TheMadFool

Well, we're homo sapiens, defined as wise and we're positively smarter than the rest of the animal kingdom. Yet, our brains have made us the single bi...

Are you mistaking peace for freedom? Peace of mind may come from not having to worry about every small detail as would be the case in an unstructured ...

You're assuming God uses causality to know our choices. You seem to think that God knows us thoroughly and from that has preknowledge of our decisions...

Ok.

God knows everything including what everyone will want and do at any particular time BUT this knowledge has no causal import on us. For example I can ...

People are too busy just living to think about living. It's like the situation where you're in some crappy deal but it's too late for you to change yo...

I don't understand how arming oneself helps to be be ''polite''. Is it fear of retaliation with deadly force that makes for the ''politeness''. The wh...

How do you act/react regarding others? In other words how do you deal with people and know how what and when to do something? Empathy? I guess in the ...

If something hurts the most rational thing to do is to examine it closely, like a doctor, diagnose the problem/affliction and treat it. For someone wi...

That, my friend, is the million dollar question. We can't answer that question but that doesn't mean free will is impossible does it? I've been thinki...

Yes, it seems if causation is a universal fact, free will would be impossible. Free will is premised on the existence of a prime mover in the causal m...

Control our emotions? I guess there's a lot going on than meets the eye. Emotions are part of our personality and our experience of the world. We're d...

Maybe you did destroy your argument by contradicting yourself. Or maybe not

X You can't. Any possibility of memory being modified for a person would make it impossible for the person to know anything about him/herself. Not eve...

For a Buddhist there are 3 things that are important 1. The law of Karma which is basically ''what goes around comes around'' 2. Samsara, the universe...

I've always been more than a little confused about happiness. As a teenager the acquiring of and the comprehension of knowledge were things that made ...

What sort of evidence would convince you?

Well, I said you're right but why do we have things like etiquette, manners, good, evil? Their existence point to a shared belief vis-a-vis our feelin...

I understand what you're saying but you're asking for perfection. Nothing is perfect. All I'm saying is empathy works for most of us because we are si...

I agree that there are many differences between people but are they enough/more than required for empathy to lose its value? We have similarities too ...

:lol: You have a point. We can't distinguish dream from reality. So, why not call it reality then and do away with the description ''dream''? You'll, ...

What is your point? Dreams are real and reality is a dream isn't it? Well, I wake up from my dreams but I haven't heard of anyone wake up from this re...

Del

I guess someone who's living life unaware of its facts can be said of as dreaming. For instance a naive child who doesn't know how the cookies crumble...

I consider the fallacy active only when it attempts to maintain a status quo, as in my example of killing being natural behavior. Why? Because moralit...

The is-ought problem seems to be a claim that the normative can't be deduced from the descriptive. The mistake is elucidated by claims such as: Killin...

I've heard of whistling languages but they such languages, if you can call it such, have a very limited range. Proper language like the one we're usin...

I agree but of the many colors that are available, each can be only either affirmed or denied.

Obedience, without any qualification, is bad because in this case we've surrendered rationality to an authority. Nevertheless there are people/circums...

Given human nature, our lust/weakness for wealth and power, any form of government, no matter how well-thought, is going to be just another illusion. ...

While a question may have many answers, each answer can be paired with its contradiction.

:lol:

I see idealism has a lot to explain and it's similar to the situation where a person tells one lie and has to invent many other lies to make the first...

To be frank language is symbolic but one that is capable of making fine distinctions and expressing the many shades of meaning a thing can have. What ...

Abstract thought would be impossible with just object signs.

I don't know if I'm right/wrong but no one wants to be unreasonable. People prefer to be level-headed implying unreasonableness is accidental and not ...

What do we mean by ''we ought to do x''? It's a directive to follow a certain course of action and it needs a justification. I can't simply say ''we o...

The only objective absurdity I can think of is a logical contradiction and neither realism nor idealism have any contradictions. How is idealism more ...

I understand what you mean. You want to say that the just existence is not enough for any concept of God. God's other attributes are not inferrable fr...

I doubt both. If you ask my opinion I'd prefer to be a realist but there seems no way of proving realism. I'd have to demonstrate that a stone exists ...

Since I'm referring to the omni-God what lesser God could fit the bill here? I'm asking because the impression I got was that @"tim wood" made a speci...

A realist must prove that a stone exists even when it's not being perceived by any mind. Can you do that? Please explain to me how this can be done?

I'm trying to give a historical perspective on the issue. Medieval education is about logic, arithmetic, geometry and music. The three first subjects ...

Yes, and the God in this discussion is the monotheistic God isn't it?

But then it was incorrect to make the OP about God. It should've been about a creator being. The OP quibbles between creator and God. The fact is a cr...

Ok How does one prove that objects exist when not being perceived? In a very crude sense we'd need eyes in the back of our heads. See, we still need e...

But there was communist anarchy.

I find this interesting that you associate people with concepts. Indeed we could say that justice is hard to define but we seem to know, intuitively, ...

But it's not that we just want to prove existence alone. We also want to prove that God has certain attributes too. Just the existence of an x is not ...

How do we think of "oughts" vis-a-vis morality? The moral oughts have a source - our wants/wishes. Our wants boil down to dislike of suffering and lik...