magritte

I'm not sold either! It's just something else to ponder. The challenge is how to keep up with revolutionary progress in the sciences with static model...

Nope, that would be fun but the metaphysics isn't all mine. I'm talking about a much more generalized version of Aristotle's systematic metaphysics wh...

Do you mean experimental physicists or perhaps engineers?

To speculate what if comes naturally to people. Imagined scenarios just convincing enough to elicit reflection and to enable change of conception or b...

Some thoughts, Even speculative physics of other possible physical worlds is intended to be fully mathematical as soon as the needed maths are invente...

Sorry, I just dropped the other shoe in answer to the OP. If physicists understood the underlying metaphysics of modern philosophy they would raise ex...

That's a circular argument. You start with completely reducing Aristotelian logical metaphysics to ontology of predicated things, then you claim that ...

I think you are taking the problematic nature of the philosophy of physics too lightly. One can discover a thousand competent books and professional q...

If your question is indeed sincere and you are not just tossing my challenge to physicists back in my face then I have to assume probably wrongly that...

As an aside just for comparison, it might be noted that mathematicians, while not particularly involved with philosophy since it seldom interacts with...

Not physics, but the physicists. They're as big know-at-alls as we are here at TPF. I don't even see any physicists with a glimmer of understanding of...

Take away eleven zeros and he is just an ordinary man: 1. He will be first ever to take it all with him. 2. His family are big spenders. 3. He plans t...

I suppose shared reality would need to come from common human inheritance and traits or from close to uniform environmental possibilities and limitati...

We and our society have privileged morality, there is but one true morality and it is ours. Unfortunately, others who disagree in the details also cla...

I suppose so. Then we have to ask if the different patterns of behavior serve any purpose at all. Do they help the birds to survive, were these select...

Leftists start from the top of the ladder and climb down a couple of rungs, rightists start from the mud and climb up maybe a quarter of the way. Prag...

That's part of the argument under discussion. Most people are economic materialists, they are motivated by more goods, money, and power. Science offer...

Yes, but not magically all at once, as is usually implied by teleology. Nature is infinitely complex with many levels of complexity and we are rarely ...

Is this what you mean?

Or perhaps a: conditions of the universe must allow at least one universe b: Given this universe, such as it is, it is inevitable that bacteria exist ...

Is this the reaction to a bucket of icy cold water or a charging tiger which are animal responses held in common with a paramecium or an earthworm, or...

Does this mean that experience is not intentionally directed but emerges as an act of subconscious attentional focus?

That seems to summarize the dilemma of the social sciences. When they study minute mechanistic processes they get funded and succeed with many small p...

You would say that the difference between a musician and a successful musical is some timely marketable shtick, a successful presentation plus audienc...

Zero is just a strange number with many guises. It isn't just 0 or Nothing but also the dimensionless Origin of any arbitrary observer in space-time o...

The library heroically fetched a copy of the book for me. It was sad to see four bored workers and no patrons. I am grateful to you for bringing this ...

I read that Deacon objects to the overly simple linear computer modeling for either the massive neuronal cross-wiring of the brain or for the unknown ...

Yes, but that provides the excuse to stop the lawlessness with order

:alarmed: He is replacing a number of Defense Dept officials. Just to be paranoid, which is called for with HeWhoMustNotBeNamed, is this just childish...

I'm not going to push this further, but Plato's final reaction to this discussion would have been that there is no subject-object relationship either ...

Thank you, I have only considered metaphysical solipsism which is an entirely different rabbit's hole. Descartes pulled a rabbit out and asked what th...

? I presented the most positive and strongest possible position that I could imagine for a solipsist to hold and to defend against any critique. But i...

For solipsism there is only one. Memory, reflection, imagination, creativity are all purely solipsist activities. What's wrong with solipsism is the d...

Much of the confusion arises from frequent time honored conflation of realist ontology with metaphysics. Ontology is perfectly adequate to the study o...

The solipsist is living a daydream in the present where there are no objects to 'exist', or events or facts to stand in their place. All feelings and ...

:smile: :up: As of this moment Biden has edged ahead in both Pennsylvania and Georgia, and Biden is heading for around 300 electoral votes for better ...

Ultimately, yes.

Not someone but something. Observations can be repeated or measured for public scrutiny or it is not science.

You're making a good point. I'm missing at least a third kind of knowledge. If I am hungry is subjective and private to me, then we are hungry is stil...

or just metaphysical relation or metaphysical transcendence is a very significant part of trying to understand much of philosophy. What is understandi...

Sorry for the delay, I am still waiting for the library to retrieve and transfer this book for me. After looking at the snippets available online, one...

1 is not only subjective and private but (in that special sense only) also possibly absolute, unquestionable, and irrefutable. 2 Public knowledge, lik...

There are two choices here 1) I know that x, 2) We know that x. Belief and justification are quite different for the two, so they're not the same. In ...

I always assumed that Bernie was a Russian plant in the classic communist tradition.We have seen way too many like him for the last hundred years. We ...

Language from other incompatible theories imports implicit assumptions which could make this solipsism self-contradictory. For example, 'exists' is ex...

The big rat is preparing to jump ship. :smile:

A possible scenario could be tRump loses, sues in swing states, drags suits out till January, then leaves quietly in exchange for not getting prosecut...

Just in case, I want to be the first to celebrate. :party: ??

But natural selection is based on natural profligacy of species, environmental chaos, and shear dumb luck of being in the right place just at the righ...