Pantagruel

If you can't say, "this is thought now" then there is no thinking. It's an assertion of awareness. Thought is aware of its own authorship. It is funda...

That depends on the abilities and habits you cultivate. Ideally, yes. Although I would say, happy and sad so much as having an optimistic or pessimist...

I've heard it said, if you want to read a good book, write it. I record my songs to hear them. I'm a pretty average musician, but I think a better tha...

Maybe when their heads start hurting?

More Habermas, The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory Given the tenor of politics, especially in the states, it is interesting to not...

Dickens' Mystery of Edwin Drood I have to do 5 more books by the end of the year to meet my Goodreads goal, so I'm throwing in some shorter works (alt...

H.G. Wells, Selected Short Stories. Still wading through Habermas....

:up:

It's a typo for Descartes' "Meditator" - i.e. the guy doing the meditation. It's in the first line of the text in the link supplied by Mww.....

You would need to provide a bigger excerpt than this. I cannot find that text online.

"In the throes" I would say.....

:up:

As long as the subjective is accounted for. That's why I favour Scientific Realism. There is a strong bridge between the subjective (methodology) and ...

But if these are distinct categories, then would not the concept of "reality" by definition (and usage) have to be expanded to encompass both? Maybe i...

If empirical realism is an ontological verus an epistemological stance, then how do you describe the status of subjective experiences, from an empiric...

Meliorism

:up:

I read a lot of statistical documentation a couple of years ago (which is at least as new as the article you cited) that in and of itself is equivalen...

According to one article. The suggested consensus I posted from the Smithsonian website is that it is at least an open question. So maybe try to keep ...

I read the article. He seems to be splitting hairs and is not saying that a "mass die-off" isn't happening. Only that it doesn't fit the classical pat...

Since extinction is a global-scale event, on a global timescale, if there is a mass extinction in the next few hundred years, then it seems reasonable...

:wink:

Great! Yes, I thought it was such a great thing I even donated $20 when I discovered it. Enjoy the forum and the MIT courses!

Yes, it takes some getting used to. Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy by Jurgen Habermas

But if there is no freedom then learning would also be an illusion.

Right. And yet there is error.

Yes, I wasn't being precise, that's correct. But if the whole point is, even if it is just the "idea of freedom", even if that is just an illusion, is...

Is actual freedom a necessary condition for the thought of freedom, in other words. Descartes thinks so. However Kant believes only the "idea of freed...

Is it? Can you qualify that? Because as just that general statement I would have to disagree vigorously.

touche

What about it? Being well-informed implies being aware of the quality of your information sources. Anyone who is naive enough to believe that they are...

A fortiori, I would say that the ultimate technique in persuasion is being demonstrably well-informed. Which (theoretically) should allow one to conve...

Not your cup of tea?

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne

It seems to me you are asking "Is meaning meaningful?" To me, this sentence makes sense (is meaningful) independent of the status of the existence of ...

Perhaps it isn't necessarily an idealized "philosophical freedom", but it is an extraordinary freedom to create a considerable persona for yourself, a...

I'm certainly not a Habermas scholar but I just read both volumes of Communicative Action. I also have two books of his political theory next on my re...

The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life by Erving Goffman

According to Popper, metaphysics is essentially our intuition of where science is headed. This can explain things like the epistemological problem of ...

It seems like you are asking if empiricism is eliminable, which it obviously isn't. And that you may also be conflating two sense of the word empirici...

Fake news. Seriously, how do you argue with a comeback like that? Very succinct yet complete catalog of our impending doom. This is what comes of cult...

If you cease to identify with the little ego then you are free to explore the full extent of life. Worrying about the shortness of one lifetime just t...

True, but you were making a logical declaration. Discourse doesn't have to be logical. It can be rhetorical, descriptive, expostulatory. If you want t...

:up:

When mixing subjective and objective perspectives like this do you think you can even assign truth values? It seems like a metaphysical issue?

Well, in the case of a thing being both beautiful and ugly, that beauty and ugliness are not contradictory properties, in the context of the OP. This ...

I don't think there is objectively such a thing as beauty. Even instrumental properties are relevant to specific ends. So TMF is right that these are ...

I don't think this is a general principle of logic.......statements are statements.

X is black. X is white. These two statements are in contradiction, there is no reference, either implicit or explicit, to a point of view. The identic...

Hmm. But as I said, if it is beautiful for you and ugly for me, the the thing is simultaneously beautiful and ugly. What does "for a single individual...