Wayfarer

the point about strictly scientific hypotheses is that they can be falsified (per Karl Popper). But a statement such as 'everything is determined' is ...

That's metaphysics not science.

Agree. I think the normalisation of LGBTQ rights and 'inclusiveness mandates' are big factors, but opposing them is to be automatically characterised ...

:100: I think you're making a vital and overlooked point. A snippet I sometimes refer to is this: As is well known, Plato appropriated elements of Pyt...

I take nihilism to imply apathy and ennui. You may not have an articulated 'philosophy of meaning' but the fact you find your life meaningful would in...

But it is intrinsically qualitative. If it were really nothing then it would not be experienced as joy. So, no, I don't think you qualify ;-)

So joy is not meaningful? :chin:

'I cannot believe that God plays dice', said Einstein, in response to the discovery of the so-called 'quantum leap'. (Bohr used to say 'stop trying to...

By the way, I've worked out how to embed Youtube shorts. If you follow the usual procedure and embed the raw url enclosed in the media tag: https://yo...

Surely a lot of these problems go away if you concede that nature contains an element of spontaneity, as well as patterns which we characterise as "la...

isn't the reflexive association of 'dogma' with 'transcendence' itself a kind of dogma, or at least a stereotype? I think nihilism is endemic in today...

My thoughts also. I'm sure the polling data is misleading and that they will be punished at the ballot box. Yes, well I guess the other predominant em...

Have a read of this OP https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/7110/how-to-write-an-op

We hear daily that Trump is either leading or tying with Biden in polls. What I can't figure out is, what Trump voters think they're voting for. Trump...

It's a manifesto more than an OP. Somehow you've managed to attribute nearly all the quotes in your reply to a poster who's not even participating in ...

Wouldn't evolutionary psychology, sociology and anthropology be the relevant disciplines for such an enquiry? They're scientific, as far as the social...

I love the political correctness of 'strawperson'. :rofl:

No, not at all. It was the recognition of the momentary nature of craving, that it was something that would pass in a few minutes, rather than fixatin...

It's not that quantification is either simply abstract or entertaining, but that it's exact. Insofar as you can quantify, you can predict and control....

I sympathize, but your prose: needs work. I see what you’re trying to say but it’s a word salad in its current form. I would put it like this: we gene...

Hence this aphorism: to learn what it is that endures, first understand what is transient.

That’s terrific writing. I’m really sensing the tension you are pointing out. I would recommend looking into the origins of mathematical philosophy in...

Oh yes you can. I was a totally addicted smoker aged about 17 until about 40. Until aged about 60 I was an occasional smoker (= asked other people). W...

'Intelligence is the ability to make distinctions'.

Speaking of whom: Excerpt From Why I Am Not a Buddhist Evan Thompson

Fair enough, agree with that. Much more like the Scandinavian model of democratic socialism. Although they have the advantage of a highly intelligent ...

You mean, by paying income tax? It's a very politically-incorrect fact that not all people are equal. All people should be treated equally by the law,...

But he is included in that same article as a representative of eliminative materialism: (Personally, I think disputing the apodictic reality of pain, ...

I still say that philosophy itself is one of the casualties of eliminative materialism. From the SEP entry on Michel Henry, phenomenologist: Dennett c...

Thanks! Helpful and illuminating as always.

I’d suggest not trying to hang on to it. These moments come and go, it is the intensity of the underlying enquiry which is key.

However those views that I ascribed to him are not misrepresentations, are they? Thomas Nagel said of him Fair comment, do you think?

Hey whatever it is, go with it! You’re actually doing philosophy!

Thanks Pierre-Normand, I am always impressed by your erudition which far exceeds my own. I do indeed only see Dennett as a reductive materialist, as I...

The key phrase is 'unconscious competence'. He argues that what we consider to be conscious thought actually arises from cellular and molecular proces...

It was a two-way street. Richard Dawkins often made a point of being deliberately insulting to shock people out of their God delusions. He and Dennett...

Fair point. On the other hand, Kant said 'concepts (innate) without percepts (acquired) are empty' - if an infant is not primed with the right experie...

Because you were born with the capacity to learn both, which animals are not, the cleverness of crows notwithstanding.

Here's a big-picture sketch of how I interpret the whole issue of mechanistic materialism and its demise at the hands of the new physics. The advent o...

A couple of observations made off the top of my head. It seems to me it's been written from a perspective of a kind of disillusionment, by someone who...

It'll all be drones and robotic equipment to start off with. Like Breakthrough StarShot

Guliani, Meadows charged in Arizona Fake Electors Scheme In a related article,

Why thanks! I'm perusing that last title he mentioned even as we speak. To even write your response, you're drawing on your innate capacities of reaso...

Shows.

@"Vera Mont"- what Javra says here is similar to 'Kant's answer to Hume'. Kant's response to Hume addressed Hume's skepticism about the ability of hum...

I don't believe this is correct. The random nature of the 'quantum leap' is what caused Einstein to say that he doesn't believe God plays dice. He alw...

https://youtu.be/xdGgVYIqvrQ?si=TqdjgWN0fyA1lARe

That’s only one way of looking at it, but it will fit right in here