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Wayfarer

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One conundrum I have been puzzling over, is the distinction between mind-independent objects, and mind-independent principles. Let me explain. The pri...
November 19, 2025 at 21:54
Thank you for that careful analysis. The comment about 'being ignored' was in response to posts by several contributors who predicted that I would ign...
November 19, 2025 at 21:16
Sure. I would never deny the facts of evolutionary theory, although I often question the significance that is attributed to it. I think if Plato had k...
November 19, 2025 at 06:32
The justified belief that knowledge cannot be solely objective. Then it's not an insight. But the fact that someone doesn't recognise an insight doesn...
November 19, 2025 at 05:40
Not according to Edward Feser, it isn't. The universals that he has in mind —geometricity, equality, necessity, logical relations—are not physical, an...
November 19, 2025 at 05:14
You wonder how they tie their shoes, really, those religious types.
November 19, 2025 at 04:48
Yes, I distinguish between factual knowledge and beliefs (justified or otherwise). No, I am not “opposed to science,” nor do I neglect the findings of...
November 19, 2025 at 03:19
A lot of people hold to a basically positivist attitude although they’ll generally deny it if it’s called. out
November 19, 2025 at 01:02
And the response was - in case it went past you - that the precondition is the capacity to grasp rational concepts, which is not something that needs ...
November 18, 2025 at 23:51
It was, in fact, addressed, point by point - but there's no use explaining that to someone who is not prepared to reckon with it. Hence Twain's adage,...
November 18, 2025 at 23:48
Spot on. I had the idea of writing an OP on disembodied cognition. Why? To bring out what was important about embodied cognition in the first place - ...
November 18, 2025 at 22:52
You’re able to grasp the concept of a triangle — “a flat plane bounded by three intersecting straight lines” — because you possess a rational intellig...
November 18, 2025 at 22:19
Saying they are “immanent” does not reduce them to material particulars. Aristotle’s forms are not products of material processes; they are the precon...
November 18, 2025 at 20:34
You’re still treating the point I’m making as if it were an empirical claim about the contents of the world — something that could be justified the wa...
November 18, 2025 at 19:58
https://youtu.be/SkEWWdDWDBg?si=oLwi5aFDaFs6fAKp https://youtu.be/8FEYm8ehaTE?si=UGZHgVDvIEviIrG9
November 18, 2025 at 08:24
Yes unfortunately me too. It’s pitched to the academic profession with all the necessary armour-plating. But Evan Thompson is just one of the people i...
November 18, 2025 at 07:34
Better! I’m going through Mind in Life although finding it a difficult read. But my Christian cultural heritage has instilled in me a conviction that ...
November 18, 2025 at 07:11
yes well all the sources I've seen says can only grow in clear fresh flowing water with stone bed. Kind of rules me out, I'll have to stick with rocke...
November 18, 2025 at 06:40
Oh, and wasabi leaf is not available in Australian supermarkets, so far as I can discern. It only grows in cold flowing streams in the Japanese mounta...
November 18, 2025 at 06:33
Yeah shows :rofl:
November 18, 2025 at 06:24
Ever seen Soylent Green? Long before your time, but a chilling dystopian sci-fi.
November 18, 2025 at 06:23
It’s also worth noting the growing debate—both in physics and in philosophy of physics—about whether time and space themselves exist independently of ...
November 18, 2025 at 04:53
Noice. I was introduced to wasabi paste, of course, over many a lunchtime sushi, and have since bought it from the aformentioned supermarket. But I ne...
November 18, 2025 at 04:43
If you want a scientific context for the point I’m making, consider the most famous scientific dispute of the 20th century - the Einstein-Bohr debate....
November 18, 2025 at 04:37
Hey don't sweat it, you could be called worse than 'English' ;-) eply="Metaphysician Undercover;1025525"] I believe there was a British one, I think t...
November 18, 2025 at 02:21
Ahem. Strine, actually. Same name but different company. Short for Woolworths. Large supermarket chain here.
November 18, 2025 at 01:11
Excellent lunch choice, although I’ve never seen wasabi leaves at Woolies.
November 18, 2025 at 00:50
Or maybe not! Anyway - it’s interesting to know that longtime posters here have a profile that the LLMs know about :yikes:
November 18, 2025 at 00:49
Well, they're both challenging! But I like to see it as constructive disagreement - we hold very different kinds of philosophy, but I've learned a lot...
November 17, 2025 at 22:13
The Rigor of Angels: Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality, Wiliam Egginton. NY Times Review (gift link).
November 17, 2025 at 21:12
It is ecological-embodied metacognition. But in enactivism, it is more than 'discursive practices' i.e. verbal behaviours. It goes 'all the way down' ...
November 17, 2025 at 20:40
“I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar.” Nietzsche. In my view, he couldn’t be righter.
November 17, 2025 at 08:50
I was chatting with Claude AI about the topic of ‘semantic realism’ earlier today, and mentioned that I had been a longtime member of thephilosophyfor...
November 17, 2025 at 08:39
C’mon 180. Bertrand Russell and Lloyd Gerson. Middle-of-the-road classical philosophy.
November 17, 2025 at 07:15
Thank you for that. Big piece of work! I’m impressed by it although have as always a large stack of ‘things I ought to read’. But anyway :pray:
November 17, 2025 at 04:46
True - it's function is not directed at itself but as part of a larger system. Nevertheless, it does meet their definition: it senses (temperature) an...
November 17, 2025 at 00:09
Neuroscience tells us how the brain behaves when we think; it cannot tell us what thinking is — because the very act of interpreting neural data requi...
November 16, 2025 at 23:48
That's an immediate red flag for me. According to their definition, a thermostat is a mind. From a review: Despite the splashy blurb, Journey of the M...
November 16, 2025 at 23:33
The “map vs. territory” distinction isn’t what’s at issue. The argument from Aristotle through Russell is about the conditions of intelligibility that...
November 16, 2025 at 23:22
:rofl:
November 16, 2025 at 23:17
Can you rebut the arguments that I provided from Gerson, Feser, Russell? Or is it just 'what you reckon'?
November 16, 2025 at 22:39
This is the sense in which the mind “constructs” or “creates” the cosmos: not as an external agent shaping an independent material realm, but as the o...
November 16, 2025 at 22:18
I stil maintain that an effective (if not 'slam dunk') argument against physicalism is from classical philosophy: that linguistic communication would ...
November 16, 2025 at 21:35
Great work Jamal. Super impressed with your commitment to the Forum. I'll help with subscriptions when the new platform goes live.
November 16, 2025 at 21:09
Please refer to what I said in this thread. As I interpreted this discussion as being about metaphysics I responded accordingly here and here. These a...
November 16, 2025 at 07:19
You'll need to try harder: You can see why I said that this suggests a cynical view of religion, can't you? Or am I reading it all wrong?
November 16, 2025 at 04:55
Further to which, one of the books that started me down this route (although there were many) was a 1994 title Understanding the Present. It was a pre...
November 16, 2025 at 04:27
:100: Very similar to the points I've been trying to make in the Predicment of Modernity and Idealism in Context. I know how you feel, I took all Octo...
November 16, 2025 at 04:16
Actually if you'd bothered reading anything I've said in this particular thread, you would see i've said nothing of the kind (although I've never said...
November 16, 2025 at 03:31
Which I am seeking to leverage to make a point about metaphysics…a point which I still don’t think is being acknowledged.
November 16, 2025 at 02:06