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Janus

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There is something to be said for the idea that compassion towards other sentient beings is a natural condition for humans, because we have the reflec...
June 19, 2023 at 22:47
:up: Yep, I have no argument with the idea that phenomena are, at least for the most part, objects.
June 19, 2023 at 09:03
I don't believe any arguments or claims are non-contextually true, or even if they were, that we would be able to ascertain it. That's why there alway...
June 19, 2023 at 04:34
That's true. I'm not sure about you, but I don't see skepticism as being a bad thing. I like the idea of letting go of the need to know, being able to...
June 19, 2023 at 04:24
Imagine you have an extremely limited view of something, so limited that you cannot tell what it is you are looking at. Say you are looking through bi...
June 19, 2023 at 04:07
I'm pretty sure that was Kepler, not Copernicus. A mode of feeling certain or of being certain? You cannot be certain of any discursive understanding ...
June 19, 2023 at 03:28
Right, we don't know whether the observer collapses the wave function or whether it occurs all the time on account of any macroscopic interaction, or ...
June 18, 2023 at 23:34
I'm not becoming hostile, just impatient. I just don't believe that you are grasping what is meant by things in themselves. So, I am not going to deal...
June 18, 2023 at 23:26
The thing in itself is posited as being what gives rise to the thing as it appears. we cannot be conscious of the primary effect on us of things, we c...
June 18, 2023 at 02:23
Fer fuck's sake, Bob, how many times do I have to tell you I'm not claiming that object permanence or independence is a feature of, or inference about...
June 18, 2023 at 01:58
Nice video! I had heard of those kinds of experiments, but never seen them in action. Right, I think I see what you are saying there now, although I c...
June 18, 2023 at 01:40
I know what you mean, but such thinking is perhaps lacking in subtlety. Society has little choice but to hold people responsible for their actions, so...
June 18, 2023 at 00:27
Do you mean that determinists still blame others for their actions erroneously? Assuming it is, I would say that perhaps they can't help doing that, e...
June 18, 2023 at 00:19
As I said earlier I agree with Popper that metaphysical speculation can inspire scientific investigation, but I think this would only apply to metaphy...
June 18, 2023 at 00:16
It seems reasonable to me to say, insofar, as alchemy dealt with substances, which chemistry also does, that in that sense chemistry evolved from or o...
June 18, 2023 at 00:07
Object permanence is inferred on account of the experienced invariance of objects. It is an inductive, that is fallible, inference, not a deductive, i...
June 17, 2023 at 23:48
The Three Body Problem has been known about for more than 300 years. It establishes that it is impossible even in principle to predict the future of s...
June 16, 2023 at 23:41
Yes, if I think so, although I don't need your free non-existent apples since I have as many of my own as I want.
June 16, 2023 at 23:16
I don't think poetry actually becomes music or literature dance, but poetry may inspire music and literature dance, just as metaphysics may inspire sc...
June 16, 2023 at 23:15
To your non-existent friends? So you might think.
June 16, 2023 at 23:13
You can't add anything to or subtract anything from an apple that does not exist, except in thought. It is not an existent apple, but is merely the th...
June 16, 2023 at 22:56
The pre-existence of the soul is not the same idea as metempsychosis. I am not sure if the latter idea is explicitly espoused by Plato, or even the Ne...
June 16, 2023 at 22:46
It seems wrong to say that alchemy, religion and folklore became chemistry and medicine. In keeping with the idea of significant paradigm shifts in hu...
June 16, 2023 at 22:21
There is no real equivalent in Western culture because the speculative notion of rebirth has never played a significant part in that culture.
June 16, 2023 at 22:06
You obviously didn't read what I wrote above what you quoted, which was that the only way we have of knowing about qualitative experience is being awa...
June 16, 2023 at 03:26
All of that was just an outline of what appears to be the case empirically speaking. I make no human-independent metaphysical claims based on that. Bu...
June 16, 2023 at 03:14
Your reasoning is necessarily subjective. The rules of logic are objective but they are rule-based procedures which guarantee validity even in the cas...
June 15, 2023 at 23:04
Sure, for subjective reasons you like to believe that logical laws are independent of human reason, but you don't like to believe that material object...
June 15, 2023 at 22:41
Only if information processing is considered not only necessary, but sufficient for the advent of consciousness; in other words, I don't think so. I t...
June 15, 2023 at 22:20
The law of identity, number and "other such principles of logic" are axioms of human reason, and as such say nothing about what exists independently o...
June 15, 2023 at 04:42
One might ask the question as to what about the structure of a computer allows for information processing.
June 15, 2023 at 01:24
Taking the visual as paradigmatic for the sake of simplicity, the environment is presented, or given, to us, meaning that our eyes, optic nerves and b...
June 14, 2023 at 23:16
This is just going around the assertion merry-go-round now, Bob. I'm going to put my case once more in a nutshell and then leave it there. The only ev...
June 14, 2023 at 22:04
You are assuming that the percentage of all the possible facts that could be known about the brain that we currently know should be sufficient to unde...
June 14, 2023 at 06:46
Right, and the further question is that, if we don't want to live harmoniously with others, does morality then become altogether redundant for us, or ...
June 14, 2023 at 03:51
Probably most do want to. If one doesn't want to there is always the option of living alone in the bush.
June 13, 2023 at 23:40
We ought to cooperate to socially and personally acceptable degrees if we want to live harmoniously in a community.
June 13, 2023 at 23:31
The reflected light still enters the eyes, stimulates the rods and cones, leading to neural signals travelling to the brain and stimulating the visual...
June 13, 2023 at 22:40
Firstly, I doubt it's possible to know all the physical facts about anything let alone brains, and secondly most of what we call physical facts are co...
June 13, 2023 at 05:03
That all makes sense to me, although I would add to this: that the motivator for the willful blindness to the science was economic: the greed of some ...
June 13, 2023 at 04:55
I already said the engine is easier to understand being far less complex, and also because our models are mechanistic and the engine is a machine, and...
June 13, 2023 at 03:04
You would have to pull the engine apart and examine the components and analyze their functions and inter-relations in the overall process of its runni...
June 13, 2023 at 02:57
Sure, but only if you can see the engine or motor vehicle working and not if you just saw it standing there would it lack mystery as to its function, ...
June 13, 2023 at 01:59
I don't think so; in any case it's not just a matter of knowing you are looking at an engine or whole motor vehicle but of being able to explain all i...
June 13, 2023 at 01:39
That's true, and I wonder if we would have achieved such spectacular levels of "entropification" if we hadn't discovered fossil fuels. That discovery ...
June 13, 2023 at 01:25
The abstract looks interesting, but I couldn't access the full article. Interesting point about the technological destruction of morality. Have we cli...
June 13, 2023 at 00:32
Sure, the way I understand it is that animals also have a self/world model but it is not symbolically reflective. So, with symbolic language, i.e. wit...
June 12, 2023 at 23:56
As I say above, Metzinger gives a neuro-phenomenological account. The socio-cultural aspect is simply an amplification of the self/ world modeling. So...
June 12, 2023 at 23:18
The functioning of an internal combustion engine motor vehicle cannot be understood in terms of the fundamental particles that constitute it. So, all ...
June 12, 2023 at 23:08
I agree; I see little difference between what @"apokrisis" is saying about the self and world being a modeling relation and what is presented by Metzi...
June 12, 2023 at 22:58