perhaps an unidentified infectious disease? — TimeLine

Right, the harmful effects of something contagious and invisible to the naked eye was identified long before knowledge of the existence of germs and viruses had been established.

It occurs to me we often derive or hypothesize that things exist from identifying what they are. Do we ever identify or hypothesize that something exists regardless of what?

Some would call it a futile endeavor because the question is unanswerable. — TheMadFool

There is a decisive answer to the question whether we're brains in a vat, recall. We're not brains in a vat, because if we were, then not only would our lived world be a simulation, the words 'vat' and 'brain' would not refer to real brains and vats either. Likewise, we don't live in a simulation.

The argument is that if there are more simulated worlds than there are non-simulated worlds then you're more likely to be in a simulated world than a non-simulated world. — Michael

Looks like it contains fallacies of ambiguity, such as two different senses of 'world' used in one sense: worlds you could be in. Or different senses of 'to be': as in to be in a world, or to be represented in a world etc..

I didn't say that.

I think the idea is that there is one universe and it is the inhabitants of the future that are simulating the past, and they are doing it an enormous number of times. Hence we are far more likely to be simulated than real. — tom

What a dizzying idea, but an enormous number of simulations won't increase the likelihood of other things being simulations. Even in a universe replete with simulations each and every simulation must be composed of parts which are constituitive for the possibility, but insufficient separately. The number of parts is always greater than the number of simulations.

But, if you add in the infinite number of other universes, and the infinite number of causally disconnected regions in our own infinite universe, then the fact that we are simulations is inevitable. — tom

How would an exercise in counting infinities be a reason to believe that reality is a simulation?

Like I said, it seems you can't comprehend that there is more than one universe. — Grey

What part of

there must be something left, say a second universe — jkop

do you not understand?

He's not saying that there isn't a real non-simulation universe in which our universe is simulated. — Michael

He says that the entire universe is a simulation, in which it is assumed that there isn't anything outside the simulation. Or he is misusing the word 'entire' or 'simulation' or both.

That's not my problem but yours. What I typed lays out how your claim fails to make sense.

Whence your concern for my comprehension? Post a counter argument instead, if you can.

Look, a simulation requires that there is something to simulate. If the entire universe would be a simulation of someone outside the universe "running the simulation", then it shouldn't be a simulation of a universe but someone outside it "running the simulation", which is obviously different from a simulation of the universe. Like I said, it makes no sense.

The entire universe cannot be a simulation, because there must be something left, say a second universe which is real, and of which our universe could then be a simulation. So the speculation makes no sense.

when entities use their capacity for reason are they able to reason apart from their personal natural history in an objective manner? — jackhuxy1

You might be interested in this book: Fear of Knowledge (2006), by Paul Boghossian, in which the idea that knowledge and reason would be fundamentally cultural or subjective is torn to shreds.

reason is simply a product of human existence — jackhuxy1

I don't think so. Reason is not a product but the capacity to make sense of words, beliefs, or perceptions, and as such it is not exclusively human. A bird, for instance, might not make much sense of words but it makes sense of things it sees, hears, feels etc., which enables it to act accordingly. Its tweets, colours, and gestural signs might be products of bird existence, like our words, pictures, and gestures are products of human existence. But the capacity to make sense of things is then not species-dependent but a feature of the biology of conscious creatures.

Alien blobs may thus have the capacity to make sense of perceptions, beliefs, or signs in alien blob languages.

You're right, I made a mistake, but it also got me thinking about a comparison of music and games.

It's full of adventure and virtuosity, inspires imagination without the need for high-end graphics, physics engines or the like.

He is a bullshitter, and bullshit can be used as a control technology (like obscurantism in religion, art philosophy and so on).

Everyday experiences are very different from dreams. Consider, for example, that dreams typically disappear when you wake up, whereas experiences of seeing something when you are awake tend to have a continuous flow and clarity which allows you to further investigate the objects that you see.

