• The Dream Argument
    I asked how you know you aren't dreaming right now. — Mongrel
    Since I perceive the world directly there is no reason for me to doubt whether my experiences right now when I'm awake might be real or dreams.

    What does it suggest.. that you don't simply answer the question? — Mongrel
    No, after your clarification your question turned out to be easy to dismiss (despite your misuse of "logic").
  • The Dream Argument
    Problem? — Mongrel
    Yes, do you mean that the existence of dreams, or dreams of saying things, would somehow show that we never know whether we dream or not?
  • The Dream Argument
    ↪Mongrel

    You're not making sense. Would you care to explain?
  • The Dream Argument
    ↪Mongrel

    Nothing is literally said in the dream.
  • The Dream Argument
    What properties does one have that the other doesn't? — Mongrel

    Unlike the dream the real table has the property of being the object of your experience of a table. For example, its present features in your visual field cause your visual experiences of it.

    The dreamt table, however, is not causing your dream of it, instead it is evoked by your memories of a table, or your will, habits, or familiarity with describing tables.

    The two experiences might be momentarily indistinguishable despite their difference in objects experienced, but it is not difficult to find out whether there is a table in your visual field.

    The mistake of the skeptic is to assume that what the dream and the veridical case have in common would also be the object that you experience, or an element of the experience. It isn't. They only have in common what is constituitive for any experience, brain events. They differ, however, in what causes them, e.g. the real table as the intentional object of perceiving it, and in the dream it is your memories etc.
  • The Dream Argument
    ↪Mongrel

    But experiences are not objects of observation; it's trivially true that you don't observe whether this has dreamy or veridical features... and from the lack of such observation it doesn't follow that there would be no difference between this and a dream.
  • The Dream Argument
    The dream argument attempts to demonstrate that belief in the existence of an "external" world is never justified. — Aaron R
    That's a bad argument. You shouldn't ask for justification of belief in the existence of an external world under the assumption that the external world doesn't exist, or that we would never encounter the external world, only our own internal constructs.
  • What is the best realist response to this?
    Then how does the realist distinguish between a veridical and a non-veridical experience? — Michael
    For example, by verification.

    The very principle of realism is that the way the world is is independent of our experiences such that we can see things that aren't there and not see things that are there. — Michael
    That's not a principle of realism.

    Realists assume that the world exists independently of our beliefs and statements. You should not conflate that with talk about experiences and seeing, because many realists differ on questions on the nature of experiences and seeing (direct vs indirect realism).
  • What is the best realist response to this?
    ↪Marchesk

    For a realist reality exists independently of his/her beliefs or statements about it. The idea that reality would somehow exist in itself adds nothing. It is a term invented by thinkers who seemed to have reasons to distinguish an invisible yet existing reality from its visible parts.
  • What is the best realist response to this?
    Plenty of realists would disagree. — Aaron R
    What is an example of a realist who would disagree with a rejection of the idea that the world exists in itself?

    "In itself" need not denote Kant's "ding an sich", which is just his particular take on the concept. — Aaron R
    No-one says it needs to denote Kant's ding an sich, but you mentioned "thing in itself", and I replied. Moreover, plenty of scholars disagree on whether Kant's take implies two worlds or two perspectives. One is invisible and assumed to exist "in itself" whereas another is assumed to be a "visible" mind-dependent version of the invisible version. Neither is plausible, and regardless of what Kant's particular take might be I see no good reason for a realist to speak of things in themselves.
  • What is the best realist response to this?
    There is no such thing as the world in itself. You don't get to take anti-realist assumptions for granted.
  • What is the best realist response to this?
    There's no good reason at all to believe that the world would be differentiated by someone's mind.
  • Why I don't drink
    ...
    And you, you can be mean
    And I, I'll drink all the time
    'Cause we're lovers, and that is a fact
    Yes we're lovers, and that is that
    ...     — Bowie
  • Is Truth Mind-Dependent?
    Yet we don't just invent things to say, out of nowhere, for maintaining them in a linguistic system. We also discover reasons to invent and say them. Perhaps in some sense statements exist as reasons to say them, regardless of whether they are ever said or maintained by minds. Likewise their truths might exist as certain relations to what they refer to, regardless of whether minds discover them.
  • Is consciousness created in the brain?
    The word 'created' seems wrong, because to create is typically a conscious act of putting things together, or in motion, such as designed objects or machines. You don't explain whether consciousness is created by a brain under the assumption that it would already be a part of the brain, somehow creating itself out of its own brain events. You can. however, explain it like photosynthesis can be explained, i.e. as a higher level phenomena arising from lower lever events.
  • Work
    In some professions the border between work and free time, or work for money and work for nothing, is fuzzy. In architecture, for instance.
  • What do you live for?
    You didn't list why not, you just stated your premise again.

