract object...

I don't see how any reflection on any experience is not after the fact. That subjective experience seems somehow radically different is not a guarante...

It's not that I've been arguing that symbols are important but rather that there is an important distinction between symbolic and non-symbolic signs. ...

We believe machines don't understand themselves to be consciously experiencing anything. We do understand ourselves to be consciously aware on account...

I understand animal warning cries to be signaling, not symbolizing, danger. I have acknowledged that I believe animals sense danger. I'm not sure what...

Our eyes have photoreceptors called rods and cones. Rods detect shades of grey and cones detect different colours. Presumably a machine that can respo...

I haven't disagreed that we can make generalized conjectures about how human and animal minds work. The point is we have no way of testing such conjec...

That is nothing more than a generalized notion of how minds work. It gives you no specific knowledge of what is going on in the minds of other humans,...

You might know what goes on in your head via introspection. You won't know what goes in mine except I tell you truthfully and presuming I know myself....

They consist in what the banks or financial institutions do. They consist in concrete actions. Failing their actualization they exist merely as ideas ...

You mean if we leave the world behind after discovering the systems? :wink:

I didn't say it is I said 'danger' is a linguistically generated concept. Its a generalization and I doubt animals have a generalized conceptual notio...

:up: :cool: Of course the human sense of self is elaborate. I was referring to the basic sense of self which consists in the sense of being distinct f...

As I said animals can feel threatened. My point was simply that they don't think in terms of the word 'danger'. Of course I don't deny that there is a...

I would agree with ucarr that the basic sense of self is plausibly thought to be the same across species. Obviously this is not an empirically checkab...

This seems like a misunderstanding. Quantum phenomena have discernible, even measurable effects. That is what qualifies them as 'physical'. The seemin...

My understanding of formal logic is probably more limited than yours. When you say that a generalization is a quantification over a domain I'm not sur...

:up:

This seems like nonsense to me. It is the physical conditions for example the density of the air and the intensity of gravity that determine what form...

I think the problem there is that we are trying to understand micro quantum phenomena using macro concepts. So is a quantum particle anything like a p...

:up: Sounds about right.

Yes but is it real in the sense that it seems to be. Is its non-physicality real in other words?

By "primordial" I mean generalization in the non-linguistic, non-abstractive sense. Think of painting as an analogy. A representational paining is not...

Seems agreeable. :up: I would go further to say that their non-physicality is not real but is merely a seeming.

So you are saying that non-physicals are only real insofar as they are physically instantiated?

A circle is a drawing or something imagined. it doesnt have a "back" since it is a representation of a two dimensional object. So it's not clear what ...

I missed this one. I wasn't suggesting that abstract thought and generalities are in every sense the same. All our abstract thoughts are about general...

Something that appears perfectly round could not appear to have four corners.

Obviously we cannot physically model what we think of as "subjective experience" or "being conscious" or any other conceptual generality or abstractio...

Frank, how would a square circle look? That is how would you know something was a square circle?

I agree. Collectively we are by and large fucking hopeless. Chicken or egg? I think pattern recognition accounts for being able to see things in gener...

I agree. The only "continental" I have failed to find anything of interest in is Derrida. There may be something there but I've tried to find it and r...

I'd say the most significant thing is that it enables collective learning. History and art and literature and music and science and so on. It seems to...

Redefining so-called analytic philosophers who are interested in and/ or influenced by Hegel as being no longer analytic philosophers seems rather sel...

Not sure if you are disagreeing with me here. I believe animals to varying degrees are self-aware. But I find it hard to imagine how they could be ref...

"Objects of experience" or 'aspects of understanding or judgement'? Perhaps an example or two would be helpful.

John McDowell and Robert Brandom.

I'm not sure being aware of awareness makes sense. Perhaps it's just that we can tell ourselves that we are aware on account of possessing symbolic la...

:up: Ambiguity may be evocative and thus inspiring as with some poetry. However ambiguity is not necessarily confusion and need not produce confusion.

If you disagree with an argument it follows that you must not understand it. QED

The parts of the universe that become aware of themselves and other parts only do so by distinguishing themselves and other parts from everything else...

No worries.

That's it. When argument fails you resort to ad hominem. You failed to answer the question as to whether you think it is a good thing to put faith in ...

I agree with that. Thinking about things in new and fruitful ways can certainly be a positive creative aspect of philosophy. Philosophy as art more th...

I don't know what you are referring to. By "fantasy" I was mostly alluding to ideas about afterlife. Do you support people believing in such fantasies...