:waves:

Hi. For some reason I used my real name. Surprisingly, the universe didn't implode. I live in Leicester, a small city in the UK midlands. I’m 71, semi-retired and half-educated (six GCE O levels, left A levels halfway through). I’ve so far lived a somewhat drifting life. I’m enrolled in the University of Life, of course, but keep missing the lectures.

I’ve got a small chip on my shoulder about not getting a (real) university education. In an adjacent parallel universe, I’m a semi-retired academic. In the next one, I’m a successful freelance journalist. In another one, I’m a homeless alcoholic junkie. And so it goes.

Not that I’d want to categorise myself, but (in this universe) I’m a cisgender, heterosexual, neurotypical, ex-omnivore semi-lapsed-vegan organic-buying vegetarian, left-liberal-Green, antireligious agnostic lapsed Christian with pantheistic, panpsychist and antitheistic tendencies.

On an even more personal note – why not? – I’m in respite from depression. Having tried most available treatments, with varying success, I now occasionally self-medicate with cannabis. I’m currently hanging on to my precious marriage. (Counselling has – kind of – helped.)

Hey, welcome along. :clap:

I feel the vibe.

Feel it!

Thanks. Love your work!

I live in Leicester, a small city in the UK midlands. — Chris Hughes

Welcome. These are good years to be a football fan in Leicester :smile:

I'm a philosopher from Scotland, Hume 2.0 haha just kidding.

I come here to have deep discussions about what I feel are the best questions I come up with to help humanity grow. Or at least that is my goal. Will always be debatable whether or not they are good questions for the purpose.

My dream is to just be seen as someone who tried their hardest to fight for a better future by those who will call us history.

My more immediate goal is to try and convince as many people here to work on collections of books and essays to publish together as a community in partnership with public libraries on as large a scale as is possible with who is represented here. :)

The reason for public partnership with libraries is to make sure they are properly funded and potentially open up other avenues of investment for them; such as teaching degrees and other helpful certifications for librarians and offering up little to no cost growth based personal education to the public through online courses and in house at a public library.

So seriously everyone; if you write a book or an essay and it makes money, donate some or all (depending on if you're writing for a living or for other reasons) of it to your public library and give them a few free copies!

football fan in Leicester

Yes - now we're safe in the Premiership I can go down the road to watch my favourite team, Man U. Not that I ever have :gasp:

Howdy, folks. I'm an old guy with opinions, some philosophical, all irrefutable.

I don't know how much I'll be contributing to the forum, as I try to confine myself to topics within my philosophical wheelhouse, by which I imply no expertise whatsoever. But between you and me, I'm pretty much an authority on every topic, so expect reams of wit and wisdom promptly.

Well, that was tiring. That's about as much thought as I'll probably put into any post, so bask in the quality that awaits you, folks. Thanks for having me.

Welcome!

Nice to hear from you again fiveredapples.

Greetings.

I've been looking for a suitable forum to share some of my own ideas on consciousness.
I've been thinking about it on and off since 2014 and developed a fairly detailed theory. But I approach it much more from an engineering perspective than the philosophical one, so I'm not totally sure whether this is going to be the right place.

I still haven't figured out the difference between a materialist and a physicalist, or if there is a difference. And I'm not sure about identity theorists, functionalists, and behaviourists, and whether there is some other 'ist that I could relate better to. But my philosophy probably falls somewhere in the space of a skeptic physicalist.

I don't address people I just start speaking. I'm seeking a change in thought process of priority. The universe is limited and I believe if there's anything to be done we must start now because they universe won't force us to fix it. I seek perfection & permanence. True purpose.

@TheLeviathanKing
Welcome to The Philosophy Forum.
Enjoy your stay :flower:

True purpose. — TheLeviathanKing

You might embrace:

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' - that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know--John Keats

Welcome!!

But my philosophy probably falls somewhere in the space of a skeptic physicalist. — Malcolm Lett

Careful of that Phi function. It's a doozy to compute! Welcome. :cool:

Hiya jgill! Welcome to The Philosophy Forum!
Enjoy the ride! :halo:

I still haven't figured out the difference between a materialist and a physicalist, or if there is a difference. And I'm not sure about identity theorists, functionalists, and behaviourists — Malcolm Lett

Sometimes materialist and physicalist mean the same thing. When they differ, it’s either just to explicitly expand the set of things believed in to physical stuff besides matter (like other forms of energy, spacetime, quantum fields, strings and branes, etc), or to affirm that general kind of stuff while denying the existence of “material substances” as in something above and beyond the empirically observable properties of things, some kind of transcendental stuff that those properties inhere in.

Behaviorists think that there is nothing more to mind than behavior; to be in a mental state just is to behave some way. Functionalists are very similar, except that they take mind to be a function, a map from input to output, where the output is behavior, and input is sense experience; to be in a mental state is more like to be disposed to behave a certain way in response to certain experiences. Both of these differ from any kind of identity theory because they imply multiple realizability: anything that does the same behavior or function is in the same mental state, no matter what kind of underlying stuff is instantiating that behavior or functionality (brains, circuits, vacuum tubes, etc), whereas identity theories say that a mental state is (either a type or a token of) a brain state specifically.

Behaviorists think that there is nothing more to mind than behavior; to be in a mental state just is to behave some way. — Pfhorrest

I'd argue a behaviorist admits there is a mind separate from behavior, but its inner workings are unknowable. The mind is not just behavior, but the behavior is the only thing that you can measure. In order to advance psychology into a scientific discipline, as opposed to the speculative theories of Freud, Skinner limited the relevant data to that which could objectively be observed and measured. So, I don't think you can say that behaviorism states that the mind is behavior, but it's more that the mind is a black box with inner workings that cannot be known, therefore making only the behavior relevant for analysis.

Hello there. I'm not well versed in the study of philosophy, but I was looking for a forum that satisfies my thirst for intellectual discussion, and it seems I've come to the right place.

I'm only a lurker now, but that will hopefully change in the near future.

Welcome to the forum @Ecliptic

What then is the difference between behaviorism and functionalism? Since functionalism also looks only at behavior for data.

Maybe this conversation should be split into another thread so we don’t crowd this introduction thread.

Good evening!

I'm currently studying history and mathematics to complete my general diploma. Have been working for some time now towards becoming eligible for admission into the university here where I live. I'll be applying for philosophical studies once I'm able to, as I'm interested in the meaning of learning, in the nature of thought, and in the search for reality. Although, to my surprise, I've found a great deal of joy in studying history and mathematics as well. Not always due to the content but, rather, to the act of studying and finding out. Other than that I'm generally interested in most things - sometimes to such a degree that I can be amazed by seemingly simple things, like a pen on the table, a rock down by the shoreline, or the noise of a stone under the tire of my car. Other times, nothing at all.

Any way, looking forward to explore the forum some more. :)

Cheers!

Welcome to the forum Lutz :smile:

the search for reality — Lutz

Try and remember where you last saw it.

Try and remember where you last saw it. — jamalrob

:grin:

Try and remember where you last saw it. — jamalrob

Not at a Trump presser for sure.

Hello everybody:)

Welcome!

Hello. Where have you been all our lives?