Vera Mont

Yes, I got that. What I don't see here is the alternative they should have chosen, how they could have known that was the better choice and did they h...

And then may we visit Pandora and ride a blue dragon? I'll settle for Carl Sagan's ship of the imagination.

It's your knowledge, nobody else's. To a reader, it's words that may be true, but they can't test, so they either believe it or not; they don't know i...

Yes, that's the part I didn't get: 'ungrounded foundations' seemed to me a contradiction in terms. I assumed unquestioned assumptions were formed eith...

I guess everyone knows I don't 'do philosophy'.

I once read almost half of the Inferno. Took a second run at it half as century later and left poor Dante in the deep, dark wood. That's the only essa...

And this is why I don't guess authors. I could maybe take a stab at one or two, but I just don't know the participants well enough to make intelligent...

I'm pretty sure the salient points can be translated to more accessible - if less philosophically precise - language. I would like to see that version...

What? I wasn't concerned with the difference between belief and true belief or justification and justification, or even truth; I was concerned with th...

It grabs you right away. Land-whale and crow...?? The choice of words is unexpected, arresting, intriguing. I mean "universe's own safety box". I've n...

You said knowledge is true information. I said it is not: unless and until it's been tested, reviewed, classified, stored and incorporated into a data...

A person can be rational and yet be unable to calculate the odds accurately. Indeed, I'm pretty sure no prisoner worked it out as the philosophy stude...

Not simply; it's quite a complicated process. Some new thing gets into the culture if many people admire it. Christo wrapping bridges in silk, to me i...

I doubt it's a philosophical question. It's a cultural one. Every age, in every culture, has beliefs, values, norms, taboos and moods. These are not u...

Aha. But nobody's told me yet: if "Do what I want!" is art and "No!" is art, butchering a pig is art, brawling is art, feces is art - exactly what isn...

Sure. Why not? It's all real and portable.

Bring things back from the future? I don't believe anyone can actually do that until STNG. Imagination can project possible futures - it always has. S...

Without original content and a message, it can only become a craft. I'm not putting crafts down: an excellent brick wall or well-made violin, a beauti...

I strongly suspect the majority of humans do. More sadly, a large proportion of that majority still restrict that crown to male humans of European ori...

for poetic skill, it's no Hound of Heaven, but it has great breadth as well as depth. It touches on every discipline with interesting analogies, chang...

Every now and then, you read a movie or book review that includes the sentiment: "explores/illustrates what it means to be human". The question has be...

Disclaimer: I can't comment on the comparison or parallel, due to the limits of my knowledge. I know how many cats I have to feed, what catfood costs ...

So is human hardware. I'm sure he would be gratified to hear that. I have yet to see a program without the hardware, or a concept in the absence of a ...

Yeah, it's hard to peek over the baby belly when your head is too heavy to lift. But eventually, you became an expert on what a woman is. Amazing! Tha...

And technology came about by.... no physical or material means? OK

But can represent the will of the people far more accurately that a questionnaire made up by people. Land ownership is a human invention (an abominabl...

What makes you think they're real?

Yeah, we find it useful. If you can manage without it, happy trails!

Not without your senses, your squishy, pink, very physical brain and someone to teach you or a whole lot of imagination. We have the capacity to make ...

Where? How would a mind be able to think mathematical thoughts? We're not born with mathematics, but we are born with sense. How would pure mathematic...

Made up of the traits all humans share, what we were each born with, what we've been given and had impressed upon us, what we've learned and experienc...

I don't think you can. The process may be envisioned through probes and coloured lights, but you can't go into the brain and follow the action close u...

Well, yes. That's a whole 'nother kettle o' sprats. Social mores are not necessarily - indeed, hardly ever - about the value of individuals. They're a...

Lots of people would, for lots of reasons - climate change denial comes to mind... or the benign uses of coal power.... This author hasn't. That's a b...

The essay we're supposed to be discussing never mentioned changing rooms.... Although, speaking of, since you're so deeply invested in them, what exac...

Buddhism, Stoicism... to rise above desire, fear, pain. For Christian and Sufi ascetics, just the opposite: to seek and embrace suffering. To me, it j...

Subjectively. Okay. Which processes are art and which are industry or mundane life? So, basically everybody who tells a story, whether you know what s...

I thought it was like the Klingons' 'a good day to die': that is, whether you win or lose, there is glory in the engagement. I have no problem with th...

I respectfully disagree. No soul's journey is boring! I grasp for meaning and coherence in literature, precisely because there is so much uncertainty,...

Every essay takes the position it takes on the subject it discusses. The author talking about Kierkegaard makes no appeal to Schopnehauer. The one dis...

How many, exactly? What were the outcomes? I mean, are teenaged boys' and girls' locker rooms really open to the general public in the USA and UK? I h...

What happened to bring about this state of affairs? What should the author's soul have been walking on that he was prevented from walking? What preven...

Not a single one on which there is full consensus. There are criteria on which the majority of academics, or critics, or authors or editors or readers...

Have a lot of men pretending to identify as women asked to be in the teenaged girls' dressing rooms? Or maybe they all snuck in via the public toilets...

Why would a man be in a teenaged girls' changing room? Are random women welcome? If there is a boy who aspires to be a girl is in their gym, the girls...

I find the Google bot a handy interpreter sometimes. If the subject is important or interesting enough, I follow it up on institutional or encyclopedi...

No, it's too sad, painful and hopeless. It reminds me of too many instances of real, physical suffering that I've witnessed, and I have no will to wit...

Indeed. The problem is, and will be for some time to come, that in physics and cosmology, science isn't exactly on solid ground today. It's heavily th...

That's a good paragraph, that one! Without freedom from the traditional form, there would be no new philosophers or philosophies at all. I'm pretty su...

Whether it's true or not, it's still your internal knowledge, unless and until you are convinced otherwise. You cannot communicate it by thought: you ...