This is from an important essay that I came across when it was first published (no longer online but a .pdf supplied for those interested.) The basic ...
Agree. I don't think the word 'information' is meaningful unless it is specified - what information? By itself, the word is merely a placeholder. In o...
Something which Copernicus et al deduced from the application of reason to the evidence, to overturn the apparently-obvious conclusion that the Earth ...
Sure. :100: But they're not strictly separate faculties, are they? Thanks. I'm reading some phenomenological texts right now, including Crisis of the ...
Quite. But that implies that we can ascertain what such properties are, independently of our imputation as to their nature. Interesting paper, though,...
But language is not just an adaption, like a tooth or a claw. If you think about what is required for language to really operate, then you get into th...
The invasion has, in effect, has destroyed 30 years of economic progress, eviscerated the tiny shoots of democratic freedom that Russia was beginning ...
Actually, on further reflection, I think that the ability of animals to plan and act according to goal-directed purposes (something also central to th...
I don't consider the point about whether animals are rational as relevant to the OP. (I am listening to audio books about Franz de Waal and Jakob von ...
The bolded sentence about 'human intention as the model' is similar to what I argued above. In short, this essay pleads for a more holistic perspectiv...
Right - I think the OP mislead me, or rather I have confused the two 'Diogenes'. Although the image of 'wandering the streets with a lamp' associated ...
No, you're discussing that. They have some rudimentary capacity to reason, but I'm not particularly interested in it, and furthermore I think it is ea...
He was a wandering ascetic. They were a constant feature of ancient cultures, they still exist in India to this day. The early Buddhist scriptures ref...
Have you ever looked into what happened when behavioural scientists tried to teach chimps - our nearest biological relative - to speak? Ever hear the ...
Incidentally by way of footnote, a passage from the above review notes that: However, I think it's possible to defend the ontological difference betwe...
All of the many capacities exhibited by sentient animals other than humans. in some, such as arachnids and other inverterbrates, it is not as develope...
There's a lurking problem here. That post of yours a few pages back makes an important point, I think: The lurking problem is, that we can't seem to a...
Such behaviours can all be explained in terms of stimulus and response, without any requirement to introduce logic. To us, the behaviour can be said t...
Indeed it is not. As one of the forum anti-materialists I often rub people up the wrong way with ideas drawn from the perennial philosophical traditio...
From the Stanford entry on Ibn Arabi: Again, there are definitely resonances with the ideal of 'self-realisation' as taught by Advaita Vedanta or 'rea...
But that doesn't square with what you said immediately above: Whence does 'other-worldly guidance' originate? Isnt that the meaning of 'revealed truth...
The passage in the OP is a classical statement of 'the perennial philosophy'. However, it's also true that this insight is essentially incompatible wi...
Richard Dawkins will often say that life exhibits 'apparent design'. He obviously does this to defray the age-old cliche of the 'grand designer'. But ...
there's a .pdf synopsis of the Peter Harrison book out there on the internet although the biblical overtones area a gauranteed turn-off for most of th...
Most, I would think. :wink: I like Nagel, and refer to him a lot, not because he's a hero figure, but because he has a very cool and detached analytic...
That's why Nietszche foresaw the advent of nihilism as the defining character of modernity. And it is! Not necessarily a 'sturm und drang', dramatic k...
I observed that behaviour with my eldest son, now in his thirties. He always had that kind of discipline as a very small child, and lo, has generally ...
It's simply the idea of there being a cosmic law or cosmic order. From the New Advent encyclopedia: Clearly a resemblance to the idea of 'dharma' in t...
Which is precisely why his theories are nowadays often dismissed as pseudoscientific. He didn't use the term 'objectivism' but what I meant is, he con...
:clap: :100: I too noted the relevance of the Stoic 'logos' a little earlier. It seems rather like that other axial-age philosophical motif of the Eas...
It wouldn’t surprise me if she did. And yes the issue is a metaphysical one. It revolves around divesting the world of reason. No coincidence that Hum...
I think I'm trying to articulate the nature of the relation between ideas and reality. I mean, it's presumed that ideas are 'in here', artifacts of th...
So much for fine-tuning, then. Slight? :chin: More like, ‘in no way connected, but…’ I did read the Anscombe article, that I posted. Didn’t find it pa...
Which you nevertheless have no hesitation in doing: But they meet in places, e.g. ' For instance, (in) the proposition, “In all changes of the materia...
Regardless, 'phenomena' means 'what appears', 'a fact or situation that is observed to exist or happen'. That is a matter of definition. The idea that...
That's exactly what I'd expect. But notice that 'phenomena' means 'what appears'. Who it appears too is omitted by this, but I expect you think that '...
But to 'explain reason' is to invariably sell it short! As soon as you account for it in anything other than it's own terms, then you're denying the s...
Where I've encountered that argument is in The Indispensability Argument in the Philosophy of Mathematics. What Quine wants to do is 'naturalise' math...
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