wonderer1

Perhaps it says something about how comfortable humans find it, to feel like we have a role in our social primate band? Perhaps duty is a reification ...

Perhaps I see more value in considering thought experiments than you do? Einstein's thought experiments played an important role in human understandin...

Our thinking about analogies tends to be strongly associated with language and I don't find it plausible that analogy in a linguistic sense plays much...

...and should be prosecuted. Right?

:100:

Am I among "they"?

What scientist are you referring to? Under this scenario your belief in scientists would be a function of what the mad scientist (god to you) is feedi...

Yeah might as well be flexible and say we can't know what a BIV actually is, but under the scenario what you think of as real perception would necessa...

I've already said that I have a broader perspective on using "wave" than you seem to. So no. I don't see any value in restricting the usage of "wave" ...

Ok, suppose space is the "substance there which is waving". After all, the gravitational wave observations in recent years, (combined with electromagn...

I find it strange, the way you seem to get hung up on words being used in ways you disapprove of. Analogies play an important role in the way humans c...

The thing is, if the fact is that you are a brain in a vat, who has been fed all of your perceptions by a mad scientist, then your belief that a brain...

I'd say the best evidence against one's intuitions necessarily comes from beyond oneself. There is an external reality to learn from.

It's not clear to me what you have in mind with "because the electrons are freed from the atoms". Are you imagining these free electrons as being outs...

Suppose instead of God we have Ged. Ged is a postdoc in a ten dimensional universe who is researching the possibility of intelligence evolving in a th...

The topic is a thought experiment that doesn't need to be nomologically viable to stimulate epistemological consideration of it. Choosing to consider ...

I'm afraid your source is not very good. It seems to be mistaking the skin effect which is applicable to AC signals, for a general rule about electric...

Impossible, or merely simplistic?

Sure. However. people who think seriously about the subject recognize that different parts of the human body do different things. What the brain does ...

And welcome to TPF!

Great clip! Not to say you deserve any praise for posting it. :razz:

Indeed. I'd suggest it could have a salubrious effect on how well a person gathers knowledge, in that someone might be more likely to see through faul...

Thanks for the very substantive reaponse! It will take me awhile to respond. I'm envious of your fluency. For now I'm just going to nitpick. (I'm kind...

Logical analysis is always subject to Garbage-In/Garbage-Out. Believing oneself to have proven all other philosophies are absurd, is liable to be an e...

I think these days it is fairly widely understood, amongst those who have looked into the subject beyond high school biology, that there are selection...

I don't see any real problem. Panpsychism seems like nothing more than an unfalsifiable hypothesis that has no significant explanatory value, and Ockh...

I hope we will be hearing a lot more such statements from the bench.

I find that to be an extremely questionable statement. Do you really think so?

Even in this absence of strong emergence, it is pragmatic to recognize that different language/modeling is appropriate at different emergent levels. T...

:up:

How broadly are you defining definition? I'd suggest that rather than a definition or an essence, you have pattern recognition which occurs in your br...

As a physicalist I can say that you are correct.

And yet, according to the Philpapers survey it seems the majority of philosophers somehow manage to conclude, what you say can't be concluded.

I'm afraid I don't know how to interpret your statements regarding physical and non-physical. Suppose I suggest alternatives for your first two senten...

You know this how?

:up:

Yes. The level of GHGs in the atmosphere now, means that global warming is going to continue for a long time, even if all the human contribution to th...

On the other hand, humans fact checking (and challenging) AIs provides training data to the AI producers which can then be used in training the next g...

I was thinking I might be able to help you out of that logical straitjacket keeping you from productively considering the thought experiment. Perhaps ...

So no Mary and Paddy moment for you?

What made you think they were viscous? Are you any less viscous?

Suppose we defer consideration of a law of identity, and consider two identical beings in different possible worlds, with the difference between the t...

It's been feeling too much like coming home from work to go back to work. I talk to electrical engineers all day long. :joke:

Ah, ok. Like I said, it was very much a guess. I thought there might be some relevant analogies.

I haven't read past the introduction, but perhaps this video conveys something of relevance? Very much a guess.

Yes. fMRI is far from being a technology capable of showing "exact" areas of the brain, much less the enormous amount of dynamic activity involved in ...

Interesting question. I don't think I've ever used the word supervenience in discussions with other electrical engineers, although other EEs certainly...

Seems to me the kind of situation we would expect in light of less than adequate empirical data, and all the more reason to recognize the low spatial ...

When you believe that there is an alien, disguised as a duck, screaming into your head telepathically, there might be deeper epistemic concerns than G...

I had overlooked this until excerpted it. Googling around, the smallest estimate of neuron count per fMRI voxel that I found is ~10,000. Mr. Spock wou...