Wayfarer

We give it significance, and that’s significant. It ought not to be discounted. Somehow, the meaningless universe gives rise to creatures who impart s...

And finally, a snippet from the .pdf which @"Fooloso4"posted above. The associated book also looks exceedingly interesting. The OP asked: /uploads/res...

Incidentally - this thread started with a quote from Edward Conze, in an essay called Buddhist Philosophy and its European Parallels. The quoted passa...

I don’t regard ‘divine knowledge’ as interchangeable with higher knowledge. Not all wisdom teachings are necessarily theistic. I suspect that it’s the...

Yes, apologies for being sarcastic.

That is highly germane to this topic - thanks for posting it.

There are benefits but not necessarily personal gains. The first Buddhist book I read was the very popular book Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. It stresses...

I don't know if generically gnostic beliefs are at odds with science at all. There's a strong streak of dissident spirituality running through the his...

I suppose one paradigm of sage-hood that could be mentioned is the Buddha. One of his epiphets was Sakyamuni, meaning ‘sage of the Sakyas’ . Hierarchy...

Hey I believe it! I really do! And also that the earth is round! so you can relax on that count!

It's not so much a matter of history, as such. What we have in the historical record is 'the testimony of sages'. In that I would include, for example...

I think ‘the sage’ is disinterested, in the traditional sense - has no self-interest, sees things as they are without an agenda or desire for a partic...

For the reasons I gave. It was an outcome of Christian social philosophy - equality for all, commitment to truth, and universal salvation, which is ca...

We kept the ‘equality’ but ditched ‘before God’. People are equal in the sense that their opinions, likes, preferences, and so on, are all of equal wo...

Meaning that, at the formation of philosophy proper, there was a distinction between the philosopher and the hoi polloi. The philosophers of all schoo...

Should also bear in mind the 'philosophical ascent', and the parable of the cave.

So you don't think Spinoza should be so considered? He is after all placed in that company by the quoted passage.

I tried and failed to come up with an answer to this, but it's a long way from the OP. Returning to the OP: A lot turns on 'evidence' and what constit...

It's not so much that. It's taking 'the mind', which is the condition of any statement about anything whatever, and depicting it as part of the landsc...

I was going to mention this....

It's an acute criticism. My interpretation is that Descartes wished to differentiate himself from earlier philosophy so as to harmonize his views with...

'A physicist is an atom's way of looking at itself' ~ Neils Bohr.

There's the problem.

:up:

Hence the relationship between perennialism and reactionary political movements. At least, it’s highly non-PC. Described as ‘non-conceptual wisdom’. O...

Hey no argument from me! :up:

That's the question. Here's a quote from Edward Conze, an irascible Buddhologist from mid last century: It is within this context that the figure of '...

...to a discussion about Nagel’ most famous paper.

If you think about it, this opens out into the question of the sense in which 'the world' exists independently of the experiencing subject. In other w...

Actually in religious disciplines there is, or should be, a distinction between 'experience' and 'realisation'. It is rarely recognized but you do fin...

:ok:

I agree with you, although most won’t. I think Aristotelian philosophy believed there are ontological distinctions between living and non-living, betw...

‘Being’, capitalised, as a proper noun, which is often the case in discussions of, e.g. ‘the meaning of Being’.

:lol:

I was referring to my post. Anyway the point I tried ham-fistedly to make is that what Nagel calls the ‘subjective character of experience’ is simply ...

But the point about the scientific perspective is that it is third-person by design. It is what any observer will see, all things being equal. It pres...

I see your point, but it's being made from a 'third-party' perspective. In other words, you're making a judgement about what you think are the deficie...

"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist" ~ Baudelaire. Speaking of video games, there’s a great one called ...

Well that sure was a conversation stopper. :yikes:

That excerpt was relevant to the discussion of the attitude of positivism to matters of belief, which is why I mentioned positivism in the first place...

An excerpt from the above: I think there is a better name for that - hint: one word, begins with 'b' 'B'.

A copy of Thomas Nagel's original essay is downloadable here.

No. It's an existential statement. Consider the mythos behind Christianity - that the universe is the creation of an intelligent being with whom the b...

The American Republican party and its supporters illustrate that on a daily basis. :-) (Sorry, don't want to derail, but couldn't resist.)

I think that's why you have to look at the issue from broader perspective. I think to understand metaphysics is iitself a meta-cognitive act; you're a...

The problem of evil is tangential to the OP. How I interpret the OP is, as I said, arising from the felt need to validate belief - presumably religiou...

:lol:

Aw shucks.... :yikes: ....nice of you to say so.....

I think here you're concerned with what validates a religious belief, what criteria can be appealed to, to differentiate true and false beliefs, or wh...

This aspect of Husserl's thought has a lot in common with Buddhist philosophy. It is the basis of ??nyat?, the emptiness of objects of perception, 'em...