T_Clark

I live in a medium sized (pop. 14,000) suburban town in Massachusetts. Good schools. Good things for kids to do. Good town services. I've lived here s...

There is an interesting essay by Stephen J. Gould called "Mozart and Modularity." Gould discusses a journal article written when Mozart was a boy. Eve...

Most references to papers I follow up on are available on line. Just type in the name of the reference followed by PDF. If that doesn't work, a lot of...

Word of the Day - April 11, 2018 Consupponible - came across this word in R.G. Collingwood's "An Essay on Metaphysics." Can't find a direct definition...

Words of the Day - April 10, 2018 Prototype - A preliminary example of something, generally a machine or equipment. Archetype - A typical example. Als...

Ah, yes. A feeling I haven't had in 40 years and don't expect to have again. Thank goodness.

Punctiliousness.

I notice women. Most women. I like women and how they look. It takes something special for me to notice a man.

Which was my point.

Maybe you're old enough to remember. We used to call that an air raid drill, which was specifically aimed at protecting us from a nuclear attack. I do...

But I think "soul" is more than emotions, insight, or meditation. It's as much an entity as mind, self, or identity. You might prefer one of those wor...

I suggest you have a direct conversation with one or more of the moderators. They have a natural inclination to slap down what they consider, and I pr...

Then it doesn't exist, which is how I see it. I think the case can be made that objective reality does not exist. That's not a particularly exotic ide...

And visa versa, although I'm guessing you disagree.

That's not the way I experience it. Internal is as real as external. Also - everything external is also internal. We only know the world through our i...

I rewatch "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" and "Smiley's People" every few years and am amazed at how good they are. I talked about TTSS last week. I ju...

You're wrong. Blind.

If I say "remain silent" to you, will you do it? It's almost worth it to trade silences. Not quite. I like the sound of my own voice too much.

Sapientia get's fairly itchy around "the" and "and."

Yes. And so is rational thought. I gave examples of other terms - self, identity, spirit, consciousness, me, myself, I. I would probably use the word ...

That's not the way I experience it. For you, but not for all of us.

Just to be clear, I have a lot of confidence in the way you see things. It's been a big help to me in the past. That makes me want to go back and re-e...

Isn't this just as true for rational thought as it is for intuition? Except the soul is a mental experience. By "mental" I include emotions and intuit...

I don't think it is correct to call this "mysticism." It's just the way the mind works, at least for some of us. Intuition is what bubbles up from ins...

In my experience, the feeling, intuition comes first. Then we can be "philosophically exacting." So they're not mutually exclusive. I'd even say they ...

In case people don't understand what our friend Sapientia is saying, he's giving me the old razzamatazz about something I said on the "Body and Soul" ...

Actually, the bubble universes was what set me off down this path. If I understood him correctly, @"apokrisis" was talking about them as an effect of ...

I guess what I was trying to say is, if I can't directly observe a phenomenon, but it's existence explains things I can observe, which is what I thoug...

There are experiences that are probably only expressible in what you call "metaphors and poetic language." You don't explain them, you tell a story ab...

Just noted, this emoji - :meh: - is actually called "meh."

There is definitely some rough and tumble here on the forum. I guess you should get used to it.

Your interpretation is wrong. We're not all ..... Well, what I referred to obliquely before.

Ahmad, I'd like to introduce you to one of our resident ....well, maybe I won't introduce you to the forum with an example of the types of insults tha...

I'll let Ahmad answer for himself, but I got the feeling those last three sentences were the most important part. I agree they could use some addition...

You will find I quote Lao Tzu a lot. He talks about acting without acting. That's how it feels to me when it comes from inside me and moves directly i...

If you are saying that you have trouble expressing yourself in words, all I can say is you've expressed yourself very clearly in what you've written h...

I couldn't have said it better myself.

I disagree. I don't think consciousness is mysterious. Based on my own experience, perception is not outward. I can experience my own mental states, i...

Is it the same as "meh," which my annoying daughter uses a lot when she wants to dismiss what someone else says without any effort?

Sorry I came late to this discussion. I looked through the other posts. I don't think what I say will duplicate others, although several people have t...

Words of the Day - April 8, 2018 Some exclamations I like: Ahem... - An example of ontomonapia. Simulates the sound of clearing the throat to indicate...

This is not the word of the day, but it came up elsewhere. Dingbat - 1) A typographical device other than a letter or numeral (such as an asterisk), u...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kv2-4uPHWEM

Reykjavik! ykj!

Word of the Day - April 7, 2018 I used to tell people I had invested part of my retirement fund in Molybdenum futures, but only because I love to say ...

Word of the Day - April 6, 2018 Schmomething - as in Something Schmomething. Inspired by @"StreetlightX"'s discussion "Predicates, Smehdicates." There...

I love wings, but I've never been in a bar with good ones. If they're so good, why do you have to put crappy sauce on them. I'd rather eat wings from ...

This "googliniscience" you speak of has ruined conversations everywhere. We can no longer have long, rambling arguments about meaningless facts. In th...

Word of the Day - April 5, 2018. This, along with many other great things, comes from "National Lampoon" in the 1970s. @"Bitter Crank" - didn't you sa...

Word of the Day - April 4, 2018. I have been AWOL on the WOTD for a bit. AWOL. acronym for Absent without leave. But that's not the word of the day. M...