Fooloso4

There was a recent discovery of some writings circa 381 CE. A discussion that appears to have taken place on something translated as "The Philosophy F...

What do you think things may have looked like? In what ways do you think things might have been different?

A distinction should be made between the myth (in the modern sense of falsehood) that Jesus ever existed and the myth (in the ancient sense of a story...

One problem is that a balanced, measured response can be too quickly labeled an attack. It has happened to me. Ehrman has been mentioned a few times. ...

It is unfortunate that a discussion of the historical sources and influences that shaped the writings of the Bible and its various interpretations is ...

I think you mistook a remark by me to mean that. My point was that we should not consider the profession as a necessary condition for being a philosop...

My response will be addressed to anyone who might be interested: I use the present tense for two reasons. One, I do not regard the issues raised as si...

There is a fundamental tension in religion. On the one hand, there is the belief in immutability, and on the other, the historical evidence of continu...

I don't know. I have not read anything by or about him in a long time. I usually do not watch videos, although sometimes I do put them on 2x speed and...

I am reading "God: An Anatomy" https://www.amazon.com/God-Anatomy-Francesca-Stavrakopoulou-ebook/dp/B08XB6JHQT/ref=sr_1_1?gclid=CjwKCAiA6Y2QBhAtEiwAGH...

And yet there is no end to those who 'f' the ineffable

If you want an example of a contemporary sophist Peterson comes to mind first. At some point he began to garner attention and has milked it for all it...

Full disclosure: I am a philosopher by profession. I have a PhD in philosophy and many years of teaching before I retired. I have always been reluctan...

Are you claiming that we can understand a hinge proposition better by looking at Kuhn's paradigms? It seems to me that compounds the problem of interp...

I regard the faith in a transcendent reality to be an escape from reality. I suspect people die every day clutching on to their beliefs.

Do you take the claim to be a hinge proposition? If we consider the shift from a geocentric to a heliocentric universe it seems to me that the geocent...

I take this to be an invitation to look more closely at Hobbes in light of the ancients, and the ancients in light of Hobbes.

I do not share your confidence.

I was responding to your claim that the philosopher is someone who practices it as a profession. The professionalization of the field is something wor...

Thank you. Some time back I did extended commentaries on some of the dialogues. I take inquiry to be central to the pursuit of philosophy. There are s...

As I understand it, hinge propositions are not immutable: (OC 108) Within "our system" at that time, it was not doubted that no one has ever been on t...

Generally, what the sophists taught was how to win arguments, how to persuade others to do what is to your advantage. For some this is what it means t...

There is a difference between the way the philosopher was portrayed and what was thinly veiled. The philosopher, despite the portrayal was not a selfl...

The sophists were a diverse group. The term came to have a negative connotation but it was not always used that way. On the other hand, the term 'phil...

If they are it is not in the Kantian transcendental sense. (OC 341) (OC 342) (OC 343).

Did Socrates pursue philosophy as a profession? Is a sophist a philosopher?

I think Plato's political philosophy played the long game. Rather than enter the political arena he shaped it from the outside, by asking fundamental ...

What you have demonstrated is that your idea of hinge propositions is fundamentally mistaken. When he says: (OC 166) it does not follow that hinge pro...

A key passage in OC is a quote from Goethe's Faust: (OC 402) This is expanded upon: (OC 359) (OC 475) Language games are an extension of man's acting ...

I don't know. We see it on the national stage and we see it here on this forum. We cannot eliminate sophists, zealots, and those who are convinced tha...

There are some interesting twists here. I will mention one. Thrasymachus is a sophist. His motivation is to recruit students. His potential students m...

I suggest that Wittgenstein's use of the term 'hinge' is related to his interest in mechanics and architecture.That is to say, we should keep in mind ...

Disputes over who is and is not a Christian are as old as Christianity itself. We can go back even further to the faction between Paul and Jesus' disc...

In Socratic fashion I will let this stand, at least for now, as a riddle to be worked out by those interested in reading and understanding Plato.

We should not overlook the significance of the fact that Plato did not write a dialogue called the Philosopher. Both the sophist and the statesman are...

Can you provide historical examples of the progression/regression of one stage to each of the others? It is one thing to identify a regime as an oliga...

I forgot to address this in my last post. The claim that what is most valued in each regime leads to its eventual downfall can be evaluated independen...

The problem is not simply that the philosopher king does not exist, but that the philosopher as characterized in the Republic does not exist. Unlike S...

Does it make sense to regard this as the: And: If there is no just city from which they follow as deviancies?

Theology has created a god based on the attempt to guard against any reasonable objection. Vanity of vanities.

The just city was a regime that never was and never will be. It is a city in speech, purportedly intended to see justice in the soul writ large. Very ...

If we are to understand Aristotle we should first read Aristotle. In my opinion, Russell's History has had a detrimental influence of philosophy. Russ...

Descartes describes his provisional moral code in the Discourse.

That someone's moral character can be judged on this basis is questionable. It is evident that not all Christians, or more generally, all who worship ...

I take this to be the crux of the matter: We can speculate and argue about such things as dualism, the mind/body problem, and the "hard problem", but ...

There are far more PhDs awarded each year than there are positions available. In addition, the practice of hiring adjuncts (aka academic migrant worke...

To follow-up: Rather than see it as a contradiction, I think it felicitous to view each of the dialogues as presenting a part of a story of the whole ...

Yes, but it is not just the dyad particular and universal.

A dyad is a pair of opposites. As Jacob Klein puts it: Two in a double sense. Both one and one, and in their "twoness" each belongs together with its ...

In general it has become more narrow and specialized. This can come at the cost of a loss of depth and scope, and so, a failure to understand not only...