which had thousands of years culture behind it at the same time that the basis for western culture was in its infancy — isomorph

People are often under the impression that China is this super old civilisation like Egypt and Babylon but in fact it is barely younger than Greece.

Instead of attacking the perpetrators of this anti-Trump information (and risking committing a genetic fallacy), why don't you point out some disinformation they've put forth — Relativist

Interesting how it is "attack the argument not the source" when it comes to your side but not when Alex Jones or Breitbart speak.

He describes all the powers of living beings as potentials, capacities, the powers of self-nutrition, self-movement, sensation, and intellection. — Metaphysician Undercover

Well, you could make an essentialist argument that understanding is exactly the discontinuity between humans and other animals, even if understanding itself is a power among others like movement etc. One can find many features that is shared by all (not deficient) humans and absent in other animals and claim that as the discontinuity, no matter whether the feature chosen is important.

I quite like Aristotle though. I'm just pointing out that there are many lines that can drawn between us and animals.

there is a distinct discontinuity between living and inanimate — Metaphysician Undercover

Is there? What do you make of viruses? Specially something like a mimivirus.

Hydropower may be renewable and clean, but it destroys the surrounding ecosystem. A small price to pay perhaps, but there is that.

Narcissistic, borderline psychopathic parents at it again.

Fecundating? Or fertilizing? — hypericin

Come on now.

Just finished the Korean zombie series called Happiness. It is dumb. I loved it.

I like to think that there are others reading but not commenting. — Fooloso4

I think that too. In this case however, anyone who has been introduced to philosophy can tell the article is silly, exposition was never needed.

Because the dispute is exactly not grammatical, it is epistemological.

Because cows are not mental phenomenons unless referring to the perception of a cow.
Colours and pain are not outside objects, they only exist inside our head and designate also an experience, it is a mental phenomenon.

Then how is it merely grammatical? You said: — Luke

The problem is that for each of your examples, the second sentence is wrong, not the "I see" part.

Each of these is either wrong or ambiguous.

Which is why arguing over the grammar of "I see X" doesn't address the philosophical substance of naive or indirect realism — Michael

Babies only properly learn object permanence when they approach their first birthday. Some people struggle with hypotheticals and simply retort "But I do have X" or "But Y didn't happen" when they are posed one. Likewise, I suppose some peoples' manner of thinking is dominated by language and they ignore possible states of affairs that are distinct from what is implied by the proper semantics of a given phrase.

The hard demarcation line doesn't show up until the after the Neolithic Revolution, with the advent of sophisticated urban societies. If a deliberate psychological threshold was set, I would date it to about 6,000 BC. — Vera Mont

The Neolithic Revolution, also called the Agricultural Revolution, marked the transition in human history from small, nomadic bands of hunter-gatherers to larger, agricultural settlements and early civilization. The Neolithic Revolution started around 10,000 B.C. — https://www.history.com/topics/pre-history/neolithic-revolution

For decades, researchers have regarded roughly 6,000-year-old Mesopotamian sites, in what’s now Iraq, Iran and Syria, as the world’s first cities. Those metropolises arose after agriculture made it possible to feed large numbers of people in year-round settlements. — https://www.sciencenews.org/article/ancient-urban-megasites-may-reshape-history-first-cities

:victory:

I am a pragmatist - no point wasting time on untestable ideas. — Truth Seeker

That would make you an empiricist, not a pragmatist.

So you just take things as they seem to you?

I am a bad person :blush: :yum:

Even in the unlikely event that my body and the universe are simulated, I still have two eyes — Truth Seeker

And what about the event that you are an immaterial soul that is experiencing the illusion of being in physical body on a physical planet in a physical universe?

It doesn't surprise me.

You know that proving X means disproving not-X, yes?

What's the dubious definition of rationality to do with experience? — Vera Mont

Nothing, that's why it is a sidenote.

If I have a comment with lots of likes on some platform, sometimes I edit it to include purposefully incorrect information. Am I part of the industry? If so, should I have been receiving a salary all this time?

As a sidenote, in my basic education, which wasn't too long ago compared to some other folks here, there was a clear drawn distinction between rational animals, whose only example is humans, and irrational animals. Of course the distinction may be challenged, but it is useful nonetheless, no one would trust their pet rabbit to do taxes for them.

You said you can prove these things. "It appears" is not what most people would accept in a proof.

Well, you provided not evidence for your claim. — Bylaw

What claim?

But the evidence I found was through https://www.amazon.com/When-Elephants-Weep-Emotional-Animals/dp/0385314280 and his references/sources — Bylaw

You could just quote it. I am not going to download and read the book. But the Amazon summary does say:

Not since Darwin's The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals has a book so thoroughly and effectively explored the full range of emotions that exist throughout the animal kingdom.

True.

The Dog, various expressive movements of—Cats—Horses—Ruminants—Monkeys, their expression of joy and affection—Of pain—Anger—Astonishment and terror. — The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals, Chapter 5

They also often give their puppies, after a short absence, a few cursory licks, apparently from affection. Thus the habit will have become associated with the emotion of love — The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals, Chapter 5

The feeling of affection of a dog towards his master is combined with a strong sense of submission, which is akin to fear. — The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals, Chapter 5

Darwin wasn't too long ago, and I did say in my original comment "even centuries ago".

This abstract gives a hint.
https://rsawa.research.ucla.edu/arc/subject-experience-animals/ — Bylaw

It does.
"The Romantic tradition of the 19th century attributed elaborate anthropomorphic thoughts, feelings and intentions to animals."
"Behaviorists of the early 20th century side stepped the issue: because psychological states were private, they could not be characterized objectively, even in humans."

