...Howell wrote in a 57-page opinion ruling.

“Donning a cloak of victimization may play well on a public stage to certain audiences, but in a court of law, , this performance has served only to subvert the normal process of discovery in a straightforward defamation case, with the concomitant necessity of repeated court intervention."

Physically we are all able to get access to any degree of wisdom, we are all humans. — Angelo Cannata

Actually, if there is strong emergence, it's counterproductive to try to define touch in terms of EM fields, but the question of emergence is an open one. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think the act of pointing has a place in the definition of "slab!", for the initiate. — Moliere

In order to pick out a screwdriver you need to know what it is, and in order to know what it is you need to have an internalized definition of it. That's what a definition is. An understanding or concept of what something is. If you claim to know what something is then you have at least a nominal definition of it, and if you have a definition then you claim to know what it is. — Leontiskos

Well, all I can say is I disagree then. I think the photograph metaphor seems a coherent analogy of the view and that I think it is consistent with someone being a physicalist. — Apustimelogist

Nor can we conclude that there is an real, external, physical world. — Metaphysician Undercover

External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism?
Accept or lean toward: non-skeptical realism 760 / 931 (81.6%)
Other 86 / 931 (9.2%)
Accept or lean toward: skepticism 45 / 931 (4.8%)
Accept or lean toward: idealism 40 / 931 (4.3%)

The sun is in the sky... physical.

The sun is not in the sky... non-physical.

Physical and non-physical are embedded in our mental realities. — Mark Nyquist

It is a mistake for a physicalist to excuse the non-physical. The ones that include it will get it right. — Mark Nyquist

Yes, that does help. Thank you for the clear explanation. — Agree to Disagree

I had read that climate scientists said that a certain amount of global warming was "locked in" even if we stopped emissions today. — Agree to Disagree

Sure, but in that case you are not "trusting AI," which is a central premise of my argument. If we fact-check AI every time it says something then the conundrum will never arise. I don't think we will do that. It would defeat the whole purpose of these technologies. — Leontiskos

Last week, OpenAI announced it had given ChatGPT users the option to turn off their chat history. ChatGPT is a "generative AI", a machine learning algorithm that can understand language and generate written responses. Users can interact with it by asking questions, and the conversations users have with it are in turn stored by OpenAI so they can be used to train its machine learning models. This new control feature allows users to choose which conversations to use to train OpenAI models.

The point is, that to be two beings there must be something which distinguishes them as one different from the other. If what distinguishes them one from the other, is "being in different possible words" then we cannot say that the difference between the two worlds is of negligible relevance, because we've already propositioned that this difference is what distinguishes them one from the other. Since being two distinct things rather than one and the same thing is fundamentally a significant difference, then it's necessarily of very significant relevance. — Metaphysician Undercover

Isn't it contrary to the law of identity to speak of "two" physical occurrences which are in every way alike. If they are in every way alike, they are necessarily one and the same, not "two". So the whole premise of this thought experiment, the assumption of two distinct physical occurrences which are exactly alike, is fundamentally flawed making that thought experiment pointless. — Metaphysician Undercover

Heh. You gotta read along with us! — Moliere

I'm not seeing it. — Banno

And fuck knows what is happening in chapter eleven, where moving out of a plane is equated with bending time... or something. — Banno

...but one of the problems often brought forth by the substance dualist is that there is not empirical proof that brain state X always causes behavior Y because fMRI results do not show that for every instance of behavior Y the exact areas of the brain show activity. — Hanover

As with a lot of jargon, philosophical or otherwise, is "supervenience" really needed? What's wrong with "dependence?" — T Clark

There isn't any one mainstream theory for this. Rather, there is a constellation of widely variant theories that focus on anything from "all complex enough computation results in experience," to "certain energy patterns = experience," to panpsychism, to brainwaves, to a quantum level explanations. — Count Timothy von Icarus

What is surprising is that, even if we could resolve individual synapses, we aren't sure this would give us an answer. That is, most theories are such that, even if we magically had that sort of resolution, they couldn't tell us "look for X and X will show you if a thing is conscious or not." — Count Timothy von Icarus

