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Wayfarer

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This is not a comment on your polemics but your formatting. There is a way to quote text that you’re commenting on - you select the text you want to r...
November 21, 2020 at 07:45
Not saying there's anything good about it. I'm just saying that I think the reason Melania shed tears when Trump won the Presidency, is because she di...
November 21, 2020 at 06:17
However, children have the capacity to acquire language, which they do with extraordinary rapidity. And only human children can do that. Do you ever h...
November 21, 2020 at 03:22
Some animals show rudimentary abilities to count and reason, but speech and reasoning is unique to humans. I'm not going to argue it further.
November 21, 2020 at 02:16
Maybe that, too. Although I had the impression that this would be expected, part of the contract. If you're going to hook a billionaire, it comes with...
November 21, 2020 at 01:09
No, my take is that she realised she would suddenly be a public person, almost like public property. Rich American sugar-daddy is one thing, being on ...
November 21, 2020 at 01:00
Oh right - didn't notice that qualification. But I stand by my argument that only rational beings are capable of entertaining perspectives. I suppose,...
November 20, 2020 at 23:56
Pure desperation. Agree. Hillary Clinton seemed uniquely hated by a lot of people. But there was also a strange confluence of circumstances that consp...
November 20, 2020 at 23:25
Can ‘we’ be categorised with ‘other objects’? Do objects have a reference frame? Or do reference frames only pertain to observers? :up: Perspective is...
November 20, 2020 at 22:50
Models are collections of predictive hypotheses and mathematical formulae. At the outset of modern science, with Galileo and Newton, the decision was ...
November 20, 2020 at 06:02
Where Hugo Chavez got into the act: Meanwhile, Rudy's Dripping Hair Dye stole the show. It was infinitely more classy than anything he actually said. ...
November 20, 2020 at 03:06
Sure. Third Window is just the kind of book I like to read. I guess my research interest is tangential to yours - I'm very much interested in the hist...
November 19, 2020 at 23:12
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/11/19/us/joe-biden-trump-updates/trump-tries-to-subvert-the-election-inviting-michigan-gop-lawmakers-to-the-white-ho...
November 19, 2020 at 22:53
Sad, sad, sad. I heard a story yesterday about patients, desperately ill with COVID-19, shrieking at the hospital staff trying to save their lives tha...
November 19, 2020 at 22:17
I have noticed your aversion to religion. I think it's unfortunate. A distinction needs to be made between reflexive, inherited religious belief and a...
November 19, 2020 at 21:17
I know this is not true. Age 4-5, my family went to Scotland where we lived for almost a year. I have very many vivid memories of this trip - places, ...
November 19, 2020 at 20:04
by a being capable of speaking.
November 19, 2020 at 19:54
I hadn't noticed that paragraph, but now you mention it, it is right on the mark. To my mind, the high point of that essay is: You will notice that an...
November 19, 2020 at 07:33
:ok: The problem is, it easily morphs into a form of fatalism and/or blame-placing. 'It's their/my karma that I '. That is even, or especially, preval...
November 19, 2020 at 06:40
Perhaps you should consider the idea of the ‘ascent to truth’. You find that in Greek philosophy although many of those ideas were subsequently absorb...
November 19, 2020 at 05:11
'Perspective' implies or requires an observing mind, does it not? I mean, it is something I'm in complete agreement with, but it seems to me that it i...
November 19, 2020 at 03:32
Creationism is notoriously inflexible. It is known for insisting that Biblical maxims trump scientific evidence. Creationism is associated with Biblic...
November 19, 2020 at 00:04
I think you will appreciate this essay if you haven’t previously encountered it.
November 18, 2020 at 21:22
Aha. Interesting point. I would like to comment on your remark ‘Substantial’ (physical) existence’. A point I often make is that the philosophical mea...
November 18, 2020 at 07:22
You can study the processes of consciousness scientifically through cognitive science, psychology and other disciplines. You can arrive at an understa...
November 18, 2020 at 05:25
On reflection, I suppose my above objection is exactly like the realist philosophers' objections to David Hume's criticism of causal necessity. What i...
November 18, 2020 at 03:48
As a general rule, knowing you don't know something is preferable to thinking you know something you don't. It's also preferable to endless blather ab...
November 18, 2020 at 01:00
Not ignoring it, but acknowledging that the inscrutable nature of the observing mind is a limit. Dennett wants to ignore it, or rather, wants to expla...
November 18, 2020 at 00:32
You can't turn around and look at it. That's the main issue here: that the observing mind is never the object - which is why Dennett et al want to eli...
November 17, 2020 at 23:59
The 'white-bearded god' is caricature in place of an argument, which speaks volumes. It's important to frame the issue. Here is a description of the r...
November 17, 2020 at 23:11
Cause and effect are two aspects of a single process. Say for example you have a building which is infested by termites. This takes place over the per...
November 17, 2020 at 22:34
I agree with nearly all of what you've said above, but in one respect, I'm afraid I didn't make myself clear. What I meant was, even if you asked 'the...
November 17, 2020 at 07:26
Welcome to the conversation. I do understand your perplexity, as you can see from my profile, I have been posting here for some time, so there's a 'ba...
November 17, 2020 at 07:04
All of which are judgements concerning what is real. There is obviously a whole universe of objects and beings that I personally will never encounter ...
November 17, 2020 at 02:48
thanks. Your work is interesting. :clap:
November 16, 2020 at 22:37
If you asked a pre-modern human 'what is the meaning of it all', they wouldn't have the foggiest notion of what you were on about. If you tried to exp...
November 16, 2020 at 08:49
yeah right. Above and beyond all the dreadful things Trump has done, he has completely undermined respect for facts. The internet and alt-media then a...
November 16, 2020 at 07:38
I just downloaded a 30 hour (!) reading of the Immanuel Kant collection for nothing, by virtue of having signed up for Amazon Audiobook and cashing in...
November 16, 2020 at 07:36
Lots of very thoughtful responses above. I've been reading an article on Emile Durkheim, a French sociologist, whose book Suicide explored the relatio...
November 16, 2020 at 05:38
amen to that. It's one of the principles I've been sporadically arguing for since Day One of my participation on forums. My main argument for it, is t...
November 16, 2020 at 04:38
It's not 'democratic party' v 'republican party'. It's not conservative v liberal. Trump is a cult leader and is leading millions, lemming-like, into ...
November 16, 2020 at 01:58
Like this, you mean? https://youtu.be/OnMQbJCbr4Y
November 15, 2020 at 23:42
Spell it out Brett - what is happening? What is it we’re not seeing?
November 15, 2020 at 22:47
November 15, 2020 at 22:09
?
November 15, 2020 at 20:58
:clap:
November 15, 2020 at 08:40
There is a school of thought called analytical thomism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_Thomism. I too have hardly dipped a toe, but there's ...
November 15, 2020 at 06:35
Kant abhorred materialism.
November 15, 2020 at 04:28
I've found a reference that I think is relevant. Tom Holland's book Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind. There's a discussion of the development ...
November 15, 2020 at 03:43
We don't see any thing as it is in itself, but as it appears to us. Noumena is the 'object of thought'. It has a slippery meaning, but it's not used i...
November 15, 2020 at 03:35