unenlightened

The search for meaning is meaningful. The feeling of emptiness is a feeling of inadequacy to the task of being human. It would be kind of these constr...

I'm with you there. Look, I think that the difficulty, the disagreements, mostly arise from dealing with horrors — War to end war, defeat fascism etc....

That is a justification. It has the form, killing is bad, but something else is worse, so killing is necessary, not killing is good.

If I do what I ought to do, then what I ought to do becomes the fact of what I do. Either my morality or my immorality is realised. The reality that I...

They are only false if you misinterpret them to be statements of fact. You ought to do good, but you will not. The moral conflict arises from identifi...

That's what bothers me. That you don't even worry that the justice system is run by the politicians.

That's a sad inditement of the US justice system. I thought the whole of the US political system was about the separation of powers.

I'm not saying that. "Come buy my snake oil, it will make you immune from snake bites." Some people do lie all the time. It is corrosive to society. I...

Yes I understand the distinction being made. But when that is transposed to a psychological as distinct from philosophical context, I think ordinary l...

There is something interesting going on here. The centre of environmentalism - and it's reflected in the questions on the survey - is that humanity an...

We are trying to communicate. Communication depends on honesty. It is open to us to be dishonest, and only pretend to want to communicate in order to ...

I hadn't thought about it, but I don't think there is a terribly important difference, in my mind at least. What's important is that one can decide th...

Yes, I think that is close to what I am saying. Obligations are not facts, oughts are not is'es. But there is a radical inequality that makes obligati...

What about the tree that you climb? Is that a representation?

Boasting again. You're very competitive. Gamblers put their money where their prognosis is, so you only have to look at their bank balance. But more c...

Direct realism: Reality includes sensitive beings, and sensible objects, amongst, and consisting of a load of insensible stuff like radio waves, molec...

They like hash brownies though, a much more economic way of consuming their stash.

The train is long, like a branch. Obviously one is always on long things, and in blobby things. Thus one is always in sane, never on sane.

I read that bit too. You have no response to any of the questions put to you. You claim the high ground of objectivity but cannot explain how you over...

Do you or do you not accept that some people are blind; they see nothing that you see? If so then you accept that direct realism your argument fails. ...

That's a pretty picture; it looks to my dependent mind like a picture of some apples, with some kind of filter applied to one half. We direct realists...

Oh, that's news to me. I thought colour blind people couldn't see colours. But how did you make the comparison? and how do you access these facts that...

Again with the internal/external division, and "the senses" mediating. Once you are a mind separate from a body, you will never know that you are not ...

Then why not assume we have trees?

At the very centre, God knows everything and experiences everything for all time all at once forever. My little thread of awareness, and your little t...

How can we know, therefore, that we "really" have eyes and brain? How can we know that we cannot know? How can we know that the telephone "really" wor...

How can you speak of causal efficacy, a mysterious connective substance for sure, when you cannot see or touch a tree? When the dog sees the rabbit, a...

The phrase "external world" implies a separate "internal world" in which presumably "perception" happens, as distinct from "seeing" which happens in t...

I think the question reduces to one of identity. Those who Identify as mind will be indirect realists, whereas those who identify as body will be dire...

Is this your argument? I can't see everything, so I can't see anything. If you have a picture of the world, how do you see it? Indirectly?

But you already know how it works, I see with my eyes and touch with my skin and hear with my ears. The onus is on the indirect realist to explain wha...

No, I haven't made any moral claims, and no one has to choose to keep surviving. But if one should choose not to keep surviving, there is no more choi...

I am a direct realist, and I do not have a tree in my head. Some people say that I have an image of a tree on the retina of my eye, but if that is tru...

Not the point at all. What people want is absolutely to be removed from the equation. Animals take shelter from the storm, or the predator, or the hea...

Have you ever been homeless? It might change your mind. "Ultimately objective" is a curious term. I wonder how it it works? An organism exists in rela...

I don't think Nietzsche liked dwarves much. I doubt his real views would be put into the mouth of a dwarf. Thing is, though we look down both the road...

I want to be a bit more realist than that. We do need buildings, and architects and all those ancillary workers i mentioned are the experts on these t...

Try this analogy. An architect draws up plans for a building that does not exist. The plans are general instructions (commands) for the construction o...

This is a really fascinating thread. Thanks to @"Pierre-Normand" for the experiments. It occurs to me though that what we have here is a demonstration...

Nazis are people too. And Nazism had considerable popularity in Europe and the US, along with their own variants of Fascism. The roots are deep in the...

It's boring when sarcasm is the whole argument. It becomes an irritating straw man. I'm saying that Putin saw Trump rightly as a disrupter of American...

The conspiracy I heard about wasn't that, but 'Psychopath leader secretly supports election of easily manipulated Narcissist Fantasist as leader of en...

Yes, it wasn't my intention to suggest that enlightenment was easy. Rather to bring out the contrast between the enchantment of talk, and the disencha...

I mean your faith is cute, but unappealing, whichever way you express it. The system that you ask us to have faith in is rather a meat grinder, as @"I...

A summary. I propose/suppose:— 1. Enchantment. The magician, or the enchantress, tells you that you are Mummy's special little boy, or God's beloved c...

That, sir, is a very third rate religion you're espousing, I'm afraid. Not because it has proven false, for religion does not deal in fact, but becaus...

And also is not reframed, and does not move on.

I do that a lot; I'm glad you approve.

Inherited wealth = inherited power= the establishment.

That's like saying that policemen do not commit crimes. Dangerous falsehood. Hitler came to power democratically and then established his dictatorship...