Wayfarer

Johnson has won that particular battle, but according to many accounts, will lose the war. Commentator just now recalled that Thatcher and May both lo...

I will generally acknowledge any errors I make, but here I don't see one. I said, metaphysics developed out of Platonism, which I then qualified by sa...

Noted, but also note the first sentence: 'While there was no word corresponding precisely to the term “metaphysics"...' And also notice in the introdu...

As SEP notes, the word was coined long after Aristotle's death. And Plato never used the term 'metaphysics'. But the core concerns go back to Parmenid...

I'll take them at their word.

It's a classic in Chinese philosophy and religion. Here is the beginning of the SEP entry on metaphysics: There are some very general conceptions that...

It's a notoriously difficult word to define. I grant there's a vernacular definition of metaphysics which denotes a wide range of ideas from many diff...

There are comparisons between them, but the Tao Te Ching is not metaphysics per se. You tend to refer to the Tao Te Ching to give you a kind of handle...

It's closer to poetry than to metaphysics. Metaphysics developed out Platonism and the core subjects such as the Ideas, Forms, Universals, the nature ...

According to the source document: However, Kant then grants that you can be both a transcendental AND an empirical realist: So, Kant is not denying th...

There was nothing of the kind in the Tao Te Ching. Einstein's question was the consequence of a particular moment in history, and a highly consequenti...

This is the only thread where Boris Johnson is discussed so it seems an appropriate thread to post news of the no-confidence vote against him. As I wr...

But the point is, quantum mechanics concerned what was supposed to be the foundational level of the Universe. And yet, when Heisenberg's Uncertainty P...

I wonder why, then, the great Albert Einstein was compelled to ask, rhetorically, 'doesn't the moon continue to exist when we're not looking at it?' I...

Good idea. I had started something but side-tracked myself. Now that I have that book, I might use it as a base.

You will notice that the most frequent objection to idealism is the assumed reality of objects, the objective domain, the sensory realm. Everything is...

As you notice, I go into bat for idealism in almost every thread I participate in. But it's such a big subject - I tried to sit down and draft an OP f...

It would take a book.

Not so. His philosophy is described as transcendental idealism although I daresay your simplistic definitions would render the distinction unintelligi...

It's a rather simplistic description. Philosophical idealism can accept that material objects and forces have a degree of reality, and that they're no...

‘Miracles are not against nature, but against what we know of nature’ ~ St Augustine

Yeah, no. Not buying. Aren’t you the one supposed to be defending realism? :smile:

:up: But I get tired of hearing of 'that of which we cannot speak' as shorthand for 'shuddup already!' in response to bringing up anything deemed vagu...

Yes, exactly. But the first place I encountered articulation of the idea was in Terry Eagleton's review of Dawkin's The God Delusion: (It was that rev...

:clap: Another issue with the OP is that the God of monotheism is not *a* God, one God amongst many. Believing in the Gods, as polytheistic religions ...

I'm sympathetic to this line of analysis. But planes overwhelmingly do stay up in the air, and the many other devices and technologies that technologi...

Not all of those are metaphorical. I can't see how Newton's equations of motion are metaphorical, although I agree that many of the other examples are...

that is indeed interesting. I think overall that what has happened is that religion has 'burst its banks', i.e. overflowed the boundaries that had bee...

It's funny you say that - his Wikipedia page says he was a convinced atheist. Maybe the fact that it reads as 'religious' is because the kind of mathe...

Hey Spinoza was a mystic. :grimace:

:ok:

Ought to be remembered that ‘supernatural’ is the Latin equivalent of the Greek ‘Metaphysical’. (There’s also a Buddhist equivalent, ‘lokuttara’ usual...

Smart observations. Meta-physics is to physics as meta-data is to data. Take for example a letter. The contents of the letter is the data. The facts a...

He says consciousness is a state of matter - how could he not be? Anyway, whatever you say, not a point I can be bothered going into bat for. The two ...

I've read a little of Max Tegmark, after an OP of his about his neo-Pythagorean philosophy. But as I understand it, he nevertheless remains committed ...

I guess that's what I am saying. Despite my enthusiasm for Buddhism, I seem to have a kind of culturally-instilled Platonism - I sometimes think it mi...

I'll add that I've noticed a book by Lloyd Gerson, Platonism and Naturalism: The Possibility of Philosophy. But then, reading Lloyd Gerson is often wa...

There is an Iris Murdoch book called Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals which was recommended to me by a lecturer. I bought a copy for a relative for Ch...

Dawkins and Sheldrake are poles apart. Read about this encounter between them. (I'm a Sheldrake admirer, actually had the good fortune to meet him and...

Next episode reported. https://edition.cnn.com/2022/06/01/us/tulsa-police-incident-active-shooter/index.html

I question the coherence of the idea of a 'mind-independent world', but I don't think I'll pursue it. (I have some familiarity with F. H. Bradley whom...

I think before going further, you should explain further what you mean by your term 'ontologically exist'.

I’m no authority on physics but I’m interested in the philosophical implications.

That’s a question fir physics forum (although I’ve looked it up there before and the answer was ‘no’ for reasons I couldn’t follow).

Correct. One of your sporadically insightful observations. :wink:

This is going to be a digression but it can't be helped. I've read some brief articles and reviews by Colin McGinn who is the current mysterian-in-chi...

:up:

That quoted passage means something different from saying that 'metaphysical positions have no truth value'. That is very much the line of the 'vienna...

You're defending the empiricist view that all concepts are derived from experience. (Some of the following is cribbed from Edward Feser) Your initial ...