Esse Quam Videri

By the way, what happened to your OP? Why doesn't it show up on the forum's main page?

Thank you for the thoughtful reply, but I feel like there are a few things that you're still not properly reckoning with. First, I feel that you haven...

Very nice! I hadn't seen that paper, though I think I've run across parts of that quote before. And don't worry, your secret is safe! :wink:

Your critique of religion seems a bit superficial. First, you seem to be treating religion as a monolith, but contemplative traditions within each rel...

I think you're hitting on something important here. Aristotle's analysis of the soul can be confusing because it is multi-dimensional, and he's not al...

I agree with you that there are modes of knowing that operate without explicit intellectual articulation and that nonetheless shape us, guide us and c...

You are right to distinguish between awareness and propositional knowledge, and you're right that conscious awareness need not rise to level of self-r...

Yes, perhaps I got lost somewhere along the way. I was originally responding to this: This seems to stating that awareness is knowledge. Depending on ...

Have a wonderful holiday!

This doesn't sound right to me. A sensation isn't a claim. It can't be true or false. It can't be a premise in an argument, or the result of an infere...

Sure, you can have a tickle without knowing its cause, but having a tickle and knowing that you're having a tickle are two different things. The occur...

Your points are well-articulated and the parallels you draw between modern cognitive science and Kant are certainly apt (as they were in your original...

I don't think I can do this justice in a single post, so I am going to start with some general observations and we can dive deeper if needed. At a hig...

I would say that this probably runs afoul of the Myth of the Given. In order to know that there are things one must have grasped concepts such as "thi...

The word I used was "appropriating" not "approximating". In order to know myself I must first be aware of myself. This self-awareness is intrinsic to ...

Experiencing, understanding and reasoning are acts of subjectivity. They are not something over and above the subject but constitutive of the subject ...

I acknowledge that there is no definitive interpretation on these matters and that commentators have disagreed substantially over the last two millenn...

I apologize if I've read too much into your critique. Hopefully the discussion has proved interesting nonetheless.

Perhaps. Fair enough. I acknowledge that there is a difference between reflexive awareness and object awareness. You are right that the subject is not...

It sounds like we may be at an impasse here. It seems fairly self-evident to me that the subject can become its own object, otherwise self-knowledge w...

What I mean by “epistemically prior to the empirical” is that a proper understanding of the empirical depends on a proper understanding of the transce...

I don’t agree with the idea that the subject is forever hidden behind a veil of representation, firstly because I don’t believe that knowledge is esse...

Yes, this is Kant’s definition of transcendental philosophy, but I am approaching it differently. Kant excludes the analysis of practical reason becau...

I don’t deny that the mind has an active role to play in the construction of the lebenswelt, what I am skeptical of is the notion that the entirety of...

One last thing I wanted to say with regard to the meaning of the word "object" in the above. The word "object" here is not being restricted to any kin...

It seems like we may be getting hung up in terminology. My proposed starting point is to ask “what is presupposed in the act of asking a question?” We...

It was intended as an alternative account, not a representation of Kant's account.

The purpose of defining the in-itself in the way that I did was to avoid smuggling any ontological commitments into the definition at the outset. This...

Yeah, I get it, and I can relate. And while I personally don't subscribe to scientism by any means, I am sympathetic to metaphysical realism, which is...

True, the transcendental subject is not itself an empirical object in Kant's system, but the structure and the function of the transcendental subject ...

But again I think you are still "smuggling" an ontology into your premises - namely, the ontology of the Kantian transcendental subject. In this ontol...

Sorry for being so slow to reply. Part of the reason I don't post here often is because I don't always have time to keep up with the pace of these dis...

It sounds like we would generally agree here, though I'm perhaps more hesitant to posit reason as a transcendental invariant, because if we do so then...

Regrettably, I haven't had a chance to dig that deeply into the work of Plotinus, though I'd like to at some point. I know that there are some figures...

Generally speaking, yes, though it’s worth noting that some contemporary philosophers interpret the Aristotelian tradition in a broadly materialist wa...

I would agree that Berkeley made a cogent critique of Cartesian and Lockean metaphysics, but I’m not sure that those critiques apply to all forms of m...

Hi Wayfarer. I just finished re-reading your essay in order to refresh my memory on the thrust of the argument. Much as I enjoyed reading the article,...

Why do you believe this?

I would agree that probably no one can master every one of today's many intellectual disciplines, but I don't think that one has to master them all in...

That may be true, but the point stands that naturalism is not equivalent with the elimination of abstractions from one’s ontology. I am quite sympathe...

I am no theoretical physicist, but I think that I can understand the basic idea here. In your metaphysic, the least action principle is the prime move...

That sounds more like strict empiricism rather than naturalism. Consider the fact than many arch-naturalists are willing to accept the existence of (f...

This raises a question in my mind: would this eternal entity be inside or outside of space and time? If inside, then differentiation would be possible...

My apologies. I admit that I did not read the entire thread. I have gotten in the bad habit of reading threads starting from the last page, and I've n...

That's very interesting. So would you say that an eternal entity is still a natural entity? Do you believe in the existence of an eternal entity? If s...

So basically, hylemorphism without God? That's an interesting prospect, but I wonder if it works. In scholastic hylemorphism God is existence itself. ...

Wow, there's a lot to digest in what you wrote! Not sure I understand it completely, to be totally honest. It sounds like you accept some of the featu...

Ok, I can see how that makes sense. So, do you consider yourself a naturalist?

That's an interesting definition of naturalism. I've always thought of naturalism in terms of a lack of belief in the existence of "immaterial" entiti...