Have you read the essay that this is quoted from, Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion, by Thomas Nagel? I think what he says in that essa...
Hence the incompatibility between transcendental idealism and naturalism. The original exchange which you keep referring to was a long time ago, but I...
Could it also be seen as saying that the ideas, forms and principles that comprise the fundamental elements of reason are invariant, and so are graspe...
You may be interested in browsing the chapter extracts of a book on this topic, Mind and the Cosmic Order, by Charles Pinter, which argues the opposit...
It's only that design in nature seems obvious to me, but obviously there are those who don't agree, and I can't think of a way to make the case. I don...
I reject neo-darwinian materialism as a philosophical attitude, personified by Daniel Dennett, who has published books in its defence. There are many ...
That is by design! I myself don't think it needs to be demonstrated, but that if I need to demonstrate it, then probably nothing I could say would be ...
That is a completely different matter from evolution by natural selection. As is well known, ideas of evolution were found in many cultures prior to D...
But, prior to our development of design, and the coining of the word ‘design’, there were no instances of design in the cosmos, right? If the apparent...
Yes. Those on the Dawkins forum - the very first forum I joined - constantly used this defence against his many howlers, notwithstanding that his book...
He should have stuck to his knitting. He did a great job as a science explainer, but he is not very good at philosophy. The first chapter of TGD book ...
No, but there's also no need to explain it away. Dawkins will often say that the processes he describes give rise to the 'appearance of being designed...
One of Dawkin's books is called 'The Blind Watchmaker'. The problem of intentionality, meaning, and purpose is a very deep one, although, as Thomas Na...
The topic I was discussing at the time was Daniel Dennett's materialist philosophy, in the context of which I said that I don't believe we are product...
OK, I think I see what you mean. I specifically referred to Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, who have global reputations as evangalising atheists, ...
It's a simplistic way of putting it, but there are ramifications. Ideas have consequences. I read a thread on some other forum, or Quora, about someon...
What if it doesn't matter to others? What if I am the authority in a one-party state who doesn't recognise human rights? Would that matter to you? Wha...
I don't understand how it can't be demeaning. It completely undermines human agency and freedom. Dennett is a Darwinian materialist in his cosmology a...
It's not 'enquiry' that is at issue, but subordinating the subject within the scope of the objective sciences. It's intrinsically demeaning to declare...
As you started the thread with reference to the Buddha, this is another verse from the early Buddhist texts that is apposite, an account of a brief ta...
What would we expect from an explanation? It seems to me the motive of a great deal of the theorising about consciousness is to dispell any lingering ...
This is particularly true of American politics in the last 2-3 decades. Here in Australia, the state I live in recently had a State election, and it w...
I see that list is drawn from Wikipedia. I don't trust the provenance of that article and I'm sure few of those names would be willing to be described...
I deleted the remark of mine you’re commenting on because it was impulsive and not constructive. As the issue at hand is the role of the observer in t...
And who is well-known for having introduced the concept of 'lebenswelt' into the philosophical lexicon? (Oh, and yes.) That's more or less straightfor...
By 'observer' I'm referring to humans. 'Imagine that all life has vanished from the universe, but everything else is undisturbed. Matter is scattered ...
The point of that paragraph is to illustrate the sense in which time and space - or duration and location - are provided by the observer and have no f...
Picture a tranquil mountain meadow. Butterflies flit back and forth amongst the buttercups and daisies, and off in the distance, a snow-capped mountai...
Read a great critical analysis of the idealism of Jeans and Eddington recently, I'll see if I can dig it up. But the memes that entered popular cultur...
I'm reading it again - it's the subject of several chapters in Crisis of European Sciences which I bought recently (dense and difficult text). Husserl...
Problems arise in respect of the indubitable reality of one's own being when treated as object. What kind of thing is it? Does it exist? etc. All empt...
I took it out of the library decades ago. It is his meditation on Greek philosophy with a large collection of Heraclitus’ aphorisms, that one has alwa...
It might be relevant to introduce a Buddhist perspective on this question. It is often said that Buddhism holds that there is no self, but that is not...
There's a frequent simile in Indian philosophy of mistaking a piece of rope for a snake. Typically it is used to represent misjudgement or being foole...
The clincher for me is that , if 'fitness beats truth', then how is it different from regular scepticism? And life's too short - there are many other ...
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