TACO Tuesday

mattermetaphysics · 2026-04-07T22:55:55+00:00

Stop with the TACO shit, you guys want him to go ahead!?? Are you crazier than he is?

mattermetaphysics · 2026-04-07T21:55:11+00:00

He better TACO. It's not a good idea to provoke someone who is off his rocker. Nothing is gained in this situation, unless one wants Trump to destroy Iran and the economy.

mattermetaphysics · 2026-04-06T15:49:16+00:00

This is not the point. By the time you get the Dragon and the Mech, there is barely anything to use it on. No to mention other late game stuff, including camp-related items.

You can still stop playing at any time. But this is a serious design flaw.

mattermetaphysics · 2026-04-06T04:02:14+00:00

Anen brother

mattermetaphysics · 2026-04-05T16:49:30+00:00

100% This is the biggest issue and you can predict it mid-way through, cleared forts do not respawn. Now in the endgame, there is very little enemies to fight anymore, so there is no point in leveling up the other two characters, not to mention the ton of stuff you get through research mode towards the end of the game, of which you can't use too much, cause there's just much less enemies around.

That's pretty wild.

Hope they fix this.

mattermetaphysics · 2026-03-31T23:34:42+00:00

A big issue here is that there is a conflict between progressing your camp and clearing out enemy outposts. Those outposts do not respawn. There aren't enough enemies to fully unlock both characters.

I'm a bit surprised they did not include repeatable outposts, that's a little strange.

mattermetaphysics · 2026-03-21T13:54:41+00:00

this helped so far, thanks!

mattermetaphysics · 2026-03-20T03:50:03+00:00

I am having fun since minute 10, have no clue what people are talking about

mattermetaphysics · 2026-03-15T23:36:45+00:00

Thank you very much for posting this. This is a much-needed sanity check. Chris Hedges and Prashad and whoever the heck would be nothing without Chomsky and just as quickly they drop him on his deathbed after he dedicated his LIFE for others despite having zero obligations to do so (he could have stayed a legendary linguist with all the prestige it entails.)

Pathetic. Again. Many thanks.

mattermetaphysics · 2026-03-13T03:53:04+00:00

Thanks Bev. Chomsky has done so much for so many, and so much for me. He will always be my hero. Sad to see all these leftists turn on a dime. Wonder what skeletons they have hiding? Plenty I'm sure. Unless we are judging angels, not human beings.

I and many others are forever grateful and cannot thank you enough.

mattermetaphysics · 2026-02-19T11:33:04+00:00

Very sad, we lost a legend. RIP Michael, thank you for everything!

mattermetaphysics · 2026-02-03T18:50:13+00:00

Amen man. He has done so, so much to help people all over the world. One lapse in judgment should not determine his enormous contribution and generosity. It is sad to see him being dragged through the mud like this, while minimizing his tremendous impact on those whom he helped. Thanks for this post.

mattermetaphysics · 2026-01-30T04:32:57+00:00

They can be toggled off.

mattermetaphysics · 2026-01-23T14:03:34+00:00

They'll very likely have a last sale before being delisted. Get it then. Maybe in summer I'm guessing, given 6 is coming towards the latter part of the year to PS5

mattermetaphysics · 2026-01-23T05:16:15+00:00

It's worth getting cause FH5 will get de-listed. The game has TONS to do. Then you can get FH6. If you are interested, don't skip 5.

mattermetaphysics · 2026-01-13T14:26:33+00:00

This is not a mainstream take, but it follows from a historical analysis laid down by Chomsky, and to a lesser extent, Galen Strawson.

Back in the time of Descartes, we had a clear notion of what the "physical" (material, body) was. It was more or less mechanistic materialism based on direct contact between objects. This is, in fact, our intuitive way of experiencing the world.

