Wayfarer

Just bear in mind, again, the difference between 'substance' in philosophy, translated from 'ousia', 'being' or 'subject', and 'substance' in normal s...

Thanks for explaining your position with such clarity.

And that's not where life is lived.

But the way to cut the Gordian knot is not by kvetching about it. As some wise sage said, 'the only way out of it is through it'.

No, it's not a muddled question, it is crystal clear to me. Just because you don't think in such terms, doesn't mean that it's a muddled question. I w...

Darwinian evolution is not an existential philosophy.

A facile dismissal of the entire issue, then. Isn't there more at stake? Doesn't it really count whether you're an aggregation of physical forces, or ...

That is based solely on your conviction there isn't one.

You can observe that being born inevitably entails suffering, without necessarily agreeing that it negates the entire process, that it would have been...

Exactly! But lets not forget, they also believed that there was an escape from that, a higher truth.

So do you accept that the fundamental furniture of the Universe is material in nature? Whatever that turns out to be? And that humans, and the mind, a...

Yes, 'Alvin Plantinga'. And no, I don't believe in Reformed Theology. Here I'm interested in the technicalities of the arguments, from a POV other tha...

I think you're confusing the notion of legal innocence - of not having committed a crime - with an existential question - what is the cause of the suf...

Indeed, but that article I linked to says a major factor was Bill Clinton's aspiration to provide home ownership to larger numbers of people. Or that ...

The merits or otherwise of home ownership is a question of political economics. The point I was making was more about the influence of wishful or magi...

Here is a well-regarded book, The Nature of Necessity, Alvin Plantinga, which analyses many of the themes explored in this thread. (There is a .pdf ou...

One small win for the Justice system against Murdoch's institutionalised mendacity: Maybe part of Trump's appeal is that he exemplifies 'you can creat...

You may be aware of the testimony at the Jan 6 commission by Rusty Bowers, a Republican electoral official, who stood fast against Trump's demands to ...

that natural persons are born innocent.

Right. The process of enculturation, language, social practice, and much more, which collectively comprise the meaning-world in which humans dwell. An...

And where does that originate? What is the medium through which that is transmitted? I say that meaning, as such - the basis of rational inference, 'i...

But if you don't understand an argument, then you can't be said to have refuted it. This exchange started with: to which I responded: And then again, ...

As that was a passage from one of Edward Feser's blog posts, I think I should include a link to the original. Incidentally it was posted as an argumen...

Not physically. The idea I had for the sci fi story was about the discovery that some lifeform was able to transmit itself via electromagnetic radiati...

Always the same with Trump - although you think you've seen the worst, heard the worst, something comes along that is even more despicable than all th...

That is what I thought you meant, when you said

so you don't accept the doctrine of original sin, then?

well, that answer was no use.

that's a philosophical problem. I think it's usually called 'Why are we Here?' :chin:

Fair enough. But I find that hard to reconcile with what else you've been saying. If everything simply is as it seems, then what is there to analyse?

Right. I've started a sci-fi novel on a similar idea to that, although I can't find the motivation to finish it. In any case, we have a spaceship suit...

Incidentally I don't place G E Moore's refutation of idealism anywhere beyond Johnson's argumentum ad lapidem. 'Here is a hand' is no more a refutatio...

I think the Kantian answer is that the purported one thing is not known to us and that positing 'the real apple' is what Kant calls 'transcendental re...

The act of seeing is precisely the construction of a gestalt - not a model as such, because a model represents something. But the gestalt is the apple...

:up:

I'm utterly sceptical about the prospects for interstellar travel. The distances involved are simply too vast to be contemplated, outside of science f...

How can there be anything to discuss, then? You’re not saying anything, you’re just making marks that show up on a screen. I might interpret them to m...

Google Alva Noe 'Out of our Heads'.

What did you just ask? Your question has 'inherent meaning' doesn't it? You didn't just blurt out random sounds (and in fact you're asking very good a...

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Which is the capacity to discern meaning. :100: The machine is in the ghost.

And also a quote from a current source, namely, the technologist-turned-philosopher Federico Faggin, in whose book Silicon we find an account of an 'a...

:up:

Thanks, that is a helpful discussion from you. Bear with me here, I want to tease out a point which I only have a hazy grasp of myself. There is in Gr...

Yes, nous is preserved in the vernacular, but it had a deep and rich meaning in classical philosophy. That idea of the union of knower and known is fo...

I hope that democratic systems of government can aspire to that. I don't know what the alternatives are. As regards the civil war - it's astonishing, ...

Not an argument I’d want to entertain. I still hold out hope that sanity will prevail and that not all Republicans are delusional and mendacious.The b...

thanks! Helps me to understand where you’re coming from.

If you can possibly focus on the issue rather than adopting your usual pose of juvenile hysteria, what I’m asking is, is there a political solution to...