If I ask various AI online they agree that it was taboo to assert that animals had subjective experience before the 60s and 70s and mention things like this — Bylaw

You see, they actually agree that it was not taboo :roll:

Besides all that, your claim that "It was actually the default [view] in natural science up into the early 70s." requires extraordinary evidence, specially because "natural science into the 70s" specifies almost an unbounded territory, whose map I don't think you have. I don't doubt that your professor may have told you that the literature avoided claiming animals have consciousness, the person who wrote the UCLA article seems to agree, but that is your professor reporting his experience with the literature he had access to. A far cry from "natural science into the 70s".

I have two eyes. — Truth Seeker

This implies you have a material body and are under no illusion of being otherwise.

7. The Earth orbits the Sun.
8. The Moon orbits the Earth. — Truth Seeker

These imply there is a material world.

So how is "I exist as an immaterial soul that is experiencing the illusion of being in physical body on a physical planet in a physical universe" a hypothetical?

Do you have any?

Haven't you read my other posts? — Truth Seeker

I haven't.

When you prove P, you are disproving not-P.

Just because a hypothesis can't be tested it does not mean it is true or false.

So the hypothesis isn't false.

You say you can prove a trillion things. I imagine those things include being here, being made of matter, typing this post. When you say you can prove these things, you are also saying you are disproving the contrary. You are disproving that you "exist as an immaterial soul that is experiencing the illusion of being in physical body on a physical planet in a physical universe". So it is not longer a hypothetical, because for you, it is false.

What if I exist as an immaterial soul that is experiencing the illusion of being in physical body on a physical planet in a physical universe? — Truth Seeker

I thought that was one of the trillions of things you could disprove?

You could say scientists were allowed to be behaviorists and talk perhaps about drives, but not to assume animals were experiencers. — Bylaw

Until evidence is provided, I will stay unconvinced.

and it is hard to say that such things are any less subjective than food — jasonm

That is where people who believe in the objective reality of morals come in.

every now and then certain people 'serve up' ethical behaviour that is 'rancid.' — jasonm

The issue is that food does not work as an analogy to morals. In ethics, a course of action is judged based on at least its consequences and the consequences of doing otherwise, not whether our gastric apparatus is equipped to digest wood or rotten fish. It seems no matter how rancid an action might be, we can always summon something more-rancid to happen if we don't take the action, which is when rancid becomes acceptable.

The existence of bodies, aka res extensa, is far from certain. — Lionino

But how do I know that He has not brought it to pass that there is no earth, no heaven, no extended body, no magnitude, no place[...] — Second Meditation

It's more a noetic awareness of the thing. It might be cultivated and informed by propositional knowledge, but it's opposite is ignorance or lack of awareness of a term, not falsehood as in propositional thought. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Interesting. This seems to be where the knowledge of my own existence falls into.

This is also why I think we can get endless milage out of some of the more poetic, vague philosophers. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I wouldn't say being vague is ever a good thing in philosophy, I would say it is terrible indeed. Though the other side, limiting philosophy to language and philosophising by analysing propositions and syllogisms is also far from ideal, even if useful sometimes.

The goal of understanding then is a sort of contemplative grasp that can then be used in the dividing and combining of discursive thought — Count Timothy von Icarus

Instigating. There seems to be a useful anatomy of intellect entrenched in this idea.

I acquiesce with Wittgenstein's hinges; that men exist is not what I would call one.

You say we don't need grounds to claim there are men, but then that we need grounds to doubt there are men. This seems to assume a naïve realist view of many things.

I think we went through that colonisation thing before, including the Church's role in fighting slavery. But all my ancestors come from the Europes, so you may ask an indian instead.

If I do understand it, it doesn't seem to account for hallucinations, and if it does, I am not sure how "real" in

Perceptions are that which affords the immediate consciousness of the real — Mww

is valid.

I think it is a rhetorical strategy. After all, if he doubted that there are men in the world why bother writing and publishing? — Fooloso4

That is when we would hear the redundant neologism "performative contradiction". I think it is because "doubt" here has two meanings.
A: I doubt he actually said those things.
B: I doubt whether I chose the right team.
One is a denial, the other is insuficient grounds. That {I have insufficient grounds to claim there are men in the same fashion as I claim I can imagine balls of different colours} is different from committing to the denial of an idea (which by itself requires grounding), the denial through which we would adopt different attitudes than we would if we committed to the affirmative idea. When there are two possible courses of action that result each from committing to one idea (opposite to the other), the commitment must be made to one of them, regardless of whether I doubt both.
Thus, the admission of possibility of mistake (B) is different from the commitment to a denial (A). But when acting, one must commit. I remember some theory of belief where beliefs are defined in fact by our behaviour, in which case entertaining skepticism goes out of the window — but I don't subscribe to that theory.

I especially like when they excoriate the American natives' practice of human sacrifice — Vera Mont

I am not aware of any American natives doing human sacrifices today. I went to Argentina just last year and people's bodily autonomy seemed to be respected overall. But I heard it happens sometimes in Haiti, so they may have a point.

If God wills that one of his creatures commit a sin, then that creature must do so — Vera Mont

Some theists will object that it is impossible, as sin is that which is against god's will.

I don't think he needed to be convinced that there was an outside world because he never really doubted it. — Fooloso4

In The World and The Man, evidently not, but if he did not doubt the world in metaphysics, he wouldn't feel the need to put arguments for it in the Meditations.