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Janus

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He has said many times we have no access to the world. If all he meant was that we have no certainty about the world, or that we have no access to thi...
March 01, 2024 at 21:40
:roll:
March 01, 2024 at 07:59
I do not forgo such knowledge but accept it provisionally to the degree it seems plausible. My point to Amadeus was that if he denies we have access t...
March 01, 2024 at 04:29
I get that the "objects" Wittgenstein refers to are not ordinary objects but logical simples or something like that. But they seem to be as inscrutabl...
March 01, 2024 at 02:40
This seems to invoke things in themselves. Do you read it as suggesting that we can know any "internal properties" of objects, or is all we can know o...
February 29, 2024 at 22:28
It's not a conviction, it's simply something I see or feel. If I have two hands, and I can see or feel, I can see or feel that I have two hands. What ...
February 29, 2024 at 22:24
No, the concept of natural law is based on observed invariances.
February 29, 2024 at 22:00
Spinoza's 'conatus' or Nietzsche's 'will to power' in different dress; the same old stew, reheated.
February 29, 2024 at 20:59
You have it backwards: I'm saying you cannot rely on empirical facts to support any conclusion at all if you assume we have no access to empirical fac...
February 29, 2024 at 20:35
Are the Skeptics skeptical of reason itself or rather of the common stock of premises upon which reason elaborates? The story about Pyrrho could well ...
February 28, 2024 at 23:57
This begs the question as to just what reason is or what it consists in. Do not those dogmatists and relativists give reasons for their stances? Surel...
February 28, 2024 at 23:19
The inconsistency in your view, which I have many times and am probably now again unsuccessfully pointing out to you, is that if we have no access to ...
February 28, 2024 at 20:50
Not sure if you are expecting an answer from me...
February 27, 2024 at 00:20
Sounds like we agree...
February 27, 2024 at 00:18
I agree with your responses to the point where my intended response would be redundant. I think @"Ciceronianus" is working with narrow conceptions of ...
February 26, 2024 at 23:33
He does say at the beginning that it is an empirical proposition, so yeah, I'm disagreeing with that. I think it is a conceptual matter, you might eve...
February 26, 2024 at 01:01
I don't see the judgement as an empirical one but as a confirmation that the concept of something that thinks involves the concept of existence, furth...
February 26, 2024 at 00:45
The alternative? "Not everything that thinks, exists"?
February 26, 2024 at 00:27
Which just goes to show that the debate is ill-conceived and pointless.
February 25, 2024 at 22:32
:up:
February 25, 2024 at 01:05
Can you see an analogy with the idea of the conservation of energy?
February 25, 2024 at 00:52
Exactly, speaking in terms of the external it seems to be consistent with our general experience and understanding, including science—but the question...
February 24, 2024 at 23:46
Yes, the assumption of the conservation of energy seems to work in the sense of being consistent with most of our science. Does that mean it is true? ...
February 24, 2024 at 23:29
It might be a fact about the world, or it might not. Do we know what the "might not" could look like? Most of our experience points to it being the ca...
February 24, 2024 at 23:07
Yes, I think humans are generally fascinated with the unknown, even the unknowable—a space is left for the imagination to speculate, a creative activi...
February 24, 2024 at 22:48
It is consistent if it doesn't contradict itself.
February 24, 2024 at 22:45
I agree but speculative metaphysics is not necessarily inconsistent (Hegel for example) even if it might be thought implausible or empirically and /or...
February 24, 2024 at 22:24
What does it mean to say that models are wrong? Wrong in relation to what? If a model is useless it is useless, which means it doesn't accord with exp...
February 24, 2024 at 22:10
Right on, brother! Great philosophical works have their own aesthetic, just like mathematics does, but it doesn't follow that the great works will nec...
February 24, 2024 at 21:55
I think it's not a matter of shame, as if there could be a fact of the matter as to what is intellectually shameful, but rather a matter of personal p...
February 24, 2024 at 21:49
I'm not too sure about that. The direct realist would say "I see what appears to be a bent stick, but I know it's really pretty straight, because I to...
February 24, 2024 at 19:56
That's one way of putting it. Another would be that things present whatever it is possible to present of themselves to percipients, depending on their...
February 24, 2024 at 03:52
It seems to me that phenomenology, like any other form of investigation, is as secondary and derivative of primal, non-dual experience as science. I t...
February 23, 2024 at 22:37
For me a more accurate way of expressing that thought would be "I see a straight stick that appears bent". I see no cause for confusion in that—I've n...
February 23, 2024 at 22:27
It's a good question. I'm not convinced that speaking of things presenting themselves to us necessarily invokes agency on their part. Well at least no...
February 23, 2024 at 22:21
:up: Yes, in one sense. Spinoza. Natura naturata and natura naturans, commonly translated as "nature natured and nature naturing. The passive and the ...
February 22, 2024 at 21:43
All this seems hopelessly wrongheaded and confused to me, but I lack the will to try to untangle it, since I fear it will just continue going around i...
February 22, 2024 at 21:30
I don't agree that they are equivalent. Naive realism is pre-scientific realism, the eyes were thought of as windows looking out onto a world which ex...
February 22, 2024 at 21:23
The distinction you mention is either a phenomenological or a metaphysical distinction, and as I said Heidegger, I believe, equates phenomenology with...
February 22, 2024 at 05:37
Sounded like you were claiming it was entailed by direct realism, but what you wrote was somewhat ambiguous so perhaps I interpreted it differently th...
February 22, 2024 at 05:22
That is not anything near being the direct realism account, nor is it entailed by it.
February 22, 2024 at 01:55
No, on second thought you are probably right, as I imagine there would be basic pragmatic forms of life common to all peoples, which are socially, if ...
February 21, 2024 at 23:15
Would it not be better then to say "human forms of life", since the only common form of life is the basic biological form which, as basic, is not cult...
February 21, 2024 at 23:09
OK, so you don't think the world is presented to us via the senses?
February 21, 2024 at 23:02
I agree with you that @"RusselA" does not give an account which is in accordance with common usage and I said as much. I'm not sure if you misread me ...
February 21, 2024 at 22:53
The way I see it the "critical reflection" you speak about is the practice of phenomenology, not metaphysics (although interestingly as far as I under...
February 21, 2024 at 22:44
I think it is less confusing to say that the little light you are seeing is Mars presenting itself, appearing, to you. Language may be representative,...
February 21, 2024 at 22:27
:up: Yes, the seeing just is the representation of the thing, which would mean that saying we see representations is equivalent to saying we see seein...
February 21, 2024 at 04:41
Can you give an example of something which is physically direct, and explain what you would mean by "direct" in that context?
February 21, 2024 at 04:37
Under your criterial demand the only "direct link" would be if the object was the experience. If the object is separate from the experience of it, the...
February 20, 2024 at 23:06