We would need something within experience to be able to point out that we have experience in an explicit manner. Otherwise, we are stuck with analyzin...
There is an intimate relation between language and thought, that much is crucial. And a great deal of our language capacity is unconscious and inacces...
I mean, I'd say here with Russell, that we do not know enough about the external world (or physical stuff) to say if its nature is like or unlike "men...
What's interesting to me is that dictionary definitions barely scratch the surface of the definition of a word. They give a hint as to what the word m...
Hard to say. It appears as if a kind of mind or at least a central nervous system, is needed to register sensations. Nevertheless, it does look as if ...
There may be such entities. I don't think it torpedoes it though. Sure, experience is material, or physical. I distinguish here an epistemic claim wit...
Sorry, my views sound strange given the philosophers I tend to think are correct. I take it, following Galen Strawson, that consciousness is a wholly ...
I understand that perspective. But I don't see any contradiction or roadblock here by saying that experience is mysterious for us, in terms of how it ...
It's not that I take the issue too personally, it's that arguing against it - as Dennett does - seems to me to be irrational in the extreme. The point...
There's no reason to believe that we happened to evolve into a species that happens to know everything there is to know about the universe. That's sim...
I predict that dogs won't understand laptops for at least 1000 years. Why? They currently don't have such a capacity. Maybe by then they will be a dif...
His point is really not hard to understand and the opposite view, that we can in principle know everything if we "learn enough" is anti-scientific in ...
How? What you are arguing doesn't at all go against what I'm saying. You say that because these views are metaphysical (which isn't clear that they ar...
Well - in a sense yes. We wouldn't have a brain if there was no gravity, nor electromagnetism, nor proteins or anything else which emerges from physic...
I would keep away from Hume if I were in your shoes, which in a way I am, at least at the moment you read these words. The external world is an extrem...
Speaking of Zen, one "pop" book (a novel actually) that spurred on a mini-industry was Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Valu...
That's exactly right. But then I don't see why we can't speak of pancombustism, or panphotosynthesism or pan-everything. That's a problem for the panp...
But I don't see a principle by which sensory inputs and processing units couldn't be created by people, in a non-biological creation. Again, I don't t...
I was replying to his specific claim that we don't know if matter can be conscious. I think it can, when so modified in specific configurations leadin...
That specific example can be easily carried to past philosophers. But some of the stuff, say PKD writes, or Pynchon or even a character like Hannibal ...
I think there are historical reasons that lead us to conclude that consciousness is a property of matter. But it also depends on what you think matter...
It's a delicate issue. I think there are pop tv-series, movies and maybe even games, that certainly have quite interesting philosophical concepts and ...
Sure. And some aspects of other biological organs are also quite puzzling, baffling even. So, we have this thing in our head that produces thoughts, i...
Of course, and philosophy wouldn't be nearly as interesting if we all agreed. I find unanswerable questions - especially in the pursuit of the thinkin...
I won't quibble with the comments about animals, it's a matter that won't get us far, since we agree on the practical considerations. And it is a very...
Sure. I don't see any a-priori prohibition as to why silicon could not produce consciousness. But since we don't understand it very well in our own ca...
The issue is not one of not being able to find neural correlations, or not being able to form theories, whether that of embodied cognition or computat...
There is some truth to this post, no doubt. Especially when one considers the sheer amount of books on the neurophysiology of consciousness, which tel...
Welcome! Hope you have fun here, it's a great place to deepen one's knowledge on many topics in the field. Don't be afraid to express your opinions, b...
It's a bit tricky. It's species-dependent in so far as evidence pertaining to other animals being moral is shaky, some apes show the first glimmerings...
Welp, Finland enters NATO tomorrow. It's one way to decrease security, but we know that states only pretend to care about security issues - they usual...
Ah. I see. So all we have to do is wait for @"Noble Dust" to create a thread about PKD. Damn, that's like a big responsibility. Not easy to create a t...
Well, I mean, what did you make of it? Assuming you haven't 100% finished, I'll just say, a certain part of it, is quite "trippy", for lack of a bette...
I think this is the "real" hard problem, actually. The problem is matter in general, not consciousness more narrowly considered. First of all, baryoni...
It's a very good essay, and she makes some excellent points. This type of approach seems to me be quite pertinent and potentially very useful for ethi...
There a some good point in that, but also some serious issues, the fields he claims to be exhausted (Kantianism, Existentialism, etc.) are not. If he ...
Ah, ok - yes that summary was quite useful, thanks for that. In this example, I think so. To kill an innocent person for no reason, is not only irrati...
VALIS? Meh. I thought it was average. I suppose the fact that it was semi-autobiographical made it more tolerable. But Horselover Fat? Come on, it's s...
The Issue with The Three Stigmata... is that it's also rather heavily theological, and that can push away some people who would otherwise participate....
Very much so. He has other philosophical ones too, but this is among his very best. And it covers quite a lot of territory. Not a bad idea to do a thr...
This sounds like a complication. An object is an idea regardless of the subjects experience? Why postulate an object which can (perhaps) never be enco...
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