Wayfarer

I don't get why Nietszche is quoted as 'the last word' on anything in these subjects. I studied comparative religion at Honors level, as well as anthr...

Never a Nietsche admirer. Ironic that he's a sacred cow in secular culture. There's something he could never see, but there's zero use debating it.

One point is, Buddhism and Brahmanism were enormously influenced by each other. To this day, Adi Sankara, who is like 'the Aquinas of the Vedanta', is...

In the ancient world, which was real up until about the day before yesterday, those who realised the truth were fêted as sages, but they were always s...

I agree. But the Australian media still gave him a free kick just to stir up trouble. There's plenty wrong with Morrison, and I sincerely hope he loos...

the issue is that science is concerned as a matter of principle, with what is measurable. Interpreting science and scientific discoveries and powers i...

I actually intended that comment for the other thread on this topic, so had moved it (having copied it from an earlier comment in this thread.)

Might have just something to do with seeing humanity solely through the lens of biological evolution - which, of course, all sensible folk must do now...

It's what it often amounts to. Unfortunately.

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We did see how Andrew Probyn set that up? Asking the question, 'so, do you think Scott Morrison lied?' If it had been an exchange in court, it would b...

F'ing Probyn over there, stirring up trouble and embarrasing the govenment, just for a good soundbyte on the 7:00pm news.

semiotics /?si?m???t?ks,?s?m???t?ks/ noun the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation. Art criticism might have something to say ab...

I agree with Un. It's not to say that anyone will 'attain Nirv??a' just like so, but there's a practical side to Buddhism. Speculating about whether N...

Theravada = 'doctrine of the elders' - the tradition practiced mainly in SE Asia and Sri Lanka, and based on the Pali Buddhist texts. There is certain...

An idea that Hawking always resisted. Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328474-400-why-physicists-cant-avoid-a-creation-event/#ixzz7...

I think, overall, and at risk of getting flamed, politics is not as broken in Australia as it is in the USA. I'm a fairly middle-of-the-road voter, ge...

I think so, although not a particularly nuanced way of putting it! Not subject to decay, imperishable, secure. Generally speaking, in terms of ordinar...

Ego is not the self, but the self's idea of the self. In sacrificing the ego, nothing is actually lost, because it has no substance in the first place...

From what I've gleaned so far, Rovelli is only considering Buddhist principles insofar as they provide a metaphorical framework for interpreting quant...

:clap:

Apophatisism and negative theology are not 'an immunisation procedure'. It's not as if it is a rhetorical dodge designed to win arguments against unbe...

Thanks. Good advice.

Do you know what the paper is called, and who wrote it?

plus i’m in Australia. Much less class oriented than many places.

But that is an assertion, not an argument. Illusions are errors in consciousness. Only a sentient being capable of judgement can be subject to them.

David Chalmers: 'First-person experience is such that it cannot be fully described in third-person terms. Experience is inherently subjective, it has ...

Right. Which is why some famous philosopher predicted nihilism (and its various offspring, relativism and subjectivism) would become ascendant in the ...

I appreciate kitchen-sink wisdom, and all, but still......

Notice that at crucial junctures in these debates, Banno always ends up with these quotidian examples - such as coffee cups, whether they really are i...

No, it's where philosophical theology exceeds your grasp. Don't take that as a pejorative. But there is a definite and real method here if you're pati...

You will encounter in various schools of philosophy, the assertion that God is 'beyond being'. What this means, in my understanding, is 'beyond existe...

See this review of David Bentley Hart's 'Experience of God'

Because they start from axioms. Empiricism, for instance, starts from the requirement that whatever is posited is discernable by sense-experience, or ...

It is unbelievably depressing. Like a fifth columnist brought into the Democratic Party to wreck it from the inside. So you have the GOP, utterly corr...

I've noticed this book online, I don't know if I will read it but it may be of interest to some here: Philosophical Religions from Plato to Spinoza: R...

Maybe not 'irony', then. But he's commented that Dennett says 'no philosopher before Descartes is of any consequence'. He then briefly recapitulates p...

Unless it decides to take a course of action. Which material object created the computer you're writing this on? Reading your reply again, you've enti...

And I say I’m not the one misunderstanding him. I’ll leave it there except for this review.

That 'special spark' is exactly what is being denied: ---- You don't think Dennett means anything he says, because if you thought he did mean anything...

It's true, but the fact that it's true won't make any difference to those who wish not to accept it. We had a thread on Strawson's panpsychism a littl...

Why you keep defending him, I will never understand but it's tiresome to keep having the same pointless argument over and over, so I promise not to sa...

I've never not seen it. I'm questioning the coherence of the idea of anything being 'perception independent'.

Right. But Hawking is famous for saying in his Brief History of Time, that science was seeking to 'know the mind of God' (it's practically the only th...

Because maths has been so uncannily powerful at predicting the structure of the Universe. It's a well-known trope in Western philosophy even amongst t...

It made me most uncomfortable to do so. I gave casual talks, to small audiences, several times over the years. Is that 'a position of status'? I did a...

My intuitive sense is that people have no feel for what might be beyond the physical because they're instinctively oriented around the world of sensor...

The problem is, secular western culture is structured around a worldview in which it doesn't exist - there's no conceptual space for it, and so there'...

Bearing in mind that Hawking was a life-long and extremely vocal atheist.