I Like Sushu wrote: ↑Mon Jul 01, 2019 7:24 pm
But didn’t you say that ‘ideas’ are non-physical? Yet you’re also saying that flavour and colour don’t exist independently but fail, as far as I can see, to express why ideas do.
Flavors, colors, weight, shape, size are all physical attributes that really exist physically, but they only exist as attributes of physical entities and do not exist except as attributes of physical entities. There are no wild flavors, colors, weights, shapes, or sizes out the running around as independent existents.
Ideas and concepts only exist as the products of conscious human minds. Ideas really exist as psychological (epistemological) facts. They do not exist physically and they do not exist independently of human mental consciousness.
I Like Sushu wrote: ↑Mon Jul 01, 2019 7:24 pm
That is why I quoted Kant.
If you want to be certain I will disregard a point in any discussion, appeal to Kant. I regard Kant to be the worst philosopher in history after Hume. Together they nearly destroyed philosophy.
I Like Sushu wrote: ↑Mon Jul 01, 2019 7:24 pm
There is no thought without content (the ‘content’ is physical experience).
Thought can be about the physical but the majority of our thoughts are about other ideas, abstract concepts, our desires, beliefs, and plans. Certainly you don't claim that the Calculus, our values, or fictional events and characters are physical or that we never think about them.
I Like Sushu wrote: ↑Mon Jul 01, 2019 7:24 pm
I’m just trying to figure out where and how you delineate between ‘physical’ and ‘non-physical’ and what use it is to do so. It seems something fairly similar to the kind of thinking that leads others to state that everything is an illusion (not that I am saying you are stating this, but there looks to be some common thought process going on).
Simple. The physical is all that exists independently of our consciousness or knowledge, but is all that we can and do consciously perceive and know and is the objective of the physical sciences. Everything else is the product of the human mind and could not exist without the human mind, including language, logic, mathematics, the sciences, philosophy, history, and literature. If there were no human beings all the physical would exist exactly as it is, but there would be no language, logic, mathematics, science, philosophy, history, literature, or love, and nothing would matter. Of course that is why the difference between the physical and non-physical matters.