    Explain why you think people don't need purpose in life in order to live good lives.     — intrapersona

    I'm not obliged to list anything from nothing, nor explain an absence of necessity. Those who believe that purpose is necessary for a good life, and knows of causal or logical relations from which such a necessity could arise, are obliged to list what those relations are. But I don't know of such relations, and therefore I have no reason to believe that they exist, nor provide you with a list of why not.



    What is good? Is good happy? Fulfilled? How much of the time are they like that in order to termed "good life"? — intrapersona
    Right, but what's the point of questioning the meaning of 'good' in a discussion on whether purpose is necessary or sufficient for a good life?
  • Moving Right
    So in a single comment, you take the left to task for accusing the right of anti-intellectualism, then point out the right's "blatant" anti-intellectualism! Hilarious. — Real Gone Cat
    That's not my comment. Why don't you reply to what is written instead of your own rephrased misinterpretations?

    So your claim is that the right exhibits "blatant" anti-intellectualism. Are you a leftie? — Real Gone Cat
    My claim is directed at the anti-intellectualism of ideologues on the left and the right. Since you can read it should not have passed you by. So, are you an ideologue?
  • What do you live for?
    ↪Sapientia

    Life can be good exactly because you're free from having something to live for. In fact, having something to live for will likely prevent you from having other things to live for.

    For example, those who live for their professional careers and therefore neglect their children, partners, parents, or friends. In what sense could their lives be good? Surely not by having careers to live for. If they would instead live for their children, then others would be neglected. If they would live for all of them, then they would live for none of them in particular.

    Most people try to care as well as possible for their careers, children, partners, parents, friends etc.. without living for any of them in particular. The latter is for single-minded fanatics, marketers, ideologues or war mongers hoping to make people give up their lives for some special interest.
  • Moving Right
    Ideologues on the left typically circumvent the inconvenient truth of an opponent's words by smugly diagnosing it as a function of an assumed ignorance, personality, or socio-economic interest. For example, people who voted for Trump are simply diagnosed as ignorant or uneducated, regardless of the inconvenient truths which can explain their support for Trump. Ideologues on the right don't usually bother about explaining away the truth of their opponent's words, they simply ignore the facts, such as in the case of denying research on climate change.

    I don't know which is worse, the pseudo-intellectual anti-intellectualism of the left, or the blatant anti-intellectualism of the right. They both sabotage the means for resolving disagreements by their disrespect for truth. Instead there is violence.
  • What do you live for?
    The very nature of a "good life" entails a purpose. If you don't think it does... THEN LIST WHY NOT! — intrapersona

    People live good lives regardless of whether they live for something or nothing. A good life doesn't suddenly arise from having something to live for. Nor would the lack of something to live for imply a bad life.
  • What do you live for?
    ↪Sapientia

    I'm not discussing whether something to live for seems necessary for a good life but whether it is necessary, sufficient, both, or neither. I say neither, because ascribing life's worth on something else is neither sufficient nor necessary to make it better. In fact it could make it worse, as in cases of destructive cults, where the idea of having something to live for is exploited and sometimes taken to its extreme.
  • What do you live for?
    ↪Sapientia


    For example, some people find their pet worth living or dying for. But living for a pet is neither necessary nor sufficient for a good life. You could live and love your pet (or whatever) and find it just as significant, and your life just as meaningful, without the melodramatic act of ascribing all your life's worth on it.
  • What do you live for?
    One lives and dies regardless of whether there is something to live for. It is neither sufficient nor necessary for a good life.
  • seeking metaphors in this sorrow
    Is there something in particular you wish to discuss?
  • Nietzsche's view of truth

    Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.

