Wayfarer

But we cannot so assume. By rational agents - human beings - augmented with intentionally-designed artefacts - computers and calculators. Were those r...

All very well, but this seems to me to be overlooking or taking for granted a great deal of what is required by such an encoding. I can see how it is ...

There's a well-worn anecdote in linguistics about Eskimos having 39 different words for snow. I seem to recall reading that it's been disputed, but th...

And generally learn to speak as a part of that. Something which is also unique to h. sapiens. The law of identity itself originates with Greek philoso...

Sorry, not 'extraterrestrial' but interstellar. That was the term I got wrong. The significance being that almost every meteor or space object known o...

Sorry my bad. From ‘outside the solar system’, I meant. Different class of object.

Yeah, it wouldn't make any sense if there were no real good.

That differs from the dictionary definition. Incidentally there's a well-known anecdote concerning a conversation that occurred in in around 1940-41 i...

Not accusing you of that at all. Overall your criticism has been relevant...well, up until the excursion into marine biology. It's the zeitgeist, the ...

I've been sporadically following Avi Loeb, even before all of this blew up, because he's an interesting scientist. (I've written him into my not-yet-f...

:100: Notice this rhetorical sleight-of-hand which re-frames necessary truths as contingent. This is often deployed by way of speculations about the ‘...

Well, some of the counter cultural sources you mentioned are examples. E F Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful was one, and there is still a foundation wi...

Yes I am going to have to do likewise. But what I was getting at was more philosophical and political. I mean, liberal market economics are based arou...

How would you know? Any examples you could mention? Do you mean, deaf-mute people?

Got any examples in mind? Any particular cultural forms you can point to?

Ever run across the Saphir-Whorf hypothesis? Also known as linguistic relativity, it proposes that the language we speak influences the way we think a...

Gee, I must have missed that. I'd better go back and read the Argument from Reason again.

I feel there's a distinction here that you're not seeing. But then, that's been the case all through this thread. Thanks all the same for your respons...

Another relevant snippet from Horkheimer: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Aristotle differentiated man as ‘the rational animal’. Rationality is certainly one aspect - it enables h sapiens to see well beyond the stimulus-resp...

They should be free to make those choices, but it is an unfortunate fact that consumers are heavily exploited for commercial gain. The problem is a ph...

also a convenient way to dodge the implications of our existential situation.

Perhaps that innocence is what was lost in the mythology of the Fall. The problem-solving abilities of crows and such are often cited in this context....

Your use of the word 'finally' clearly suggests goal-directedness. I have said numerous times in this thread that h. sapiens has plainly evolved in th...

I think you will find that any idea of there being progress in this sense is rejected by mainstream biology on account of it being orthogenetic which ...

Plainly, but the difference makes a difference. H Sapiens has passed an evolutionary threshold with the faculty of reason and language being key to th...

I took it as a reference to the million monkeys trope https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem, often invoked as an account of how life...

I took the point to be the claim that life originates as a chance event. The analogy of monkeys typing represents the random combination of elements t...

Indeed. Conversely, what philosophical point do you think is being made by this oft-cited trope?

Thank you.

…which also serves as an ideological attitude, as amply illustrated in many exchanges here.

Indeed, one of the main points at issue. Something to do with philosophical shortcomings of naturalism.

But then, biologists may be poor judges of philosophical argument.

There is actually a Buddhist answer to that question, in form of the principle of 'nirodha' (cessation. It has been compared to, and might actually be...

I have noticed that. But I think his basic criticism, that neo-darwinism has become a 'theory of everything', is solid.

Wow, you have some interesting friends. I'll see if I can get started on it. ------ I was going to add this snippet I was reading in a New Yorker obit...

The year before my first child was born - he's now 34 - I saw my first-ever laser printer, which had been bought by the place I worked (for about the ...

. Thanks for introducing us to this author. He looks like a very substantial thinker, going on the ToC of his book, Structure and Metaphysics of Mind....

The model I'm trying to flesh out posits mind or consciousness as being a latent attribute or dimension of reality, which manifests when and wherever ...

OK, never mind. Mistaken impression on my part.

Would I be right in surmising that you find 'the argument from reason' an affront to common sense?

:chin:

Please do! It’s more that I think some taken-for-granted elements of the scientific worldview amount to popular mythology, which has subtle but import...

I'm quite interested in this school of thought, although it's rather difficult to find specific readings. (I read Gilson's Unity of Philosophical Expe...

Of relevance, however, is the Marcus book I mentioned, Rational Causation, which explores similar territory without any reference to theology. 'We exp...

The simplest reason is that it's intentional, and intentionality is lacking in physical causation.

All quite sound, and something I have long taken as a guidepost to wisdom. But the thing I'm now wrestling with is that Zen wisdom (as Buddhism genera...

No realistic dualism or idealism would deny that physical influences affect cognition and affect. But the argument from reason is about physicalism - ...

All the indications are that he will be indicted on those charges, and also on the Georgia election interference charges. He's going to have a very bu...

Intelligence is the ability to adapt, among other things, but it is not exhausted by that description. More to the point, its attributes can't be eith...