Philosophy Now Forum

None of this stuff is addressable by science because consciousness on Nagel's use and on Chalmers' use of that term is entirely non-empirical. There is an epistemic constraint here in that nothing arising within consciousness that can "get outside" of consciousness to find out what, if an...

Substance dualism - there are 2 types of stuff - mind stuff (or soul stuff) and physical stuff. This appears to be the least popular right now - but there are a few reputable philosophers (i.e. Richard Swinburne) who defend the idea. This is the traditional idea that humans have an immortal soul. P...

I know this topic is old and sort of ran itself out after 3 weeks, but I just now see it and wasn't planning on reading it all. I would call the 3 main options M, SD, and PD respectively, M for Monism since materialism is an unlikely subset of what I'll call scientific naturalism. Anyone else enjoy...

On the other hand, I've recently come to realize just how many movies I've seen that were based on the writings of Philip K. Dick...(Predestination, Blade Runner, The Man in the High Castle tv series, Minority Report, The Matrix series of movies, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, The Adjustment Bureau...

Isn't it possible that some professional philosophers are drawn to philosophy "because of its internal logic" and because of this mindset, or perhaps even incidentally, they become prestigious and wealthy? Are you talking about 'monetary wealth, here? On the other hand, I don't care how p...

When I first started getting into philosophy, I had the idea that philosophers, because they focused on rational arguments, were somehow more than human - I thought they would be kind, thoughtful, not swayed by strong emotion. But, having gotten to know a few philosophy professors, and meeting with...

There is an article in the latest issue of Philosophy Now (164) that considers emergence. It's called - From Birds to Brains. "Jonathan Moens considers whether emergence can explain minds from brains." Here are the last 2 paragraphs "But perhaps there's a simpler explanation for the m...

Part of the OP's problem is using professional philosophers as his benchmark. Doing something for money or prestige or both as incentives will lead to a different mindset than those who are drawn to a mindset because it suits them because of it's internal logic. Isn't it possible that some professi...

When I first started getting into philosophy, I had the idea that philosophers, because they focused on rational arguments, were somehow more than human - I thought they would be kind, thoughtful, not swayed by strong emotion. But, having gotten to know a few philosophy professors, and meeting with ...

Maybe I just have this odd belief that when reading the work of someone who was kind of a jerk, if I take his work seriously, I might be "infected" by his jerkiness, and become a jerk myself. I feel the same way about Kierkegaard. From what I read of his life, he was totally stressed out, ...

I've read about his life - and sometimes I just didn't like him, because he just seems mean. There was the incident when he was a schoolteacher - and he treated several other people rather poorly. But, I suppose he did grow up with a tyrant for a father. I can imagine it must have been hard for him ...

Atla wrote: ↑Mon Oct 14, 2024 7:41 pm No one, not even any materialist has ever directly seen "matter"..

What makes you think so?

Just "spit-balling here" but I wonder if property dualism could be combined with Daniel Dennett's ideas about consciousness as presented in his book From Bacteria to Bach and Back Again to form a coherent theory of consciousness. To do so, one would have to assume that Qualia are real, som...

Unfortunately, all of the common explanations for consciousness fall short. Property dualism - if consciousness itself (or some kind of proto-consicousness or some kind of simple experience-like Qualia) is fundamental to every material thing... then how is it that we feel like a single conscious sub...

What about a video game? Is a video game the same ontological category as the metal it runs on? How is a video game an example of emergence? Literally every possible reason. It's a simulation of another world - none of the individual physical components of a computer on their own can stimulate a wo...