I don’t think I’ve got to the part where he says that yet. Touché; you have me there (I take this as similar to Wittgenstein’s remarks). But there is ...
Well, I’ll continue on (if there is nothing else @"frank"?) As discussed previously, in Para. 2 of the Second Meditations Descartes accepts that nothi...
I take you as saying that Descartes is creating the role of the deceiver so that it won’t be thought he is speaking ill of God (if God was claimed to ...
And you say I must be right if I am conscious, which I take as not just conscious in the sense that I am awake, but “conscious of”, in that I am aware...
Ah, I see. Or, I am unfamiliar enough with all that to retract characterizing your use of the word, nor to offer much help on what happens between sen...
Well you seem to think you understand what I’m trying to say and just flatly disagree. I’d leave it at that, however, this is uncalled for in this kin...
Descartes skips over all our practices to ask whether we can trust our senses not because they are the birth (spark @"Manuel" says) of everything—imag...
Literally was the wrong word. When I said we should not read him simply at face-value, I meant we should not just take him to be making explicit every...
I’ll let you move the discussion forward at your leisure Frank, as it is your thread. It does appear we may have not worked out all the issues brought...
The Second Meditation: “I feel like someone who is suddenly dropped into a deep whirlpool that tumbles him around so that he can neither stand on the ...
This seems to be splitting hairs. I think we can agree he’s not actually claiming there’s a demon. I welcome your reading, but I am claiming he is ext...
The crux of what I see is that Descartes is demonizing the inherent fallibility of our human condition. Even in the best case scenario, even when requ...
This is the bottom of a very long fall, so it seems absurd; and people take philosophy as esoteric, unpractical, and academic because they associate i...
Of course we’re just getting started, so conclusions are premature. I will say that I think he started wanting to investigate what is normally unexami...
It might help to examine the assumptions and conclusions he makes as he goes along. “ I should also withhold it from ones that are not completely cert...
Well, if you don’t think writing can be paraphrased and drawn out at all it’s gonna be tough to do philosophy. If you think I’ve got it wrong, what do...
The implication of the sentence is that you also (along with me) will be unique, and I will respect that more: “You’ll come to believe… in your own si...
Yes, I am claiming that the article is working on (assuming) a certain framework that, yes, is trying to answer or overcome the conclusions of philoso...
I’ll let it go after this because I agree my point is not a critique of the crux of the article (rather, I would say, of its premises). We are all awa...
The trick is right in the space between feeling something, being aware of it (rather than suppressing it) and just before the jump to the conclusion t...
. What I should have said is the need to explain or have knowledge of the purpose of “phenomenal consciousness” is to desire to solidify it, make it c...
I am narrowly focused on his point that knowledge of the self will make us matter, and I am trying to show how the desire to matter creates the need f...
I am claiming that there is a reason he is imagining a “subjective experience”, the evidence being that he says it. That he wants it to be “explained”...
Humphrey, and many others, take this as a statement of a problem, seeing only that Locke (and Descartes) found it “impossible” because he was merely w...
Well the article starts with a study; there’s neuroscience behind it attempting to understand “consciousness”; and the whole point is making a problem...
The article draws a conclusion from a patient who can find objects in the range of an eye that is blind. Whatever the mechanics of that, Humphrey take...
You’re right, I missed that. What I’m claiming is that, in response to #1, there is not a problem of consciousness at all, hard or otherwise. Science ...
I am saying there is not a “problem of consciousness” in coming at the other end, which is to say we create the fantasy of the “subjective experience”...
The mystery here is not the basis for consciousness, it’s the framing of consciousness itself. We want “consciousness” to be a thing so we can feel th...
You are assuming a few things, though understandably. Your measure of “useful” is based on the success science has had, which, as you say, is due to t...
I studied Ordinary Language Philosophy, but that would be hard to find a focus on. Most notably, it includes Plato, J.L. Austin, Wittgenstein, and Sta...
I have a suggestion. Before you register, go to the actual school bookstore, and they should have all the books for each class grouped together. Read ...
This is a more precise description of the same picture I’m saying is only an occurrence (that we decide what to say), not a universal generalization t...
Yes, and what we want to be there is in order for us to avoid our having to stand there ourselves (afterwards); to be responsible for the implications...
I agree that a concept (in Wittgenstein’s sense) is better imagined as an accomplishment (an act of its kind) and not an idea (mental, owned process),...
Again, the desire to have all of language work like the very limited process of naming objects—to imagine all words referring to an object, even “mean...
I don’t want to disagree that there are very complicated (brain/syntactic) processes happening when we use language, or even that there is perhaps som...
“It is clear, as Katz and Fodor have emphasized, that the meaning of a sentence is based on the meaning of its elementary parts and the manner of thei...
If we are defining something that is empirical (objects), we are determining what counts—not what it is or what is there (@"frank"), but what we are f...
The definition of terms is an interesting case. Kant differentiates between a priori concepts and arbitrary ones, which I take him to mean: technical ...
What I was trying to bring back to the fore was what Kant denigrates as our "given conceptions", which are our existing, cultural, historical, common ...
You were suggesting a definition of “terms” (which is a separate category from those under discussion, though getting confused into it anyway). But we...
Well, it might be worth discussing the Kant if it is regarding his section on a priori definitions, though your first response does point to a wider d...
I also don’t want to turn this into it a digression about Kant. I was not trying to say that to you were wrong to use him to show that we need to dig ...
Well, this is the realm of science, not philosophy (which deals with what Kant calls the “a priori”—and Wittgenstein calls our “concepts”), and this i...
Kant says that "no a priori conception, such as those of substance, cause, right, fitness, and so on, can be defined. For I can never be sure, that th...
I think I understand and agree that: starting a philosophical investigation of a concept (separate from a technical "term") with a tidy unexamined sin...
The philosophical problem is created because we are focused on the number of things and their being identical. "They are two people, so how do we know...
I’m not sure we just disagree or whether you misunderstand my point. Not everything in the world is an object, like a tree; some are activities, like ...
I feel like we are rushing past the distinction I am making. I can choose my words, and there is a part of that where I am free (and partly I am const...
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