Pneumenon

Right on the button, here. The alt-right's rejection of political liberalism is so radical that most progressives fail to understand the movement full...

I drop an apple into an empty barrel. I then drop another apple into that same barrel. If you look into the barrel immediately afterward, you will see...

Say I load a gun with a blank and fire it at you. You don't know that there's a blank in the gun, and believe that it is loaded with a real bullet. Af...

Wouldn't the popular view of meaning as use make this a given? You learn how to use a word by growing up around people who use it, so...

Democritus: "By convention sweet, by convention bitter, by convention hot, by convention cold, by convention color: but in reality atoms and void." An...

I would rather say that to be powerful or smart is to be singled out as the perpetrator of a horrible wrong. "How dare you have what I do not?"

"A cause-creating drive is powerful within him : someone must be to blame for his feeling vile. His 'righteous indignation' itself already does him go...

To introduce a dissenting voice here (although I'm not playing devil's advocate - this is my real opinion), the starkness of Zen Buddhism is part of w...

Not British, never been to the UK. However, this: more or less sums up why there is such virulent populist anger in the United States and Europe right...

Perhaps the conflict between my down-going and my essence is a conflict within my essence, and one side will win. ;)

I'm not sure I can make a debate-style point here, as you're airing a perspective rather than an argument, but perhaps I can juxtapose my own perspect...

Try reading him.

"The mind is God's idea of the body" blew me away because it sums up a very weird experience I once had while meditating and have never quite been abl...

Yeah, that.

Fear and Trembling, and the Sickness Unto Death, are two of my favorites. TSZ is next on my list after my Spinoza studies. :)

What attracts me is the fact that I not only agree with him, but feel as if I always have. You dig? (also, thanks for the extensive list!)

The question, "Do you really need this?" strikes me as somewhat misleading. Strictly speaking, we don't "need" food that tastes good, and it might be ...

Well, you'll note that I said I didn't take Plato's metaphysics in its entirety. The OP seemed to be trying to isolate vaguely "Aristotelian" and "Pla...

I often find myself thinking like this, although I wish I didn't. The mental image that comes up is someone sneering, "What, too good for this world, ...

I was responding more to the Humean point raised by Sap. We derive ideas from impressions - where do we learn how to do that?

Okay, okay, disclaimer: I don't really buy Plato's metaphysics, and I'm not sure if anyone, Plato included, ever did. However, the tone of the OP seem...

Mystical math-fellating woo-woo Plato-Spinoza Frankenstein Demon, here. Gimme your best shot. >:)

So, because of all the suffering in the world, anti-natalism is supposed to be obvious, right? But most people don't believe it, so they're either dis...

I sense irony, but I'll take it seriously because I don't see the point in continuing barbs. Can you explain this further, and its relation to your pr...

With all due respect, the "taxation-as-coercion" thing is just a jumping-off point for discussing the fact that our society won't work unless people g...

The question I'm interested in is this: given that coercion is part of what makes a bunch of humans hanging around into a society, how much sense does...

I doubt that ownership was consciously invented, in the same way as a widget used to make other widgets in a factory. And what is "unconscious inventi...

If it makes things any easier, I am not arguing against taxation. Remember when I said that it's a matter of when to coerce, not whether? Anyway... Bu...

I disagree. Tigers don't deliberately keep me out of the jungle. A hungry one might want me to come in!

In that case, one is coerced into signing the contract, and anything resulting from the contract, including taxation, is also coerced behavior.

Interesting thoughts, everyone. But before I get to anything in depth, I wanted to respond to this: This would seem to imply that citizenship is volun...

Late reply to you, but I do want to mention that this: This smells very strongly of John McDowell, whom I understand to be wearing a fine misting of e...

Right on the button. Just what I needed.

From Section 7: So I can't plan out a chess match in my head, and then say that, every time my phone rings, another move in that match has taken place...

Much thanks. Works of the second kind are quite interesting to me, because I'm interested in how philosophy of time "hooks up" with logic and cognitio...

I think that there's truth in what Becker has to say (I have "The Birth And Death of Meaning," but haven't read "The Denial of Death"). Heroism really...

Ooh! Ooh! The Haugueland paper looks extremely interesting! The relation between patterns and the things that realize those patterns is something I've...

Why aren't you certain that you're not omniscient? You could claim that this is because you, as a human, can't be certain of anything... But where do ...

I don't think they need to reach a consensus to be productive. The people who founded the government of the USA were deeply influenced by John Locke, ...

If ideology is as powerful as positions like this say, then whence all of the opposition to the "dominant paradigm" coming from liberal arts departmen...

It doesn't exist anywhere, it just exists. There's no reason to assume that everything has a location. Spacetime exists; where is it?

Whatcha gonna do? He knows how to be convincing.

Chalk it up to Quine's rhetorical skill, which is formidable.

I think the only way around it would be if desire were malleable, in which case the hedonist would be obliged to re-shape his desires so that he does ...

This paragraph puzzles me: He seems to be saying that, since there's no general test for contradictoriness, and all contradictions are meaningless, th...

Under what definitions, though? There are definitions of the word "mental" that basically mean "thought," so that one isn't going to work. Perhaps you...

Well, yes. You said that "All and only things you think are from your perspective." Then you offered to replace "think" with "mental." This would then...

Well, you replaced "think" with "mental." But perspectival != mental, unless you're redefining those two terms, in which case, whichever one is redefi...

An observation, rather. My problem here is that either the argument is invalid, or the terms are being re-defined so as to have the implications you w...

So "think" and "perspective" drop out, and you're left with the premise, "Everything that is mental is mental." From this, you derive that everything ...