I'd say dreams are experiences of things that happen to be on one's mind, such as memories and knowledge of things and emotions.

for the sake of discussion, suppose that we must adopt one or the other. — aletheist

A nominalist who would adopt realism for the sake of discussion is an extreme relativist. His or her ontological commitment would merely be an adoption for the sake of discussion, not a belief about the nature of reality which, according to realists, exists independently of our discussions.

“A metaphor is an affair between a predicate with a past and an object that yields while protesting”.
--Nelson Goodman

Ruth Millikan is not difficult to understand, and she's both original and significant.

Is an emergent property a preexisting disposition or something completely new? — Andrew4Handel

For example, when you put certain ingredients together in one and the same glass they might begin to interact with each other so that a new property emerges, which you might find more tasty than the separate ingredients. It's a matter of physics and biology. Any physical object or property is predisposed to have physical causes and effects...

If we take care to distinguish significance from influence — Pierre-Normand

Good point. Being influential, or considered significant, does not mean that a philosopher is philosophically significant. Like Hegel, for instance ;)

Perhaps most women are wise enough to see that philosophy is mostly nonsense disguised as hard questions.

You don´t have a feeling that guides your argument? — Perdidi Corpus

An argument is guided by the truth of its words.

The thoughts you experience cannot come out verbalized. — Perdidi Corpus

First, with what sense organ do you experience a thought? Second, if you can think, but can't verbalize it, then the problem is just poor vocabulary. Any thought can be verbalized.

Who is feeding you this structured information? — Perdidi Corpus

Whence the assumption that someone would be feeding me structured information?

But you need at least the experience of thinking/feeling (I have yet to know wether there is true difference between the two) how it would be like to walk on the moon before you activelly talk about it. — Perdidi Corpus

Thought without feeling is empty, feeling without thought is blind, but talk is a use of words, recall, and our lack of experiences, thoughts, or feelings of how it would be like to walk on the moon won't prevent us from composing insightful sentences of what it's like to walk on the moon.

Being a sense datum, or sensum, is a relational property of the item that is sensed. — Sellars

Like a living organism may have a disposition to sense items in a certain way, also items may have a disposition to be sensed in a certain way. Perhaps this is what Sellars means by relational property?

Acquaintance with bioethics, for instance, seems appropriate for a good nurse.

I don't get it — TheMadFool

The justice system exists because there were benefits for different individuals to comply to a shared system, and thus avoid the bad effects that vengeance had on their society. For example, medieval Italy was plagued by wars between vengeful families. It was bad for all of them. Hence the emergence of a shared justice system. So now punishment is not vengeance but correctional care, or a means to motivate members of a society to comply to its shared system.

Punishment is a means to make different individuals comply to the system. The system, however, emerged because of the general benefits of a shared system (regardless of emotions or thoughts on vengeance).

The assumption that there would be something to translate, and necessary for starting and finishing a sentence, is unwarranted. For example, it is not necessary to have experiences of walking on the moon in order to be allowed or able to talk about it.

What is it about computation, or translations from some sets of symbols to other sets of symbols, that could produce a state of conscious awareness? I don't get it. Far more convincing is the idea of conscious awareness being, like photosynthesis, a biological phenomenon.

An experience is a biological phenomena: the identification of something, not an expression of it (eg with pen and paper).

Intentional content is set by the present features of the object that you experience. It's location is where the object is.

What is an example of a raw form of an idea? Seems like a metaphor passed for logic.

Both of my past cats showed symptoms of stress as in death agony when they got ill and died. One died slowly of kidney failure, and about a year later the other died more quickly of heart failure. Death agony amounts to a kind of awareness of one's forthcoming death.

Death penalty is murder. .

What do you think is achieved by rephrasing the same statement?

One's own experience of an object is the object that one experiences. There is no relation between the experience and the object. The computer screen that you see now, for instance, is not a mistaken version of itself; you see it exactly as it is.

The theist may have reasons and arguments for their position, which is simply something called god exists. — Chany

That would be a statement, not an argument, nor a reason.