(January 24, 2016 at 2:46 am)Jörmungandr Wrote:(January 24, 2016 at 2:00 am)Emjay Wrote: @Jörmungandr
But I would just hope that we could keep this friendly and productive on all sides, because that was what it was meant to be, but again that's just me.
I'm sorry for being a downer to your thread with my earlier outburst at bennyboy. I'm not specifically accusing him here, but in conversations about these issues in the past with others, I've noticed that certain feints recur over and over again, and, it seems to me that when they do, it's usually people trying to retreat into comfortable talking points rather than engage the issues. That gets frustrating and in some sense I'm burned out on such discussions. I suppose if I bothered to respond substantially to those talking points instead of letting my frustration get the better of me it would be more profitable to the discussion. It's a difficult situation and I don't mean to excuse myself or justify the incriminations I've made against bennyboy. Just explaining my frustration.
Saying that shows a lot of class, but it's unnecessary. I know my positions aren't that common here, and that they are sometimes seen as woo or whatever. This thread is now very challenging for me, as well, because I'm trying to understand the materialist views more, but we seem to keep circling back to the imprecise (to me, at least) terms and views that we always do. Rhythm often accuses me of using "borrowed" concepts, but maybe it's impossible to avoid some of that-- maybe the subject itself is always going to end up with conflations, equivocations, and ambiguities, just because the issue of mind is that difficult to frame.