Ciceronianus

I don't think it need justify its existence; I simply don't think it has any claim to exist because God wills it or because it's the homeland of the J...

A very sanctimonious response!

And for others, it's an opportunity to be sanctimonious.

I think this is a question only if we assume that we or our "minds" are separate from (outside) of the world. That's not an assumption I think we shou...

I would suppose it is, when it suits them at least, but am not certain that's the case as far as any claim of Jews to Palestine. I know the wackier Ch...

Yes. Then Rome destroyed the Second Temple and most of Jerusalem under Vespasian and Titus (have you ever seen the Arch of Titus? Men of the legions a...

Well, there's the "common sense philosophy" of Thomas Reid and others, in reaction to the balderdash of Hume's skepticism and Berkeley's subjectivism ...

Neither you nor I have minds lurking within us, separate from the rest of us. We think as part of our interaction with the rest of the world. Language...

Who's this "our" I wonder? If one is inclined to think time spent ruling land identifies a people with it, I would think the fact no Israeli kings, or...

It's astonishing, I know. I don't know if it can be attributed to only one or even a few causes. I think we find some of the answers in the Analytic a...

I would say there is no "thing" called a concept floating about in a thing called a "mind." Concepts and minds all exist in the same world as chairs. ...

Anticipated by whom? Not by Kant, I think, or whatever Kant-in-himself may have been. For my part, I blame Descartes for this adventure in the prepost...

You'd be the life of any party.

In which case, they should be of no concern to us. Not exactly a contention, I know, but an entirely reasonable judgment.

Not a big Jung fan, I'm afraid, although I admit the thought of God defecating on his creation has a certain charm. Perhaps defecation represented the...

I confess I'm perplexed by the outrage against Harvard's leadership for, it seems, not being sufficiently anti-Hamas and not identifying students so t...

That they did. Especially after they took Constantinople in 1453.

My guess would be around the time before 1914. It was Ottoman territory for about 400 years before then, and I think Ottoman rule was relatively undis...

Say that's true. It's creation would nonetheless remain an injustice.

When never knows where one stands with Perfidious Albion, it's true. But there was the Balfour Resolution, announcing support for the establishment of...

If you reject the views that (1) Israel has a religious right to possess and govern the areas at issue; and/or that (2) the Jewish people have a non-r...

Io capisco, I think, but I also think that using metaphors, while apposite in poetry, isn't useful in philosophy--nor is it necessary. In poetry metap...

Sorry, but nobody sees the Universe from outside it. Someone may imagine something "beyond it", or speculate regarding something "beyond it" but that,...

I haven't been referring to you, but to what I believe is the goal of Analytic and OL philosophers like Austin and others--Gilbert Ryle, for example--...

Maybe this is included in what you state, but it also presumes that what is beyond the Universe or transcends it is similar enough to what is in it th...

Yes. And so we should. How justify a search for "the real" outside of Nature, beyond the Universe?

Creating new words is not an issue so much as misusing or redefining words commonly used, thereby promoting confusion and uncertainty. Words such as "...

J. L. Austin, you mean. Not to be confused with John Austin, the esteemed (by me) legal positivist. Who has the authority to change the (commonly acce...

"Metaphysicians are musicians without musical ability." Rudolf Carnap

We've been pretending to question the reality of what interact with nonchalantly every second of our lives, for millennia. When will this affectation ...

That was another lion, I think. Do you know the story? I'm quite fond of it. The donkey told the tiger, “The grass is blue.” The tiger replied, “No, t...

Why are people engaging with this person? Remember the story/fable of the donkey and the tiger. I'm not sure whether that's one of Aesop's or someone ...

People should read Heidegger all they like. I don't seek to ban his books. I myself am inclined to avoid whenever possible those who, inter alia, thin...

I didn't know him. You were fortunate.

So, Heidegger was only following orders of a sort--social orders, as it were? In that sense, so were they all, one would think.

Certainly nobody who actively argued in its defense, like John Calhoun. Or does the "intellectual" nature of his speeches/writings in support of slave...

You should listen to Tom Lehrer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro

I suppose it could be. Unless, of course, we find H's "Dewey Notebooks" establishing he shamelessly plagiarized Dewey's work. That's intended as a jok...

Joseph Margolis told R.W. Sleeper Dewey made the remark after Margolis asked him to read some of Heidegger's work.

Ah. Now we learn Hitler wasn't that bad a fellow, after all. Loved dogs, they say.

There's a kind of magnificence in your extravagant, blithe dismissal of Heidegger's support for attempted genocide and a Germanic master race. If you ...

Yes, we are all too quick to criticize those who supported Hitler and the Nazi regime and referred to the Holocaust as the "self-annihilation of the J...

Elevated, schmelevated. It's difficult for me to think of his silly rhapsodies regarding the German Volk without picturing him as one of the performer...

Well, if that's so, there's nothing to be concerned about. Tu ne quaesieris as Horace says: no one’s allowed to know his fate, Not you, not me: don’t ...

Doesn't seem to follow though, does it? That "spiritual dimension" sneaks into the picture. Is that "spiritual dimension" a part of Nature? If so, a N...

Sounds rather Stoic and, therefore, preferable as such things go, to me at least. All that acts or can be acted upon are "bodies" and therefore part o...

Well, consider you may be less than clear. Your wrote: The second sentence seems to include a statement that "the conversion from polytheism to monoth...

I've always suspected that people long to learn what I think about most anything, but am shy.

People imagined the human race to be "one" long before Jesus was a twinkle in his immaculately conceiving mother's eye. It was the position of more th...

That's quite true. For what it's worth, let me explain why. You shouldn't take it personally. People have been telling other people about God for a ve...