To even write your response, you're drawing on your innate capacities of reason and speech, which you must have to mount an argument in the first place.
That's what it means. — Wayfarer
It seems an obvious, common-sense answer, but the point is that a dumb animal, for instance, might be likewise 'exposed' to a series of events but never form any idea of a causal relationship, unless in terms of stimulus and response. — Wayfarer
Recognition is not precognition. Most of the people who claim to have that are charlatans.it's a precondition for how we perceive and interact with the world. — Wayfarer
Okay, you've found another invisible threshold. I think the difference is of degree; you insist (along with many other humans loath to give up their god-given exceptionality) that it is of kind. I accept that.It is that abstractive and intellectual ability, easily taken-for-granted, that differentiates h. sapiens from other species. — Wayfarer
All this, I take as evidence that we do not know what "life" is. We seem to believe that there is something called "life", (and it's sort of odd that we name it as a thing, harkening back to "the soul"), but we really do not understand what it means to be alive. — Metaphysician Undercover
I would think that since having these categories is actually having a form of knowledge, then we cannot truthfully say "Kant agreed that all our knowledge begins with experience". There is a bit of inconsistency here, whereby it is necessary to either break knowledge into two types, a priori and a posteriori (such as innate and learned), or else we need to provide different principles for understanding the a priori as something other than knowledge. — Metaphysician Undercover
Aristotle offered a resolution by portraying this as two distinct layers of potentiality — Metaphysician Undercover
The mind’s a priori conceptual contribution to experience can be enumerated by a special set of concepts that make all other empirical concepts and judgments possible. These concepts cannot be experienced directly; they are only manifest as the form which particular judgments of objects take. Kant believes that formal logic has already revealed what the fundamental categories of thought are. The special set of concepts is Kant’s Table of Categories, which are taken mostly from Aristotle with a few revisions. — Kant, Metaphysics, Internet Encylopedia of Philosophy
Because you were born with the capacity to learn both, which animals are not, the cleverness of crows notwithstanding. — Wayfarer
The special set of concepts is Kant’s Table of Categories, which are taken mostly from Aristotle with a few revisions. — Kant, Metaphysics, Internet Encylopedia of Philosophy
Maybe in English you don't. In other languages we have no trouble using the word that comes out of Google translate when you write "life". — Lionino
when we say "life" we know exactly what each other mean. — Lionino
ince you'd translating from it in your head, and you don't seem to know. — Lionino
Are you saying that people do not use "life" in that way, in languages other than English? — Metaphysician Undercover
This seems to support my claim rather than yours. Since you name a multitude of types of desires, and the human being must prioritize one over the other in many situations, this seems to support what I said, that we can choose what we want. — Metaphysician Undercover
The objects of all your mentioned desires, "food, warmth, shelter, sex," are very general. — Metaphysician Undercover
The effect is not the general "desire for food", it is the desire to eat something. — Metaphysician Undercover
Oh, you are trying to make that kind of sophistical argument...if the desire is merely for "something" to eat how is that different from the general desire for food? — Janus
n any case the argument is not over whether our desires are general or specific, but over whether we are able to determine by fiat what we desire, and/or are able to determine by fiat whether we desire one thing more than another. — Janus
Your last paragraph is merely hand-waving. We are what we are and want what we want, and think what we think, and we cannot change any of that simply by fiat. Of course, people do change, but they only do so insofar as they have the capacity for change, and they cannot simply conjure up such a capacity if they don't already possess it. — Janus
For example, if you are addicted to tobacco, you won't be able to give it up unless you care about something else that contra-indicates smoking more than you care about smoking. You will either be able to do that, or you will not—we do not create ourselves from scratch. — Janus
I was clarifying what is meant by "hunger". And, rather than being sophistical, I was exposing your sophistry. When we say that someone has "the desire to eat", we recognize the generality of the supposed "object" by showing that what is actually desired is a particular type of activity, "to eat". — Metaphysician Undercover
What puts the final nail in the coffin of determinism is the reality of the decision not to choose. — Metaphysician Undercover
Therefore, if to give up smoking, it is required that one cares about something else more than the person cares about smoking, this "something else" must necessarily be "not-smoking". — Metaphysician Undercover
The point is that you cannot simply decide by fiat what will be more important to you. — Janus
If you accept that smoking is detrimental to your health, and you care more about maintaining good health than you do about gratifying your desire to smoke then you will give it up. if you care more about gratifying the urge to smoke you won't. The point is that you cannot simply decide by fiat what will be more important to you. — Janus
To break an addiction is not a matter of deciding that there is something you care about more than the addiction. — Metaphysician Undercover
In the end, the principle that got me off it was Buddhist - I realised that cravings are transient. — Wayfarer
you cared more about Buddhism and its ideas than you did about smoking. — Janus
To break an addiction is not a matter of deciding that there is something you care about more than the addiction. — Metaphysician Undercover
You simply come to care about something more than the addiction, and are thus able to let it go, or you do not come to care about something more than the addiction and are thus unable to let it go. — Janus
I cared more about living. On previous occasions, when I concentrated on "not-smoking", I was still thinking all the time about the cigarette I was "not-smoking"; it was still the focal point. Once you move your focus to the better goal - e.g. survival - you don't think quite so much about the thing you're giving up and that saves a lot of energy.he issue here is the possibility of failure, which is very strong with addictions. If a person proceeds toward quitting by caring about something, or someone, more than smoking, then the smoker depends on this other thing, or other person, to support one's own will power, as a sort of crutch — Metaphysician Undercover
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