Absolutely. In fact, this is what we do: we start with basic terms which we don't fully understand, but can speak about them in a manner that makes se...
Well, there's a lot here to talk about. I very much like, and have vividly felt, your second proposition. That we are pressed for time in coming up ap...
I very much agree with the sentiment and the conclusion that if it goes away, we might as well say random words or stare at a wall or something. The p...
He obviously knows a lot of stuff in detail, and his heart is in the right place, it seems to me. But the general idea of transhumanism hardly seems p...
I think Carnap brought it up and I'm probably butchering his exact idea he has a point. If you think to yourself, what do actually end up concluding? ...
Am currently in Spain, where I am from, is a good philosophical question. Dominican/Spanish/American :) Actually, I might be able to help. I would not...
As I understand it, via Sean Carroll's work, if you die here, you may well be alive in many other universes, but that would not matter in the sense th...
It's true, in the sense that we construct the world according to our cognitive capacities. The claim is much more difficult to defend if you say that ...
Plenty of people we don't know, die all the time fighting for they believe in. Socrates happens to be a vivid example in our imagination because Plato...
That's interesting and it seems to follow from the general argument. But then the concept of form seems to become extremely elastic, as in we'd have t...
Yes, I think we do. But the way it works is a mystery for us - we simply lack the brain power to understand how it could work. But that you can do oth...
If there is a change in reaction and behavior, then that already indicates the ability to act on reasons, which you can reject. Like, someone could co...
Let me ask a question. If they could prove to you that you did not have free will, would you act any differently? How would you change if someone coul...
Socrates was an example. He wrote nothing. I think the only minimum requirement is to have read at least one philosopher, ancient or modern and then c...
Well, which God? There are too many to list, outside the Abrahamic tradition. Would I like to believe in the God of the Old Testament? Absolutely not....
I'm way late to your most excellent post. I think Bertrand Russell is exactly right about mathematics and ignorance. There are elements in Platonism w...
Good post. But how to correct it? That's a really difficult question. What surprises me in certain circumstances is that despite knowing better, our m...
Against the conceivability of p-zombines? I don't think you can argue against conceiving such a thing. The only arguments against p-zombies would have...
It's probably clear, but if your name is the reason for the word "sadism", you must have been a unpleasant person to be around. I've read a few pages ...
Probably describing nature. Or a version of it that fits our mode of cognition. "Understanding" is a very complex term and it's not entirely clear wha...
Maybe I'm not being clear to myself! :) I personally don't see those two options you provided as mutually exclusive. I suppose that the latter is what...
Yes, what they say could be true. There's a very good book on this topic called The Gap by Thomas Suddendorf, he covers "killjoys" and "romantics", it...
I agree that we are constantly bombarded by sense data. But we sort them out into stable objects, not the world. Suppose I see something on the the fl...
Partly, yes. What we see is a representation of that environment, not the only one. The one which we construct, categorize and make sense of. But we a...
I'm not entirely clear what you're describing. I'll attempt to reply as I understand it. The term "information" here is taken as a convenient label to...
According to Schopenhauer as well as to his biographers, he developed his thought before reading the Vedas and after reading Kant. He just happened to...
Maybe I'm being too semantical here, but I don't think we are machines in any relevant sense of the word. You can say we are biological organisms that...
Schopenhauer has it right, to me. The world is empirically real and transcendentally ideal. No objects without subject, but more interestingly, no sub...
I mean, you're older than me by quite a bit, so I can only speak out of *** so keep that in mind. Inherently, I don't see anything wrong with that. Th...
I think it makes sense to be proud of, and be humbled by, what science has achieved. Whether you are speaking about any part of physics or astronomy o...
Ah, I see. Yes we do, you're right, but it's probably not the correct use of these words "determined", "free" and so on, as it incorporates human elem...
Sure, you can "teach" me to fear something not innate in a sense, given that today we don't believe in such things. But it wasn't too long ago in hist...
I don't know how to quote properly here yet. So thanks for correcting my Many Worlds explanation, I should've looked it up instead of relying on my me...
I see the math symbols and my brain freezes. Hah. In any case, I think the question is quite interesting and can be tackled in numerous ways, as has b...
I think that Galen Strawson is right on this topic, he only mentions it but, the idea is that people can confuse "empirical" with what is "publicly ob...
To clarify what you have in mind, you have to be capable of pointing out what you mean by the word "real". It's an honorific term, we speak of the "re...
I mean, that's assuming that reductionism even works. In some domains it has, chemistry to physics, but in most domains I don't see how it's possible,...
Likely not. Susan Haack talks about this in Evidence And Enquiry. But from my perspective, I'm unsure how far such views take you. We don't have acces...
Good. He really deserves it. One of the few who isn't afraid to go after evo devo dogma. And just writes really well on interesting topics, doesn't ge...
The context in which I ask the question is because it seems to me that whatever value or worth or significance a person has is being cast into doubt, ...
Dictionary definitions do not come close to exhausting the meaning words. We'll end up defining words by other words in endless wordplay. You can choo...
"Okay, so you want to assign a different meaning to "value" which is not actually value, but something different." I did not know that "value" was the...
If you want to take the question with a quasi-positivistic attitude or stance, then sure it is the wrong question, or a poorly phrased one. But if you...
It seems to me inevitable that we express ideas of philosophers in terms they did not use. Quite clearly with Plato and Aristotle, after all they didn...
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