When a thing is exactly the same as a duck from all external appearances including
a blood test of DNA, then you can tell it is actually a space alien when it telepathically
invades your thoughts screaming that it <is> a space alien. — PL Olcott

And this then also neatly describes why consciousness is so impossible to find in all our myriad brain scans. This is puzzling because we think we should have the resolution of scans we need to be able to identify what it is that "causes," consciousness. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Non-biogenic methane is a different issue. — Agree to Disagree

I suspect that when I went back to university to do a 2nd degree you were probably still in nappies (or if you are American, still in diapers). — Agree to Disagree

Notice how close this is getting to the dictum of classical metaphysics - that ‘to be is to be intelligible’. — Wayfarer

Plus, paired with findings that give rise to the popularity of computational theory of mind, the view of computation as something that only occurs in sentient consciousness starts to get a little wonky. Presumably, I am computing if I am not a math wiz and have to consciously think about the steps involved in summing some list of figures. But then am I not computing if the entire process happens unconsciously and I just know the outcome by glancing at the symbols? Do I compute when I consciously try to read French, but acomputationally experience when the meanings of English words fly into my awareness with no conscious effort? If unconconcious computation is possible within a human, it seems harder to justify it not existing outside the mind. But then knowing the answer to 3+7, 2+2, etc. doesn't seem to require anything conscious or intentional on our part. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think it might be the case that experience is special.
— chiknsld

Do you mean "special" in the sense of special relativity? — Benj96

It’s the effect of propaganda…or pure stupidity. — Mikie

Methane oxidizes to CO2 after about 12 years. — frank

Since I know the outline, it is easy to know where each new sentence should go. In this way, bit by bit, I fill out the story, until I feel all the gaps are filled. — hypericin

Now we'll add a cattle farm in Mexico, and it's truly net zero, which means that after 12 years, its output is entirely absorbed by its input. — frank

1. Intuitions (i.e., intellectual seemings): one ought to take as true what intellectual strikes them as being the case unless sufficient evidence has been prevented that demonstrates the invalidity of it. — Bob Ross

This causes all synthetic expressions of language to be rejected
as knowledge. — PL Olcott

Gettier cases prove that a reasonable approximation of knowledge
sometimes diverges from actual knowledge. — PL Olcott

I see lots of examples of science gaining some grasp of cognition and psychology in your list but none that indicate an understanding of consciousness. — FrancisRay

We know a bit about anesthetics, as you say, but this tells us nothing nothing about consciousness. — FrancisRay

Did anyone in this discussion indicate or imply that this isn't true? I don't think so. — T Clark

So, an appeal to evolutionary theory. But that is not really a philosophy, even though it's often taken as such - it's a biological theory, and viewing motivation solely through that lens is biological reductionism. — Quixodian

'People can perform extraordinary acts of altruism, including kindness toward other species — or they can utterly fail to be altruistic, even toward their own children. So whatever tendencies we may have inherited leave ample room for variation; our choices will determine which end of the spectrum we approach. — Quixodian

This is where ethical discourse comes in — not in explaining how we’re “built,” but in deliberating on our own future acts. Should I cheat on this test? Should I give this stranger a ride? Knowing how my selfish and altruistic feelings evolved doesn’t help me decide at all. — Quixodian

I think your opinion of what it takes to be a philosopher is a bit high-falutin. — T Clark

An objection you could then make is: "But what if someone plays out all the arguments in their head?". I would then say "That is nigh impossible to do, because it requires a brain that would outmatch all these brains that one could bring into play when one would conduct philosophy in a social group". That is why also philosophy was developed in conversation with others. — Tobias

I don't think it necessities omnipotence for knowledge. For example, the Dude in the Big Lebowski knows "he's had a hard day and he fucking hates the Eagles man." He can't be wrong about this because his knowing he hates the Eagles necessitates that it is the case that he hates the Eagles. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Unless at least one mind has a belief B about subject S such that the justification of this belief necessitates its truth then B is not an element of {knowledge} because no one knows it. — PL Olcott

I'd love to have a go at it, but I too find it daunting. A logician, a mathematician, and an electrical engineer would be useful contributors. Anyone? — unenlightened