It was appropriate, in the context. Sure, 'pleasure' can be construed in many ways, but here we're talking about one of the main factors underlying et...
I did a search on the term 'hedonic' in this thread, of which there are quite a few instances. And it all amounts to the following: that you equate so...
Yes, but the problem with your approach is this principle of 'maximising hedonism' or however you describe it. Sure, you're appealing to something mor...
Some notes from an article on Pitirim Sorokin's phases of cultural development: Sensate (Materialistic) Culture The first pattern, which Sorokin calle...
There are facts, and then there are axioms. Naturalism certainly starts with the axiom of 'nothing beyond nature' . You yourself start with that presu...
It was Cartesian dualism that posited 'mind' as 'res cogitans', meaning 'thinking substance'. I think that's where the concept of mind as an 'immateri...
Presumably, I could write something here which might cause you anxiety, which would produce an adrenal response, among other things. Auto-suggestion, ...
Apophaticism. One rhetorical device I've been thinking about is to ask the question: 'does reality exist'? It seems an absurd question, although it mi...
Nonsense. His predictions were first of all validated by a famous set of observations lead by physicist Arthur Eddington. Subsequently there have been...
this is true - we’re told that 80% of victims have mild symptoms and quite a few are a-symptomatic. That’s one of the factors that makes it so prone t...
It's closing in. Last Friday a school was closed for the day less than 20 k from where I live; today, more schools in the district; a month ago it was...
The short answer is: when asked straight out or not if the self existed, the Buddha would not answer (ref). This is because, He said, to answer 'no' w...
Who or what is this 'we' to whom all of this occurs? And wouldn't anything occurring to anyone presume that there is a subject - we, or I - to whom it...
I'm hoping, Amy Klobuchar OR Elizabeth Warren, so they'll be able to run as 'Mr and Mrs America'. Warren would be my hope. It will work to assuaging t...
I'm an interested foreign observer. Foreign, because I don't live in the US, but interested because I have immediate family who does, and also because...
actually, having read that essay again - yes, I do think it's commendable that you take on board criticisms; but no, I really don't agree with its bas...
It is an improvement. I admire your willingness to seek out and adapt to counter-factual views. It's commendable. But a difference remains with my own...
You’re the one who brought Buddhism into it; as an example of a philosophy that minimises suffering. What that quote illustrates is something beyond ‘...
Whoever does that? We all know the citizens of our advanced economies are almost without exception dedicated to self-improvement, edifying spiritual a...
So you're saying that the basis of moral and ethical judgement is necessarily connected with pleasure? I think your model amounts to a kind of hedonic...
This deserves more discussion, especially in regard to the question of values - which is where we started. The point is that the 'objectively measurab...
Because he's bad for America, bad for democracy, bad for capitalism and liberal social democracy. He's the best trojan horse a dictator like Putin cou...
Fair point, and I agree - but that is not how it works out it practice. Because of the emphasis on quantitative judgement, then there are fundamental ...
That is not so. Note this article in Aeon magazine (subject of a rather acrimonious debate here last June). The point of this criticism is precisely t...
The issue being the fact that the reliability of science is based on quantitative analysis, whereas qualitative factors are intrinsic to moral princip...
Again, your definition of what exists is too narrow. It's restricted to objects. But mathematical relationships and ratios also exist - it's simply th...
This thread ought to have a practical definition of what ‘secular’ means. It originates from time. To my understanding, the ‘secular calendar’ was ori...
But what is the status of the definition? I would have thought that triangles would be discovered in all possible worlds, in other words, their realit...
I think an objection can be raised here at the outset. The statement about 'the real world' falls for what has been described as the 'myth of the give...
It is no more ‘located in the brain’ than actors are located inside televisions. Rather a rational mind is able to recognize such concepts which howev...
I think there's a deep issue of what really constitutes or counts as 'basic' or 'foundational'. I would question the sense in which propositions are t...
So, you say that you can't see Sanders winning, but you also can't see anyone better positioned to beat Trump. Which seems to imply, you think Trump w...
and a caveat: even though I find Sanders arguments convincing in the abstract, I think his inability to really lay out a budget even in conceptual ter...
I've said numerous times, I'd love to see Sanders win but that I just don't think it's on the cards. That America is emphatically not going to go down...
No use debating something who can't deal with the obvious. Sanders himself says he's socialist, there's no need for me or anyone here to define it. SO...
I spelled it out, and got a wall of blather in return. You're not being objective. Bernie Sanders is an avowed, self-declared, democratic socialist, a...
But Bernie himself says he's socialist. He says he's against authoritarian communism, which is how the right will try and paint him, but there's no qu...
That’s the kind of cynicism that everyone else here is showing. Ironic, considering how Sanders is running for the Idealist Party. Right, because they...
America has drifted right over the last few decades, mainly because of corporate manipulation of the media (think: Fox. Reagan would be dismissed as '...
Zen in its natural setting is a monastic discipline, arduous and requiring intense commitment. That is something that is often lost in translation, as...
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