Chalmers doesn't endorse any particular theory of consciousness.

You're right. I was just taking the "lean toward" as being less than committed.

Setting the filters to all responses and all regions the percentage of respondents who endorsed realism exclusively was 76.37, hence only 1.5% endorsed realism and some other option. — Banno

Are you sure you're reading that correctly? Some chose "accept or lean toward" exclusively, some chose it inclusive of something else.

But I understand these are merely short quotations, though there seem to be quite a few along these lines. They strike me as a bit gloomy. But I don't mean to characterize all of his work. — Ciceronianus

Sure. Beware of people who are all clowns and balloons. There's likely something hiding in the shadows there.

And as I pointed out above, of greater significance is the fifty percent who would not commit to one of skepticism, idealism or realism. — Banno

In the article the majority voted for "accept or lean toward ". Lack of commitment is perfectly acceptable in a good philosopher.

Declaring the failure of reductionism seems premature. — Fooloso4

Could be. I think the prevailing view in philosophy of mind is non-reductive physicalism due to multiple realizability (there's no way to match up x-mental state to y-physical state).

know little about that VERY Melancholy Dane, Kierkegaard, but he seems more a theologian or commentator/apologist for religion than a philosopher. — Ciceronianus

He wasn't melancholy. He had a fearsome, biting wit, and his works are energized.

His most famous works are about identity.

:up:

I thought it was really cool of you to share it.

I just am not certain what part is completely external and what isn't. Quite hard to tease apart. — Manuel

:up:

It's fun to give the psyche it's own location, like it's in another dimension or something, but that dividing line isn't present in the content of experience.

Well, as portrayed by Aristophanes — Ciceronianus

He's hilarious. It's weird thinking of people being that funny so long ago.

before we became devotees of angst. — Ciceronianus

I see you're a big fan of Euripides. Because of all the angst in his plays. I'm being sarcastic. But in a friendly way.

In old-fashioned psychological terms, one needs to establish an unproblematically robust ego first, before considering a philosophy that negates or transcends it. — unenlightened

I can see that, and I agree. I've always admired people who have unproblematically robust egos. I'm not on a journey to get one of those, though. There's just no way to get there.

The brutal coldness of behaviorism and eliminativism is basically the same thing as the death of God. Waking up to a pile of myths in a world of floods and holocausts.

Remember that book that said the ego is the part of you that thinks you're all alone? For humanity, the death of god is the first step into the bright light of the human Ego. In eliminativism, the light goes out.

It occurs to me that a person with a strong ego may not be aware of the cold darkness because they're walking around with a hat with a bright spot light on it, illuminating the world with Nietzsche's anathema: hope. Thus the Marxism.

I guess that means you're going to ban me. All I can say is that I really didn't understand why.

Likely. I will generally interpret someone telling me my perspective is "cold and brutal", without invitation or further comment, negatively. Perhaps if you used more words, I would have understood you. — fdrake

I've been practicing that lately. I find myself saying the same thing over and over in different ways, hoping that the meaning will get through somehow.

Have you said something about yourself and I missed it? — unenlightened

I didn't. I had a dreamlike childhood during which I saw the sights and sounds around me as a kind of veil with something more real behind it.

I think this was probably a childish translation of the beliefs of the Jehovah's Witnesses I grew up around. They rejected this world and expected it to all be replaced by a perfect world. To me, my only access to the real world was down in the woods playing in the creek. Unfortunately, I couldn't stay there and I became suicidal in my teens.

It's like a gorge opened up between the real me and the me who deals with the world of people and the dramas they create. For me, philosophy is part of my quest to find the bottom.

Just out of curiosity - is this some kind of accusation that I'm "cold and uncaring" because I "don't believe in minds" and "don't care how individuals are treated"? — fdrake

Not at all. It was an invitation to talk about the psychological dimensions of eliminativism. The way you reacted struck me as defensive, as if you're emotionally unstable. Or maybe we don't understand one another at all.

don't think so. But that's off topic. So I'll leave it. — fdrake

Eliminative materialism is obviously a kind of nihilism. It's psychologically precarious. That appears to me to be on topic, but I agree we should leave it. :grimace:

Why does it sound that way to you? — fdrake

Eliminative materialism and methodological behaviorism? It's a kind of nihilism, isn't it?

Nah — fdrake

It does sound that way to me. I take it you don't experience it that way.

That all sounds kind of cold and brutal.

Funny thing is: it doesn't make sense to call a world "external" unless you think there's an "internal" somewhere. :razz: :razz: :razz:

So a woman is raped in a nation where the positive law permits it because she is the possession of the man who has committed this act.

