Is it always total bullshit? What about defenses like sunk cost, concern for how a few particular human beings will fare without one, the hope that on...
If memory serves, those guys were politically religious. As I understand it, there was basically a secularization of Christianity. Heaven would be bui...
Dark, man. I like it. I think that way too. There's a dark ecstasy in it, but it's a rough ride at times. The spiritual dream comes in at least 50 fla...
Remember the first episode of season 2? The woman who is devoured by social media ratings systems? That episode nailed something true and terrible. I ...
Interesting point. But what occurs to me is that substantive/non-substantive is the same kind of convenience of language. What do we mean when we say ...
Is that really the problem here? I think all kinds of conversations are productive without terms being defined. In my view it's the social dynamic tha...
'Heroic' might be a better word. I think he was (at his peak) one of the great artists in one of the greatest art forms. He also brought a feminine en...
Indeed. And there's also the way of a man with a maid. The good stuff is the same old stuff. In my experience, the high feelings come with a sense of ...
Dreams have got to figure in, I think. We can see dead people in our dreams. We can even have illuminating conversations with them. Then we might drea...
Right. We can think of a reactive folk-philosophy mode for coming to acceptable terms. Then there's also the active or inspired mode. For instance, I ...
I don't have the sense of a break between my mind and my body. It's more like a spectrum. What I might call my soul is the 'higher' end of a simultane...
If I go way back to when I started doing philosophy without calling it that, I'd say it was a response to the trauma of growing up. A cynical person m...
I suppose I think of people as wholes greater than the sum of their parts. I'd like to believe in a good afterlife, but I just can't. I can make peace...
They didn't have to be Batman or Mick Jagger to live noble lives. They could do ordinary things with style and awareness. Bukowski wrote somewhere tha...
Most certainly. When I read Ham On Rye, it reminded me of my school days in a small town. His school was different. His difficult father was difficult...
http://www.iep.utm.edu/fallibil/ Also Popper said something about letting our theories do our dying for us. In short, unbeliefism seems like old news....
In my opinion, it's about sharing the glory of one's genius in these cases. If this was about money, he'd be charming us. I actually think PGJ is a sm...
Yes, indeed. And it's a nice high. It's like the foolishness of young love. 'Holy cow, mom, turns out I'm a genius.' The comedown is rough. The fog of...
Wow, great quotes. I've read lots of Buk, but neither of those. He was prolific. Ginsberg has powerful moments and is a fascinating character. Kerouac...
If memory serves, Hume couldn't think of an argument and didn't expect anyone else to either. The temptation is to say that the future will resemble t...
I see. I suppose I draw the distinction elsewhere. There are people who think in terms of materialism and idealism (who take grand abstractions and wo...
Damn. I was on those subways once (visited NYC last summer). I was lucky. I mostly remember heartrendingly beautiful NYC girls. I should say women. Bu...
What's interesting is that it allows us inferior believing types (superior more sophisticatedly arrogant types who like online friendliness) to get to...
Right. Trivially. As I believe I said earlier, I find it hard to distinguish your opening post from the demand that we think critically, non-dogmatica...
Ah, we poor inferiors accustomed to belief. But that's the point, right? You rule. We drool. Yet we aren't believers enough to fall for this approach....
Good issue. I tend to read this situation in terms of the limitations of human thinking. Maybe our minds just weren't evolved for this kind of thing. ...
Actually I'm familiar with variants or rather precursors of non-beliefism. I do understand the emotional charge or allure of presuppositionless though...
Excellent point. I usually enjoy these problems as parodies of philosophy at its most tone-deaf. It's like the tragicomedy of a Vulcan working out an ...
Hi. I must confess that I can find only another example of vague abstract evangelism in the opening post. Would you mind boiling this down in practica...
I hear you. It has its uses. I even suspect that most ways of talking that have caught on have their uses. That's why they caught on. We philosophers ...
What comes to my mind is that all metaphysics is reductionism. We reduce the complexity of experience to useful generalities. I've heard/read a simila...
I agree with the sentiment. For me this is largely an issue of personal style. I don't like taking labels too seriously. But I swim in the language wi...
I agree. I don't think we can get behind our own language. When I first read philosophy, I learned somewhere the motto 'define your terms.' While this...
As I see it, Hume himself continued to believe. He knew that we all must do so. What he noticed was our inability to justify this trust deductively or...
I object to the commas in both sentences above. But I like this attention to prose style. Should I have combined my two sentences into one? Maybe. But...
Hi. We could look at this another way. 'Don't murder' could be phrased as 'respect the lives of others.' Also 'give to the poor' could be phrased as '...
I generally agree with that claim. Of course (?) the disquiet can return and the system is then discarded or adjusted. It also seems possible that a s...
Hi. Do people really tell you this? For me it's usually people talking about how screwed up the world is. And I also thought 'life isn't fair' was a p...
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