Michael

What if I dream of something that doesn't exist in the waking world, like me having a child? Or is such a thing impossible? How so?

No they're not (always). They're saying that the real thing that we refer to by the term "consciousness" is just behaviour/brain states and not some n...

So when I dream, what external things am I aware of? What are the objects of experience?

That's not how it works. If you were to go back to some relevant period in history and tell the people there that stars were luminous spheres of plasm...

They're not redefining consciousness, but claiming that what we refer to by consciousness is just behaviour. It's similar to the physicalist who might...

We win! I think we can all agree that we couldn't have achieved this without @"Hanover".

Physicists observe 'negative mass'. I recall reading somewhere about a hypothetical mechanism that uses negative and positive mass to achieve faster t...

This has nothing to do with the paradox.

No true Scotsman wears anything under their kilt.

The paradox doesn't talk about deceleration.

I'm not saying that people don't imagine things visually or must be able to imagine things verbally. I was simply addressing TGW's remark that "What I...

Apparently open water swimming.

If that planet is toxic to humans then no, I wouldn't have children on that planet. Presumably they (and I) wouldn't survive?

What's the visual property of being a diabetic racist? How could you see that the cover-less book was the Lord of the Rings? What about the image of t...

This sort of reasoning seems to crop up in moral philosophy. Theories about morality are often judged according to whether or not they conform with on...

He's the Guelph Party.

What about sexual preferences? I think women are far more likely to be attracted to men than men are.

Well, what does imagining a diabetic racist sitting at home reading a cover-less copy of the Lord of the Rings consist of? I can understand having a q...

Well, the minimum wage, railway, university tuition, and state school stuff isn't relevant to me. And do the Lib Dems differ from Labour on any of tho...

Like what? The only thing that really matters to me is the price of food, rent, and bills (and my wage, of course). I think staying in the Single Mark...

I'm clearly a bad visualizer, because when I try to imagine a zebra I certainly don't imagine something that can be said to have an exact number of st...

Me neither. Guess I got one free page view? Yeah, I'm hoping for an "impossible" Lib Dem victory. I think a lot of people want to stay in the Single M...

Would you expect someone with no experiential states to behave overtly the same as those that have them? If not, is that because experiential states a...

Oh, look, a General Election, just a month or so after saying "There isn’t going to be one. It isn’t going to happen. There is not going to be a gener...

Ah, I see. You were saying "no" to the for fun part. My mistake. Carry on.

I don't know. Do you know what makes it wrong to cause someone pain?

(Y)

They're not brain dead as the brain still functions.

Again, you're conflating. That a traditional zombie is defined as "the living dead" (an oxymoron anyway) is not that a philosophical zombie is defined...

I am attacking your claim that p-zombies are dead because they're not conscious. Whether or not we can converse with sponges has nothing to do with th...

Replace a p-zombie with someone with congenital insensitivity to pain. Is it not wrong to perform acts on them that would cause pain to someone who co...

Well, I guess it depends what you mean as you brought up harm. If by "harm" you mean "cause pain to" then it doesn't even make sense to say "it is (no...

So it's not possible to hurt someone with congenital insensitivity to pain? Surely that they suffer physical injury is relevant, even if there's no pa...

I'm confused. Question's question was "do you think homosexuals watch porn with heterosexuals for fun?" and your response was "No, I think that it's m...

Sorry, was referring to porn. You said that homosexuals wouldn't watch heterosexual porn because they "get off on porn with someone of their own gende...

Heterosexual sex will include someone of their own gender.

No. That's a really obvious strawman. I'm saying that it's wrong to say "X isn't conscious, therefore X is dead" because having consciousness isn't pa...

And in saying that this philosophical zombie is dead because the original definition of the term "zombie" included the term "corpse" is conflation. Th...

Three posts ago you defined a zombie as a corpse revived by witchcraft. Now you're defining it as something with no inner life. You're conflating.

We're talking about philosophical zombies, not "corpses said to be revived by witchcraft, especially in certain African and Caribbean religions". You'...

So you were just making a joke? My bad.

Sure, but is that difference one that would lead to behavioural differences? It seems to me that if it would then either experiences are (uniquely) ca...

And sex/gender. I'm not aware of any (common) man vs woman (in the same weight class) boxing matches.

If you're referring to life in the biological sense then this isn't true; having consciousness isn't a requirement to be alive.

Get help from Keanu Reaves and Sandra Bullock.

"Bachelor" isn't a synonym for "man".

Is "I am a bachelor, therefore I am a man" a tautology?

What I meant to question was why there are separate competitions for women in chess when chess has nothing to do with size/weight/muscle mass.

Dude, the first rule of Fight Club is to not talk about Fight Club. Now we're both disqualified.

Given that rules, insofar as they can be understood, can only be understood by how the community of rule followers participates in the activities invo...