If I decide to fight, it won't be because I assured myself it was just. I don't get to know beforehand. I don't understand most of the things that are...
What I mean by that is that each struggle is peculiar to itself. Some differences seem large in the mind but involve short distances in the world. Oth...
Creating new alternatives as a peacemaker is tough job. It may not work. Some people I have met try stuff that may not work at all. I try to be like t...
Well, I did say that I cannot make a "rational" argument for war. The Aquinas argument for a "just" war is not helpful. But everybody decides when to ...
War may not be rational but the end of negotiation is not necessarily irrational. We all have our limits to how much is a matter of a deal that could ...
Well, there are so many "modern psychologies." So many, in fact, that I have no idea what might be said by saying stuff about it. I may as well treat ...
I dunno. It sounds like you want some kind of control over the outcome.The fate narrative that runs through all of the instances cited is interesting ...
Well, one of the options after looking down from a window and wondering if the people are automatons is that one could check it out in that moment. Ru...
One way to look at the Descartes speculation about other minds is not to look at it as a matter of proving the viability of certain theses but a metho...
My reading of Hobbes differs from your breakdown in two respects. Any condition where people cooperate instead of fighting each other is a "state" of ...
The terms of the wager are more of an invitation than an ultimatum. Pascal is proposing one could start living as if certain things were the case befo...
Unlike killing a non-state actor, this one targeted a senior officer of a recognized state. So, it is an act of war. Not only by whatever other nation...
The psychology of prayer may have nothing to do with this X you propose to be the deity. But maybe it does. The serious attention given to what concer...
You may be interested in Gregory Bateson and the Evolution Of Mind. But if you are going to bring in the biological in that way, it changes how one sp...
I don't mean to say that the one toward whom prayer is directed is a "space filler." What I am saying is that faith involves the act of being witnesse...
You are holding on to both sides of a comparison there when they are mutually exclusive. Praying is not a quid pro quo. You open up what is most impor...
Various narratives and traditions address evil. I don't see any value in judging in advance how one or another point of view will respond to it. By th...
It might not be remiss to note that the idea of the "secular" appeared in a theological package. The introduction was not an argument against the mora...
The first sentence of that statement suggests some kind of reincarnation. The second sentence sounds like the automatons Descartes imagined were walki...
Well, the selfish part of feeling the loss is not so very different from the way the friendship itself was selfish for both of us when it was happenin...
What I would have liked to ask him is whether he saw the limits of speech in some parallel to Taoism where what cannot be expressed is the beginning o...
Well, there is a lot of talk about preference in his book. The talk about being commanded to love is different. It would be interesting to hear object...
From the point of view of Kierkegaard's Works of Love the matter is not about the conditions that determine what brings about one kind of connection o...
It would help me if you referred to specific text of Islamic philosophers you have in mind. They did not all agree with each other. Grouping them toge...
Okay. I will try to do better. Kant objected to Hume's view of causality because it did not give a way to rank different explanations. The objection o...
It is not very complicated. The work of critical thinking reveals how assumptions shape various arguments. So, how does one separate those various arg...
In terms of context, it is a matter of much debate to say what that is. From one point of view, that is the only argument. We cannot get past the fram...
I am not sure where the knife is balanced between being a result of causes and being responsible for the choices one makes. Basing an ethic strictly u...
Along similar lines, Philip K. Dick has parallel histories struggling with each other and individuals able to traverse between them. One of my favorit...
Good question. Our adaptability has lead to a crisis of stasis. The tools that have worked so far to extend control of resources now have their own in...
It is pretty obvious that one is hearing what Yourcenar thinks during the book more than a transcription of what Hadrian thinks. I happen to be intere...
The first book I listed is a fiction, presenting an emperor musing on the best kind of Empire to shape. The second is a series of essays arguing that ...
I do not mean to question your sincerity. I was trying to take the Pilate reference seriously. Now that you abandon it, I am not sure what it has to d...
From the Pontius Pilate question, it is presented in the accepted Gospels as an observation upon the process of judgement Pilate is carrying out. Some...
I will check Collingwood out. I am not familiar. To be clear, I am not dismissing historical enterprises. For example, I think Hegel is really importa...
Compare, for example, the way someone like Plato is interpreted by the generations of people who have done it. Whether that be Plotinus or Strauss, th...
That is a good point. My only objection is that much of their wording stays out of the problems being wrestled with. It becomes too much of sports-lik...
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