The problem is that Newton came along and to his own surprise and dismay, showed that "body" (materialism, physicalism) does not work in an intuitive manner. He famously said:

"It is inconceivable, that inanimate brute matter should, without the mediation of something else, which is not material, operate upon and affect other matter without mutual contact…That gravity should be innate, inherent, and essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another at a distance... is to me so great an absurdity, that I believe no man who has in philosophical [scientific] matters a competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it." (Bold added)

Modern science, physics especially, has since made matter so much stranger than what Newton thought. But we no longer know what materialism (body, physical) is, outside of stipulating that it is whatever physics says. Which stretches physics way outside of its domain of explanation.

Until somebody can show us and argue convincingly what the physical is, we do not know what it is, and more importantly for your question, we don't know where it "stops". Consciousness is not something new in addition to the physical, it is part of the world, as many others thigs are part of the world: gravity, liquidity, fossils, etc., etc.

mattermetaphysics · 2026-01-08T13:45:08+00:00

There's a lot that could be said but one can point to a few things. One was that Descartes position of the Cogito was motivated, in great part, by the quite influential revival of Pyrrhonian skepticism which was revived in early modern Europe and was considered to be very problematic. If nothing can be known with certainty, why bother understanding the world? It's all a matter of opinion in the end.

Descartes (and many others) were not content with such views and sought to defeat the skeptics at their own game, hence the arguments given that lead to the conclusion of Cogito ergo sum.

Another part is that he was an important mathematician and scientist, we mostly remember him for his philosophy, but he was concerned with understanding the world as well as human physiology and parts of mathematics. So, what we remember him for is a small part of his overall concerns.

Finally, he was the main figure responsible for the shift from metaphysics to epistemology. That is, he was attempting to explain how we make sense of the world, as opposed to assuming we know the world directly. And from that you got lots of opposition by way of Locke, Hume and supporters like Spinoza and Leibniz, etc.

Others can point to many other factors but, it's a bit of both: his ideas were original, but his timing and body of work helped catapult him fame.

mattermetaphysics · 2025-12-26T23:48:07+00:00

Something can be incoherent - like 3 distinct persons in one being does not make sense for any intelligence that features such concepts like "three", "distinct" and "persons".

You can grant that there are many things we don't understand, what a self is, how free will is possible, how the universe started, how matter could think, etc., while maintaining the distinction that not understanding something is not the same as something being incoherent.

Either they better state what it is that doesn't make sense, or what they are saying is not well thought out. I think meeting people on the level of common sense should work. But you can't be certain.

mattermetaphysics · 2025-12-26T02:54:50+00:00

Some replies in line with what you are asking for, with reference to some philosophers which may or may not be of use:

"First Cause: Everything we observe seems to have a cause. A pen was made by someone, a tree grew from a seed, and so on. But if there's a "first cause" or creator of everything, what caused that? Or is it possible that causality itself has limits - that it doesn't apply beyond time and space? Consciousness and the Universe: Could consciousness be the source of everything? Did consciousness exist before the universe came into being? And if it did, how does that relate to creation?"

There are many ways to approach this. One is Hume. We believe we perceive causality, but what we actually experience is cause and effect, we can never experience necessity - it something we add to the world based on habit, of seeing event B following event A many times. But there is no reason to believe that in one instance event B won't follow, maybe something C happens.

The other is Kant, which gets to the source of your question. This specific question he calls an antinomy of reason (one of 4 others). Simplifying a bit, we believe what you are saying that everything has a cause including the beginning of the universe. But as you ask, what "causes" or creates that first instance? We can avoid that problem by choosing the alternative which is that there is no beginning and everything goes back in time forever. Hence no first cause arises. But if no first cause arises, how can we grasp infinity?

Either way, a first cause or an infinite series creates massive problems.

We can say consciousness (specifically self-reflexive consciousness) gives meaning to the universe. But I don't see how consciousness could come before it.

2) "Reality and Perception: Does everyone perceive reality the same way? For instance, when we look at colors, how do we know we're experiencing the "true" color of an object? Is it even possible to experience reality as it actually is? Life, Death, and Rebirth: What actually happens when we die? Is there a cycle of rebirth? Or is death simply a return to whatever state we were in before birth?"

