Pantagruel

I like this characterization, especially the analogy of the "phase change"....

Yes, it is more of a tool for finding a source than an actual source, at least in any non-trivial sense.

Exactly. There is a correspondence between the quality of belief and the quality of the presentation (enactment) of the belief. That would be the fund...

Right, the belief is the "attitude of confidence" that is what we are discussing. It is not the memory, and it doesn't have to be "about" memory. Beli...

This would be a vicious circularity. You can't believe something unless you already believed something. Clearly we do begin to believe, which is not a...

Yes, people don't 'believe' they want to be happy, they just do.

If I believe I am writing this now, how is that a memory? It may become a memory, but only because it was first a belief.

Without specifically answering your questions, I would elaborate further that the actual coherence of one's thought is the measure and the projection ...

Maslow also uses the term genius frequently and equates it with what is most idiographic or unique to the individual. Since we are each completely uni...

The Antiquary by Sir Walter Scott Essay on Metaphysics by R.G. Collingwood

What struck me most was the notion that the manifestations of our higher motivations, our higher selves, can only emerge from a milieu in which the lo...

I've just been reading some Maslow and he presents a really nice theory of the need for the idea of God. Maslow distinguishes between D-motivations an...

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I think that there are people who are involved with corporate pollution who coincidentally happen to espouse climate-change denial. Look at the saga o...

Exactly. I wouldn't mind if you were saying we can't have any effect, and still doing all the things to remediate pollution, etc.

Is this your qualified, scientific opinion? Final answer? Sounds like an excuse to piss in the pool to me.

The current reputable scientific consensus is that it is "Human-caused." Given the revelation of the complexity and functionality of natural systems (...

Toward a Psychology of Being by Abraham Maslow

All of the energy that we currently consume on earth has been stored up on earth almost entirely from the sun. Every time we burn fossil fuels, we rel...

With this I definitely agree. Lots of people believe that, if we could only solve the problem of limitless free energy, all the world's problems would...

Ok, from a strictly "energic" standpoint and if you adhere to a labour theory of value. However, you premised the post on the fact that people can and...

That's not true. People have brought computers to me for such minor fixes I didn't charge them anything. If I can be a big help to someone with almost...

In that case I'm not able to really grasp what it is you are suggesting.

If you are suggesting that there is some kind of holistic-transcendental consciousness from which conceptual consciousness has differentiated itself, ...

The Intellectuals and the Masses by John Carey An overlooked item from my own library. Elitist orthodox intelligentsia as a contributing factor to the...

Maybe it is? The notion that something can "be" property only emerges with the subjective viewpoint. One object cannot "own" another object. So maybe ...

In the context Mannheim uses it, "reality transcending" is everything which goes against the current "objectively construed" state of affairs as histo...

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Something I'm just reading. Mannheim talks about the "utopian" faculty as that in mankind which transcends the mere factuality of historical determini...

A purpose is a reason for which something is done. If it is possible NOT to have a purpose, that implies that what is done without purpose happens bec...

If we are capable of creating a purpose, doesn't that imply that we have a purpose? To create purpose?

Aha, so it is really a cultural issue then. I'm of a stoical disposition - IMO, stoicism is the route and recipe to true happiness.

Your position essentially revolves around the question of definitions. Happy, content, satisified, satiated. Depending on how you choose to spin the w...

Granted that, as human beings we are subject to an astounding variety of cognitive biases that can skew our interpretation of facts. Beyond even that,...

Scientific faith: Belief in science increases in the face of stress and existential anxiety "That modern secular individuals are prone to cling on to ...

I'd take this even further. In Ideology and Utopia, Mannheim repeats ad nauseum how scientific and theoretical knowledge is, by its very nature, abstr...

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Popper gave me my most profound redirection in thirty years. I was a staunch existentialist, then an idealist (are these really different?) then a pra...

I don't see that this is necessarily so. Pragmatics can be more or less self-aware, like anything. On the other hand, instability is not necessarily a...

Exactly. And that...is...life. Not the portion we intellectually amputate, the whole thing. It's why social scientists like to use the term "irrationa...

Yes, Popper's refutation of the possibility of a "causally complete" omniscience (Laplace's demon) is based on such laws and the "event-horizon" of th...

I think life is exactly of the nature of an experiment in the way that conscious volition formulates choices that result in real consequences. I call ...

Yes, I followed that. My contention is that there is always a why somewhere. And that the notion of a purely objective how is always an abstraction fr...

I would go even further, and suggest that, in intellectualizing communication, we have actually introduced barriers to communication, wherein our some...

:up: :up: One of the most remarkable traits of consciousness is that it actively self-perpetuates, creating artefacts housing information, which infor...

Philosophers have too long concerned themselves with their own thinking. When they wrote of thought, they had in mind primarily their own history, the...

I think that the purpose of science is realized with the 'top-level' context which is the natural purpose of existence. As such, 'scientific objectivi...

It's the concluding paragraph of the second edition of his book First Principles. It's good to attempt an overarching theory - that's Spencer's positi...

Ideology and Utopia by Karl Mannheim

Yes, Spencer definitely anticipated and, in some cases, confused some modern scientific concepts. His assessment of the significance of various manife...