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Manuel

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The issue here is not merely terminological but conceptual, what is mental and what is physical? It's not as if there is an intelligible distinction n...
July 19, 2025 at 02:27
S'all good. :up:
July 16, 2025 at 15:51
Hey man, I'm just the mediator. Don't argue with the messenger but with the bot. It will agree with you always. As for how it gets its name, we give i...
July 16, 2025 at 15:47
It's not as if we can be logical all the time even if wanted to. And there's no clear distinction between "logical thinking" and "imagination". One co...
July 16, 2025 at 14:53
Something like a thermostat in-itslef would be what a thermostat could be like absent human experience. This has similarities to Kant's "things-in-the...
July 16, 2025 at 14:46
Sure. Otherwise, one cannot make sense of the evidence and practically all of cosmic history. What if that is false somehow? Then we make everything u...
July 15, 2025 at 18:13
I understand that. Need not turn out this way, in so far as that debate even makes any sense at all. Got you.
July 15, 2025 at 18:08
If you don't want to engage with arguments, why participate in a philosophy forum? There surely are other forums in which you can discuss this issue w...
July 15, 2025 at 02:27
Yep, it could be a circular thing. But I think it's impossible to find evidence for it that may corroborate the theory - hence leaving us in the same ...
July 09, 2025 at 12:59
La invención de Morel by Adolofo Bioy Caseres
July 01, 2025 at 01:21
We don't know. Akin to the status of time "before" the Big Bang. May even be a meaningless question we try to provide an answer, but hit upon a cognit...
July 01, 2025 at 01:19
Which is why his book is called "Consciousness Denied". He has some fancy neuroscience; he does write well - but the people who agree with him are jus...
June 18, 2025 at 16:11
He has always been extremely cringe-inducing in this topic. The level of irrationality and utter disregard for the most evident, clear, best understoo...
June 18, 2025 at 15:51
I suppose it's a balancing act, if you (or anybody) are harsh to all these enlightened posters, then less people might be willing to engage. But it ca...
June 18, 2025 at 03:23
In: Iran War?  — view comment
What is the point with debating a supporter of a paranoid, ethno-supremacist, racist, genocide enabling state? Is it worth pointing out trivial facts?...
June 17, 2025 at 20:56
Agree with a good deal. Especially on the point of some newer members coming in with a ToE pretending great wisdom and exhaustive theoretical depth, w...
June 17, 2025 at 14:24
Great post Wayf. I may be nerding out again, but I think there's a very interesting argument to be made against positivism, that is in my opinion deva...
May 29, 2025 at 22:00
Finished The Tacit Dimension by Michael Polanyi. The first part of the book was quite impressive, it's been quite a while since I found something new ...
May 27, 2025 at 11:21
Well, a country is quite a complex idea. It's not something that is easily pointed to in the way a rock or a river can be pointed to.
May 21, 2025 at 16:43
I think there is a fact of the matter, that is, is nominalism true or not? If we only distinguished particulars, we would never develop a concept, no ...
May 20, 2025 at 19:38
De Veritate by Lord Herbert of Cherbury
May 18, 2025 at 15:22
Sure but you are assuming we have a final theory of physics. We don't.
May 14, 2025 at 13:13
In: The Forms  — view comment
That's a much better way of understanding the issue and I think your explanation is quite sensible. Of course, it becomes very tricky to argue that ce...
May 13, 2025 at 10:22
In: The Forms  — view comment
Up to interpretation, but as I take it, it's an attempt to make sense of concepts which we experience in individualized actualizations: we see a horse...
May 12, 2025 at 20:42
Maybe it's an emergent phenomenon, as some theories in physics imply. Or maybe it's irreducible and hence not explainable by anything else other than ...
May 12, 2025 at 20:35
This question can be misleading, as real, in English, is an honorific term: "Here's the deal." vs. "Here's the real deal." There aren't two deals, one...
May 08, 2025 at 23:11
Imagination in Hume's Philosophy: The Canvas of the Mind by Timothy M. Costelloe
May 04, 2025 at 02:03
That question goes beyond our capacity to provide an intelligible answer. One can say anything and probably be wrong about it.
April 15, 2025 at 19:05
It can be an interesting exercise so long as you are aware that it is what you are doing - a kind of poetry with some distinctive philosophical value ...
April 15, 2025 at 19:00
Am reading several papers on Salomon Maimon, probably going to read his Essay on Transcendental Philosophy sometime this year. Very interesting stuff,...
April 15, 2025 at 18:09
You can't. And if you could, you can never be certain.
April 15, 2025 at 18:03
Moral systems are meant to be an ideal to strive for, more so than something that has to be adhered to 100% of the time all the time. It is supposed t...
April 07, 2025 at 14:56
If no evidence can be provided that makes the concept obsolete, then it could be an indication that is mental only. Alternatively, if we cannot but he...
April 04, 2025 at 02:12
It's a good question. I'd start conservatively and argue, what do we know about substance? Well, for one thing it is a concept, and in this regard is ...
April 03, 2025 at 23:55
Ah gotcha. Correct.
April 03, 2025 at 23:32
What like atoms? Or something along those lines? If so, that's a bit different from substance as Locke (and others) talks about it.
April 03, 2025 at 11:42
Probably. I think after Hume, substance became very problematic, Hume of course denied we had a concept of substance. Interesting arguments for sure, ...
April 03, 2025 at 03:55
I've always been a fan of Locke's discussion on substance, it's phenomenal: "So that if any one will examine himself concerning his notion of pure sub...
April 03, 2025 at 01:26
They can be doubted too. But without a goal in mind, you're just left with skepticism, and you get stuck. It's tricky.
March 26, 2025 at 04:02
Populism can (not necessarily) lead to authoritarianism in this specific version (neoliberal capitalism) of the economic system we have. It has been m...
March 25, 2025 at 02:35
We don't know. We have guesses related to problem solving, or the brain "repairing" itself, but this is completely speculative. The richness of the ph...
March 06, 2025 at 14:49
It wasn't a big why. It was admittance of the intrinsic unintelligibly of the world. And what was considered problematic by Descartes, Newton, Huygens...
February 27, 2025 at 21:18
Yes. But the point is that we have no intuition as to how this is possible. That was Newton's famous "it is inconceivable to me" quote was all about. ...
February 25, 2025 at 18:30
Some may assume that. It need not be accepted in these very terms. Naturalism can be taken as the view that all that exists is natural and no more. Th...
February 24, 2025 at 15:16
He doesn't say it's a really hard problem? That leads to the natural reading that it is an especially hard problem. I would grant it with one crucial ...
February 24, 2025 at 03:13
I understand the usual monopoly on the term "physical", that's Dennett and the Churchlands. But there are others, like Galen Strawson (without panpsyc...
February 24, 2025 at 03:06
Definition? I mean there is standard use "physical thing", sure, that usually means something we can touch. But in epistemology it means "physical stu...
February 20, 2025 at 22:02
Why is experience not physical? I agree that things "outside the mind" - outside consciousness itself are physical things and hence mediated through e...
February 20, 2025 at 20:40
Why do you think mind cannot be matter or the opposite? This needs to be argued for, not asserted. If the argument holds, then we can talk about the i...
February 20, 2025 at 15:32
We have experience, we infer the rest, call it what you will. I don't see why they both can't have an underlying cause, outside stipulation: physical ...
February 19, 2025 at 19:20