Not personally! And no, it's not something that is usually spelled out - it's more of an implicit assumption. And there's a lot of truth in it - but o...
I’m not sure I know either, but I’m pretty sure that to a physicalist, ‘the physical’ refers to the only real entities. That is what physicalism means...
Thanks, helpful. As for definitions of positivism, the web definition is: As a rule of thumb or heuristic, I think it’s a reasonable definition. I thi...
Oh, and one more point. The meaning of ‘substance’ in philosophy is quite different to its meaning in ordinary language. ‘Substatia’ was the Latin ter...
Maybe it is, but so far, I haven’t seen reason to categorise your contributions under any heading apart from ‘generally positivist in orientation’. Am...
Well, hi there, I haven't been active on this forum much lately, and haven't noticed your posts before. But this is a pretty good one, although you co...
No, not true. I vastly appreciate Enlightenment values, living in a pluralist culture, technological progress and democracy. The only reason you think...
I greatly admire Einstein and frequently refer to him, but I really don’t think he ‘got’ Emmanuel Kant. It’s not so much a matter of subtlety but of t...
I had in mind - referring to Steve Pinker, who is an articulate and well-intentioned advocate of scientism. And besides, it is indubitably the case th...
Notice your presuppositions here. They are exactly those of 'Enlightenment rationalism'. Which is not surprising, as it remains the de facto philosoph...
Nothing is ‘purely physical’. If there were any such object, physics would be the discipline which describes it. And yet, the search for the fundament...
In Jain and Buddhist religion, there is no judging God who punishes evil-doers, so the bad karma that leads them to hell is solely their own doing. I ...
The review I linked to draws on a large study of fmri data and raises fundamental questions about its accuracy and replicability in many respects. The...
It is clear enough that brain damage can interfere with speech, thought and language - as I said, that is for question of pathology. I don’t think it ...
The drawing of such implications from fMRI studies, especially psychological or ethical implications, is precisely where many major issues of replicab...
I think ‘violence’ is the wrong term here. Imagine you eat something poisonous and become violently ill. Are you ‘the victim of violence’ in that case...
If hell is real, then the religions might believe that they have a duty to inform. You may not believe it, but their warning of it is not in the least...
Isn't the difficulty with this the very point that Wittgenstein was driving at in passage at the end of the Tractatus that 'ethics are transcendental'...
Yes. Another of the many books I know about. I liked this review. I myself am really rather a secular Buddhist, except I regard sa?s?ra - the eternal ...
Wrong astronaut! Edgar Mitchell had a profound epiphany on return journey from the moon: The Institute of Noetic Sciences is still going strong, its w...
As noted above, the furniture of reason - the law of the excluded middle, the law of identity, and so on - is not something that could have evolved, h...
But, in so doing, you're actually relegating what has always been understood under the heading 'philosophy'. Yours is a great, if unwitting, example o...
Interesting that Aristotle’s treatise on biology was called De Anima. Animated, animal, what animates. It is said there is no ‘vital spirit’ considere...
In very bald terms, a major consequence of ‘enlightenment rationalism’ is the wish to replace religion with science, or put science in the place of mo...
Indeed, two, one of whom died about 6 weeks ago. And, no, dogs cannot speak or reason or weigh up courses of action, except in the most rudimentary wa...
Interesting fact - the term ‘enlightenment’ was chosen by one of the influential early translators of Buddhist texts as the translation for the Buddhi...
I think you’re conflating evolutionary biology with ethical philosophy. Your ‘flourishing’ is only ‘surviving with style’, to paraphrase Buzz Lightyea...
You've completely failed to see the point. The point is, animals act from instinct - they do what they do out of necessity. Only humans can weigh thin...
If behaviour is 'hard wired', how can it be moral? Morality relies on there being different possible courses of action. 'The idea of an “ought” is for...
The philosophical difficulty is articulating principles which don't ultimately reduce to 'doing well' or 'getting along together', which in turn begin...
As I said, not 'evidence for theism' as such but for, at least, divine intervention. The reporter in that case is a medical practitioner, reporting on...
As mentioned, I don't believe Christianity has ever relied on philosophical arguments to establish the existence of God. But as to whether all such ar...
I do feel as though I should respond to that, as it's not the first time you've said it. Expressed in these terms, it reduces the entire question to p...
'Rational warrant' and 'empirical evidence' are different things. Empirical evidence, as construed by modern naturalism, starts, as a matter of princi...
It was. You were asking what 'substantial empirical evidence' there might be - having already declared that all rational argument was invalid or quest...
Well, the point is, belief in God is foundational to the ethical system of Western culture, whereas the existence of garden fairies or unicorns is for...
Worth noting that none of the medieval 'proofs' were remotely considered as anything like a proof in the modern or scientific sense. There was a long-...
Well, 'God' may be an 'invisible garden fairy' to you, but that might only be a reflection on your belief system. Condescension noted. It might be tha...
what would empirical evidence for a transcendent being comprise? I mean, if you reject out of hand all of the Biblical and other accounts of miraculou...
But when you ask 'what does it mean 'to know'?', you're not trying to elicit information. You're contemplating the nature of knowing, the nature of be...
Oh good. (Although had to read it twice, I thought you said 'stewed'.) //ps// although something tells me, if there's an even bigger accelerator, ther...
I think you're misunderstanding the thought experiment. If it was only a matter of probabilities, of which outcome is the likely one, then there would...
You might be interested to know that there is a history of 'undetermined questions' in Buddhism. These mainly concern what we could translate as metap...
It does well to remember the historic roots of atomism. The original atomists were addressing a particular philosophical problem - Why has everything ...
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