We know how to measure this, and it's relatively easy to do so" isn't actually a criterion for something being physicall. — Terrapin Station
You know that empirical claims are not provable, right? (Assuming that you're using "proof" in a more strict sense of that term.) — Terrapin Station
Which is one of Berkeley's crux points. You have no more proof for materialism than for immaterialism. — Jamesk
Because it's not much different to saying something like, say, "The feeling of anger is an emotion". You do see the problem, right? — S
We already know that a feeling is an emotion. — S
And, what's worse, it misses the point, namely that the aim of the game is to score a goal without cheating, so to speak. If you start by speaking about a notion, then that's cheating, because it's setting yourself up so that you can't possibly lose. But as a result of your cheating, your attempt can be rightly dismissed. — S
My reply to this will be much the same as my reply to Wayfarer. Masterful prose? Perhaps. A very clever piece of writing? May well be. But are the key arguments plausible? No. What's more important? Are you a truth seeker or something akin to an admirer of exotic artifacts? — S
Thank You!!I'm open to this. I think it's fair, however, to question whether it makes sense to talk about a primary substance. Maybe it does. The mind (or matter in a mind-like mode) seems to aim at unifying experience this way. Let's grant your point. Then all the apparently plurality (all the different kinds of things) would seem merely to be renamed as 'arrangements' or 'modes' of a primary substance. So there is 'really' just one kind of thing. But it's the nature of this primary thing to express itself not only in different modes that ask for useful and illuminating categorization but also this categorization itself.
The primary substance has to be the kind of thing that can mistake itself as a plurality. Moreover the primary substance has to be able to exist in the form of the question too. The primary substance unveils itself as primary substance, within time, by having a conversation with itself. So it also has a memory. It is (or one of its arrangements is) a speaking, thinking mode of primary substance (tempting us to call it a subject all over again.) It is also the world in which these subjects converse. Even if 'mind' and 'matter' are 'false' categorizations in some sense, they are inescapable at least as the ladder with which primary substance learns to grasp itself as one and homogeneous. [All this is just following out the implications of there being a primary substance and us becoming aware of it and how it happened.] — sign
This just explains the initial responses you had to my questions. It's nice to see that you eventually came around to seeing and agreeing with what I've said all along.<Turns down the poetry knob> — Terrapin Station
This just explains the initial responses you had to my questions. It's nice to see that you eventually came around to seeing and agreeing with what I've said all along. — Harry Hindu
Jamesk? What is the difference between "mind" and "matter"? — Harry Hindu
How do we get to the point of saying that matter is an idea? — Terrapin Station
You know, so phenomenally, there's a tree say (not as a tree--that is, the concept, etc.--but "that thing"--I have to call it something to type this), and then how do we go from that to saying that the phenomenal tree is an idea? — Terrapin Station
I'm not saying that the tree is an idea, I'm saying that matter is an idea. You sense the tree as a tree, you do not sense it as matter. — Metaphysician Undercover
Unless you're saying something about the calling per se, that just restates that you think there's a difference between trees and matter. It doesn't specify what the difference is. — Terrapin Station
If trees are matter, then you sense matter all the time, right? (Well, assuming you often encounter trees.) — Terrapin Station
The problems with that argument should be pretty obvious to you. — Terrapin Station
Trees are not matter though, they are trees. You violate the law of identity if you say trees are matter. — Metaphysician Undercover
Do we violate the law of identity when we say that the song "Kashmir" is music? — Terrapin Station
Trees are not matter though, they are trees. You violate the law of identity if you say trees are matter. — Metaphysician Undercover
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