"even if you arranged some non-living matter into the exact form and function of a real human being, such that it walked around and talked and lived life like a real human, and even reported on mental states it supposedly had, might there still be something missing that's not accounted for just by the functionality?" is "basically no". — Pfhorrest
But "experience" in this sense is not thought, belief, or even feeling, perception, or sensation. It's whatever the supposed difference between a real human being and a fully functional replica of a human being who is "not actually conscious" (a philosophical zombie) is supposed to be. — Pfhorrest
"Your 'A' is not similar enough to the ideal mental form for 'A', try again."
"Your 'A' is not similar enough to all the other 'As', try again."
What's wrong with the second teaching method? What does it fail to achieve by way of learning how to write? — Isaac
It is less elegant..., — Olivier5
...heavier conceptually.... — Olivier5
...more complex to teach. — Olivier5
They are variations on a theme, derivated from the ideal A by adding little bars at the bottom (sheriffs) or thickened strokes (bold) or what not. — Olivier5
Just teach them the alphabet; it's easier. — Olivier5
Sound waves are physical for sure. But what about the probability wave? Are those waves physical? — Wayfarer
No, I’m arguing for substance dualism — Wayfarer
Physicalism believes that mind is a result of matter, the product of the material brain, whereas dualism believes that mind is the cause as much as the result. — Wayfarer
We’re not entirely consistent it seems to me when it comes to what we call physical. — khaled
You keep insisting that the mental, is not a substance, so you’re not a substance dualist. — khaled
Not 'entirely'? It's a moving target, it changes all the time. — Wayfarer
mind is a substance in the philosophical sense, that is, it has properties (such as knowing) — Wayfarer
There are a whole range of other realities whose reality we can…affirm: interest rates, mortgages, contracts, vows, national constitutions, penal codes and so on. Where do interest rates "exist"? Not in banks, or financial institutions. Are they real when we cannot touch them or see them? We all spend so much time worrying about them - are we worrying about nothing? In fact, I'm sure we all worry much more about interest rates than about the existence or non-existence of the Higgs boson! Similarly, a contract is not just the piece of paper, but the meaning the paper embodies; likewise a national constitution or a penal code. — Neil Ormerod
Are they physical? I’d say, of course they’re not, they’re principles or observed regularities, discovered by the application of mathematical reason to phenomena. — Wayfarer
It's about concepts and their usefulness, not about their existence. — Olivier5
If all you're saying is that it's useful to imagine a single ideal 'A' then...meh. Some people do, some don't. — Isaac
What's absolutely a given is that it's neither necessary, nor foundational and so there's no cause at all to assume some second substance for it to be constituted of. — Isaac
Everybody does, in actual fact, even those unaware that they do. — Olivier5
Aristotle, in De Anima, argued that thinking in general (which includes knowledge as one kind of thinking) cannot be a property of a body; it cannot, as he put it, 'be blended with a body'. This is because in thinking, the intelligible object or form is present in the intellect, and thinking itself is the identification of the intellect with this intelligible. Among other things, this means that you could not think if materialism is true… . Thinking is not something that is, in principle, like sensing or perceiving; this is because thinking is a universalising activity. This is what this means: when you think, you see - mentally see - a form which could not, in principle, be identical with a particular - including a particular neurological element, a circuit, or a state of a circuit, or a synapse, and so on. This is so because the object of thinking is universal, or the mind is operating universally.
….the fact that in thinking, your mind is identical with the form that it thinks, means (for Aristotle and for all Platonists) that since the form 'thought' is detached from matter, 'mind' is immaterial too. — Lloyd Gerson, Platonism vs Naturalism
They say things like: "is this an A or not?" — Olivier5
Which, as I've just explained, does not require an ideal mental construct. It's just a façon de parler for "is this sufficiently like all the other 'A's". — Isaac
"All the other As" means the same thing as "the set of all As" which means the same thing as "the concept of the (singular) letter A". — Olivier5
Everybody does, in actual fact, even those unaware that they do. The human mind thinks in universals. — Olivier5
You were talking of ALL the As, which a concept. — Olivier5
Categories generally are idiosyncratic. — Kenosha Kid
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