Janus

Right, I did say "more or less arbitrary". The point is not that we don't know anything, but that any attempt to show that we do know is subject to sk...

A worthy motive! I agree that substance is just an idea (or set of ideas). Our thinking is dualistic and pairs of ideas that go together are relationa...

The OP seems confused; the above excerpts assert that substance is just a word. Then he presents a "counter-argument", but refutes that with a "respon...

True, but the OP also says that substance is just a word, which suggests just one non-cogent meaning. The components of the word seem to indicate an e...

You are presenting an Aristotelian understanding of substance. Spinoza argued that there cannot be more than one substance. In ordinary parlance subst...

I'm trying to point out that the notion of justification is vague and that judgement in particular cases that beliefs are justified is therefore more ...

Assuming that reality is non-dual I don't undertsand that to mean it is either one or many, which would entail that it is neither differentiated nor u...

That's a more or less imaginable picture, but how do you know, how could you know, it captures the character of reality? How could we make sense of th...

Well, yes all that much is obvious, but it doesn't change the fact that physicists still think in terms of particles. Democritean atoms are as easy to...

The "no-design" position is the natural selection position, and sure it is speculative. Is it falsifiable? Popper didn't think so, and then he did, if...

No I meant the physicists. What would the wave/particle duality be without the particle? How would entanglement be thought of without particles? What ...

Cocksure ballsups? :grin:

Computers were designed to compute, and their development has enabled many different manifestations of that basic function, but it is still the basic ...

It is more or less common knowledge that the conception of what a particleis today is different than it was in Democritus' time, but the point is that...

Sure looks like we're still thinking in terms of particles or quanta, even if not unequivocally so.

We know human technological artifacts are designed for specific purposes; they are utilities, tools, machines. Although natural systems. including ani...

What then could be the general criteria to justify thinking there is or could be justification for belief in any particular case?

Right, it seems that only those who are discomfited by uncertainty are troubled by perceived failures to commit. Avoidance of views seems to be the mo...

We can take skepticism as far as we like. Excluding extreme skeptical possibilities is ultimately arbitrary, but useful enough. If the chances of bein...

"Where do you live" means 'where have you been living most recently' not 'where will you live'. The very question presumes that circumstances have not...

He knows where he lives, but doesn't know whether his house is still there, even though he has very little reason to doubt that it is.

If the glimpses are very closely timed then he knows where his car is in between glimpses. Of course we can question whether he can be absolutely cert...

Yes, unless he is looking at it.

:up: I find Sellar's idea of discursive categories useful: "the space or reasons" and "the space of causes". The first is also the domain of qualities...

The most primal experience, I would say, is of embodiment. Body as experienced is primordially spatio-temporal and causal (in the sense that we find w...

Al knows where he parked his car. That's it. You might say he knows there is a better chance that it is still there than not, given the statistical li...

As I understand it Schopenhauer, like Kant, posits that it is via the primal understanding that every event is caused (PSR) that we (and animals in si...

Would the jhanas not be states of mind or concentration, rather than experience or perception of any particular thing? Empirical experience or percept...

Probably true, but is there any warrant for postulating that what we think we find introspectively is universal?

To my way of thinking Schopenhauer was "off" for positing that this "something" we cannot help imagining without being able to have any definitive ide...

Yes, existence and non-existence is just another dichotomy of dualistic thought. I'm not sure how well it maps against the idealism/ materialism polem...

I agree that the ultimate truth, if there is one, cannot be a matter of taste or opinion, but what humans think is the ultimate truth is inevitably so...

Exactly, and as the old adage tells us: "There's no accounting for taste".

I don't disagree with your point that all knowledge is in a form conditioned by the nature of human perception, intelligence and judgement: I think th...

It still remains that if whatever it is that appears as the world and its objects is not a collective mind then, since it is independent of individual...

So,are those "conditions" mind independent? We know they are independent of any individual mind, and if there is no collective mind, then how would th...

Without the idea of a collective mind, how to explain the easily deduced fact that we all see the same things in their respective locations? For examp...

I pretty much agree with everything you say there, but I do think the Universe is a special case. We can draw, photograph whole objects of the senses ...

In one sense this is true and in another not. Most familiar objects we can move around to see the object from all sides. From any perspective view we ...

So much changing of the subject and so much confusion on your part it's too much trouble to address, so I'll let it go. Good luck finding any clarity ...

Again I see this as coming down to definition, If you define consciousness as something like the felt sense of being or existence, something experienc...

You didn't mean 'defective'?

What is a "true boundary"? Just as there are no perfect circles. rectangles, triangles or perfectly straight lines in nature, there are no perfect bou...

We can predict the behavior of some of what appears in our empirical world accurately. The empirical world is reality for us, and it is a collective r...

Yep. What is variously said about world, existence, reality and truth manifests the limited number of ways in which humans can model those ideas, whic...

It seems to me that such puzzles, problems and objects are artefacts of linguistic reification. Of course whether or not an insoluble puzzle should co...

Objects of the senses have visually or tactitlely determinable boundaries. Visual objects have edges and tactile objects have surfaces. Sounds and sme...

Does an insoluble puzzle count as a puzzle at all?

The way I see it there is the possibility of philosophical insight and understanding, but the idea of "ascent" is tendentious and potentially misleadi...

That is a weak rejoinder. With any object of the senses the boundaries are determinable, and an object of the senses has a location. Where is the univ...