I don’t see how accounting for it can not amount to explaining it away. I completely accept that h. Sapiens evolved to the point of being able to unde...
I’m saying that ‘reason’ or ‘meaning’ can’t be found amongst the data, because it is internal to the act of thought. Reason and logic comprise wholly ...
OK, trying again. Correct. It is the capacity we use to interpret and find meaning in any data. A datum is 'a piece of information' by definition; it ...
What I'm trying to explain is that the division of 'mind and matter' is often assumed, it's part of modern Western culture, going back to Descartes. (...
My initial impetus towards what I now understand as philosophy was actually counter-cultural. I came of age in the 1960’s, and in that period there wa...
Disagree. Reason is the faculty that makes abstraction possible. If you didn't have the faculty of reason, which is able to grasp similarities, differ...
What about the idea, expressed in by the Allegory of the Cave, for one, that human beings generally have a deficient understanding of the human situat...
I've noticed you've had positive things to say about Bernard Lonergan in the past, whom most people would consider wrote at length on metaphysics. Do ...
If you’re interpreting neurological data for scientific or medical reasons, there’s no issue, because that is what neuroscience is intended to do. But...
The conclusion I'm drawing is not about reason, but about the argument that 'the mental world... is closely associated with brain activities that can ...
No, because I’m not arguing from the supposedly objective facts of neurological data. I’m not arguing for neurological reductionism. The burden of dis...
Now why on earth do you feel the need to introduce ‘spiritualism’ to the conversation? ‘Spiritualism’ is Victorian gentlemen in suits listing to table...
You’re still not seeing the point. If you’re claiming that the mind is explicable in terms of neurological data, then you have to show how the brain c...
But in this case, there’s a fundamental difference between the subject of the analysis, and the subjects that have been examined ‘millions of times’. ...
Yes, of course I deployed that faculty. The same faculty the Greek philosophers deployed, namely, that of reason. What I’m arguing against is accounti...
Whenever we deploy a reasoned argument, we’re using a faculty that is internal to the nature of reason. And that is not something given in any data, i...
It's true that there's a relationship between brain activity and, say, speaking or thinking, insofar as this requires a functioning brain. But it's th...
The term 'product' is what concerns me. It is the fundamental assumption of philosophical materialism - that 'mind is a product of brain'. What I'm ar...
The foundational difficulty with all such neuroscientific views, is that inferring what neurological data are or mean, is itself an act of judgement. ...
Right. I think this draws on Husserl’s understanding of ‘umwelt’ and ‘lebenswelt’ which are likewise very basic or foundational and for that reason ve...
‘Appearance’ is a better term than ‘awareness’, as it is nearer in meaning to ‘phenomenon’, which means literally ‘what appears. The term ‘noumenal’ i...
My take on Bohr and Heisenberg is that they are philosophically quite sophisticated and are also indubitably scientists of great influence and moment,...
Well, I appreciate your interest in my posts. I agree that what often is said in the name of metaphysics is pompous twaddle. But I'm taking issue with...
I think it takes a deep questioning of the ‘consensus reality’ - just the kinds of things that everyone knows must be true. It takes understanding tha...
(This was part of the point of my oblique reference but I didn't pursue it, because it's a guaranteed derailer. The argument is that the assumption th...
I see what you're getting at - it might as you say be a reference to what I have called 'the formal realm' albeit in theosophical terminology. I don't...
Well, it is a discussion from a standard text of a traditional question of philosophy; if you find it 'deeply confused', then you ought to admit at le...
Akasa is 'space' and one of the unconditioned dharmas. There's nothing corresponding to the Platonic forms in Buddhism. Have a skim of this passage on...
Yes, I always had the sense, back in the Sixties, that Planet of the Apes, corny though it was, had a real point, although it took until recently to g...
there is no single 'view'. When I did comparative religion (sub-discipline of tilting at windmills) the very first class was devoted to coming up with...
The thing which struck me as intrinsically important about it, was the notion of different levels and/or modes of being. (But it's certainly linguisti...
I don’t find it confused but I do see the perplexity. Russell goes on to say: I think that you think - and in this, you would certainly have the major...
Again, and can't stress this enough, so much in this argument hinges on the question of the nature of the existence of abstract reals. As soon as it i...
They demonstrably do not possess language, the ability to abstract, the ability to create technology, and so on and so on. If that's 'magical thinking...
The point about Platonic realism is that it posits that intelligible objects, such as number, are real but incorporeal. That is, they're real but not ...
The question I have raised are, in what sense do the constitutive elements of reason, such as general ideas, exist? Are the objects of mathematics rea...
Animals don’t reason, no. It’s amazing what they do - salmon returning to their home streams from across the Pacific, birds flying halfway around the ...
For empiricism to get out of bed, it has to start from some assumptions, as to what to study, what to consider as ‘evidence’, what ideas to pursue. An...
Comments