apokrisis

Technically it is not "nihilism" to believe that Nature has intrinsic purpose and that we also have the freedom, indeed responsibility, to construct o...

Sure. We have to pay for our freedoms in terms of the much greater amount of waste heat that we generate. So we can have our private purposes that see...

The past constrains the future, but it doesn't absolutely determine the future. So the past leaves the future only relatively determined in terms of i...

Nah. Still doesn't work. Can any statement be known to be true as opposed to being asserted as true, or defined as true, or believed and acted upon as...

Is it pedantic to say one is reasonably certain, or justifiably certain, but never absolutely certain, or certain without qualification? On what argum...

Is that pretty certain, absolutely certain, cross your heart and hope to die certain, as certain as you can reasonably be? Anyway, I’m certain you’re ...

Put forward your argument. It’s been years. You still haven’t.

Disingenuous? Moi?

So you’ve got nothing but the demand I should share your certainty? Sounds like the epistemology of a solipsist.

Again you are claiming certainty in regard to your assertion? Sounds legit.

Yep. You are in a little world all of your own on this one.

So I can’t doubt your statement? Sounds legit.

Hmm. So you have adopted a moral position and you demand the science must find a way to support it? I don't believe that is how it works. Well I flatt...

A Cray is not a souped up microcomputer. A vector processing architecture is very different from a scalar processing one. So bad analogy. Likewise hum...

But that is how I redefine "consciousness" - as a biosemiotic modelling relation. And then beyond that, I would agree with Peirce's project of total g...

That's what I said. All these different bits of jargon - truth, belief, certainty, justification, etc - they are emphasising different aspects of a pr...

So that is where we would differ then. Well that is the semiotic position I take. And it serves to generalise this "I-ness" in a suitable fashion. The...

So are you proposing that "absolute certainty" as a verifiable fact or not? Is your willingness to act in accordance with that belief the evidence req...

This seems just like word play over definitions. In my approach, it is all one process - a sign relation with the world, a modelling relation with the...

Again, I'm not disputing that there are numerous borderline cases. And so the question then becomes, why a sudden and vast human difference? It's an o...

Did you have an example of animal deception that involved abstract symbolism rather than indexical or iconic signs? I am not arguing against borderlin...

Yes, I’m familiar with the literature thanks. My opinion is that you overstate your case.

Now you are talking about mental "objects" like feelings, intuitions, images, etc. You are conceptualising the mind as some kind of stage across which...

So isn't this just pragmatism? You are now thinking of a belief as a proposition - a hypothesis that, if true, would have expectable consequences. You...

Checking further, there is this attempt at a pantheistic reading of Peirce.... ARTHUR W. BURKS - PEIRCE'S EVOLUTIONARY PRAGMATIC IDEALISM https://deep...

Like I replied to MU, do you think that beliefs can only speak of absolute certainties? If they are Bayesian expectations concerning probabilities the...

So beliefs can't be weak and strong? Beliefs aren't by nature probabilistic and so held with various degrees of conviction? There is some "degree of d...

A distinction would be useful. But making a sharp distinction is also really difficult as the linguistically structured human mind never actually aban...

Actually the quote I was thinking of was misleading as it wasn't connected to his evolutionary cosmology but to the more mundane thing of how his Chri...

Yep, @"Pseudonym" is only talking about indexical or iconic semiosis here in regard to animal communication. Symbols are a whole different thing. Synt...

No. I would agree they need linguistic structure to flesh out alternatives to that degree - scenarios in which they themselves feature as actors. My p...

Colourless green ideas sleep furiously. Apparently.

Yes. I agree that language puts it out into a social space where there is then the further fact of the “I” that is doing the asserting. But still, the...

Well propositional just means that a belief can be asserted in a way that makes it true or false. So if we leave out the asserting bit - which is wher...

If an animal looks surprised or puzzled, did it have a prelinguistic belief? Surely a belief would be positively held if it can be revealed as an expe...

It is notoriously difficult to agree what Peirce actually believed about god or divinity. But he himself stressed he certainly did not follow any kind...

Poor old SX. :yawn:

Your criticism is correct, but your tone is way over the top. Poor old Wayfarer. He has his views and he promotes them pretty politely. He doesn’t des...

Hah. This level of commonsense is going to kill the thread. Kudos. :)

Well, we could say they exist in different manners or that they are real in different manners. That still leaves us with the issue of how they are bot...

I can see you just want your usual argument, and to get it started you must misrepresent what I say, and so force me to spend the next 100 posts tryin...

So why is it logically impossible? You might want to argue that based on some particular metaphysical premise. But then you know that I have my own vi...

Hmm. But I am then concerned to make the further distinction that is only now coming through in the past century of science and physics. So it is not ...

I guess to my ear the term "exists" means to be actualised. To be present and individuated in terms of matter, time and place. Existence is the concre...

Scientists who work at the systems science end of things - who take an Aristotelean and holistic view - do self-consciously call themselves natural ph...

But are possibilities real? Do possibilities exist? How do you answer there? They seem real in that they are there, just not yet substantially express...

So are possible beings then beings that exist? Or simply beings that could exist? Does the possible itself exist? And is it real if it doesn't? In wha...

A belief is a habit of interpretation. It reads reality in terms of confirming signs. If an individual wears his underpants over his trousers, it is i...

Hey, that's fine. I don't take things personally. It's all about the cut and thrust of ideas. But thanks for saying that.

Yep. So to exist is to be substantial. Yet to be substantial is to be individuated. And so the question become how does individuation come to be. And ...