petrichor

Tribalism might be part of it.

Ah, but the point is to be on top of the mountain, with the big world-transcending view, isn't it? To tunnel through the mountain leaves you still at ...

Ironic that you say happiness is a pathless land and then suggest that logotherapy is maybe the one true path to happiness! :razz:

Herd warmth certainly feels good in some ways. But should our lives be about staying comfortable?

The trouble I see with -isms is how we tend to become tribally identified with them, with a particular side of a conflictual divide on a question. It ...

If, by raising a "level-playing-field problem", you mean to say that the situation is unfair, this is only a problem for a position if that position i...

disclaimer: I am no physicist and don't pretend to be an expert. I have never taken so much as a single physics course. I've only done some casual rea...

You can experience the illusion of being? In the present? Or in other words, you can not be and yet be deceived that you are?

And what of the motivations for making certain drugs illegal and not others? Consider the claim that has been made that the Nixon administration pursu...

As for Socrates, did he always preach obedience to the law? Besides, does "Socrates said we should do X" entail that we should do X? Socrates says it ...

Now, let's ask if it is wrong to do drugs. Is it wrong to do antibiotics? Perhaps it must be mind-altering. How about caffeine? How about a beer with ...

Is it immoral to do illegal drugs? Lets look at illegal and drugs separately for the moment. Is it immoral to do anything illegal? Surely we can imagi...

And yet a date, often the entry point to the most important relationship we might ever have, is usually pretty much just like a mutual job interview. ...

Okay, so a madman can believe that he doesn't exist. He can experience mental content such as, "I don't even exist". Is he correct in these thoughts? ...

And supposing someone (who?) goes deep in meditation and finds themselves not existing (who finds themselves not existing?). Did they cease to exist? ...

I am not a big fan of Dennett or eliminative materialism either. But Buddhism's denial of materialism is immaterial. ;) My point was that when you say...

I agree. You can doubt what you experienced in the past. Epistemological problems arise there very naturally. You are not experiencing the past direct...

What I am talking about is not what I would call a "higher self". I am not sure what that is supposed to be. And I am not sure that it would be correc...

It is a strictly defined number with a definite value. Its position on the number line does not change. It is exact. Sure, our decimal approximations ...

Do you mean to say that there is change here? Surely, the value of Pi doesn't change.

There are some good reasons to believe it. I am not sure I have the motivation at the moment to lay it all out, as it is pretty involved. But I have l...

What is the implicit argument here? P1: There is nothing which does not change P2: The self is something which doesn't change C: Therefore, there is n...

I don't think religion and religious ideas are fully explained by power interest. Religion is complex. But power interest, in my view, is one of the m...

Is there really so much difference? Basically, the idea is the same. If you are good, you go better places after death. If you are bad, you go bad pla...

If we aren't allowed a lottery system, it seems that the desire here is to prevent us from escaping the decision about who dies, so just being arbitra...

I've often thought that the Buddhist doctrine of no-self is in conflict with the doctrine of reincarnation. What reincarnates? The answer usually give...

Thanks! I can't help but think that some would argue that most things we do are vain and pointless in the end, if not artificial. In my mind, pointles...

And as for vanity, well, we all betray our vanity when we share our precious opinions here. We are flexing, both in the mirror and on the stage.

I am an artist. And nothing appeals to me aesthetically quite as much as the muscular human form. Muscle on bone is beautiful. The biomechanics of the...

How does it do away with athleticism? What, exactly, is athleticism? And whatever you define as athleticism, why does bodybuilding need to have that i...

Bertrand Russell demonstrates clear writing in his essays. No gobbledygook. One such essay: link Heidegger on the other hand...

That's not quite what I've said. But, I suppose I wouldn't entirely disagree in the following sense. The education system is like an organ in the body...

I have a feeling that if everyone were highly developed along those lines, the economy would be a lot smaller.

I'm a gen-Xer, and I've never been under the impression that my generation considers boomers the worst. I always admired much about the boomers. And t...

It seems I must not have explained myself clearly. With regard to the question of planning, I wasn't alluding to the sort of planning you seem to have...

I never claimed any of it is planned. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Perhaps this is just a pattern of organization that tends to evolve simply because ...

You're right. It isn't. I am not claiming that "2+2=4" is actually the law of identity itself as traditionally given. The law of identity says that "A...

One severely underappreciated function of our education system is that it acts, for good or ill, as a big sorting machine. Think of how after digging ...

If you give love, is something in you or something of yours thereby diminished?

"Can artificial intelligence be creative, can it create art?" Several questions immediately come to mind. Is all creativity art? Is all art creative? ...

I suppose I'll need to! But does it put things that way? I'll have a look.

Isn't the whole reason for the new equation that you can't simply add relativistic velocities as in the old equation? In relativity, c is a relativist...

My physics and math education are so limited and rusty! I am not sure how to deal with this. I've been trying to read and think about it, but I am jus...

In your original post, I believe there are some problems with your analysis. I don't know how to format the math expressions properly here like you di...

The way we talk and think about the truth that something is identical with itself or simply is itself is a convention that perhaps requires our minds....

I am not sure questions about consciousness and whether relativity requires it are particularly relevant to the topic of this thread. If we pursue tho...

Isn't 2+2=4 just an instance of the law of identity, A=A? Any something is itself. How could it be that anything in actual physical reality could be n...

In at least some cases, it is probably just regression toward the mean, a phenomenon that often fools us.

https://youtu.be/aEj-mrwwaxo

However bad we might think life is for humans or animals, that doesn't give us the right to do bad things to other sentient beings. On the contrary, w...