View attachment 15678
View attachment 15679
Not a specific thing. You are making category errors. Repeatedly. Stop it.
No, how about you stop it?
The brain is an organ. I don't care if you want to call it a "thing" or not, in fact I couldn't care less and am growing ever more baffled at the endless monotony of these threads. The brain is a specific, single organ, composed of parts, like every "thing" else. You have your brain, I have my brain. This is not rocket science.
What you're doing is what empiricists love to do, and have loved doing, for ages: since the objective world is made up of atoms in constant motion, with mostly space between particles, therefore there is no such thing as a
real solid object: everything is dynamic and in constant flux (which is objectively true). Therefore, if you look at the edge of a knife under an extremely powerful microscope, you don't see a sharp, incisive edge, but something quite different in appearance, something more distributed and diffuse. There are some amazing photos of extremely sharp edges that look like you could drive a Ford F-150 on top of them. Beautiful images.
Well, now we can pretend that there are no
really solid objects in the world, since every thing is matter in dynamic, fluid motion, therefore there are not
really any discrete objects. It doesn't matter that putting a scalpel to your wrist will cause your flesh to open up and your blood to spill out: this is in no way
proof that your wrist and the knife blade are discrete objects. It just
feels that way, it's an "impression" (thanks to the naked emperor, David Hume) which our brains interpret in a certain way which, in the case of the incision, comes with a ruthlessley efficient alarm system called
pain. Nature can be a bitch that way.
Have you read
The Ego Tunnel, by Thomas Metzinger? There was a thread, or many threads, about that book years ago, in which I, and others, argued with a Berkeleyan idealist, and other idealists, who was fascinated with his recent findings, which led him to realize that he could no longer trust his senses, and that he could no longer think of himself as a
self, since Metzinger had magnanimously announced that no such thing as a
self existed (which of course thinkers had been thinking about thousands of years ago, which it may not have occurred to Metzinger to actually check).
While I may not hold to the common sense "proofs" of objective reality, such as offered by Thomas Reid, and in contemporary times John Searle and G.E. Moore, I
do think they offer a much better (a popular, and nicely classist and derogatory "folk") description of the world, which is actually
useful to most human beings, like untermensche, who work in the world with other human beings and are forced, by necessity, (not to mention HIPAA laws) to deal with reality
as it is and resist whipping up splendid castles in the air for their egocentric entertainment.
In my career in healthcare, nursing homes, assisted livings, hospitals, I have had to deal with real people in real situations, often entailing great discomfort and pain. I DO NOT give a fat rat's booty about the latest flighty, spoiled, academic theorist's navel-gazing speculations about how the world
really is to us simple dummies down in the trenches.
Searle was right when he said that empirical scientists and philosophers sometimes say "some appalling things". It is a much better world that some brave people are audacious enough not to be a flock of gullible sheep and allow intellectual elitists to explain the world to them. Most people can figure things out all on their own.
Lastly, unless you own the joint, or are an admin, or a moderator, please refrain from telling me what to do, whether it be to
stop it, or whatever. If you tell me not to do something, I will take that as a request to continue doing that very thing.
I will admit I may have made a category error. I shall look into it and see. Please bear in mind, I've forgotten most of what I ever knew about this stuff. It gets really tough at times.
