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Mijin

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You haven't given any argument to think such a thing though, just a pointless digression into the Chinese room. Let's get back to brass tacks: I'm in ...
December 07, 2020 at 03:32
Sure but what's the relevance here? We're talking about whether an entity can itself be under the illusion of having sensations (a nonsensical notion ...
December 05, 2020 at 15:30
I'll stop you there. We don't know. We don't know to what extent images are formed in the brain; we know that sensory data from the eyes is broken dow...
December 05, 2020 at 15:12
Agreed. The Chinese room is about whether we can infer intentionality, let alone subjective states, in another entity based on its behaviour. This is ...
December 05, 2020 at 14:49
I think the op is right but actually think this is already implicit in how we currently divide politics. "Conservatism" could be seen as a kind phrasi...
December 05, 2020 at 05:38
What's the distinction between the illusion of consciousness and consciousness? Physical pain is unpleasant, and explaining how matter can have unplea...
December 05, 2020 at 03:25
It would have to be rare to the point of basically being unique for this alone to work as the solution to the Fermi paradox. As big as space is, when ...
December 04, 2020 at 16:52
Because I know since pushing myself more, I get more opportunities in my career, relationships and general interests and hobbies. My point is that, be...
December 04, 2020 at 16:30
I think there is a danger with these kinds of labels -- I think they can be self limiting. I always thought of myself as an introvert, and I am, but t...
December 04, 2020 at 11:59
It's true that a lot of the time we can be unaware of the full dangers of using a technology, like the ozone layer example. But when we do know, the i...
December 04, 2020 at 05:41
You have said that our understanding of gravity is flawed. The theory of gravity itself does not include the suggestion that we necessarily find the c...
December 04, 2020 at 03:13
I'll start with your last set of questions first, as it's the most concrete point. I'll get to the rest when I get time. quote="Metaphysician Undercov...
December 03, 2020 at 18:46
Again, please publish your data and receive your Nobel prize. If you're right and physicists are wrong, that's a big deal and you should reap those re...
December 03, 2020 at 08:05
Quite. It's not that science turned away from logic (whatever that would mean). It's that science comes with a toolbox for gaining an understanding of...
December 03, 2020 at 07:45
Black is the qualia that first made me realize that color is not "out there". But some people still don't quite get it, so you might find a better exa...
December 02, 2020 at 16:40
No what I meant was your allusions to things like your definitions of action and living matter, for which we're supposed to go and find from other dis...
December 02, 2020 at 16:33
But you're making a specific claim about an area of physics. It's like if I claimed that in bowling 3 strikes in a row is called an Emu, and when some...
December 02, 2020 at 14:53
I actually like attempts to define free will, if only because they might end the nonsensical "Do we have free will?" debate, which, in my view, is 99%...
December 02, 2020 at 10:43
You said that our understanding of gravity is "flawed" and "primitive". This is a claim of scientific understanding, not philosophy. Firstly, finding ...
December 02, 2020 at 03:48
Yeah, I could agree with this. Defining physicalism as "closed" might well be misleading and pointless (incidentally, I neither call myself a physical...
December 02, 2020 at 01:57
I'd actually say it's the other way round. Alternatives to physicalism generally suggest that there are mental or spiritual aspects of the universe it...
December 01, 2020 at 10:44
Let's go back a step first. You've now agreed with me that physicalism does *not* make the claim that we know everything about the physical universe. ...
December 01, 2020 at 10:27
No, I don't think that. Do you? And if so, on what basis? Yep. Hate to see it.
December 01, 2020 at 09:35
I meant straightforward in terms of comparative ease of understanding. I mean, you just summarized the theory in 14 words, you can't do that with all ...
December 01, 2020 at 08:08
It's more than just that. Galaxies' star rotation velocities were the original reason for positing dark matter, but there are numerous other lines of ...
December 01, 2020 at 04:21
The problem with the wiki, and the OP, is the conflation between whether an action has benefit to the individual, and whether it was motivated by bene...
November 30, 2020 at 17:32
Well we need to be consistent, and not engage in a bait-and-switch. If we want to say that all instincts are selfish, because they are the product of ...
November 30, 2020 at 08:23
I was speaking of "the group" in the widest possible sense, because we were talking about altruism. When talking about human altruism, we normally con...
November 30, 2020 at 06:46
Sure. Let me give an example. Let's say we're talking about "playfulness". Now, it's not hard to think of how that behaviour may have had survival ben...
November 30, 2020 at 06:42
Sure, and that's what I understood. What I am saying to you is that a single counter-example is a big problem for the philosophical idea that life is ...
November 30, 2020 at 06:29
Yes possibly. We can describe animal behaviours in two ways: 1. Why the behaviour evolved. What selective pressure resulting in this being a common be...
November 30, 2020 at 06:21
Yes, exactly. This is a thread about what life is "all about". You have phrased it as "life is competition" You cannot simply handwave counter-example...
November 30, 2020 at 05:05
I think with your allusion to consistency, what you're implicitly saying is that if all life competes, then the statement "life is competition" is val...
November 29, 2020 at 12:32
I would still consider that a subjective judgement. Let's go back to the guy who wants to spend his life bouncing on a space hopper. If we look at thi...
November 29, 2020 at 05:01
The point is, the only reason it is not considered a polygon is because it breaks equations like that one. The OP was saying that, since infinity brea...
November 29, 2020 at 04:50
First of all, it's worth saying that life does not need to be "about" anything. Sure, this is a philosophy forum and we can talk about what we think l...
November 29, 2020 at 04:48
1) As Banno has pointed out, you can't do this. You can't use infinity as if it's a regular number. Consider: there is an equation for calculating the...
November 29, 2020 at 04:31
Good point. I need to give this more thought...does the Chinese room apply if consciousness is informational, but not Turing-compatible? But at first ...
November 28, 2020 at 15:32
Sure but I don't think your point is actually different to Searle's, or something he's overlooked. Because firstly, yes, when he is talking about "com...
November 28, 2020 at 07:05
Yes, that's right. According to the wiki: The argument is just against certain computational theories of the mind, and he is just trying to show that:...
November 27, 2020 at 04:50
When people talk about "computers" within the context of strong AI, they usually mean Turing machines i.e. something which runs a program which can be...
November 27, 2020 at 02:37
Once again, this kind of train of thought is more linguistic that ontological. Consider that not all languages even have a word for "nothing"; many la...
November 25, 2020 at 16:33
You are quoting me from a different thread, and I think the context is important here (I was talking about optical illusions).
November 25, 2020 at 16:19
So much of the discussion of the hard problem seems to be based on this flawed reasoning. The fact that we cannot think of a physical model, is neithe...
November 25, 2020 at 07:42
I'm not trying to shut the conversation down, I was replying specifically to posts about what physicists say and how physics is taught. (Emphasis adde...
November 05, 2020 at 04:17
Well, indirectly, yes. But largely as a side effect. There are lots of other roles and responsibilities e.g. being drafted for war which have consider...
November 03, 2020 at 18:12
As is often the case, the real mystery is why anyone gives a fuck about who touches their own junk. And I think the answer is, we're a social species ...
November 03, 2020 at 07:04
It's not just graphically. There are multiple models of the atom, and while there is a clear "best", most accurate model, it's nonetheless often usefu...
November 02, 2020 at 02:40
What? I wasn't disagreeing with you. I was just clarifying one of my points.
November 01, 2020 at 05:18
This is the standard solution to the problem of evil, but it doesn't actually work. How do I make decisions? I make decisions based on prior experienc...
November 01, 2020 at 04:26