They're both paradigms, as per Kuhn's terminology. Quantum physics represented a significant departure from classical physics, particularly in its rej...
How about the relationship between books and stories. In what sense is the meaning of a story contained by a book? Is it physical in the sense that th...
How about the 1927 Solvay Conference in Physics as the mother of all paradigm shifts in modern science and philosophy? I say it marks the boundary bet...
But do they use that actual terminology: 'what is your essence'? Do you remember Gattica, a 1997 movie set in a future society where genetic engineeri...
Excellent question. Isn't it because it is too near to us to grasp? Focus requires some distance, you can't see something pressed right against your e...
Another saying comes to mind, from the ascerbic G B Shaw - 'youth is wasted on the young'. (Something to which I can personally attest, having wasted ...
He also said recently that he hopes the economy will crash in the next twelve months so that he doesn't have to take the blame for it if it crashes la...
I’ll look into it! And Tallis wouldn’t know who I am - I emailed him after picking up a copy of Aping Mankind about 10 years ago, and got a reply, tha...
I’d agree with that. But don’t forget, for a great deal of the cultural history of the West, belief was dictated by the ecclesiastical authorities. Th...
Yes, I can see you two wouldn't get along. Talis is a reactionary from the post-modernist pov, but then that probably applies to me also :yikes: I wil...
'Being modern' or 'the modern worldview' is itself an over-arching paradigm, because it embodies many unspoken axioms or presumptions about 'the natur...
I wrote to Tallis after getting one of his books, and he replied very positively. I will look out for that title! (Looking at the Amazon page, one of ...
I think it's because pre-moderns had a fundamentally different 'experience of the world' as or them, it was an expression of the divine intelligence. ...
No, of course not. It's all become massively distorted, a quagmire of confusion and ignorance. But then the mystics, those with the most penetrating i...
I generally avoid comment on Nietzsche as I’ve never felt compelled to read him and don’t know his writings very well. But I don’t agree with his pers...
On further thought, don’t agree. I looked back to when I first posted this five years ago, the response was vitriolic, it was taken as an attack on sc...
Actually I will provide more of a reason for the section in Deacon's book that turned me off it. it's the discussion about the homuncular fallacy, and...
The first article that drew me to philosophy forums was a scathing review, by Terry Eagleton, of Richard Dawkin's book The God Delusion, way back in a...
Interesting JSTOR review of Deacon from a process-theology oriented academic: Is Terrence Deacon's Metaphysics of Incompleteness Still Incomplete? (fr...
It's not 'ironic', it's a deliberate tactic. He's furious that if the bill goes any way to addressing the problem, then it will reflect positively on ...
So, there is no category of apriori facts? The only facts are those 'confirmable by observation'? How does that apply to mathematical theorems, and ot...
The essay I linked to spells it out pretty clearly. It doesn't come down to the 'reliability of scientific measurement'. Measurement is one of the thi...
Deductive truths are inferred from rational principles. That It is true of any triangle doesn’t need to validated by observing every particular . But ...
I would turn the question around, and ask if 'the law of the excluded middle' or 'the Pythagorean theorem' came into existence when humans first grasp...
I quoted what he said about idealism verbatim. If you missed it go back and have another look. Note the distinction he makes between subjective ideali...
Which is the same as what I'm saying: That's what he, and Husserl, mean by the 'lebenswelt' - the 'life-world' of assumed meanings and relationships, ...
Compare that with what I said here: I'm saying Thompson's 'they don't refer at all' is exactly synonymous with 'nothing whatever can be said about it'...
Trump acts as if he's convinced he's above the law, and Trump supporters likewise view him as above the law, or as BEING the law. Hence his constant d...
Fair point, but he also makes it clear that what is at 'the bottom' of the 'bottom-up process' are not atoms as such. At the end of Chapter One, he sa...
Fair point. I don't agree much with ucarr either. I'm talking more about Deacon, which I give ucarr the credit for causing me (and no, that is not a m...
I’m in your corner, but so far you have nothing to go on but sentiment. You could benefit from some more reading, starting with one of the books this ...
Yeah but Trump has been saying it's going to be a hiding, 90% or more. Anyway, she better keep going. The Republicans are soon going to require a spar...
A difficult and delicate question. The bottom-up account of such entities is that they are the product of lower-level processes, beginning at the leve...
That's what he's working towards. As said, I quite like the book, I'm finding it pretty compelling, although I've also skipped ahead to some of his mo...
Only agents have agendas. This is where Deacon coins the neologism 'ententionality'. It refers to the goal-directedness that characterises organic lif...
But the significance of what he calls abstentials is that while they have physical consequences, they're not physical in nature. He himself says that ...
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