Sure. I am reductionist in the sense of reducing things to models. In this case, a general holistic model of causality that stands in self-conscious c...
I'm tempted to draw attention to the lack of intellectual mastery here. :naughty: But instead, I think all three of yours require quite sophisticated ...
The pre-modern view was animistic. The human social sphere included the whole of nature. The sun and stars were personified. So were the winds, the mo...
Persistence. Stability. Equilibrium. The limitation of flux or change. So it would be better to say actuality is a sum over potential histories. Entit...
Oh I agree heartily that starting with definitions is the last thing we would do. You are absolutely correct that meaning can't be analysed by interro...
Being is definite existence. It takes structure or form to make anything definite. Structure is organisation that limits meaningful difference or unce...
Yeah. But "consciousness" is a bad starting point. It is as far away from the primal, or the ultimately simple, as Nature can get. So you are speaking...
Primal, ominous, ennui, insomnia, striving, lurking ... all the anthropomorphic jargon of the Romantic tradition imported to address the basic metaphy...
Well given that was the kind of god the OP refers to, it seems fair enough to be focusing on that. And I was pointing out how you were defending the s...
Again, I pointed out to you two things. Expecting our metaphysical speculations to be constrained by actual evidence seems to have emerged as the best...
But the non-religious might have the advantage of having an argument that hinges on the test of evidence? One might scientifically keep an open mind o...
If you accept cosmological science as a believable starting point, then already a heavy constraint has been laid on your theological Bayesianism. The ...
It can't be difficult to agree that this is a two-way street. Linguistic communities create the general game. And individual players make creative use...
The issue is the flip from one extreme to the other extreme. Recognising that there is no definite atomistic foundation leads to the jump to the other...
The central issue is that language does not work propositionally, even if language can be employed pretty well in that regard. So these threads seem t...
Between the picture theory of language and linguistic behaviourism there is a middle ground position. Mental imagery or non-verbal content is the brai...
Performative contradiction? So we know what is essential when we know what is not accidental. And language use in turn relies on us using words in way...
The idea that existence is a unity of opposites, the pairing of chaos and order, or flux and logos, goes back to the first metaphysical speculation of...
And physics also puts an entropy constraint on the fidelity of the simulation surely. So how many bits do you think the simulation requires? Would it ...
So we agree that physics doesn’t account for that part of the structure of reality that is an algorithm? Great. Now what is it that says an algorithm ...
Fair enough. I'm reacting mostly from the point of view that sees a common method to what we mean by "rational thought". CS Peirce in particular pinne...
How are you defining empirical evidence? Isn't the rational method of philosophy just like the rational method of science in that one puts forward som...
There is a reasonable thought in your OP. At the Heat Death, there will only be a sizzle of photons with a temperature of the empty vacuum and wavelen...
Are algorithms physical? In what sense are you using the term physics to mean a scientific model of both hardware and software? You can start with a T...
It seems simple. If we need to numb ourselves, that spells some kind of problem. We would want to tackle the cause and not the symptoms. If we want to...
The OP was about drawing sharp baseline boundaries. My answer is that there is no sharp boundary really until you get right down to a state of matter ...
I just posted on that. Perception depends on conception. And for humans, conception depends on intellectual systems. Even hiking qualifies as a holy s...
I see @"Bitter Crank" made the important point in your other thread that shamans did create a guided experience. The rituals created a social framewor...
We could easily tell if it had degrees if we had a good handle on what it actually is. Measurement and theory go together. My general definition of co...
Processes of individuation are a mix of purposeful constraints and material accidents. So the story is more subtle. Individuation is the limitation of...
Look at c trying hard to be all nasty and offensive. Just so cute. Keep up. My attack was on the usual Romantic guff that motivates these kind of PoMo...
But the forces are also a "just a story". So what makes sense of what here? Sure, that means we are in an epistemic bind. We only ever "talk about" re...
It was acid-tripping hippies. I was more specific. So it is now you seeking to assimilate what I said as something carefully particular into a more ge...
But 1 exists as the identity element. It is the name we give an actual universal symmetry. And can nature escape being a story of symmetries and their...
We sort of agree except I talk about sign rather than mind. What I object to is the lingering dualism of treating consciousness as a substance, an imm...
It is off topic. So I'll just say how I would respond personally. No to the stimulants as the mechanism is too crude. And no to the educational settin...
But it works both ways. What is it like to have a mind that has never been blown? :grin: Or if we are talking about the advantages of things being rev...
You replied exactly as predicted. So you can have your sacred knowledge of the experience and I'll stick to my sacred knowledge of the cognitive neuro...
All I can do is shrug and think of all the theoretical biologists who don't accept this dogma. They might not accept your theistic dogma either - the ...
Nope. I've avoided all mind-altering substances on the grounds my neurochemistry seems nicely functional, thank you. ;) I did get drunk once 40 years ...
That would seem to be what I said. Internalism would take advantage of the resource that is apophatic reasoning. So vague then? It absorbs all contrad...
My point was that any perception of things inevitably requires the context of systematising thought. So to pose God as an ideal observer who would "se...
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