Philosophy Now Forum

The only reason I'm bringing that up is that on your view, the fact that our sensory systems work as they do--by sending information along nerves, etc., is sufficient to imply that our perception isn't accurate and unmediated. 'Unmediated' what? 'Accurate' compared to what? What we understand to be...

Do you believe that stereo systems aren't capable of accurately presenting just what a band sounds like (at least from a particular reference point in a system)? I believe that stereo systems can (more or less) reproduce the auditory experience we would get if we were in front of the band itself. B...

I use the terms this way: Subjective = mental phenomena, that is, brains functioning in mental ways. Objective = the complement of mental phenomena, or in other words--"everything else," everything that isn't a brain functioning in a mental way. I do not see how we can know about 'everyth...

My side of the philosophy perception debate is that we're directly perceiving objective things (where again, because for some reason it's so easy to overlook this, one should note that I'm not saying that we're not perceiving objective things, we are perceiving them). My side of the debate is not t...

That you think your senses are somehow tainted, separate from the universe is quite insane. Organisms developed the senses so as to survive, and we've done a pretty good job all these billions of years. Ones perceiving was in fact born of the universe, and tested and improved over much time, theref...

Me: Therefore, I know the things I see like trees must be reconstructed in my brain from these electrical signals. However, if you reach a conclusion that you can't actually observe trees, where you're observing something that's not just your own mind, then you have to realize that you royally fnck...

That's not my view of course, but on your view, you have absolutely no grounds to believe that you have eyes, hands to put in front eyes, and so on. Any argument you'd attempt to give in support of believing such things would work just as well for believing that there are trees that are independent...

And I would say:

Objectivity is not obvious because we know we can be mistaken about it.

I do not think you can look at, hear, smell etc. any of those things. Bits of my body are sensitive to pressure, light etc. But if you don't believe that we can look at etc. any of those things, how do you get to a belief that you have a body that's sensitive to pressure, light, etc.? Because sensa...

What I'm getting at is this: I say that objectivity is obvious, and that in includes that there are others in the first place. You'd say this is wrong. Okay, well how would we establish that it's wrong? Why would I change my belief to "objectivity is not obvious" instead? The justificatio...

Ok. Lets attack the problem in another way because I have trouble to explain my thought in plain words: Think of beginning as a point on starting of real axis, zero. And that is what a 'beginning' is. Something you set, for your purpose, relating to some particular event that you have chosen to dis...

I have been struggling with this problem for a while. It is difficult for me to even explain it to you. Lets assume that universe has a beginning whether it is created or it is result of big bang. There is however no before before beginning which means we cannot possibly define any reference point ...

Now, a body can dick around, arguing over the precision of a truthful statement, but this is separate from the basic idea that truth, at heart, is what is real (whether described or not...that is: the true (truth) is that which we describe, not that which we make true through description). Yes; I t...

Yeah, mebbe you wanna put the kibosh on being so literal-minded. And, it's flattering (I guess) you have such an interest in (worry about) my eccentricities, but -- really -- you're makin' too much about nuthin'. You criticise philosophers for their 'philo-jargon'. I'm pointing out that your own po...

From philosophy? Not a goddamned thing. From 'philosophers'? Less arrogance, less condescension, acknowledgement that philo-jargon is not synonymous with knowledge. Folks who fancy themselves 'philosopher kings' (but who couldn't spend a day in the woods alone), I want they should climb down offa t...