Yeah, er, I provided a defence of it in the OP. — Bartricks
They ARE states of complex systems. — khaled
Point is that by the materialist definition you get everything an idealist would want. — khaled
A materialist would not say that humans have any mental things attached if "mental thing" is to mean some other different kind of substance from physical thing. If it means a particular pattern of physical thing then maybe. — khaled
The novelist can be questioned. The scientist wants you to shut up and calculate or follow. The philosopher wants you to accept his visions. To prove his vision is the one. — Mystic
I am not sure that story(or fiction) is absolutely only mythos and that philosophy and science are entirely explanatory. — Jack Cummins
Fiction can incorporate some aspects of science and philosophy if it is brought in carefully. — Jack Cummins
Incidentally when you read Don Quixote 1605, you find a book that is like a post-modern pastiche, dripping with irony and self-reflexivity. It could almost be John Barth (except readable). — Tom Storm
With many positions on modernity and the individual, can one say they are indifferent? Some philosophers say we are still living in modernity, for some we are in post-modernity, some say we were never modern. — Warren
A materialist believes that there are material things with no minds
— Kenosha Kid
I can take this two ways — khaled
Again, I think if you say that there are 2 different kinds of stuff, mental stuff and physical stuff, you're already not a materialist. — khaled
I have always found the novel to be a far better expression of truth and wisdom than academic philosophy and science.
For instance dickens is far superior to Wittgenstein and any neuroscientists publications.
Do you agree or disagree?
What are your reasons? — Mystic
So what really is the difference between the two views? — khaled
There are different kinds of representation. But all require a representer because they all represent, even if some do so propositionally and others not. Do you understand? — Bartricks
Simple. Classical. Still intriguing. — ssu
One of my favorite thought experiments is the boy with no words. Suppose if a boy was raised his whole life without any sort of made up language of communication. How would he think? I think he would think in terms of images and feelings. The essence of what we think. — Thinking
Quite. To me, it's unfair to judge an employee for doing something under effective duress, when the employer is the effective agent involved. — MPhil
You don't understand the argument, clearly. I am arguing that in order for something - be it a mental state, a picture, some squiggles - to be said to be 'tepresenting'something to be the case (as opposed to appearing to represent something to be the case) there needs to be a representer.
The clearest way to show this is with notes. This - this here, this 'message' - isn't representing anything if I am a bot. It is if I am a person. — Bartricks
The laws of physics are not a property of any particular thing within reality, but a property of reality itself. These laws are expressed in a seemingly infinite number of varied circumstances. So bouncing a ball might seem to an observer to be an entirely different phenomena than the orbit of a planet, but the same laws govern both. — Foghorn
But as far as we know (religion and alien theory aside) evolution doesn't arise from any particular source. It would seem to fit our definition of an intelligent process, but does not appear to be the creation of any particular entity. — Foghorn
Asking to define the terms you are using is a very common question to ask on a philosophy forum. — Harry Hindu
Yeah, it would depend on the nature of the immorality, no? Polluting is different from murder or theft. How would you treat someone who scammed a family member out of thousands of dollars but then told you that he was doing it to put food in his table? Is that really the only way to survive? Doubtful. — BitconnectCarlos
That's what I would be concerned about. Many people will not be in a position to be able to just quit a job and get another one without serious ramifications for their lives/families/health. — MPhil
What personal sacrifices should someone be forced to make, when they know their resignation won't have an impact on anything — Judaka
To what extent do you think it's justified for a third party to blame employees as being responsible for the situation? — Judaka
Given that theoretically if all employees refused to participate in perpetuating an unfair or harmful operation, then the problem would be resolved. — Judaka
I'm asking a question, using your examples. You can clear up the confusion if you weren't trying so hard to be obtuse. — Harry Hindu
That experiences supervene on the physical is compatible with any theory of mind, including substance dualism (I'm not a substance dualist). To spell it out in terms of substance dualism, just to make the point, there might be a lawlike relationship between physical stuff and mental stuff, such that any change in the mental stuff corresponds to a change in the physical stuff, in a consistent, lawlike way. Substance dualism is wrong for other reasons, but it's consistent with the evidence that physical neural events correspond in a very regular manner with that subject's experiences. — bert1
No neurons, no wetware, no behaviour similar to human behaviour that would allow us to infer consciousness, no? So how may perspectives on the rock are there? Just one, presumably. It has no first person perspective, the only perspective that exists is the perspective of the conscious creature looking at it — bert1
The question now is, why does a neural function have two perspectives, and a rock only one? — bert1
In other words, in claiming an identity in order solve the hard problem (the mental just is a physical function) it becomes necessary to re-introduce a dualism in order to be able to talk about subjective experiences as distinct from neurons firing, namely, the distinction between two perspectives. — bert1
How can functional interactions of things with only one perspective result in something with two perspectives? — bert1
I contend that the natural assumption would be that whoever is using a thing is its owner (residents own homes, workers own businesses, etc), and so the distribution of ownership that one would infer just from looking at the world with fresh eyes would be very different from what the legal records in the real world say it is. — Pfhorrest
That raises the question of how the law got and stays so different from the “natural order” so to speak. I contend that that has mostly to do with, first and foremost, straight up violent theft in the history of ownership that gave some people more than others; and secondly, terms of contracts like rent and interest (but not limited exclusively to those) that are morality invalid and serve to reinforce and perpetuate those differences in wealth, and without which those differences would naturally dissolve back to the “natural order” that one would expect when looking at the world with fresh eyes. — Pfhorrest
In other words, your experiences and perspectives are part of "objective" reality. If not, then how can you talk about your experiences and perspectives like you can talk about faces and apples? — Harry Hindu
If you don't have "direct access" to "objective" reality then are you saying that you have indirect access to your own experiences? — Harry Hindu
Now it's probably entirely possible to develop institutions that can resolve these problems in an egalitarian and peaceful fashion. The problem is such solutions require experimentation before you get them right. — Echarmion
Meanwhile, an experienced hunter from a band with a bad harvest at risk of starvation leads a group of hunters to a neighboring band and murders their hunters, or at least a significant portion of them, in order to secure sufficient food for his band. — Echarmion
And because a tribal society has much more military power than individual bands, the first such society to develop might easily have become a model for others to follow. — Echarmion
I think it is fair to say though that if the focus of the society is on anything but egalitarianism then egalitarianism won't be achieved. — Judaka
But actually, I meant how we feel about narcissism could reveal our preferences. — Judaka
...You completely missed the point. — Harry Hindu
Does a brain exist how we see it, smell it, or taste it? — Harry Hindu
If you can't discern the difference between water and vodka visually, but can only do so by smell or taste, then is the world is as it appears visually, or as it smells or tastes? — Harry Hindu
But the evidence only appears a certain way depending on what sensory device you are using to observe the evidence. — Harry Hindu
I think that we are forgetting that any time we mention evidence, we are mentioning some conscious experience of some evidence, not evidence as it exists apart from our experience of it, or the way it appears to some sensory apparatus. — Harry Hindu
Anti-semitism in the Arab world did not only begin existing in 1948, there's a very long history there. — BitconnectCarlos
And Trump should be commended for saying that, because it's true. There's blood on every states hands. It's just that the bigger the state (generally) the more blood they spill... — Manuel
Newton tortured people??? — Wayfarer
That doesn’t mean, necessarily, that they could adopt any interpretation they like. — Wayfarer
The Buddha never interpreted or understood his realisation in theistic terms. — Wayfarer