Valentinus

When I read those words, the first thing that came to my mind was Ralph Ellison wondering at how strange the life of a white supremacist must be after...

Love cares for the being of another even it involves being separated from them. If you are connected, then it means learning what they need with or wi...

That is actually a problem for people who are so attractive, the fascination of other people becomes a burden to them. The terrible symmetry of the st...

That is an interesting interpretation of the story. An alternative version would spell a story of insecurity. There is noting to secure my vision of m...

I was referring to this:

So, is that to say, that you consider the challenge made by Constance to be irrelevant to your enterprise?

I am not sure you are being completely genuine in your responses. You asked me to explain how I understood the texts as well I could. I did that, as w...

The reflection is not oneself. The resemblance is an odd accident. A glimpse of a passerby that is wrongly understood as oneself. The fascination is w...

The story is interesting because it can be read in other ways than a cautionary tale against excessive self involvement. Is the anger of Achilles only...

My intent was not to offer a pragmatic limit to religious language but to suggest that that the secular protection of the personal protects the expres...

Does that conclusion amount to a rejection of a claim that something else can be recognized outside of the stories we make to explain things?

I don't think you have derailed the thread. Constance has asked us to consider the matter beyond the terms of adequate explanations for what we have w...

And there I was, without a net or a circus. Confident in the findings, like grasping an old spoon to manage soup that was not served. The banquet will...

How does the way you frame the idea of "informational structure" relate to the language games perspective of Wittgenstein?

I just completed the duty of serving on a jury and have been made particularly sensitive to how values important to one can be seen as a threat by oth...

That observation from Luc Ferry does draw, in sharp contrast, the different purposes being pursued by using the language of the "Greeks" to connect or...

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In the context of a shared language used in a community, what has permitted the discussion of religion with a relatively small amount of bloodshed has...

Who, pray tell, are these thinkers who assume Socrates was a secret atheist? You just allowed the observation that the "secular, modern sense" is not ...

I was referring to the way the "scientists" are viewed as being against the existence of the gods because of the power that arrogates to themselves at...

Sometimes, it is difficult to distinguish what is a genuine desire to understand from a confident assertion that something is the case. Oh wait, you w...

I have read this text before. Are you offering it as an argument in the context of the discussion underway?

We live in the shadow of our images, the results of our attempts to imagine what is happening. Noticing that is happening doesn't put the "material wo...

Yes, that passage is the start of the argument against the "scientists." But before the explanation of what should be accepted as "natural" is given, ...

The law is arbitrary and and does not fit with the Timaeus or the limits of understanding the natural world as expressed by Socrates in a number of di...

That is an interesting question. It reflects how our use of the division "atheist versus theist" is a species of the "modern educated liberal student ...

The dialogue of Cratylus specifically addresses the matter. Unlike the presentation of the Timaeus, Socrates offers an opinion upon it.

I take your point that Jim is presenting his case in front of a community whose language connects meanings in ways that include him and his listeners....

I have to admit at the outset that I am unable to entertain the idea of predestination as an alternative to the role necessity plays in various attemp...

It is pleasant to be cast in exciting movies that I will never appear in. I appreciate the attention. I have no idea what you are talking about, howev...

It is also "theologically" relevant because the Gospels present Jesus saying that not everybody is going to be saved. The mustard seed grows in some p...

I figure Jim will have to decide that question for herself. In the context of the shared language we now use to agree or disagree, the expressions of ...

I did not mean to say that you did. I was asking if you had skin it the game, and if not, what was your interest?

If you have a thesis you think opposes another, state what that is. Badgering other people to answer leading questions is juvenile.

As far as I know, Apollodorus is the only one to have suggested that such a personal inventory is what was meant. The OP uses that personal inventory ...

There is still a lot at stake in the matter. I don't want to suggest I have a greater understanding by wanting to approach the problem through specifi...

If you are going to refer to Christianity, treating it as an established body of agreed belief runs into the problem of how many people have died expr...

I found Spinoza addressed the problem as I was having it. It seems like your question regarding duality involves something else. Wondering if the fear...

I figure Wayfarer and 180 have shown the "mind /body problem" as the child of metaphysics, so it is connected to it by default. I agree with 180 that ...

My comment regarding the physical aspect of the mind was not really germane to the distinction I was making about the Cogitatio. The isolation and imm...

Whoa there, fellow reader of the Dialogues. I did not mean to argue whether Socrates was an atheist or not. You referred to a bit of text as amounting...

If there is a part of the body that is considered to be where the mind hangs out, then Descartes' distinction challenges all the others, including you...

That might be an interesting question. Without an argument, it leaves your reader to fill in what you have not. I am done with guessing what other peo...

He did not renounce it, he declared it insufficient for his purpose to understand the causes of things.

I was hoping to separate Descartes' project from any that would explain the difference between identity and experience. Rather than viewing the isolat...

I expressed myself poorly. Descartes argues that "I", the thinker, the one who can doubt what is understood, cannot doubt that such thinking is happen...

Saying: "the awareness of the 'I' was about going within oneself" makes it sound like a resource or a means of understanding only available to a perso...

Apart from the question of rights and whether guns help protect them, there is a beautiful form of life to be found through being able to go out and b...

I just lost ten pounds from reading that. Don't worry, I am still not permitted to wear Lycra according to a strict interpretation of the guidelines.

That is one for the Mods. Being a Rocker, I am not qualified to say.