That's spot on. — Manuel
The notion of subjectivity is fraught with nonsense. — Banno
Physics is the question of what matter is. Metaphysics is the question of what [is real]. People of a rational, scientific bent tend to think that the two are coextensive—that everything is physical. Many who think differently are inspired by religion to posit the existence of God and souls; Nagel affirms that he’s an atheist, but he also asserts that there’s an entirely different realm of non-physical 'stuff' that exists—namely, mental 'stuff'. The vast flow of perceptions, ideas, and emotions that arise in each human mind is something that, in his view, actually exists as something other than merely the electrical firings in the brain that gives rise to them—and exists as surely as a brain, a chair, an atom, or a gamma ray.
In other words, even if it were possible to map out the exact pattern of brain waves that give rise to a person’s momentary complex of awareness, that mapping would only explain the physical correlate of these experiences, but it wouldn’t be them. A person doesn’t experience patterns, and her experiences are as irreducibly real as her brain waves are, and different from them.
Talk about physics, chemistry or physiology is distinct from talk about desire, intent or understanding. — Banno
His work [was] opposed, as he once put it, to “the spirit which informs the vast stream of European and American civilisation in which all of us stand.” Nearly 50 years after his death, we can see, more clearly than ever, that the feeling that he was swimming against the tide was justified. If we wanted a label to describe this tide, we might call it “scientism,” the view that every intelligible question has either a scientific solution or no solution at all. It is against this view that Wittgenstein set his face. — Ray Monk
But I would like to know how experiences can be compared. I don't think we can use language, because there's no way to verify what another person means when they refer to their own expereinces. — RogueAI
1. There is something it is like to be a bat.
2. However much I learn about the objective world I can never know what it is like to be a bat.
3. Therefore there is something in reality that is outside of the objective world.
Do you agree with the argument? — Aoife Jones
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.