Pantagruel

But exempt from what? People choose to endure something because and when it is meaningful to do so. And when people do, historically, it often is mean...

From what I see, he became even more committed to freedom as an intellectual ideal. And so, during the forty years since I first read Being and Nothin...

I've never read the Critique of Dialectical Reason, but I'm starting now, and the preface sure seems consistent with the views I've cited" "This is th...

I think it is the furthest thing from an exaggeration, and I'll tell you why. Nothing constrains our free choice more than our own pre-existing (cogni...

Sure, I scraped these from the online version of BN. In fact no matter what pressure is exerted on the victim, the abjuration remains free; We have al...

Sartre views our freedom as essentially unlimited. To the point that he characterizes "vertigo" as the sensation, not that we are going to fall off a ...

I was initially thinking this too. But by this reasoning, when I am looking at an apple, is my thought therefore "coloured"?

Per Sartre, even under torture, the victim determines the exact moment at which he chooses to submit to the torture....

Free will is a phenomenon, like gravity. So it isn't any more circular or tautological to describe free will in terms of its own evident operations th...

FB systems theory group I belong to just posted a link to what looks like a fascinating short article on self-organizing systems. "I shall now prove t...

Well, speaking only from personal experience here, I have entertained this question seriously at several points in my life. At those time it was certa...

I do believe that there is an actual sense of "legitimacy" of authority, relating to the fact that every action we do ultimately results in an overall...

I would have to argue that what you are describing is an abuse of, rather than legitimate authority. Insofar as authority is legitimate, in my view it...

I have found this attitude generally boils down to wanting things to be different than they are. And when it comes to changing the universe, versus ch...

I am ultimately responsible for everything I say and do and think. So I find myself pragmatically in the same category as you I think.

I just started Popper's "Quantum Theory and the Schism in Physics" last night. His introduction concerning the relationship between the direction and ...

Yes. It kind of reminds me how physics can be accused of introducing "occult forces" when it discovers counter-intuitive phenomena, such as action at ...

What is the sense of "self-sufficient" I know Plato considers the soul to be independent of the body, so in that sense, it is "self-sufficient". How i...

Right, in that book on Fichte, the comment was specifically about the ancient greek concept of the nous...

If you are interested, the essay I am highly recommending, Indeterminism is not enough, may be found here.

There is a history of pre-Cartesian dualism here which talks about Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas. In a book on Fichte (one of my all time favourite ph...

Shelved the Systemic Thinking book as it is basically a short handbook for experimental design and methodology. Interesting, but just too tedious - I ...

:up:

So, I'll just reiterate, you are hijacking the thread, and not in a nice way. I've studied lots of information theory, neurocomputation, neural networ...

Saying that no serious discussion of the mind-body problem can begin without discussing AI is inane. I'm sorry to be blunt, but it is. Frankly, AI has...

The mind-body problem is a feature of the universe and has been debated since time immemorial. Why, because man is suddenly capable of computational m...

Nonsense. Neural nets, for example are architected at a conceptual level, whereas neurons actually fire based on chemical potentials. You can model ne...

What you said is a complete non-sequitur to the content of the post. Nothing whatsoever to do with simulations, or AI. It was a reading recommendation...

Actually current cosmology points to the various regions of the universe retreating out of causal contact with each other (cosmological horizon).

No argument from me. All I am pointing out is that the extension of the concept of the ego-cogito is far more complex now than it was in the 17th cent...

If the claim "This is the best of all possible worlds" were true, then you would not be questioning it. i.e. No one disputes the claim "Liquid water i...

Descartes' Cogito Ergo Sum is the product of his approach of methodological skepticism which, in my opinion, is the more important piece. Rene's concl...

"Systemic Thinking - Vol. 1: Aspects of the Philosophy of Mario Bunge" I wanted to read Bunge himself, but his books are way too pricey.

Well I'm not a solipsist. In fact, I believe that mind is a community phenomenon, and being an adherent of Systems Philosophy I embrace the maxim, uni...

Well, yes, that is the question.

I extrapolated the possibility that the I is illusory from the general modification of CES. It is a standard objection or caveat to "Cogito Ergo Sum" ...

Cogito ergo sum does establish that "Thought" exists now: There is thought now, is how I like to generalize that aphorism. However the "I" seems like ...

My example (it wasn't a simile) didn't fail, you disputed the premise, which is a long way from invalidating it. Cheers.

Interesting. Have you ever read Freud's "Future of an Illusion"?

If a man in a third world nation somewhere stood up to an oppressive military regime because of his belief in God, inspiring a revolution and freedom,...

You omitted my option. Surely no one would deny the role of the unknown in stimulating discovery.

Unfortunately the term God invokes strong prejudices on both sides. So replace god with ? and I'd agree. The cosmic unknown maybe? As far as the ongoi...

I think by definition speculation is not authoritative, otherwise it becomes dogma?

Safe to say that much of what passes as definitive scientific truth today is wrong. What I love about Popper is that he is so...balanced. The most imp...

For it is a fact that purely metaphysical ideas—and therefore philosophical ideas—have been of the greatest importance for cosmology. From Thales to E...

:ok:

Well, it's his main thesis, to be scientific, an hypothesis must be falsifiable, so disconfirming evidence must be at least possible. Whereas inductio...

This would be letting confirmation back in through the same door that Popper just tossed it out.

I think Karl Marx really pulls it off.

Au contraire. I provided a version of coherentism founded on enacted belief, based on the well-founded fact that people often misrepresent themselves ...