unenlightened

You don't have to sign the contract. But if you don't, then you cannot expect others to respect your right to property, freedom of movement, or life.

There is no virtue, beyond common prudence, in my putting on a pair of socks when my feet are cold. And if I felt the pain of your cold feet, there wo...

I simply do not buy this at all. Relationships are certainly states of the world, and one cannot talk at all without them. To say that the cat is on t...

Well, I'll withdraw the definition, as it only fits one half of my dualism. But it's an unfair example, as an intimate relationship is composed to a c...

Just so. What counts a planet changes according to how we decide to see things. Yet such changes in terminology do not, I maintain, change the ontolog...

@"Pierre-Normand" Chess seems a bit hard to me, how about beans in a pod? What counts as a bean may well be somewhat vague and arbitrary; there may be...

I wonder if anyone can relate all this to my own simple-minded dualist ontology of stuff and arrangements? For example, wallpaper is stuff; but it is ...

Well the fact of the matter is that I don't generally preface my remarks with 'The fact of the matter...' - at least, that's my experience. ;) I quite...

There are of course no trials or convictions, merely experiences of such. There is no rubber meeting no road, merely experiences of rubber meeting exp...

Having just examined my life and thus made it worth living, it occurs to me that all my ancestors back to the primordial slime, along with everyone wh...

Indeed. but it is worth pointing out that self interest is no more rational than altruism. The myth of rational self interest leads to much nonsense. ...

There is nothing rational about self interest.

Nah. Slugs and snails and puppy-dog tails; that's what little philosophers are made of. Even when all our basic needs are all met we're still assholes...

The main problem I have with it is that it is upside down. The primary needs are psychological; given sanity, peace of mind, and and awareness, matter...

For them as knew Oliver Carter, aka Mars Man in another place, he has died today. A frustrating windbag to discuss with at times, but a decent, smart ...

Fortunately, it's not usually our line to draw. So you don't need a contents list to your prayer, but can leave things to the gods to decide for thems...

For most sciences, one can take it for granted that the subject matter is unaffected by the theories one has about it. This does not at all hold for p...

One certainly could. But then one had better not claim that Plato thought it.

The form of the good, primarily. But maths is good.

This is the bit I agree with. But you have the allegory backwards entirely. It is the crass materialist who is stuck in the cave of facts and knowledg...

Yes, we disagree; it is discontinuous, as awakening is discontinuous with dreaming. It is precisely the initiation into a shared world, an awakening f...

I think this is wrong, as a matter of fact, or at least radically incomplete. The babbling stage is imitative and thus eliminative, and I vaguely reme...

Is it a metaphysical doctrine? It looks more like a fairly practical (physical) statement about the limits of good sense.

Not 'finally', surely, but 'In the beginning...' or 'Once upon a time...' Like this:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8V5GbJwQ9rg

Is this the rehabilitation of rhetoric? Meaning is use and we use it on each other? The toddler knows tone and gesture as meaningful sans words, and f...

Anyone would think you wanted 'them' to make up their own minds about shit.

Judith Butler is worth a read, I think.

Way back around the time of the Falklands war - the good old days - I lived in The deep south of France in a half abandoned mountain village. Even the...

This interview with Alice Miller seems relevant to the psychology of fascism. Telegraph This is what is known as 'overkill'. Overkill is a disproporti...

You disagree - but you agree? I say that to the extent that people care about each others' interests, they will have a good state, and to the extent t...

I don't see the state as being fundamentally other than the people that compose it. Unfortunately we are untrustworthy arseholes who callously disrega...

It's unfortunate that pious poetry and monuments do not suffice to sustain virtue. It has, like bread, to be remade each day. One would like to do one...

It's the only way to keep God out of your head.

I would say that a through h are all approximately true, but none of them negate the fact of democracy. It's a crap democracy where the politicians tr...

That seems to support the thesis that meaning does not require reference, but only function. On the other hand, my old buggy buddy here can only be un...

Any statement that takes 'we' as the subject is a political statement. Otherwise known as 'virtual welding'.

I'm not seeing nearly enough welds in this thread. It is clearly dominated by philosophers. Think how much better it would be, stronger and more solid...

I have a position on this. I always treat the dream as real until I wake up.

Indeed. But where is x G? First, x wasn't G and everything was fine, and then becomes G. We need to resolve it because we want to use expressions of t...

In the good old days, science was known as 'natural philosophy'. Life was simpler back then, and these questions were not asked.

This won't do. It is declared a contradiction only because a paradox arises. When you then explain the paradox as arising because there is a contradic...

Now where's my old sig gone? Ah yes... Picasso said the same about art, in respect of the cave paintings of Lascaux. It was all there from the beginni...

I think to answer that would be to reinsert it back into the causal chain, and deprive it of freedom. If i take a modern analogy, a computer world is ...

These damn commies with their functionalist approach. :-} The function of dear Mr Lear Is to vanquish the very idea That art must be done For rum-tidd...

Well it's not all bad in the US. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqi10h0Tg_Uhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqi10h0Tg_U Looking at the comments on the...

Yes I see. Perhaps I should say rather that faith is expressed in action, and belief in words. 'Belief', 'faith', and 'trust' are related and the dist...

@"Monitor" Ball park - faith is putting your balls on the line. Or for the religious: Beliefs are what you recite in a creed, faith is what extra you ...

I have in the back of my mind a situation I was in recently that you may have heard about, where I remained faithful without much belief for some time...

I'm not sure I understand. One chooses to jump or not to jump. One's choice determines the act. Once one has chosen, one has acted and there is no cho...

@"Monitor" You seem to be agreeing with me despite yourself. Faith is the act of putting your money where your mouth might or might not be.