Philosophy Now Forum

Name one problem analytical philosophy has solved ... A fair point but in general I'd say analytic philosophy is about clarifying or asking questions rather than answering them and that generally results in the original question being discarded. or one useful application of modal logic. There's a c...

I don't think that people deny that things happen or that consciousness exists as a process. What people deny is that there are intermediary 'things' called qualia or phenomenal experiences or conscious experiences that come between us and reality. Materialists/physicalists, for instance, must eith...

Philosophy Explorer wrote: ↑Tue Jul 11, 2017 10:28 am Clearly you're not killing individuals. Yet one group can wipe out another group from the face of the Earth.

Would you regard this as genocide? (I'm on the fence about this myself)

PhilX

I thought genocide involved killing people. So Catholics would have to say 'yes' and everyone else 'No.'

The name of the game is Probability. To KNOW things seems to be the only interesting thing for "academical philosophy" and of course we should strive to do that. Science and analytical philosophy is to some extent da shit. For what science can reasonably achieve to solve in a reasonable ti...

Howdy all, Over the years I've had a number of curious conversations with people who claim it's reasonable to deny the existence of consciousness, but I've never really grokked their arguments. I'm assuming there must be some such people on this board, and I'd like to figure out exactly what it is ...

What a croc of shite! The US government and Israeli governments are the chief motivating forces for these wars, and BOTH are highly motivated by their religious populations. You're stuck in the 1950s. . On the contrary. The scientific idealism of the 50s is long gone. What has happened in the last ...

If they did, they couldn't be more wrong. But they'll never believe that, so why point it out, I guess. One of the cardinal values -- maybe the most important value -- of Christianity is the freedom of conscience. You can discuss with people, debate, argue and proselytize as much as you see fit; bu...

These debates are so stupid - the one side expands the notion of 'atheist' to include the most 20th century atrocities and the other side exaggerates the influence of religion on world leaders and populations. All in a tit for tat effort to lay the most murders on the opponent's historical allies. ...

For instance, America's wars in the mid east have nothing to do with Christianity,. What a croc of shite! The US government and Israeli governments are the chief motivating forces for these wars, and BOTH are highly motivated by their religious populations. You're stuck in the 1950s. Religious nuts...

The mass murderer's of the 20th century or any other century, whether or not they were religious god believers, had their agendas and once in power proceeded to fulfill them. Religion in any guise would not have prevented or endorsed it. Theists only use it as a clause to justify how good they are ...

That is a good way to put a distinction I tried to make earlier - that visualizing/imagining is not the same as seeing. There is, among other things, a voluntary/involuntary distinction. But raw_thought will only continue to hammer away at his notion that we must be able to see something inside the...

I'll take your word for it.

How? You might as well ask me what the implications are of a pencil writing all by itself. What would it write? Answer nothing. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/ba/DrawingHands.jpg -Imp If you think that is some kind of answer, you are mistaken. It's a circular argument if I've ever seen ...

I think it would be better if we avoided saying we 'see the visualized triangle'. To visualize something is not to see it. That is a good way to put a distinction I tried to make earlier - that visualizing/imagining is not the same as seeing. There is, among other things, a voluntary/involuntary di...

Chalmers argument against a future scientific (physical) explanation of consciousness is profoundly disappointing. The argument is: if there were an atom for atom replica of a human being, then that replica could lack consciousness. Or, even if we knew 'all the physical facts' about consciousness, ...