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Wayfarer

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As I say, a very deep topic, I could easily be mistaken about many aspects. It is not accepted by all Buddhist schools, because it said by some Buddhi...
August 29, 2025 at 03:32
Show me I’m mistaken and I’ll change my view. As always. ‘ ‘… The discovery of the genetic code was a breakthrough of the first order. It showed why o...
August 29, 2025 at 01:26
I sure will but I’m in grand-dad mode today so am besieged with a thousand minor annoyances and it’s a very deep topic. I’ll try and find some time so...
August 29, 2025 at 01:05
Thank you for those comments on my essay, appreciated. My only comment on the closing analogy is the proximity to that materialist saying that ‘the br...
August 29, 2025 at 00:11
I sometimes entertain the idea that modern culture normalizes problematical states of consciousness—restlessness, distraction, alienation—and that phi...
August 29, 2025 at 00:08
:rofl:
August 28, 2025 at 23:55
https://iep.utm.edu/hadot/#SH5a This kind of attitude is bubbling up through independent philosophers rather than academics although again John Vervae...
August 28, 2025 at 23:21
The edition Paine links to is the Cambridge Edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, ed Guyer and Wood. The gold standard translation.
August 28, 2025 at 21:42
A gloss on first the section Paine quotes ( A758 B786) 1. Ignorance as motive, not paralysis Kant begins by distinguishing types of ignorance. Some ig...
August 28, 2025 at 21:28
It's the possibilities that near-death experiences suggest that are of philosophical interest. It raises the question, in what sense is our being more...
August 28, 2025 at 21:13
Just the passage I had in mind! ‘Tat tvam asi’ :pray:
August 28, 2025 at 20:40
The reason why one might be open to the possibility of a ‘life beyond’, or not, or why one might think it ridiculous, is the philosophical question at...
August 28, 2025 at 20:39
What I said ‘couldn’t be more wrong’ was this: That’s why I mentioned the Bohr-Einstein debates which were precisely over this issue, insofar as this ...
August 28, 2025 at 20:36
I’ll try to find some time to study this the next few days.
August 28, 2025 at 11:53
Alan Watts used to quote that all the time. Between drinks.
August 28, 2025 at 04:46
I suggest Wikipedia may not be a reilable source for matters of this kind. There is a group known as Guerilla Sceptics, who methodically edit or redac...
August 28, 2025 at 02:25
Might I suggest that this is another consequence of the Cartesian divide between mind and body? Again, the definition of phenomena - the definition, n...
August 28, 2025 at 00:49
No, I’m not suggesting that. The commonalities between German idealism and Eastern philosophy were a matter of convergent development. Schopenhuaer al...
August 27, 2025 at 21:39
Have you encountered Alva Noë ‘Out of Our Heads’? ‘Noë’s contention is that you are not your brain – rather, that “consciousness is an achievement of ...
August 27, 2025 at 21:27
Well, Schopenhauer and Kant have been compared with Eastern philosophy. Indeed in Bryan Magee’s excellent Schopenhauer’s Philosophy from which that is...
August 27, 2025 at 08:05
'within' is an interesting concept in this context. It's a spatial metaphor in which brain/body is a container and the mind is something inside it. Bu...
August 27, 2025 at 06:53
You’re right that “empirical proof of the non-physical” makes no sense - if by proof we mean showing a physical photograph. But philosophy has long un...
August 27, 2025 at 05:40
I'd like to be Sam, but I won't insist.
August 27, 2025 at 04:53
What other kinds of evidence could there be? The issue is about first-person reports of near-death experiences. The only third-person corroboration th...
August 27, 2025 at 04:22
Suits me. Kudos for keeping the discussion going. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/90/Sam_and_Ralph_clock.png
August 27, 2025 at 03:16
That’s a more reasonable framing, yes. I’d agree that phenomenological reflection is the method by which we clarify the conditions of experience, and ...
August 27, 2025 at 01:30
A general observation on many of the comments being made in this thread:
August 27, 2025 at 01:11
Isn’t that exactly what the OP was about? The point of the transcendental argument is that there are truths not determined by observation or logic, bu...
August 27, 2025 at 01:04
Right - that's what you're doing. You fall back on the 'it can't be determined, therefore a matter of opinion.' I think the logic of the original post...
August 27, 2025 at 00:20
No. It's that when you imagine or conjecture a universe with no humans in it, that conjecture still requires an implicit perspective. To conjecture a ...
August 26, 2025 at 23:43
That couldn't be more wrong. Surely you know of the many controversies over the interpretation of quantum physics. The question of whether the objects...
August 26, 2025 at 22:11
"Not determinable” in what sense? If you mean not determinable by science, then of course — but that doesn’t reduce it to mere opinion. If you mean no...
August 26, 2025 at 08:55
Depends on who you ask ;-)
August 26, 2025 at 06:03
we'll pick it up elsewhere, it's not really connected to this topic.
August 26, 2025 at 05:25
That’s a very simplified gloss, and not my argument. I’m not claiming that “nothing exists apart from cognition.” I’m saying that any concept of exist...
August 26, 2025 at 05:00
We demand physical evidence that there is anything that is not physical!!
August 26, 2025 at 04:19
I'm saying that the argument in the OP is a logical argument. If arguments can only be decided by empirical means, then we're back at verificationism ...
August 26, 2025 at 03:45
I don't rate that as memory. A rational observer such as ourselves can intepret it, but it is not information that is conserved for the sake of mainta...
August 26, 2025 at 03:43
We have plenty of our own.
August 26, 2025 at 03:41
Basically you're saying that it's subjective, a matter of opinion. 'It's OK if you see it that way, but I see it a different way'. It's not 'determina...
August 26, 2025 at 00:06
There's a very simple metric which ought to be mentioned in this context. That is the idea of a 'metaphysics of quality'. One popular source for that ...
August 25, 2025 at 23:32
Scientific objectivity has customarily been grounded in the notion of the 'mind-independent object' without taking into account the Kantian insight in...
August 25, 2025 at 23:00
The mystery lies precisely in the fact that every scientific explanation presupposes symbolic mediation — concepts, meanings, language — which themsel...
August 25, 2025 at 22:50
The objection: The response It's this taken-for-grantedness that is the main target.
August 25, 2025 at 22:38
But the whole point of the essay is what we know of what exists. When I say the world “relies on an implicit perspective,” I mean the world-as-known. ...
August 25, 2025 at 21:57
McGinn thinks it's an intractable scientific problem, that it's so complex we can't feasibly tackle it. Marcel was an existentialist, he didn't unders...
August 25, 2025 at 21:45
Although, that said, I think the nature of mind is mysterious, but not in the way Chalmers, or McGinn, are suggesting. It's not a problem to be solved...
August 25, 2025 at 10:00
Never took to Colin McGinn, although enjoyed his scathing review of Paula Churchlands materialist baloney. Besides, 'New Mysterian' sounds like a band...
August 25, 2025 at 09:56
It’s a worthy aspiration although one I haven’t necessarily mastered.
August 25, 2025 at 09:25
I wasn't taking issue with ontic structural realism.
August 25, 2025 at 08:14