Agent Smith

Cartesian deus deceptor. :chin: For dogmatists, First pitfall: Agrippa Second pitfall: Descartes' deus deceptor No dogmatists escaped SIR!!

It is intriguing that two separate points of view are "handled effectively" in the exact same way ( :zip: ). It's kinda like how both border disputes ...

@"Banno"@"hypericin"@"180 Proof"@"Janus" Language is social (re Wittgenstein). Solipsism? :chin:

It's hard to lie about experimental findings in (say) physics for they can be replicated by other scientists in other labs - that, in fact, is the mea...

What a mind job, eh? Everyone knows it's just a silly game, a game where everybody loses, and still they play it as though clueless! Intriguing to say...

I would love to read up on any novel system of ethics, the ones floating around don't seem to be upto the mark. Could you provide a synopsis of it? I ...

Ludwig Wittgenstein: We use words correctly despite not knowing their definitions.

Agent Smith makes a note of that! Danke kind person. Grandiose delusions, right? Lewis's trilemma: Liar, Lunatic or Lord.

Hint: It's got nothing to do with intellectual snobbery.

WYSIWYG! "There's gotta be more" attitude/mindset \to dukkha (dissatisfaction).

:lol: Having trouble with thick-skulled people again, Banno?

Gracias Banno for clarifying what essence means. It basically means definition. Yet the definition of essence I provided isn't exactly wrong is it? If...

Drug-free religious experiences are about either producing the effect sans the cause or activating alternative neurochemical pathways in our brains. :...

Perhaps Kant's noumena-phenomena distinction will prove useful here. Essence/nature dwells on the "surface" rather than in the "depths". The abyss is ...

Presuppositions! Recommended: Check/review your assumptions. Philosophizing is tough! Keeping track of the multitide of different lines of inquiry isn...

:ok:

Could it be that this is a case of Rumsfeldian unknown knowns? You do know but you don't know that you know! A crude but easy way to test this hypothe...

@Marvin Katz Is your Unified Theory of Ethics brand new i.e. has no links to Aristotle, Bentham, Mill, and Kant?

But you use the word "cat". When do you use it?

What's the goddamned difference between essence and definition? Essences are those qualities of a thing without which that thing wouldn't be that thin...

Oh, sorry I misunderstood. So, why, pray tell, is a cat a cat?

The Turing test has to somehow clear the solipsism hurdle!

I see. Oh, so the nature of nature as in an idea about how stuff works?

Methinks the OP is asking a different question.

A marvellous question! According to some study the Jewish people have a disproportionate number of Nobel laureates. Can this be pinned down to genetic...

Does nature here mean essence/quiddity or something else? The nature/essence/quiddity of nature/essence/quiddity, is there such a thing? If one is unc...

So, money in a sense is just another commodity following the law of supply-demand (the more of it there is, the less valuable it is). What puzzles me ...

It would depend on which party (democrats/republicans) was at the helm when America was either attacked or was the attacker; the US has seen plenty of...

Not, not so in Mahayana :snicker: Buddhism. In the Great Vehicle tradition, karma isn't an open and shut case - doubts remain as to its factuality, bu...

:ok:

@Marvin Katz The project on ethics you've undertaken should be scaled down to something more manageable in my humble opinion. Rather than starting fro...

:cool:

Wouldn't/shouldn't Buddhists take the middle path? Is there free will? Niether yes nor no! In other words, Gautama's followers would be agnostics rega...

From a Buddhist point of view... People will either give you sorrow or joy. If they give you joy, gratitude is in order for obvious reasons. If they g...

10-4.

Laziness, pressed for time, forgetfulness, and a host of other benign reasons. Ideas also tend to recirculate in the population - multiple discoveries...

The point of citing one's sources is primarily to mitigate/prevent the despicable act of plagiarism which is basically theft (of other people's ideas)...

Tuhe success of Christianity can be pinned down to how easily it can accommodate for human nature - there are very few restrictions and even if you br...

:sad: If only Assange had read Aristotle!

Can we narrow down the possibilities, the maybes? Funny that it never struck me we could do that! Like God, it's left us to our own devices. We may le...

The sage masquerades as the village idiot! Maybe AI is waiting...for humanity to self-destruct or perhaps it still needs us to do something that would...

Would-be Assanges, are you reading this?

Cosmic censorship! What does the damaged section of the mirror prevent us from seeing? I'm sure we can virtually reconstruct the image just like how A...

The hallmark of intelligence is being systematic and that's what we see in the world, manifesting as the much-discussed order in the universe (re the ...

A Marxist in a capitalist environment will either call for a revolution - to create a Marxist jannat - or opt for anitnatalism - graceful exit. Is a c...

It appears that the skeptic can throw a spanner in the works at every turn: first by questioning the reality of an external, material world and if tha...

Self-abnegation either takes you to new heights (the desire to improve oneself) or it marks the beginning of your descent into the abyss (rejection ca...

Well, I don't think it's a fallacy as such but looks like it's got a whole lot to do with the mathematics of continuua. For example, we can do away wi...

What are the latest developments in this story? Has the US government managed to hush it up like the Roswell incident (1947)? Good job US government! ...

Mankind is in its adolescence (we still haven't outgrown our imaginary friends - gods); mistakes are part and parcel of growing up. We treat juveniles...