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Wayfarer

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However, Wittgenstein, Tolstoy and the Folly of Logical Positivism Stuart Greenstreet, Philosophy Now. I think it’s quite arguable that Wittgenstein’s...
August 15, 2020 at 03:05
I don't agree that the Greek philosophers 'broke with mysticism'. Parmenides, Animaxander, Plato, and many of the other seminal figures of Greek philo...
August 14, 2020 at 22:25
Ontology is the study of ‘being’, not of ‘what exists’ - a distinction which I think cannot be made in the modern lexicon which generally treats the t...
August 14, 2020 at 11:16
Meant ‘pronoun’. Anyway, an interesting essay.
August 14, 2020 at 10:40
Noted. But the point that interests me is the article distinguishes the sense of ‘being’ from our customary use of the word ‘existence’. This is the d...
August 14, 2020 at 09:51
:ok:
August 14, 2020 at 08:49
Fundamental to modern science is quantification and quantitative analysis. And that really starts with Descartes, Newton and especially Galileo. 'That...
August 14, 2020 at 05:10
:up: thanks, that does look like a great read, I'll go through it.
August 14, 2020 at 04:39
There's a really important point about this word, (and one that I am criticized by StreetlightX for raising, on the grounds that my reading is tendent...
August 14, 2020 at 03:33
That is an artificial distinction. You're making it more complicated than it is. His hypothesis was: there are children who remember previous lives. F...
August 13, 2020 at 23:14
Yep, the 'I' dies. Yet somewhere, an 'I' is being born. This never stops.
August 13, 2020 at 23:12
I really like your reasoning in all of this, and have been pondering similar questions. Let’s say, you can never be in a position of weighing up all t...
August 13, 2020 at 10:05
The underlying issue in the 'nature of ethics' and 'nature of reason' argument is that of neurological reductionism: the contention that by understand...
August 13, 2020 at 07:44
It's a completely different issue. 'The nature of reason' is a philosophical question par excellence. I dispute that it will ever be subject to empiri...
August 13, 2020 at 07:05
Such misunderstanding! The whole point of the other conversation was entirely different. What I was arguing about then was that you couldn't understan...
August 13, 2020 at 06:51
Sure. If you could show his results were bogus, then you would falsify the children's claims. That's what I kept saying to MF. His cases comprise thou...
August 13, 2020 at 05:22
As a matter of interest, have you read any of the research, i.e. interviews with children who claimed to recall earlier lives and whose claims were in...
August 13, 2020 at 01:28
On the other hand, to answer my own objection, 'it has to work on TV'. This being the situation we're in, whomever was chosen had to be telegenic and ...
August 12, 2020 at 10:58
Actually not even policy, so much, but ideas. World seems barrelling full-tilt towards some kind of Armageddon, yet the headline is....well, you know....
August 12, 2020 at 08:50
From where I sit (Australia, but with a son who is permanent US resident), Kamala Harris looks great. Liked her from the outset (and follow US politic...
August 12, 2020 at 08:28
It’s simply fatalism. It is characteristic of religious cultures like India’s, where everything that happens is thought to be a consequence of actions...
August 12, 2020 at 03:26
He didn't present a theory of reincarnation; he investigated children who claimed to remember previous lives.
August 11, 2020 at 05:41
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/08/10/chicago-looters-riot-magnificent-mile/ I've visited that part of Chicago several times in the last fe...
August 11, 2020 at 00:51
Stevenson interviewed children who claimed to recall previous lives. He documented many such cases over a period of 30 years - something in the vicini...
August 10, 2020 at 08:22
My thoughts are that karma ought never to be the source of blame or of resignation. If you say 'it's their karma' or 'it's my karma' to rationalise mi...
August 10, 2020 at 04:56
What about the argument that the fundamental constraints - that very small number of constants and ratios that Lloyd Rees describes in 'just six numbe...
August 09, 2020 at 23:13
‘Let ‘em burn it down, Chief. They’re just kids, after all, AND they’re pissed!’
August 09, 2020 at 08:58
https://www.philosophersmag.com/footnotes-to-plato/77-string-theory-vs-the-popperazzi
August 09, 2020 at 07:37
So, BC, if the police move to enforce order and dispersed the protesters to protect the precinct, wouldn't that have been instantly called 'police bru...
August 09, 2020 at 05:00
No, I think I'm saying something about the subject. A lot of people here just make stuff up, you're free to do that of course.
August 09, 2020 at 04:55
I'm saying modernity still relies on reason, but it often narrows its scope to what is measurable, what can be represented in scientific terms. Wherea...
August 09, 2020 at 03:43
:cry: :angry: :yikes:
August 09, 2020 at 03:20
It encompasses all of what is designated by the conscious, subconscious, and unconscious aspects of the psyche - much of which, as Freud showed, is no...
August 09, 2020 at 02:47
I agree, but reason is indispensable to it. The problem is that today, 'reason' is simply assumed to be 'scientific reason', and scientific reason, in...
August 09, 2020 at 02:29
I don't see much of either in you, but I do see there are certain topics which just 'push your buttons'. There are quite a few philosophically-literat...
August 08, 2020 at 23:55
Although I do have to say I think this is incorrect: Stevenson's research includes thousands of cases of children who recall very specific details of ...
August 08, 2020 at 23:11
you're the kind of soul who wouldn't :-)
August 08, 2020 at 23:01
The more general a term, the more difficult of definition. A hammer is easy to define, 'consciousness' or 'soul' much less so. But my pragmatic defini...
August 08, 2020 at 22:43
I'm sure that biological evolution occurred just the way science says that it did (although that account is by no means fixed). But it has not much to...
August 08, 2020 at 22:38
Interesting to see how Darwinism filters through to popular culture.....
August 08, 2020 at 10:14
You missed the ‘stellar explosion’ bit.
August 08, 2020 at 10:09
Hang on! I’m ‘me’. You are someone else. Oh damn. I suppose anyone can say that.
August 08, 2020 at 10:03
It's an interesting point in Buddhism in particular. Buddhism emphatically rejects the idea of an individual person or same consciuosness which migrat...
August 07, 2020 at 22:35
:up: //ps// I would hate to be thought of as ‘anti-science’. The chief manifestations of ‘anti-science’ are anti-climate-science and anti-vaccination ...
August 07, 2020 at 22:20
Actually Stevenson was careful not to say that his research proved reincarnation occurs. He said it suggests it, but was willing to consider all kinds...
August 07, 2020 at 07:29
Most people will say that Stevenson naturally suffered confirmation bias - damn the evidence!
August 07, 2020 at 06:46
Yeah, I do think Stevenson does actually consider that possibility. But in many cases, prior commitments are unlikely to be swayed by such considerati...
August 07, 2020 at 05:50
One issue is, in today’s culture the ‘sensory domain’ - the world perceived by the physical senses and its electronic enhancements - is regarded as th...
August 07, 2020 at 03:46
Discussion of reincarnation is a taboo topic on this forum in Western culture. If you really want to know what research has found, google Ian Stevenso...
August 07, 2020 at 01:47
I would be really uncomfortable comparing the scientific slant of modern thinking to ‘racism’. Not least because, unlike racism, the scientific mindse...
August 07, 2020 at 00:32