Was this "act" a violation? If it was a violation, what was it a violation of? — Hanover

The people in that nation might be appalled that Americans let women with children languish in poverty, working multiple jobs trying to make ends meet until they end up in the emergency room with pneumonia, panicking because they can't stay home in bed. Is this neglect a violation?

The question ends up depending on what sort of foundation you put under your morality. How do you look at that?

That is an irrelevant example.
Albert's thought experiments ARE NOT claims about facts of reality....the keyword is "thought experiments"
His work was not on QM and the Nobel awarded model of Quantum fluctuations came much later.
Absolute void is NOT possible (according to our current data) in our universe. Quantum foam is everywhere. — Nickolasgaspar

What you're doing is using scientific theory to lay out what we mean by words like "existence." Wouldn't it be better to just look to how we actually use the words? Einstein's thought experiment depends on it being at least logically possible for a person (or one dimensional point if that helps) to exist in a void.

Logical and metaphysical possibility often informs the way we use words. This means that as long as there is no logical contradiction in the idea of a void, it's going to make sense to talk about it. You know what I mean by "void" whether you agree that there is such a thing or not.

The fact that we can meaningfully talk about a thing existing in a void (in spite of believing that there is no such thing) means that "existence" means more than an interaction between items. See what I mean?

(absolute)void has not been proven possible within our universe. (Quantum Fluctuations). So we constantly observe interactions in every scale of the universe. — Nickolasgaspar

You, alone in the void. That's the beginning of one of Einstein's thought experiments. Did he make a mistake?

This is what defines existence....interactions between elements and entities — Nickolasgaspar

How does that work if you're in a void?

first heard about it in a great book by Carolyn Merchant "Autonomous Nature - Problems of Prediction and Control from Ancient Times to the Scientific Revolution".
Theories like "Chaos Theory", Scientific Emergence, Quantum Biology, Mechanics, Chemistry and many methodologies that use statistical probabilities are part of Complexity Science. — Nickolasgaspar

That sounds fascinating. Thanks!

I expect it will be two or three more Presidential elections before "Republican primary voters" throw up a nominee – man or woman – who will have an even chance to win enough of Independents and former-GOP voters to get back into the WH. — 180 Proof

I think it just depends on who looks the best on tv. The reason I'm keeping my eye on Haley is that she managed to be elected governor of SC, but at the same time doesn't show up as a complete sycophant or psycho.

I'll admit that it's also because DeSantis makes my stomach turn, he's such a slug, and Biden definitely looks weak.

Makes sense.

The first female president will be a Republican. People can't handle liberal and female at the same time. Think Margaret Thatcher.

We could get chat-gpt to tell us what he said.

:up:

I could be wrong (happens on a regular basis) but I don't see any scenario in which Haley can win in the primaries. — EricH

Famous last words, though. If you're thinking that just because of racism, I think you might be mistaken. I don't think the average Republican is racist.

One cannot be through with Marx until human emancipation is achieved. — Jamal

I guess my identity thread is a long way off then.

:up:

Thus, if I'm to be taken as saying anything at all about ontology, I'm saying that the historical and conventional ontological frameworks are fatally flawed in that they are inherently inadequate as a result of being incapable of taking meaningful experience into account. — creativesoul

You're probably right.

but in smaller scales we prefer other tools like Complexity Science and Emergence. — Nickolasgaspar

I'm not familiar with complexity science. Do you know of a good resource?

The second meaning of the term is more of a failed philosophical attempt to oversimplify the above "success story of science" but that has nothing to do with the goals of science or the emergent characteristics found in Nature. — Nickolasgaspar

One of the things I quickly noticed about this topic is that a person would really need to be a scientist to make any pronouncements, and scientists are usually busy doing other things.

think identity is a rich concept. I'm not following how decision making marks off the natural from the supernatural. — Moliere

We know the amoeba made a decision because it's not just flowing along with the current. That's what volition is: going against wind, so to speak. Id like to do a thread on identity one day. Maybe after you're through with Marx

So it looks as if we expect knowledge to be proof against changes in context. That's a tall order. — Ludwig V

It's the measurement problem. Looking at it changes it.

Suppose I asked Al whether he is aware that there is a non-zero probability that his car will be hit by a falling meteorite. Do you think he would change his mind then? — Ludwig V

If it was me, I'd say that I'm VERY aware of it and glare at you knowingly. I don't know what Al would do.

But Ann Coulter is an idiot. I think Haley will appeal to swing voters because she seems to have a moral center. DeSantis comes across as a slug after what he did with shipping immigrants all over the place.

MAGAs won't give her the nomination. Most GOP donors don't back her candidacy. — 180 Proof

Oh. I didn't realize that. Who are they backing?

Really? Why do you say that?