Wayfarer

It's central to modern democratic liberalism, that's for sure. Whatever wisdom the crowds can muster. A large part of which is the heritage of Christi...

No better illustration of the kind of prejudice I'm referring to. Esotericism is essential to philosophy proper, but it's culturally subversive and so...

For those into jazz fusion - Fool Arcana, a new band! They won a contest in Italy in April 2021, right in the thick of COVID which kind of hampered th...

The demarcation is that the esoteric is identified with religion, and religion has a meaning that is culturally specific. So to venture into the esote...

I've just realised what the missing word is in nearly all these debates: it is esotericism. Here, I was going to say something about the content of es...

Except that it has been empirically falsified: Famous Experiment Dooms Alternative to Quantum Weirdness

My interpretation is that biosemiotics was born out of the discovery of language and signs as a metaphor for organism which replaced the mechanistic m...

In Phaedo 72b-e, Socrates has Simmias agree that there is such a thing as Equality itself--something that is independent of any particular case of equ...

Fair point. I got that book when it came out, having read his dialogues with Krishnamurti. I haven’t read Pas’ book yet beyond the first few pages but...

I had no prep, and at the time, and for many decades later, I never associated that experience with religion. I thought it was about the nature of rea...

But that, I suggest, is the fundamental misconception of the role of ideas in Platonic philosophy. It's not as if 'the ball' and 'roundness' are two t...

Wasn't really quoting him as a source, other than in an 'even Steve Pinker understands....' kind of way.

Perhaps he should have moved to India. They have many.

Apologies, I mistook you for someone who might have an open mind. I’ll keep out of your way in future.

Of which you have a concept, hence the designation 'roundness' that goes with it.

I'm with Russell on that. You're arguing from an empiricist viewpoint - that we learn the concept of roundness from the exposure to many instances of ...

You may recall that empiricism disdains any such conceptions. No lesser light that Steven Pinker wrote a book on it. (As it happens, the last Christma...

It is writ large in today's world. What are 'our best' theories, and why do they entail that such knowledge is not possible? But those mavericks known...

Daily Beast asked ChatGPT to answer questions 'in the style of Trump', which it did, right down to stylistic ticks and bombast. Here's a sample: Answe...

I think the change came with the Renaissance conception of humanity. Many of the Renaissance humanists held philosophical views of dubious orthodoxy, ...

I equate them with conversion experiences, or steps on the path. I don't regard such insights as instances of extra-sensory perception. In late adoles...

In medieval philosophy, the rational soul referred to the aspect of the human being that was associated with the faculty of reason and with free will ...

The saddest, and most dangerous, thing about Trump is the way he has persuaded hundreds of millions of people that there are no facts. That he can app...

.....leaving the certitude of the cogito bobbing in its wake....

My only reaction to reading the above, is that whilst Harman et al wish to depict idealism as 'anthropocentric' or 'human-centred', in fact their clai...

On a side note. Imagine - just imagine - the howls from the Republican Party if George Santos were a Democrat. The outrage! The denunciations! The cal...

US$10.00 payable to charity of your choice :up:

It's about the instrumentalisation, and relativising, of reason - that reason used to be understood as an objective reality (although I think the worl...

And that you haven't addressed.

There is a basic philosophical issue of how intentionality arises in the first place. Materialism ascribes that to chance - as the outcome of a fortui...

I might agree, but materialism has no concept of telos. There is no possibility of intentionality outside the intentional actions of agents. Carl Saga...

I've often mentioned the connection that has been discovered between the sceptic Elis of Pyrrho and Buddhism (extending all the way to David Hume). Th...

I'm not talking specifically about Christianity or belief in the Bible. I'm saying that philosophically, the idea that human life has an intrinsic con...

The point I'm labouring in all this, is the philosophical one - that (true or false) religious philosophies provide a framework within which to situat...

I'd still be willing to bet that Trump will not be the Republican candidate for the Presidency at the next election.

I really can't see how the kamikaze pilot could be interpreted as self-centred when the entire narrative was created around self sacrifice. Same for j...

Whereas if you had been a Soviet citizen, you’d immediately join it. :-)

Plainly I will agree that such fundamentalism and extremism are abhorrent, but I don't think that makes them nihilistic as such. I mean, kamikaze pilo...

What would a solution to the hard problem look like? For that matter, what is the problem? I had thought that the problem is actually a simple one: th...

A synoptic reading would be sufficient in my view. I was surprised by how some of the ideas in 'dialectic of enlightenment' resonated never having enc...

I've listened to that talk now, and I agree with what he's saying. But thanks for the opportunity of holding forth on one of my favourite themes.

It's situated in the context of the Enlightenment criticism of religion, yes. (I was going to add something about the fact that the word 'religion' ha...

It's not fortuitous, but intentional, as a matter of definition. In Buddhism, the view of 'fortuitous origins' is also rejected, although not in favou...

I wonder about the sense in which the specifically Enlightenment criticism of religion amounts to the demand for the replacement of the idea of religi...

I suppose the kind of expression I would reach for is that all being is 'cut from the same cloth', so to speak. It's not a numerical unity, an undiffe...

As I said, I think the basis of monist philosophy is another kind of cognitive mode or way of being. Saying 'all is One' in ordinary discourse is mean...

However, you have joined a philosophy forum, and whatever explanations heaven provides to you, and whether they're truthful or not, may not be of any ...

Philosophy requires reasoned arguments. A revelation may be meaningful to you, but the onus of proof is on you to demonstrate why it ought to be meani...

:100: :clap:

I imagine that the objection is: one what?