Wayfarer

Might be worth saying a few words about the meaning of ‘secular’. According to one scholar, secular means The ‘secular calendar’ was originally distin...

I have never read anything else by Stanley Fish, although I frequently refer to a great Paglia essay, Cults and Cosmic Consciousness: Religious Vision...

I'm not an Assange fanboy, but was very pleased to hear that judgement. I hope that under the new administration the extradition is quietly dropped an...

I was, although the original question was about numbers, not letters.

But the point is, discussing the issue is one thing, but casting it in terms of 'religious people as opposed to secular people' already injects an air...

Not to mention there's been sixty lawsuits about Trump's allegations of fraud, and all but one were tossed out immediately as having no merit, standin...

Yes, but that is a much deeper problem, in some ways. You're talking about ontology, the nature of being. But the debate started with the argument ove...

If this type of call had happened mid-term, with, say, a contested run-off, it would certainly be grounds for impeachment. The only reason impeachment...

To illustrate by way of example: third person perspective is 'witnessing an accident'. First person perspective is 'being in an accident'. From Daniel...

The quote you provided does not support the point you made. We've been discussing the nature of symbolic expressions, such as a=a, with some tangentia...

Pity to cast the question in terms of 'religious people v secular people'. Immediately sets up the whole question as one of identity politics.

Let’s not try to swallow the ocean. Nihilism is variously interpreted as nothing is real, nothing matters, or nothing has any real value. As is well-k...

It’s characteristic of Hume, ‘the godfather of positivism’. The ‘is/ought’ problem was very much a consequence of early modern philosophy and the Cart...

‘I just want to find 11,780 votes’ ~ Donald Trump, Jan 2021 ‘I just want to find $462,987,383’ ~ Donald Trump, Mar 2021

I wish you would stop saying that. I think it's your interpretation that is idiosyncratic. Precisely. 'A' represents an object. So, it's an abstractio...

So if you advocate for fictionalism, then you're also advocating for nihilism? No, reason didn't tell us that. David Hume did.

Sorry! :yikes: Brief moment of dyslexia there, meant to refer to Pinker. Corrected. Pinker takes ‘neo-Darwinian materialism’ for granted, as if it’s t...

The impeachment was never going to be effective (although don’t overlook the fact that he was indeed impeached, and his acquittal by the Senate doesn’...

:up: I like many of Singer's Pinker’s books - until he sets foot in philosophy.

So, again, you're saying that every occurence of 'A' is unique? I still think you're confusing the law of identity, with the meaning of individual ide...

The original metaphor in Aristotle was that matter was like raw material. The word 'hyle' meant 'timber' or 'lumber', that things are made from. And i...

exactly!

I don't know about that. I was glued to the screen during the impeachment trial, and I think they did as well as they could, given that the Senate was...

One of the big problems with this terminology is the meaning of ‘substance’. The word Aristotle used was ‘ouisia’ which was translated into Latin as ‘...

I read - I think in Walter Isaacson’s book The Innovators - that the term ‘scientist’ was devised sometime around 1838 in the salon associated with Si...

That’s right. There’s no way of knowing. Nothing to do with either subjectivity or objectivity. It’s not as if there’s an unknown cause, but that even...

That review is what got me into philosophy forums. If you only read one of the many links I post make it that one. (Although ‘in the grips’ can’t be r...

Einstein used to say 'I can't accept that God plays dice with the Universe'. Bohr used to reply 'Don't try and tell God how to run the universe'. Mayb...

You do realise that this is the one assumption that methdological naturalism cannot make? It might be a result of the failure to understand the nature...

Actually, what I think Metaphysician Undiscovered is talking about is personal identity. The ‘law of identity’ is a different thing altogether.

That is exactly the meaning of ‘abstraction’.

Unfortunately, that seems completely unlikely. Thanks, very insightful article.

There is something really absurd here. So, you're saying, that in the expression A=A, that this expression only refers to particular instances of 'A'?...

That is exactly what I said. It's not a matter of 'recognising it', this is something that I have only ever read in your posts. If you provide a refer...

Now who’s equivocating? Social equality means ‘treating everyone the same’. In that sense it means treating them as ‘equal’ but that is a specific use...

Trump really is trying to orchestrate a coup. This is exactly, exactly what Trump is attempting this week by having Congress refuse to certify the Ele...

I kind of see your point, and sorry for my earlier snide remark.

But if symbolic form is not at all representative of the world as it is, how could devices such as these operate? After all, symbolic codes of many ki...

My interpretation of the question of universal and particular is close to Thomism, as I currently understand it. Going back to Greek dialectic, the or...

I think it's worth pointing out that this is quite a modern question, first raised by Leibniz and again by Heidegger. Of course, Liebniz also provided...

This is the point of hylomorphic dualism, is it not? Thomistic Psychology: A Philosophic Analysis of the Nature of Man, Brennan. I say it does. I thin...

actually, anything would do.

He’s a total nut. Just the kind of specimen that gets drawn into the outer orbits of Trumpworld. On the bright side, he’s doing his level best to ensu...

Strange then that we can read what you’ve written. (Which is not to say it was worth the trouble ;-) )

Should be noted that the Trump White House, disfunctional and seditious as it might be, has ‘distanced itself’ from this particular escapee from Trump...

But, the point about universals is that they're universally applicable, isn't it? They're applicable in any context. Think about scientific laws, whic...

The Platonist explanation is that these 'things' - they're not actually things, which is part of the point - are discerned by the rational intellect, ...

So, you're a relativist after all?

But the most succinct formulation of 'the law of identity' is 'a=a'. So are you saying that 'a' doesn't have an identity? Many things can be triangles...

Right. So 'identity condition' pertains to individual identity, something unique and particular. What is the source or definition of 'identity conditi...