The idea of the written word in some sense is a preservation of the mind. I believe a lot of Aristotle's works still exist and I wouldn't say that Ari...
Let's suppose we agree, and for good reason, that happiness means the presence of pleasure and the absence of suffering. I've always struggled with th...
Right on the money I believe. I know my opinion doesn't count as truth but have you noticed that, according to Agent Smith of Matrix fame, the way hum...
I believe that we can't universalize i.e. say that all of something is a particular way but we can generalize in that we can say most/almost all/the m...
To me mind is the sum total of all thoughts - the immaterial or so it seems and the apparent physical origin of mental activity (thoughts) the brain -...
So, there's such a thing as base nature and we have an override capability. Where is free will in all this? QM doesn't provide any proof of free-will....
What is your definition of free will then? In my humble opinion, a key determinant for free will is awareness, self-awareness and also awareness of po...
By natural tendencies I mean that, ceteris paribus, humans, like all living organisms, have preferences born out of desires which are observed to be c...
Have I contradicted myself? Let's take your car example. None of its parts is anything that can be driven or used as transport but all together we get...
The notion of natural tendency is important. If I'm correct then there's a widely held belief that animals are slaves to their natural tendencies i.e....
Natural tendencies will predominate our behavioral repertoire - what comes natural to us will feature prominently in our conduct but only if there are...
Ok. What is the level of certainty you can achieve regarding proof/evidence? If we're going to use deduction and supposing your arguments are all vali...
I don't think so. The mind seems to be an object that deals with abstractions. Yes abstraction may be the result of neuron firing but they do have an ...
I just want to say that Descartes may have approved of you since, in effect, he was sure of only one truth - his own indubitable existence. Surely the...
I'd like to run this by you all to for comments: It seems that free will isn't just about choices; if it were then there would be no difference betwee...
Let's delve into the nature of legal punishment. It is or is best when it is: 1. Retributive 2. Deterrent 3. Rehabilitative The deterrent factor is wh...
Well, in my humble opinion, the existence of deterrents in any form, even just the thought of it, is ample evidence that there's trouble in paradise. ...
Draconian laws were harsh - death penalty just for loitering. Modern laws may be more humane in terms of the absence of torture and very strict regula...
If you have issue with belief without evidence then why bother about assertions without evidence? I mean the problem of being told you're wrong withou...
Indeed, this is the very essence of free will - to be able to deny/negate anything and everything, whether it's logic or morality or even the basic in...
Just as there are failed humans, there are failed communities. At the risk of committing the fallacy of composition I'd say since a community and its ...
Initially, there seems to be a similarity between assumptions, used in logical discourse as necessary starting points, and faith; after all both "don'...
Reminds me of pragmatism. Would it have worked? I mean if we did define pi = 3.2 and used it in, say, engineering calculations and other scientific fi...
I may be totally off the mark here but I couldn't write this post if I didn't see colors. I wish we could post in color. Hey moderators, feature reque...
I don't have anything against confidence borne of true knowledge but given that we all have blind spots I suggest you take a look at the Dunning-Kruge...
Yes indeed, defining a good leader is the first hurdle and the first things that come to mind is they should be immune to the temptations of power and...
I'm talking about unconditional love and by extension anything stated to be unconditional. I guess you're right in bringing up a discussion of necessa...
:up: You have a point but what about other numbers like 22 and 7. In high school, ages ago, we were taught to use 22/7 for pi. Archimedes too set a lo...
I don't know what exactly truth is but the concept itself applies to propositions: if the propostions reflect states of reality then the propositions ...
Well then we can learn from them and use whatever traits they possessed as part of our model of the "perfect" leader which we can ask future leaders t...
Condition for x = prerequisite (necessary for x) Being unconditional to me means that there are no conditions and since everything can be a condition,...
How is that relevant to what I said? Churchill and Roosevelt were formally installed as leaders by way of elections. Does that alone make them leaders...
How did Archimedes calculate pi? I thought he used the method of exhaustion - increasing the number of sides of a polygon and doing the necessary divi...
You don't see the statement non-condition is a condition as contradictory? I think set theory can help us. The set of non-conditions contains no condi...
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