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Pantagruel

['Member']Joined: June 26, 2019 at 18:46Last active: February 25, 2026 at 22:3467 discussions3503 comments
Location: True north strong and free

Favourite Philosopher

Karl Popper, Henri Bergson, John Dewey, Max Scheler, Fichte, Ervin Laszlo

Favourite Quotations

Shall I eat and drink only that I may hunger and thirst and eat and drink again, till the grave which is open beneath my feet shall swallow me up, and I myself become the food of worms? Shall I beget beings like myself, that they too may eat and drink and die, and leave behind them beings like themselves to do the same that I have done? To what purpose this ever-revolving circle, this ceaseless and unvarying round, in which all things appear only to pass away, and pass away only that they may re-appear unaltered;?—?this monster continually devouring itself that it may again bring itself forth, and bringing itself forth only that it may again devour itself? This can never be the vocation of my being, and of all being. There must be something which exists because it has come into existence; and now endures, and cannot again re-appear, having once become such as it is. And this element of permanent endurance must be produced amid the vicissitudes of the transitory and perishable, maintain itself there, and be borne onwards, pure and inviolate, upon the waves of time.

Discussions (67)

The Merely Real

January 22, 2023 at 22:29 22 comments Metaphysics & Epistemology

The Will

December 02, 2022 at 13:45 82 comments General Philosophy

How and Why

February 06, 2021 at 12:09 25 comments Metaphysics & Epistemology

Comments

I tried to post reply with Habermas' take on the work ethic, but it won't allow me to log in to the discourse group area, even after I upgraded my TPF...
February 22, 2026 at 12:19
Modernity: An Unfinished Project by Jürgen Habermas
February 19, 2026 at 12:45
The Ontology of Social Being, Volume 3: Labour by György Lukács
February 03, 2026 at 12:52
I'm a strong believer in symbolic interactionism and also communicative rationality, so reason is certainly describable in the way you suggest, yes. B...
January 27, 2026 at 16:03
The Journals of Lewis and Clark by John Bakeless Something a little different to help mobilize my perspective a bit.....
January 27, 2026 at 12:35
We are prejudiced by specific subjective mechanisms known as cognitive biases. But there are other channels of verification available to the human min...
January 27, 2026 at 10:08
It sounds like you are espousing an epistemological relativism that is tantamount to subjectivism. I wouldn't tend to agree with that.
January 26, 2026 at 21:52
Constructing artificial feedback loops is no big trick, arguably that is how neural networks operate. But that isn't the same as something that evolve...
January 26, 2026 at 19:15
Sentience is minimally predicated on the property of being engaged in a cybernetic feedback loop as an agent with an environment. AI is a construct an...
January 26, 2026 at 14:00
The Ontology of Social Being, Volume 2: Marx by György Lukács
January 23, 2026 at 12:37
The Ontology of Social Being, Volume 1: Hegel by György Lukács
January 12, 2026 at 13:05
Interesting. It has become entirely commonplace now, to criticize people for being boomers....
January 01, 2026 at 13:36
Fell off my pace this year. I hope to get back on track with a book a week in 2026. Standout favourites were: One Hundred Years of Solitude The Sociol...
December 31, 2025 at 16:11
It is possible for objectivity and subjectivity to be both complementary and mutually contradictory. I don't think either is internally contradictory.
December 07, 2025 at 15:50
Yes, I think it follows from that political characterization that the left has a "fundamentally tolerant" nature, versus the right. If you don't think...
December 06, 2025 at 19:19
The left and right are mutually intolerant because they are motivated by incompatible ideas of freedom. For the right, individual freedom takes preced...
December 05, 2025 at 11:15
:up: Dream-quest of Unknown Kadath if you don't already know it. It is his longest story and my favourite. I love playing the Audible while I'm fallin...
December 04, 2025 at 09:35
H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction by H.P. Lovecraft Re-reading. The ways in which we integrate the concept of "the unknown" into our worldview and ...