    Mystical explanations are considered deep. The truth is they are not even superficial.     — Nietzsche

    I'm curious about how truth is being used in each of these sentences. . . — Mongrel

    Looks like they don't use it but mention it.
  • How would you describe consciousness?
    Whence the rhetoric? I asked you two straightforward questions.
  • How would you describe consciousness?
    . . .consciousness itself . . .is a non-sensory experience - capable in principle of being undergone in a state where all of the five interactive senses are negated. . . . — Robert Lockhart
    What's it like to be senselessly undergoing a state of negating something?

    . . The significance of this fact consists in the consequence that our experience of consciousness is inimical to the method of scientific description, capable soley of describing our sensory perception of material interaction. . . — Robert Lockhart
    Please feel free to describe a senseless experience of an immaterial interaction.
  • Brains do not cause conscious experience.
    ↪Marchesk

    You can also wake up from the bang, or pain, and experience a shock which causes your heart to stop, regardless of the physical damage caused by the bullet.
  • Brains do not cause conscious experience.
    ↪Marchesk

    You can die from experiences as well as knives, which result in physical ailments and death. In the case of a knife it might be loss of blood, in the case of an experience some stress-induced heart failure. You won't get away with murder by selective talk about the loss of blood, or heart failure.
  • Brains do not cause conscious experience.
    ↪Marchesk
    I've yet to die from a dream or a perception. — Marchesk

    Some people die from the experience of pain, depression, a broken heart, delusion or a reality perceived as unbearable etc..
  • Brains do not cause conscious experience.
    ↪Wayfarer

    To deflate something merely because of its authority is clearly not philosophical. You're campaigning here against the authority of anything scientific, as if biological explanations would be reductionist, and as if reduction ought to be avoided. But that's nonsense.

    If you'd read at least the short intro to John Searle's Consciousness, then it should be easy for you to also understand that there are ways to understand consciousness as a non-reducible biological phenomenon.
  • Brains do not cause conscious experience.
    ↪Wayfarer

    Deflating the best explanations because of their authority is adolescent, not philosophical. And reductionism is not assumed in my talk of a biological phenomenon.
  • Brains do not cause conscious experience.
    It simply provides a way of managing the debate from a point of view which is understandable by the physical sciences, in the absence of any other agreed normative framework. — Wayfarer

    It's not a point of view but an explanstion, your campaign to deflate the authority of the sciences, and the best explanations, seems ideological, or religious.
  • Brains do not cause conscious experience.
    Consciousness is obviously a biological phenomenon, caused by the organism as it interacts with the world in various ways: e.g. as perceived, remembered, imagined, habitually talked about, predicted, pre-conceived, discovered, revised and so on.
  • What are you listening to right now?
  • What are you listening to right now?
  • PopSci: The secret of how life on Earth began
    . . . But when some of these chemicals contact water they form spherical globules called "coacervates", which can be up to 0.01cm (0.004 inches) across.

    If you watch coacervates under a microscope, they behave unnervingly like living cells. They grow and change shape, and sometimes divide into two. They can also take in chemicals from the surrounding water, so life-like chemicals can become concentrated inside them. Oparin proposed that coacervates were the ancestors of modern cells. . . .     — BBC, Michael Marshall

    How some things behave in fields of force :)
  • Program for website
    ↪Benkei

    You don't need a special web-site management program for showing your CV online.

    If you wrote your CV with a word processor, then save it as an html file named index.html, and upload it to your host's server (e.g. with FileZilla).

    Before uploading it you can open the file with your web-browser to see whether it looks good enough. If you'd like to elaborate its design with small means then you can use a simple text editor (e.g. notepad++) and learn to edit the html-code.
  • How do I know I'm going to stay dead?
    . . why can't that same magic soul drop into a new body after it becomes disembodied after my death and I can live again? . . . — Hanover
    Right, and why talk of one's death in the first place under the assumption that a part of oneself lives on? Reminds me of talk of ghosts assumed to be immaterial yet capable of rattling chains and the like.
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