Reality consists of relation. Nothing could be ‘real’ in itself, in isolation from any and all interaction - there’s no way to be certain, and it’s fr...
Language is socially constructed, too - that’s not to say it’s a social construct, though. There’s a difference. The Simpsons and the particular ‘soci...
The difference between men and women is a social construct in relation to a biological foundation. Male and female biology IS different, but the fact ...
Philosophy is the love of wisdom - it is really concerned about how and when to judge or action an understanding of reality. Authenticity is as much a...
Males (and females, for that matter) in a formal situation are expected to keep any and all emotions in check, so it’s no surprise that ‘anti-social’ ...
It’s not a question of IF you invest in teaching/education, but HOW MUCH to invest, how much to pay those who teach - an entirely different question. ...
The value of roles such as nursing and teaching stems from an understanding of when and where to relinquish or hand over control/power to another. A q...
When we try to associate two dichotomies - in this case positive/negative and male/female - we’re never going to generate ‘true’ statements or conclus...
Liebniz described his monism in terms of immaterial entities of being. Carlo Rovelli explored the physics of this in The Order of Time: that our physi...
We’re always so quick to isolate and exclude absence from the discussion, as if it can simply be tacked onto the system as an afterthought, and doesn’...
I would say the main issue is that it needs to be ‘a thing that exists’ in order to feature in the system. Ontology doesn’t preclude being sans ‘thing...
My initial response to this would be to ask: how do we recognise and distinguish patterns of matter without acknowledging the absence of matter? Indee...
Not with those two rationales, of course. I think my highlighting ‘after’ may have confused things. This focus on assessing the moral worth of an acti...
I didn’t say it was a bug - my point is that it lacks accuracy, but I get that may not be a value for you. Justifying past behaviour offers little lea...
Well, I’m not sure that we always do the best we can with it. We often do what best suits us at the time. Recognising the fallibility of the model, an...
I wasn’t really asking for clarification on what you meant - it was a comment on the ambiguity of the term. We use it as if it means something specifi...
True self - as in essence - is a reductionist methodology. Any statement about who we are is inaccurate from the moment it is made. It immediately bec...
Will - the faculty by which an act or event is determined and initiated - is essentially a perceived relation between potential and actuality. As huma...
All of these CAN influence decision making, sure. But they also don’t have to be as limiting as we tend to think. The thing about human adaptability i...
I would say there is reason here to suggest a human preference/desire for rules, but not necessarily that any innate ‘rules for behaviour’ exist as su...
This is where language fails us in terms of clarity. The terms ‘kinetic’ and ‘potential’ refer to particular qualitative relations. Kinetic is a quali...
Who said anything about less than? I keep bringing up energy because it exists at the same level you are trying to dismiss as ‘less than’. You can try...
You’re oversimplifying. If I write a biography based on limited information I have about someone long dead, gleaned from multiple second and third-han...
I’m not arguing against the implication that ‘other people’ aren’t ‘real’ as such, because I don’t think it’s as important as you might think. I’m arg...
You will notice that I’ve referred to the level as both ‘metaphysical’ and ‘quantum’ - the difference as I see it is only in how energy, logic and qua...
‘Can’ being the operative word. Logic relies on value structures within language/mathematics for its appearance of certainty, in useful relation to th...
That’s an affected response, based on an assumption that ‘fiction’ = ‘not real’ = non-existent. To refer to someone as a ‘useful fiction’ is to put as...
. Colour does exist as a relative value. And ‘phantom limb’ refers to an experience of pain - although any resultant terror can be dismissed as unjust...
We use terms such as ‘really’ and ‘truly’ to make distinctions in a discussion between what we experience and what we accept. Have a go at rephrasing ...
I’m inclined to say nowhere. I didn’t say ‘love is not attachment’, rather that it wasn’t the same. Love can manifest as both attachment and detachmen...
Why is the binary necessary? I didn’t say that love was opposite to attachment - so, no, it doesn’t hafta be detachment. I think that love is more abo...
We can perceive thoughts and feelings - what we observe are the internal changes some can effect on our brain and nervous system. But not all thinking...
What I’m saying is that, like energy, what we name ‘thinking’ is evidence of thinking, based on perceived potentiality. I agree that it’s not well-def...
Attachment, at least in the sense I’m referring to here, is not the same as the original Christian notion of love - but I could argue that most modern...
Sure - sometimes - which is why I said it’s not just a kind of doing. When we talk about ‘thinking’ we are commonly referring to the attention and eff...
If we consider ‘thinking’ to be a kind of ‘doing’, then we’re only looking at the allocation of attention and effort towards thought over time. In rel...
Most of what we learn about the world begins with simplistic categorisation as heuristic devices - it’s how our understanding develops with language. ...
I get the sense (and I could be wrong) that in criticising the ‘modern’, Dermot Griffin is contrasting it with an original notion, rather than traditi...
That may be one way to perceive it. I agree that nihilism by definition rejects/denies everything, as it were. But I see nihilism as a process, not a ...
No, what happens in the story is a reduction of terms. And no wager happens in Job, it is only discussed. I understand the preference to treat the tex...
No, you’re assuming the story actually happened, but it’s literature. A story’s terms should not be bound by what happens. This only limits understand...
But it seems to me that you’re personifying in order to make this query - a character even in a story does not imply personification or being in the s...
Well, I don’t think it’s possible to say both at the same time, but it is possible to believe both at the same time. Any action can be interpreted/obs...
A little more... 1. Quality: There’s different kinds of happiness/suffering. 2. Quantity: There’s different amounts/levels of happiness/suffering. It ...
Thanks for the stats. It’s very different to external perceptions. There does appear to me to be a very vocal (or lobbied) push FOR religious interven...
I understand your hope, and I agree there is a distinct lack of allegiance as such to the British monarchy in Australia. But I honestly don’t think we...
I don’t think we can assume anything, tbh. I do think a persistent conflict between what we know about ourselves in our private moments and how we ‘sh...
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