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I don't know whether this is a challenge for skeptics but most Christians seem to believe that God is the creator of everything. According to Genesis it is not true: It is quite common in creation mythologies that in the beginning there was water, the sea, and the earth was created in the...

Computer algorithms don't make choices, they follow explicit rules. The article seems to point that non-emotional people try to "calculate" the right answer because they have no subjective relationship with the question. Zombies, I'd say.

Yes. :thumbsup:

You are right, Kant had two definitions, "positive" and "negative". See my response (#21) to ontological_realist. But, even in the negative sense of noumenon, knowing the metaphysical definition of noumenon as a universal concept, doesn't imply knowing any particular noumenon.

Actually Kant says that noumenon as a limit concept is problematic, because it is something we are bound to conceive as a correlate of phenomenona. Kant calls that a noumenon in the negative sense. In the positive sense noumenon is completely intellectual concept without any correlation to...

The new Swedish government's policy in the Palestine case is exactly the same as the policy of the last strong leader of Israel, Ariel Sharon: two separate states with well-defined borders, i.e. peace - however cold and hostile it might be in the beginning. Sharon begun to build massive border...

Yes, I agree. Noumenon is a limit concept, that's why it's unknowable. If we begin from a perceived thing (a phenomenon), we see first its appearance from some viewpoint. Later we can see it from other viewpoints like overall form, surface materials, function(s), etc. We can also learn about...

For a long time I've considered Francis Crick and Christof Koch the last of the Mohicans searching Neural Correlates of Consciousness. Claustrum was Crick's last hypothesis before he died ten years ago. Since then nothing worth news has happened in the field of NCC. And never will, IMO: it's a...

By behavior you mean pack and independent behaviors? They are genetically complex: several genes define several properties which together produce this or that behavior; there are no single pack or independence genes. Pure physical traits instead may depend on only few - or even single - genes.

I agree with BFI, it's about the difference between independent and pack animals. Distinct breeds don't change dog's nature and welfare as a pack animal, because they are made from human (pack leader) viewpoint. The human/dog pack works well; another matter is that if this kind of breeds...

I've posted this on another forum, some wordings may seem strange here.

OK, then how do you call the corresponding phenomenon we do perceive/experience?

Ryan, do you understand what I mean? There's no doubt that we understand the real process similarly.

Yes, it's possible that I've misunderstood you. We seem to use terms differently. Let me analyze the bolded sentence my way: IMO it's not light that enters our retina, just electromagnetic waves reflecting from objects. When our brains finally produces conscious percepts, we experience ("see")...

You seem to think it kind of backwards? Our sensory organs detect electromagnetic waves and certain molecules, but - after a complex process - we experience light and taste. As to the OP, our perceptions (experiences) create for us a meaningful projection of the world, ie our phenomenal world...

Yes. "Material" or "physical" does in no way characterize mind. Maybe sometimes, years or decenniums ago, these discussions were about "spiritual or material mind", which made them reasonable, but since then it's been just a language game between "soft" and "hard" materialists. If someone...

In my country the law secures the surviving partner's lifelong right to live in the property where they lived together, provided that the surviving partner isn't wealthy enough to aqcuire an equal property.

Hmm... we are the knower, not our senses. But I see that that's not your problem. The problem seems to be that information cannot be reduced to any definite physical form. It is true, the same information can be transmitted and stored using infinite number of different forms. It is not a...

Our senses have evolved exactly for our survival. They inform us about our environment: the world we live in, the world where we must find our food, mate and shelter. They build us a view of our world, not an "objective" information storage but a subjective view about our relations with the...

Right cause, wrong effect. Alcohol prevents your liver releasing sugar. When you drink much alcohol, you'd better eat or drink something that contains carbohydrates or plain sugar.