Wayfarer

Isn't there still a sense of there being mutual destruction if nuclear weapons are deployed? I don't think, or rather I hope, that Putin would not ris...

One reason this is different to the Cold War is that Russia is not the USSR. Russia is a large nation, but it's not the massive aggregation of nation-...

Not wanting to answer for Apollodorus, but I think the characteristic expression in Eastern Orthodoxy is likely to be 'divine illumination' rather tha...

I think that Putin is trying to split the Western alliance. He thinks that the US public has turned against involvement in foreign wars - one of the r...

But language surely straddles two realms. Yes, we're biological beings but we're observably the only beings that really have language. We're unique in...

Forgive me, but my observation is that you also have a bit of a hot button about this issue. Whenever it's suggested that Chomsky's ideas might be inc...

That is the underlying cause behind the acrimonious debate in this thread. "Innate ideas" are a no-go for empiricism as they're intractable to natural...

Whereas the materialist explanation is that....

Isn't mathematics universal already?

The Western tradition is fundamentally Platonist~Aristotelian. Materialism is parasitic on it. (Don flak jacket.) Thank heavens for small mercies.

I don't believe in the God that a lot of atheists dispute the existence of, but I'm not atheist. I suspect it has to do with what the popular imaginat...

great book, thanks for it. :up:

Close to what we're trying to do here.

'Interpretations of physics' are metaphysics. Metaphysics is a lot more than what is in textbooks about metaphysics.

I think a question that should be asked is, is language something that can be understood in principle solely through the lens of biological evolution?...

Of course. There the context gives it the intended meaning. Rather than as a token in a philosophical debate.

I think that horse has truly bolted, but I notice it is a word that those who speak most meaningfully about it rarely use. Oh, and I think that is a b...

I don't like the word 'spiritual' much but I think English doesn't have many useful equivalents. I found this passage in one of the essays of Nishijim...

one swallow doth not a summer make.

Not so. 'Sudden vs gradual' was a debate that ran for centuries in Chinese Buddhism. I've never read any reference to 'pragmatic Buddhists' in this re...

This is from Fiona Hill, the intelligence officer whose forthright testimony at Trump's impeachment trial I'm sure everyone will remember. https://www...

The USSR collapsed. From the last story - ‘Please note that all of that is not happening because of what we, Russia, do. This is happening because of ...

Point taken. :chin:

The post was of insufficient quality according to the guidelines. They had no choice.

:party:

I had the idea that 'das man' was about the tyranny of popular opinion. The dominance of popular opinion is one of the characteristics of liberal demo...

Can you imagine the dialogue. 'Hey Bert. 1.3 nanometers to the left.' 'Sure thing Fred. Give me half a nanosecond'.

They sound similar. I'm not disagreeing with the point you're making. I'm simply saying that the idea that there are abstract reals is not a novel ide...

Numbers, qualities, logical principles, scientific laws, and so on, are only discernable to the intellect but are real for all who think. So hate to d...

Vision and Routine, Bhikkhu Bodhi

98% of the distance to orbit as of 9:00 am 24th Jan 22 (AEST). A video on calibrating the 18 mirrors (in increments of 1/10,000 of a hair's width) htt...

:up:

Perhaps there's a sense in which liberation cannot be attained by a deliberate strategy. Nevertheless, in Buddhist cultures, there are strenuous regim...

Judging the past in terms of today’s political correctness is a scourge. We might as well just erase it, burn the books, melt the statues, tear up all...

That doesn't mean that every mug punter is enlightened, otherwise the world would be entirely different. It means, don't go chasing after fantasy imag...

Gary Lachman's books cover a lot of this subject. Or, the ways clever folk see through what's gone wrong.

I’m not sure, but I’m exploring Kant’s philosophy of time https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4280/4280-h/4280-h.htm#chap19 Deep questions. I can’t say I ...

It can’t be relegated to some other realm so easily. Recall that the subject of the discussion are the fundamental constituents of matter. The fact th...

Question - An observer is mentioned in all of the hypothetical examples. Outside the mind of an observer who interprets the movement of the dials on t...

Well - it's 'tradition', and traditionalists of all stripes tend to be suspicious of liberal democracy and modernity. The 'traditionalist school' whic...

It takes historical sensibility to interpret Aristotle properly. Of course it's true that in medieval society, Aristotelianism was used to rationalise...

:up: When I was studying in Comparative Religion, people sometimes asked me if I was studying Divinity, to which I used to reply, no, I’m enrolled in ...

As I understand it, Democritus said that all the exists are atoms and the void. (which was also in Lucretius.) In essence, it means that the atom is e...

My heuristic for this idea is that the subject of such discussions is really the nature of existence as distinct from the nature of being. This distin...

Agree. I always appreciate Manuel’s contributions.

No, but they are dead white guys, and that counts.

Not supernatural, but you may recall that one of the still-influential dogmas of empiricism is that there are no innate ideas. It is still so widely a...

I won't believe it unless I see it.

I very rarely talk about anything I discuss here anywhere other than here. That's why I joined a philosophy forum. Where else can you discuss it? (Act...

Yeah, true that. Regardless, although I'm not a betting man, I would bet money that Trump won't run again, although I'm not going to get into a debate...