Trying to get back to the point I wanted to make. Religion, generally, encodes ideas about the nature of meaning in mythological forms, to try and tel...
A quote I've posted a couple of times in the last week or so, which I think is relvant. Nobody can accuse Schopenhauer of being a religious apologist,...
You say I’m dodging your questions, but you’re not understanding the answers. But, as I say, it has been an interesting conversation, and I’ve enjoyed...
I would also raise the question, regarding the closure of the physical domain, what is precisely the meaning of ‘physical’ when there are many enormou...
What if the answer to the question is neither yes nor no. What if I asked someone who had never been married if they’d stopped beating their wife? Cou...
Not in respect of everyday life. Science has had to invent fancy concepts like 'negenrtopy' to allow for the fact that you can tidy your room up. You ...
What do you call a Greek skydiver? You're doing exactly what you're accusing religious people of doing, i.e. interpreting the question through your pr...
Like you having a drink of water. Programmed by humans. Without humans, no algorithms. Humans interface between the domain of ideas and those of matte...
Right! No argument from me on that score, but mainstream science (and therefore a lot of philosophy) is radically non-teleological in its outlook. Mea...
And I'm telling you why that couldn't happen. You can't infer the nature of intentionality from looking at neurological data. I told you about that At...
Through intentional action. We all intentionally do things, we carry out conscious acts. If you were unconscious then you couldn't do that. From the p...
I know that's what it sounds like. It is related to your earlier comment: Part of this confusion is because of the word 'substance'. It needs to said ...
Because they belong to different orders of explanation. Physicalism, the belief that everything is physical, will say that logic supervenes on physics...
The idea is simply that the laws of physics can't account for the laws of logic, as they belong to completely different levels. So Watched it. The onl...
That depends on what is at stake. If we're simply material aggregates and death is the end, then nothing is at stake. But if there is a higher purpose...
Your problem is you’re too busy arguing to really think about what you’re saying. Look at it like I’m trying to convey something remarkable to you, so...
But that does not make it a pattern. The key characteristic of patterns are repetition. Crystals form patterns. Waves form patterns, and there are pat...
what's the pattern of prime numbers? the laws of motion? English syntax? German syntax? Reason, abstraction and language are all intimately linked and...
Terror in the God-Shaped Hole - Confronting Modernity's Identity Crisis, David Loy. Essay about the 9/11 terrorist attacks and their meaning for Islam...
When I said 'meaning was an illusion', I referred to the Dennett and Dawkins style of evangelical atheism. That style does explicitly say that what hu...
It's a matter of underwriting meaning - not simply 'making it up'. Buddhists don't believe they are 'given meaning by a Creator' but they nevertheless...
It is a pathetically simplistic statement. Bearing in mind, this is an Internet forum, many of the exchanges are squeezed into the dimensions of a twi...
If you read my post carefully you will see it's not religion I'm defending. I said, what is important about religion is finding the source of compassi...
That was what Albert Camus' books were mainly about, and others of the 20th century existentialists. I think in Camus' works, it called for a kind of ...
From your linked article: The fact that it is not purely objective doesn't make it an illusion. I agree that time is in some sense mind-dependent, but...
Steely Dan (left, Walter Becker, now deceased, right, Donald Fagen, still kicking.) I’m told, although I’ve never validated it, that it was the name o...
In that case you’re likely to know the origin of the name of my favourite band. https://www.rollingstone.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/gettyimages-76...
:up: :clap: Don't agree with anti-natalism, though. We don't choose to be born, we're born because of reasons well beyond any kind of conscious choice...
I had such experiences. They are truly mind- and eye-opening. Best to keep shtum, though - society takes a dim view. Besides, those days are long gone...
Berkeley believes that 'we're are spirits in a material world', to quote Sting. Material objects exist but they have no inherent reality. I guess that...
Well, sure, but someone being enthusiastic about it does not constitute a viable plan, unless you're in a position do something about it. //I've googl...
Berkeley believed that objects are ideas, or collections of ideas, in the minds of perceivers. That is why he said esse est percipi, to be is to be pe...
Not at all, I have no expectations. You know that after Kant published the first edition of Critique of Pure Reason, many of his critics said he was s...
Do you have any citations for that? Are there scientists lobbying for it, or interest groups? I never read anything about it in the media, or not that...
Sure! I think you're on the right track, where others might not. But the point about academia is not only to impart knowledge, but also to help you to...
I'd like to agree with you but finding it difficult. Your presentation is rather idiosyncratic. But I do have some general comments to make on the rel...
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