There's a sense in which modern Western culture sets out to make the world 'a safe space for ignorance'. It's a harsh saying, but I suspect it's true....
looked up the page on wikipedia. Strikes me as a positivist. I noted this paragraph: which I think, from the perspective of living in a country which ...
I'd be wary of slipping easily between Platonic and Buddhist. Interestingly, they both have chariot analogies, but they're totally different. They als...
Right - in my view, it does a lot, but it doesn't account for Life, the Universe, and Everything. Transformed by what, and how? In Spinoza's philosoph...
Anyway, If McConnell is a villian, it's for acquiting Trump after the impeachment. //update - the bill has been signed. Another Trump mind game over./...
Not so. The Republican Party and the Democratic Party had already agreed to the details. When Mnuchin was going back and forth to the Congress with th...
Trump’s mental states are on clear display for the entire world to see. Unfortunately. The bill was negotiated by both parties, with Steve Mnuchin rep...
So let’s hope these diehard MAGA types who are standing on street corners holding STOP THE STEAL signs realise the error of their ways when their powe...
Well explained. (There’s that archetypically American series of sounds - ‘dah dah d dah dah - dah dah!’ I once heard the derivation was from GI’s pull...
It grew out of AARPANET which was a US Defence Dept initiative launched in the 1960’s. The problem that needed to be solved was in response to the Sov...
So - the clock is ticking on desperately needed benefit payments for millions of American households and businesses. And Trump is playing golf. If he ...
You might be interested in this academic. He sounds a bit fringe to me, but I have to admit, his electromagnetic theory of consciousness seems plausib...
Well, that's a cynical attitude to take. I agree that humans are imperfect by default, but the paradigmatic sage is an exemplar for human possibility....
Assuredly. There was a comment made above that detachment means 'you don't care if your child dies'. Couldn't be further from the truth. I have long r...
Buddhism was originally a renunciate spiritual movement, so attachment is precisely what was to be overcome. The rationale for renunciation is that ul...
The point of the Ananda Sutta is not a comment on logic as such. The question was 'does the self exist'? And the response indicates it's not a Y/N que...
Yes. There was this young chap who used to be runner for the Physics Department, back in the late 80's when I was managing the Uni computer store. He ...
Yes, and indeed there are. It was a comment on this particular thread, and some of the gormless and jejune naive realism that's been on display here. ...
Seems to me that Trump is about to throw the whole of Government, and Wall Street, into pandemonium, and to deprive millions of people of benefits, on...
In practice, empiricism, and positivism, usually turn out to be precisely the 'elimation of metaphysics from philosophy'. In positivism it is overt. A...
There might well be a sign over the portal of most Zen monasteries NO PHILOSOPHIZING. (Anyone who has attended one of the 10-day Vipassana retreats wo...
It ought to be acknowledged that a large part of the philosophy of The Enlightenment comprised the rejection of metaphysics (as per David Hume's entre...
I don't understand symbolic logic, so there's no use asking for my comments on it. As for 'neither objective nor subjective' - the philosophical point...
And, who adjudicates the answer? Relevant quotation: ‘Those who are awake have but one world in common, while the many live each in their own private ...
What I get from the etymological dictionary is: Which is precisely the definition I gave above, only to be told that I had it wrong. The gen- root is ...
There is no 'generic food' either. What would it be, other than 'something that can be consumed by humans (or other creatures)'? But that 'something',...
That’s a definition of information. The term ‘generic information’ doesn’t appear in the definition you give in the OP. Of course information is real,...
It's a philosophy forum. The Piya Tan article you linked to above has a good brief account of the development of Koan. I learned from it that the Chin...
As I said, I believe information is always specific. It's meaningless to talk about 'generic information', and I'm sceptical of the effort to make 'in...
Three men looking at a large paddock. One is cattle farmer, he's assessing it for the quality of the feed, whether there's water on it, how many head ...
I am not currently enrolled in or formally practicing Zen meditation under a teacher, which is the only context within which koan practice is meaningf...
I've never been through Koan training, and likely never will. My point was simply that epiphanies do occur and they can be real indications of a break...
Epiphanies are real. Of course there are also ‘false epiphanies’. And simply because one has an epiphany, doesn’t mean enlightenment. One of the Zen t...
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