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The paradox of hedonism leads me to believe it is better to simply focus on minimizing pain, avoiding harm, and satisfying basic needs and enjoy the p...

Okay

I'm not sure what any meaningful instance of value would be that isn't essentially a conscious judgement, that doesn't equivocate.

If a person does not recognize a benefit, it can only have an instrumental benefit by maintaining things that are recognized as valuable. I don't see ...

Of course, but the value comes from the perceived ability for the food to provide nutrition. As soon as you consume it, you begin to forget about it. ...

Not actualized, but recognized, by a psychological agent capable of encountering value.

I would say potentiality is "actual possibility" whereas abstract, imaginary possibility is "hypothetical possibility". But yes, potentiality is "phys...

On a more serious note, I suspect that much of metaphysics is basically just speculation about things that we will never actually be able to know. The...

I will never understand women.

Probably there should be a distinction between potentiality and possibility. Potentiality is a sort of possibility, but one that is "almost immanent",...

I wish some of the great thinkers had lived later in history, so I could hear what they have to say about their intellectual descendants. I would have...

Excellent decision.

Are these the sort of arguments you expect to see in philosophy, though?

But again, the gnostic-agnostic thing doesn't even exist in philosophy of religion. It's just stupid.

Right but the point of the OP isn't to figure out what the colloquial terms mean.

But why should philosophy need to cater to those being irrational?

But for our purposes, those who call themselves gnostics in this context are pretty much irrelevant, because philosophy is not about conviction.

Do you think these people are a good representation of actual philosophy of religion?

Who exactly calls themselves a gnostic, apart from those fourteen-year-old wannabe tryhards?

But certainly nobody actually claims that they have absolute knowledge of God's existence. If they do they're a hack.

Then this applies to basically any judgement at all, and agnosticism becomes an annoying baggage term. I'm an "agnostic" about the real external world...

But asserting that lack of belief in God makes you an atheist is to beg the question. What if I just don't believe in God, one way or another, but nei...

Disbelief is a claim of knowledge. Any sort of belief is held because it is seen as true, even if one is a fallibilist or whatever. Agnosticism applie...

How am I employing it in a bastardized form?

That diagram is basically cancer precisely because it leaves out, or rather bastardizes, agnosticism, or the mere lack of belief. Agnosticism entails ...

Was listening to Portugal. the Man before they were cool... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBkHHoOIIn8

I have asked myself this question repeatedly for a very long time. On one hand, there is a tremendous amount of suffering, naturally and inevitably oc...

No, might does not make right, just as having power does not give one authority.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2lzmpEs29M

I don't see where you're going with this. To exist, at the bare minimum, means to be not-nothing. Demonstrations like the cosmological argument are ty...

I'm kinda addicted to this song. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NcMdYj_xYU

Stumbled upon a great piece by Susan Haack - "Scientism and its Discontents"

Love, love, love Tame Impala. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0jqPvpn3sY

Well, both are necessary for the ascription of responsibility. You can't have one without the other. The intention is the psychological state and the ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ax6jTZlu_g

Are you talking about motivation from an egoistic perspective? As in, what's in it for me? If so,I already said that morality does not require you to ...

I've been thinking about this a lot recently. Given that the "good" or the "moral" life (if that is even possible) is more demanding (sometimes exceed...

So affirmative perspectives get themselves into all sorts of thorny convolutions, including the idea that existence has to be improved. If it has to b...

Yes, it's as if affirmative morality exists within a conceptual vacuum and is unable to survive a radical self-analysis! How strange that most people ...

Yes, this was essentially my response to your OP. It's a coherent theoretical idea but I don't really think it is what is actually going on. The idea ...

Don't Dennett and co. have no trouble relating to and describing the experience of qualia?

I suppose the metaphysics of the mind is still not developed enough to make any qualified statements. Your hypothesis, to me, is implausible. But it h...

At the same time, though, there needs to be an explanation as to how the brain produces epiphenomenal qualia, and why it would (presumably) use energy...

Secular theodicies be like: http://i.imgur.com/WThI9eL.png

But certainly it seems qualia plays a more functional role than just when we are discussing its existence. Which is why I said to accept your argument...

I think there are better explanations as to why some philosophers deny qualitative experience than the hypothesis that they are actually p-zombies. Th...

You would think that, ideally, science would operate like this. But this is not really what happens. Established paradigms are pushed as dogma and alt...

I believe that, contrary to the recent(-ish) wave of positivism and the optimistic liberal prophets, humans are not as rational as they believe themse...

Rule number one: Don't ever philosophize while under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs.

Suffering.