Living, after all, is only a distraction from dying. My life distracts me (less with each passing decade) from my death. And so it goes. C'est la vie. Amor fati.

Information is not the subject of physics — Wayfarer

I don't believe experience is private, ala the private language argument — Moliere

I have adopted the modern notion of "Information" to describe the essence of all things. — Gnomon

So "the hard problem .." is not a scientific problem like I've stated.
— 180 Proof

No not really ... — Metaphysician Undercover

Personally, I refer to purposes, meaning the purpose of science is to tell me about the world. The purpose of religion is to tell me how to live in it — Hanover

[W]hat is lost is identity, not consciousness. — bert1

How did you feel when you were unconscious?

[R]eligion and science don't serve the same human needs. Science is the tool used to understand and manipulate matter. Organized religion (which bears only the most superficial resemblance to prehistoric or tribal ritual) is a tool used in support of stratified power structures. — Vera Mont

Consciousness is the capacity to feel. — bert1

What is the hard problem, in your own words?

What is my concept? — bert1

If you have the same concept I have .. — bert1

What do you think I mean by the word 'consciousness'? — bert1

I'm saying, reluctantly, that you lack the concept of awareness. I think you are aware. But I don't know this for sure. You both seem to avoid the concept. — bert1

• pre-awareness = attention (orientation)
• awareness = perception (experience)
• adaptivity = intelligence (error-correcting heurstic problem-solving)
• self-awareness = [re: phenomenal-self modeling ]
• awareness of self-awareness = consciousness — 180 Proof

Would I be correct if I said praxis is the stumbling block ... — Agent Smith

Philosophy as persuasion may be shallow as it is with another end in mind rather than an open approach to where the philosophy quest may lead. — Jack Cummins

... the obvious fact that first-person consciousness cannot be captured by third-person science — Wayfarer

I remember,” someone said, “how in ancient times one could turn a wolf into a human and then lecture it to one's heart's content.

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In their effort to divorce language and experience, deconstructionist critics remind me of middle-class parents who do not allow their children to play in the street.

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Poetry is an orphan of silence.

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For Emily Dickinson every philosophical idea was a potential lover. Metaphysics is the realm of eternal seduction of the spirit by ideas.

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At some point my need for a solution was replaced by the poetry of my continuous failure.

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Making art in America is about saving one's soul.

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Dear Friedrich, the world's still false, cruel and beautiful... — Charles Simic 1938-2023

... a system that supports a nefarious and privileged few, who live off the sweat and toil of the majority ...

My own early life experience is one of the foundational reasons that I am a socialist and secular humanist. — universeness

I do not want to blame anyone for this economic disparity because I can not think of how things could have been done better. — Athena

Forming questions is an important part of philosophy. — Jack Cummins

Gassendi1 his name was. He was a prick but I learned a lot from him. He really added argumentative quality to the forum as well as knowledge of hard nosed analytical philosophy, something that the forum lacks nowadays. — Tobias

All this to say it's high time neuroscience takes thinking as seriously as musicologists take music. No musicologist worth the name would use orchestra heat scans to explore Mozart. — Olivier5

Yes, we are very good at lying to ourselves. — Olivier5

Now, when you reflect on your own mental events, you're not doing so real time, you're doing so milliseconds (sometimes more) after they happened. So you, in reflection, are just like the third party looking at a P-zombie. You don't know for sure what just happened and could be wrong about it. You tell a story. — Isaac

I'm not talking about religions — TheMadMan

... to figuratively demonstrate the difference between 180's worldview and my own. — Gnomon

What is an anomaly? — Agent Smith

Why does it beg/demand for an explanation?

... why was the early universe in a low entropy state? — Agent Smith