Thorongil

And if the depressed person needs to work to survive, then work they must. But if they don't, then my position remains that it is good for them to fin...

There's an equivocation going on here. What you and Agustino mean by work is not what I'm conceiving of it as.

I never said it was. I was talking about people who are depressed. That would be a job, if one is supporting oneself with it. Being a novelist, if it ...

This idea accords with Neoplatonism and Schopenhauer's philosophy as well.

Human contact is still necessary to overcome depression. I don't know what image you mean. I'm just saying that doing some kind of productive activity...

Not even friendship? Which describes maybe two, at most three, people. Sounds like a piece of cake!

Them's fighting words. Paging @"Buxtebuddha". My own thoughts are that you're being silly. For your typical person, i.e. his audience, that is good ad...

Flake's already written a book and made his views known before. He can criticize the president for his lack of civility when there isn't a budget to p...

That's precisely the problem!

Of course. I also regard him as an oaf. A buffoon. A sneering, serial liar and anti-intellectual fathead. But for all that, he's done a lot right and ...

Do you assume that I don't think it is? Did you know that ">" means "greater than," not "of sole importance?"

Imagine Trump was a surgeon. Baden might be the type of guy who would be like, "no, don't have him perform this operation. He said some means things a...

Policies > character.

You mean Jeff Flake? He's busy living up to his surname.

Clinton and Russia. Wow, who would have guessed the inversion of that narrative? After all, it was vigorously maintained and the cause of so much faux...

Then you already have my answer. I used them interchangeably.

I had used those words interchangeably. But sure, if you posit a distinction between them, as you're apparently doing here, then the answer is no.

I don't understand the question.

Benefiting how? Becoming more virtuous? If so, then I agree, but that's different from what I was saying. The pursuit of virtue for oneself is not the...

Yes, but I somehow doubt that this means what I just said, to wit, "committed to satisfying the desires of one's ego." In your own words, what does lo...

More relevant to what? Compassion is obviously great, but I think it presupposes some degree of asceticism. One can hardly begin to identify oneself i...

But the Ideas are not contingent! If by "all" you mean "all particular appearances," then I agree that their existence is contingent, but that doesn't...

I might add to my last statement above a consideration on Schopenhauer's oft-repeated line about how the world "ought not to be." This is a curious st...

No. The Ideas don't begin or end. Their instantiated particulars do. I could turn this around and say that I don't really see how an animal is "accide...

There are two views, it seems, in Kant interpretation on the question of the status of the thing-in-itself. One sees the thing-in-itself as a positive...

The Platonic Forms, or Platonism more broadly, is not falsified by biology. The notion of an essence is not meant as a physical explanation of a speci...

Yes, as I may have said in a PM, I think his doctrine of the denial of the will provides indirect proof of there being something other than the will. ...

Great video by the way.

As Agustino pointed out, he is ambiguous on this claim. The most sensible reading in my mind is that he maintains two different notions under the head...

I'm not sure I would use these terms. The view that desire is the ground of representation would be an ontological claim. If he posited mind as the gr...

Jein?

Actually, if one believes the traditional account (Laozi may not have existed), then he was forced to write down his philosophy, otherwise the gatekee...

I think it depends on one's perspective. If one is predisposed to the melancholic viewpoint, as it were, then it can seem like many if not most major ...

Right smack in the middle for me, which probably suggests that I confused the test with my answers.

But insofar as you admit the possibility of salvation, then you admit the possibility of being extricated from the "human condition of instrumentality...

There needs to be an N/A option for the questions after the first one, otherwise one can't truthfully complete the poll and see the results. I screwed...

What is hope? "A feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen." To hope is irrational if what one expects to happen is impossible. ...

See here, too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrowing_of_Hell

I don't see any damnation there. By "damning," I mean, "being sent to hell." And by "hell," I mean, "eternal separation from God." Adam and Eve are cl...

They aren't.

Alternatively, from the mortal sin angle, no, he never deceived himself. He always knew and knows what the good is and why he should will it. God woul...

He possessed knowledge of the good and what would happen if he freely choose not to will it anymore. No longer willing the good is the act of will in ...

He can. I'm saying he must have done so with full knowledge.

According to this, it would be impossible for any being to commit mortal sin, which requires not only willing evil, but doing so with full knowledge. ...

I disagree. I think it can be deliberately denied with full knowledge.

Which reveals him as a philistine.

Not if you recall the premise I added, which is that everyone desires happiness. To me, free will requires that we need not desire the good. From a Ch...

Funny guy.

Not quite. I used the word "harm" to describe something being done to the will, not the state the will is in. Suffering follows harm. Yes. Actually, I...

Alright, that's an answer. But then, as I already anticipated, whence free will? So you're equating goodness with happiness. Again, this seems to igno...