Wayfarer

Numbers, grammatical rules, the principles of logic, scientific principles - none of these have a scientific explanation and cannot be meaningfully re...

Maybe the Universe possessed a latent urge to experience things, which is what gave rise to 'thinking beings'. If this were the case - not saying it i...

The Gnostic Valentinus came within a few votes of being elected Bishop of Rome.

A degree of interpretive freedom is not necessarily relativism.

Perfectly true, in my experience.

More likely because the answer would reflect something about them.

great answer, Astrophel. I would love to sit here and compose a reply, but I'm moving house for the next 2 days, but you can be sure I will come back ...

Yes, did some essays on those subjects also, whilst at Buddhist Studies. Mark Allon, one of the lecturers, is a foremost expert in Ghandhara and early...

There are facts (or purported facts) and then there's interpretation - what those facts mean, or even, did those purported events really occur, or are...

As if there were a single uniform interpretation of the Christian gospel. History says otherwise.

Presumably because their understanding is completely divergent from your own, strange though that may seem. I think what you're not seeing is Jesus as...

thanks for the explanation, it helps. I will go back to that passage on physics and track down the original reference, it might have been poorly parap...

I completely agree with your point. I'm not in the least a materialist-reductionist or a brain-mind identity theorist. I might well have said 'the min...

:up: My thoughts exactly. I don't know why this seems so hard to grasp. It's like, either you can publish absolutely anything whatever without let or ...

Quite so. I've often commented on the idea of the forgotten truths of the wisdom tradition, generally to either indifference or scorn. (Not that that ...

They're deductive. Synthetic a priori, yes? Does this relate to Wigner's 'unreasonable efficacy of mathematics in the natural sciences'? I know I'm gr...

It's not in the least how Plato is presented and taught nowadays. You could sit through many academic years of seminars on Plato's dialogues and not h...

Thanks, that is helpful, but what of this? Doesn't that negate applied mathematics, which is so fundamental to science?

:ok:

I'm very suspicious about this element of Kant's philosophy. One the one hand, in the SEP entry on Kant's philosophy of mathematics says this: But in ...

What I obviously don’t understand, is how the ability to grasp novel facts through mathematics is not intellectual intuition. Think of Dirac positing ...

The "perennial philosophy" is...defined as a doctrine which holds that as far as worthwhile knowledge is concerned, not all men are equal, but that th...

Thanks. That does indeed appear synonymous to Mok?a. As I don't read Greek, do you know any instances in Plato's dialouges? I can't help but agree. I ...

I think that language belongs much more to Plotinus than to Plato, and even more so to later Christian Platonism. Do you think you might tend to evalu...

do you have a reference for that? None of the sources that come up for me support that. D T Suzuki compares the Platonist 'metanoia' with the Buddhist...

I agree, but the point I'm obviously failing to make, is that believing it and seeing it are different things. Put another way, dogmatic belief in it ...

Of course, people willl believe anything, especially in today's world where there is such a huge variety of belief systems rubbing shoulders and the e...

Neither did he. That's because of your prior inclinations. And that's what I mean by 'theosophical' - small 't', right? Not a member of the Theosophic...

I think that's a very noble aspiration, and one that I'm sure many practising Christians would applaud. Not the tub-thumping evangelicals but those la...

I’m going through Bernardo Kastrup’s Decoding Schopenhauer’s Metaphysics. Overall, very good, but I’m not convinced by his interpretation of Kant on t...

hey nothing personal it's just an observation. I think however that contrary to what the OP argues, for a very large majority in the secular West, the...

Although I didn’t specifically mention religion in my response, I guess that, because belief in an afterlife is usually associated with religion, then...

But I thought the theory was that what occurs in the next life hinges on your actions in this life. As it is, I think a lot of people do many things w...

At this moment, I don't know. More work required.

So, here's what is bothering me. I already quoted this: Now in the Platonic sense, an intelligible object is something that is the object of rational ...

:100: I thought so. I've returned to it many times.

That's actually a salient point. I'm listening to Kastrup's Decoding Schopenhauer's Metaphysics on Audible, and this idea is central. Schopenhauer's c...

A bear might kill you, but it would not be murder. The idea that owning a gun makes you safer is completely false, as the number of crimes or assaults...

There are many such similarities and parallels explored in comparative religion and cultural history. 'The noumenal' is a cross-cultural conception (w...

Very theosophical of you :wink:

Now pinned to profile page.

I can't stress enough that this is not correct. In fact speculative ideas of the higher self (etc) are anathema to the Buddha: 'Believing in a higher ...

I think the entry on nouemenon in Wikipedia is significant -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noumenon - particularly this passage: That is preserved and ...

That's what I linked the Westacott article for. I know Kant is a lot of f****ing reading but that article is about 2,200 words and an excellent primer...

I would agree, but this misses an essential point about Buddhist philosophy. This is that the assertion that 'the self exists' is a dogmatic belief (d...

Thanks. For a very useful primer have a read of The Continuing Relevance of Immanuel Kant, Emrys Westacott. One amongst a number of salient points:

Well sure, I’d consider that, but you’ve moved a long way from ‘mind is made from atoms’ ;-)

Incidentally I'm puzzled by Kant's attitude to the noumenal. Actually, and tip of the hat to 180's mention there, Schop. says something highly prescie...

I wouldn't call myself a Kantian, although I hope I understand some aspects of his philosophy. The distinction he makes is between 'things as they app...