November 29, 2025 at 14:07
The Lost Continent by Edgar Rice Burroughs
November 22, 2025 at 10:17
Yes, rationality means different things to different collectives. My sociological interests tend to collide with philosophical anthropology, following...
November 19, 2025 at 00:02
Rationality is also a narrative.
November 18, 2025 at 10:30
I'm a keen student sociology, especially symbolic interactionism. For me, Habermas' communicative rationality seems a logical development of that. Ins...
November 18, 2025 at 01:29
Habermas looms large in modern philosophy for me.
November 17, 2025 at 20:33
Also a History of Philosophy, Volume 2: The Occidental Constellation of Faith and Knowledge by Jürgen Habermas
November 17, 2025 at 13:13
Escape on Venus by Edgar Rice Burroughs
November 08, 2025 at 12:26
§ 553. The notion of mind has its reality in the mind. If this reality in identity with that notion is to exist as the consciousness of the absolute I...
November 08, 2025 at 11:48
Carson of Venus by Edgar Rice Burroughs
November 05, 2025 at 11:46
I have been reading this particular Hegel for 6 weeks and it will be several more before I finish it. I reread those sections several times. There is ...
November 02, 2025 at 21:03
Exactly. It is a matter of degree. Hence by definition no longer binary. We have moved now onto a scale which lies between two extremes.
November 02, 2025 at 20:56
Just because it is "not yet rational" doesn't mean that it is the opposite of rational. This is a classic fallacy of the excluded middle. Rationality ...
November 02, 2025 at 17:15
This hinges on the fact that we both believe what and that we are thinking, and think only what we believe. Even if I think "the moon is made of green...
November 02, 2025 at 12:52
external things of nature which exist for consciousness...constitute the external material for the embodiment of the will....But the purposive action ...
November 02, 2025 at 10:50
Yes, you've already said that and I never did make that claim, as I clarified. I'm glad we agree.
November 01, 2025 at 21:35
Since the problem of will was brought up, Hegel's formulation leads to the recognition that will necessarily includes the concept of its own right app...
November 01, 2025 at 11:19
Hegel has quite a lot to say about Will...
November 01, 2025 at 01:28
As for Hegel, I'd say that Will is the culminating synthesis of self-determining awareness that coincides with these 'wordless and indescribable exist...
November 01, 2025 at 00:33
Sure. But I'm reading Hegel right now. And I liked the formulation, it was evocative. If you wanted to reformulate something in more Kantian terms tha...
November 01, 2025 at 00:27
Not exactly what I said. I noted that the self-evidence of material intuition can't exceed that of self-evidence simpliciter, which is to say thought....
November 01, 2025 at 00:18
I'm aware of Hegel's views on history, but they aren't central to my perspective on rehabilitating the validity of the intuition of Idealism. They don...
October 31, 2025 at 23:43
It is also very interesting how he frames "names" as instrumental in the intelligent cognition of reality as reflective consciousness. Intriguing beca...
October 31, 2025 at 21:36
By the inference of the interaction problem drawn from the intuitions of the material you mean? Course you do. And I never mentioned a thing about sub...
October 31, 2025 at 21:29
Very generous.
October 31, 2025 at 20:34
I definitely would say that the Cartesian cogito supports mind-independence (which I have long believed). Although it doesn't inherently imply idealis...
October 31, 2025 at 15:50
As was the answer. The section from Hegel definitely expands further beyond what I explored. However it very nicely expands the Cartesian cogito in su...
October 31, 2025 at 15:24
Bear in mind this is an extension of Hegel's reasoning that (I believe) clarifies the core historical problematic of idealism, that it is somehow refu...
October 31, 2025 at 13:09
Lost on Venus by Edgar Rice Burroughs
October 28, 2025 at 12:11
Pirates of Venus by Edgar Rice Burroughs
October 24, 2025 at 10:03
Skylark of Valeron by E.E. "Doc" Smith
October 15, 2025 at 11:02
TPF has always seemed more compositional than conversational; AI just exacerbates that quality. So is philosophy a monologue, or a dialogue? When empl...
October 15, 2025 at 10:24
Skylark Three by E.E. "Doc" Smith
October 08, 2025 at 11:03