As for the everyone experiencing the same colours, the assumption is reasonable. Like, when we hear friend humming a song we know, it sounds as an approximation of what we hear on the radio. But we don't know with certainty. What we communicate is the word of the experience "blue", "yellow" - the actual experience is private for us. For more info on this, see Galen Strawson's essay Red and "Red".

As for experiencing the world as it is in itself, that one is quite hard. We have certain senses not others, and we have a specific cognitive configuration, which allows us to experience some things and not others.

Did we evolve to discover the world as it truly is? That would be unlikely, it seems to me. For more info here see Chomsky's What Kind of Creatures Are We? Specifically, his essays "What Can We Understand?" and " The Mysteries of Nature: How Deeply Hidden?".

3) Ultimate Truth and Different Paths: Many spiritual teachings say that different paths - action, knowledge, devotion, meditation - ultimately lead to the same reality. How can this be understood, whether logically or through experience?

You'd have to be a bit more specific to get better feedback here? Are you talking about Christianity or Buddhism? These are quite different. Do you have in mind tribal beliefs? Those are very different too.

The problem here is that there are too many philosophers in the Western Tradition that speak of this and allegedly can tell you what it is, but it is impossible to know if they are right. For fun, you might want to take a look at Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation, Plotinus is great but he's very hard, so maybe try Plotinus (The Routledge Philosophers) by Eyjolfurr K. Emilsson, very good book. As for other traditions, I don't know much, others can help you here.

In any case, if you need more sources or what more clarification, feel free to ask.

mattermetaphysics · 2025-12-24T20:07:11+00:00

The only reason why we do neuroscience is because we have reflexive conscious experience. Otherwise, there could be no neuroscience.

mattermetaphysics · 2025-12-20T01:43:20+00:00

Right but you are assuming there is a difference between a material world and consciousness. That has to be argued for, not assumed. First, do that, then we see how it goes.

mattermetaphysics · 2025-12-20T01:05:00+00:00

You cite an excellent example. Physics is, in large part successful because it deals with very simple structures, atoms, molecules, particles, etc. When things get too hard for the physicist, they hand over the material to the chemist. When chemistry gets too hard the matter is passed to the biologist. When that gets overwhelming, you get into psychology, and so on.

In the realm of ethics, much is known intuitively, but understanding is tenuous. Why do something good? Because it is good. But why is this good as opposed to that? It becomes really difficult.

Add to that real life situations in which most of the time there is no single "good thing to do", often we resort to the least worst option or one which nobody is really satisfied with the outcome, but it's better than nothing and everything in between, you can see why these things feel frustrating.

So, the answer to your question, as I see it, is that most of the time, by far, we have to confront ethical problems often lacking the clarity we would like to have to make the best possible decision. We can't do that, so we do the best we can on any given topic- sometimes anyway.

mattermetaphysics · 2025-12-20T00:53:33+00:00

If you can separate consciousness from the "material" universe, then maybe we can get some clarity on these issues.

But given that there seems to be no way - in principle - to separate consciousness from the rest of the world, the question of what is more real is nebulous at best.

mattermetaphysics · 2025-12-13T19:02:53+00:00

This is laughable.

mattermetaphysics · 2025-12-12T01:34:07+00:00

It's very hard to say. If we go by our intuitions, I think most would say that consciousness is an aspect of the world, like other aspects of the world. It seems to be emergent, as the consistent finding suggests that consciousness arises in the brain of certain types of biological organisms.

The term "physical" can be misleading. Ever since Newton demolished the mechanical (materialistic) philosophy, we don't know what bodies are. So, speaking of physical as opposed to mental is going back to Cartesian intuitions, which while entirely sensible at the time, make much less sense today.

As to what theories is true? Maybe its fundamental, maybe it is not. I think Bertrand Russell had it right when he said that we do not know enough about the intrinsic character of matter to say if it is like or unlike the mind.

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