Of course each one of us is "participating in something grander" just by being alive. Each one of us is a member of multiple communities whether he wa...
I agree that it's going too far to say that any person who acknowledges spiritual experience, or claims to engage in spiritual practices, or is a memb...
Of course it's an ideal that can and should be pursued at the national level. At every level, but I suppose at the national level first and foremost, ...
I have no idea what the total cost would be, and what the total disposable income of the 0.1% comes out to nowadays. Moreover, I'm not sure it's enoug...
It seems to me you may be confusing the concept of truth with other concepts here. The fact that someone says "I am telling the truth" does not entail...
I agree that it's reasonable to use the terms belief and faith as synonyms, and that in this sense everyone "has faith" in something or other. I disag...
I don't believe in reincarnation. But I don't think the idea of personal identity that you've sketched poses any problem for the concept of reincarnat...
It's not clear in this story what sort of question is being asked, and what sort of justification is being provided. What does it mean to "question lo...
What is "our own sphere"? What is an "hyletic nucleus"? What does it mean for one person to "express meaning" to another person? What's the difference...
I'm inclined to agree that disputes about ontology, especially in the academy, often seem to be mere disputes about logical preferences, about the way...
I agree, it's important in philosophical conversation to clear up our terms. There are many ways to go about this, however. One need not provide a glo...
It seems the task indicated in the OP is to prove ?y.?x. p(y,x) starting from the premise ?x.?y.p(x,y) It's not just the order of the quantifiers that...
Do utilitarian theorists nowadays agree that pleasure maximization is the best or only criterion of utility? I expect the evaluation of utility is an ...
It seems to me we're roughly agreed on the value and character of the range of experiences and practices you've emphasized. I offer a broader emphasis...
Interesting approach. Perhaps I'm just unaccustomed to this practice, but it would seem to make a series of three or four replies most cumbersome. If ...
What do you make of this putative correlation? Suppose that 99% of bipeds are right-handed. What does this tell us about left-handedness, apart from t...
I wouldn't say truth is physical, and I wouldn't say truth is something "beyond" or "outside" the physical world. I'm inclined to characterize numbers...
I'm not sure I'd characterize the relation among these terms quite that way. For instance, I might prefer at least in some cases to say that "belief i...
An important issue for our conversation. As you suggest, we may distinguish formal (deductive, logico-mathematical) certainty from psychological certa...
It seems reasonable to suppose it's beyond our power to predict the future with certainty -- especially if we allow it's doubtful that we know the pre...
I like to say empirical science is a rigorous extension of ordinary experience. I characterize the various formal and empirical sciences as only some ...
I doubt there's such a thing as a noncontroversial metaphysics. Do you say you've got a hold of one? What do you mean "a reason why you're in a life"?...
Fortunately our conversation is not constrained to repeat the thoughts expressed in the OP, but only to reflect on them along with some of the remarks...
What is it in my remarks that lead you to suspect I underestimate the severity of the problem? Surely our conceptual and linguistic habits may contrib...
Will you provide a source for that datum? I don't know what the proportion is in the US today, or in any other place at any other time. Who cares? Wha...
Perhaps you're not familiar with the use of the word "some" in elementary logic. That's the sense of the word I intended, and the sense I often intend...
Do you mean to imply that in order for something to count as "an ultimate standard", a standard must be "something outside physical reality"? What doe...
Is there a transcript I might skim? Or perhaps a short section of the video that's especially instructive? I'm not in the habit of sitting through hou...
Many ancient philosophical tendencies sought to promote something like stable peace of mind in their practitioners, including at least some sects of B...
I've abstained from voting, as I'm not clear about the meaning of the question. For one thing, it's not at all clear what "free will" is supposed to m...
I would say some conception of circumstances *must* be part of the formulation of the maxim. As I recall, this is an old line of critique of Kant's ca...
I don't say morality is subjective. I say that moral feelings, impulses, attitudes, judgments, values, ends.... vary from one person and from one cult...
Every philosophical text is a commentary on indefinitely many other philosophical texts. Follow the trail of citations, including self-citations, each...
I'm sympathetic with the overall view you've sketched. I prefer to say that belief and knowledge are compatible with doubt, though it seems a psycholo...
Is it an infallible conjecture? I agree there's a sense in which the relevant sort of conjecture is unverifiable and unfalsifiable. But to say a claim...
It's become customary to make a firm distinction between gender and biological sex. According to that usage, gender is a cultural construct that is no...
I'm not sure what view you're attributing to the materialists here. I've never heard a materialist claim that consciousness is constituted by any sort...
I presume not. How many senses of the word are there? I'm not sure the list is determinate, nor that I could make myself responsible for all the relev...
What do you mean when you say "nobody knows what the mind is"? I might say in kind, "Nobody knows what anything is". All we get is glimpses that we ma...
I agree that reflection on one's own position is a crucial feature of good philosophical practice. I'm not sure on what grounds you suggest that Denne...
Is that passage from Bernstein's "Objectivism and Relativism"? I agree that the longing described in the passage sounds like the symptom of an illness...
The abstract logic of reproduction and survival doesn't inform us about the particular motives and impulses that drive each animal, or the particular ...
Me too! I can't tell if it's for any reason in particular, or just because it's an old habit I haven't managed to shake. It took a long while, but the...
How would you characterize the relation between "individual" and "group"? Is this just a way of speaking about the relations of various individuals in...
What is there in this world that isn't a process, or in process, or the abstract result of some process? The process of being alive involves biotic an...
Your short replies are wonderfully open-ended prompts. Though so far, in such few turns, they do more to stimulate my thinking than to give me a clear...
When a speaker's utterances seem unclear to me, I ask what he means. When I feel I've got a grasp on his assertion, but the assertion seems unreasonab...
I suppose treatment depends on diagnosis of each interlocutor's position in the communal discourses, even taking style and character into consideratio...
What does it mean to say "I believe it, but my opinion is not correct", or "I believe it, but I don't care whether my opinion is correct", or "I belie...
Comments