Philosophy Now Forum

...But wow, it's long... Maybe best to use this summary: Need to represent what I am saying correctly: You can’t say that we need to posit an entity other than material on which to predicate consciousness just because the predicate of consciousness is not “merely physical”. The whole idea is that m...

Which causes which is not the question, so much as "Why and how are they coordinated Why are they coordinated? Do you think there is a reason that they are coordinated? How they are coordinated is important in the sense of description but not in the sense of some answer that explains without posits...

Here is what I get from your last post: Two vs one: Your position is that there are two real entities required for experiencing to possibly occur. Not quite, but you're close. Two coordinated aspects are involved. Then we agree? Two coordinated aspects of one entity? My position is that there is no...

Sorry, this post was to be in reply to Immanuel Can's previous reply to me

Here is what I get from your last post: Two vs one: Your position is that there are two real entities required for experiencing to possibly occur. My position is that there is no entity logically required for experiencing to occur. However, as a matter of contingent fact, I hypothesize that all expe...

....it requires a conscious "experiencer," which is not a mechanical process but a personal and cognitive one. Absent a personal "experiencer," what we have is merely another kind of "occurrence." Well, there is no doubt that as you say conscious experiencing is not a mechanical process if by mecha...

"No zombies, no ghosts." It's a good working hypothesis at least for now. Well, either you've got bodies with no souls (zombies), or souls with no bodies (extreme Idealism, ghosts), or you've got Dualism, meaning both exist together somehow. Had a very long debate a while ago on this. I came up wit...

I take this as: does the individual have a spirit? I think so. I think, wedged deep into the meat of a person, is a soul, an immaterial, irreducible, 'something'. My evidence for this flimsy and wholly idiosyncratic and of little interest to anyone. "No zombies, no ghosts." It's a good working hypo...

Since human experiencing is temporal and since the temporal, contingent fact of what was is eternal, then humans have an eternal soul. That soul is created up until death when it becomes the eternal identity of that person forever. There are some theories in which the soul is reborn and there is Nie...

How do we get an idea through reading a text for example? I assume that by "get an idea" you mean some type of experiencing that occurs that is caused by a state of the brain. I further assume that our brains are similar enough that the states produced are similar. Then it is just a signal pathway ...

....Does any of this proves time exists as such? .... It may be that the notion of time itself is linked to certain categories of existence. Not all existence is temporal. The Pythagorean theorem is true and that is not an event that happened, happens, will happen, can cease to happen etc. It is ou...

Do you think suppressing the survival instinct is a moral thing to do? Do you think it is harmful to optimise for survival? Looks like some people do.... https://blog.startwithwhy.com/refocus/2012/06/there-are-fates-worse-than-death.html Amazing how deep a fish can swallow a propaganda hook....aw s...

...but presumably neither party would have conditioned knowledge. I wonder why you say that? We already have some conditioned knowledge and if they visit presumably they would too. Perhaps you mean "...condition knowledge of each other...." but even there I would expect we would start to study each...

we have been altering the genetics of plant foods for decades -Imp Longer if you include our selection of plants. Mendel. Corn. etc. But you mean direct manipulation of the genome. Will be interesting when we start selecting for the nature of the experiencing the device produces. Did I say "start s...

It would be interesting to have an example from like a lizard or insect. Something further from us than another mammal. I believe that the strategy of inflating ones size is a strategy common to more than just mammals but I could be wrong. In the case you mention I think that the bear has evolved to...