frank

You're a person. You're at least part abstraction.

So you have freedom in this real world. What does that mean to you? (Real question, not rhetorical) What comes of that freedom?

Why?

Monks are always feeding the poor and taking in stray schnauzers. Hermits become useless to society.

Abstractions aren't hidden. They're in plain view everywhere. Aren't you yourself an abstraction?

Grace requires adversity.

But you'd also be out of the loop on making the world a better place.

Me too.

Yes. The world has recently embraced Nietzsche as the greatest thinker of all time (metaphorically speaking). Don't be ridiculous. Truth is alive and ...

Does the deluded individual lead a more useless life?

This thread wasn't meant to be an analysis of the Matrix. Its a question about the value of truth. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Heidegger denies any innate essence. That conclusion is not drawn from witnessing the phenomenon. That is an interpretation of early childhood develop...

Propositions aren't about the operation of philosophy. It's about thought and communication. Among all the amazing things you can be aware of, there a...

Universals are indispensable. So are propositions. We could just make a special ontological category: indispensable. Maybe we're flatlanders and when ...

Some things are innate, though. Think of twins separated at birth.

He isn't denying that we believe that nature is ceteris paribus uniform. He is attempting to offer a sufficient reason for that belief. He is being dr...

A fair amount of your unthinking behavior was (one assumes) instilled in you from your observations of and interactions with other people. Imagine you...

You first have to accept a division between unthinking behavior (second nature) and subsequent analysis (reflection). Do you agree that we can divide ...

Hume performed intellectual somersaults in an effort to satisfy the PSR in regard to induction. At what point did he reverse course?

True. And that highlights how thoroughly intellectual the PSR is. It's upon reflection that the demand for explanations appears along with the assumpt...

Spinoza did accept an exception to the PSR. Your post deserves more than I can offer now. My stake in it is just that grasping the PSR is critical for...

:up:

The split is between my emerging view, Dreyfus, and whatever Heidegger was actually trying to say. My view carries more weight with me, obviously. :) ...

Dreyfus: "Thanks to our preontological understanding of being, what shows up for us shows up as something. As Heidegger puts it, using "actuality" thi...

Sounds like you've got the issue covered. Carry on.

Describing Davidson's project as successful would also be fairly odd. :grimace:

Culture and nature provide the forms of background practices from which we derive propositions (upon reflection.) Our reflections in turn affect futur...

It's a hermeneutic circle. This one is good too: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--3hUmEAJoVk/TqS1DaRyMsI/AAAAAAAAAMQ/Whr2f38HO78/s1600/hermeneutic_circle.jp...

I'm going to have to get back with you after thinking on it.

Yes, but it's not like we justify willy nilly. We analyze events and put ourselves on a stage like soap opera stars. The question is: where does the s...

Nevertheless beliefs are residents of the domain of reflection. You swerve around the bump in the road and later work it out that you believed it was ...

:up:

That's the sort of thing Dreyfus would point to, yes. First of all, I didn't type it out, but it occurred to me in the midst of the OP: "This is amazi...

"Principles em-bodied... are placed beyond the grasp of consciousness, and hence cannot be touched by voluntary, deliberate transformation, cannot eve...

thanks!

Suppose we find it reasonable to conclude that the Big Bang was causeless. The PSR doesn't say that we're unable to conceive the bang in some way. We ...

The causeless is a fixture of thought traditionally associated with divinity. I'm reading about Heidegger's rejection of ontotheology (seeing all thin...

...in the light of the intellect's insistence on universal inter-relatedness. The individual, as a concept, stands out against a background of wholene...

We don't need no education.

You might have a special ability to conceive the causeless. Just put that to the side if you dip into Leibniz or Schopenhauer. They had more trouble w...

Chance doesn't signify causeless. The die lands with the 2 face up by chance. One still assumes there is a cause.

We'll see what happens...

It's interesting in the US right now. The more socialist side of the Democratic party is trying to edge out the moderates. The part of the American so...

It's not that we should look for sufficient reasons, it's that we have no choice but to believe that they exist. It's a basic principle that pertains ...

:heart:

Yes. I was trying to explain earlier that some people will automatically put the two together: you're disadvantaged because you suck. But that's true ...

It was showing that some people in the US start with a disadvantage that wasn't caused by anyone who is still alive. The video said nothing at all abo...

You said the video confirms T-Clark's thesis. You either didn't understand the video or you didn't understand T-Clark. If we stopped talking about the...

Nope. If you were a black or latino friend, then I would try harder to get you to see past the "white people hate you and that's why you're failing" m...

This is what I think is really going on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwx5IvypC5Q