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Wayfarer

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Philosophy used to be understood as the pursuit of the eternal truth or at least something beyond the transitory affairs of life. Of course the word '...
January 19, 2020 at 03:23
Once while resident at Ojai, Krishnamurti went on a picnic with Charlie Chaplin, Bertrand Russell, Aldous Huxley, Greta Garbo, and Christopher Isherwo...
January 19, 2020 at 02:23
It is Trump who has betrayed - the oath of office, the Constitution, the standards expected from a public officer.
January 18, 2020 at 23:57
https://nyti.ms/37aWw52 This was abundantly documented by trustworthy witness testimony in painstaking detail during the public hearings. Since the fi...
January 18, 2020 at 22:56
As I mentioned, Bishop Berkeley already addresses this question in his Dialogues: Third Dialogue, edition from https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets...
January 18, 2020 at 22:07
My thoughts also. I was taking issue with those who believe otherwise. However, no scholastic would have said you could have reached an understanding ...
January 18, 2020 at 10:42
As I understand it, the original Greek term that was translated into Latin as 'substantia' was 'ouisia'. The meaning of 'ouisia' is rather different t...
January 18, 2020 at 06:19
What I hate hearing is 'how likely it is for Trump to win a second term'. This doesn't mean I don't believe it's possible, because I do. It's just tha...
January 18, 2020 at 02:05
Sanders on how big Jeremy Corbyn's win will be. If Sanders is nominated, it would be deja vue all over again.
January 18, 2020 at 01:54
Biden with Warren as running mate. Mr and Mrs America, Uncle Affable and Mrs Policy Wonk. How could you miss?
January 18, 2020 at 01:46
https://thepreachersword.files.wordpress.com/2019/01/ten-commandments.jpg
January 17, 2020 at 22:39
No, but it looks interesting. But anarchy can’t possibly be a solution to anything. Would every person be required to construct their own road? Would ...
January 17, 2020 at 10:40
But you’re still talking about managing others, about control strategies. Unless the culture has a sense of values which the citizenry can freely adop...
January 17, 2020 at 09:06
Agree. I don’t think science on the whole is nearly as philosophically aware as Janus suggests. There are individual scientists who are, of course, bu...
January 17, 2020 at 08:00
:up: Duhem was a pretty major intellectual. I never encountered him at University but have since read about him.
January 17, 2020 at 04:30
Christianised Platonism had an answer for that, in the form of Augustine's doctrine of 'evil as the privation of the good'. As illness is the privatio...
January 17, 2020 at 00:42
We’re watching Donald. Trump treat the law with contempt, and the Republican Senate aiding and abetting. American democracy is being destroyed from wi...
January 16, 2020 at 20:03
I have a couple of his books - Face of God, and one other whose name escapes me (might be Soul of the World.) I liked him OK - not one of my favourite...
January 16, 2020 at 09:47
Right. That is one of the reasons why I say that political theory has to be underwritten by Christianity, or something like it. I mean, if you wanted ...
January 16, 2020 at 09:42
:up:
January 16, 2020 at 08:23
'First philosophy' or metaphysics is concerned with the ultimate nature of reality. In a theistic metaphysics, then God is understood as being the sou...
January 16, 2020 at 02:41
A good example of one of Kant's antinomies, which lead us to conjecture about things that might be, or must be, on the basis of what we observe, but w...
January 15, 2020 at 10:16
Darwinian rationalism does not constitute a philosophy. The point about love is that it has to be its own rationale - as soon as it serves something o...
January 15, 2020 at 10:08
Although theoretically philosophy is said to be the antidote. Presumably by inculcating the realisation that, as everyone is subject to self-pity, the...
January 15, 2020 at 09:56
By the many worlds theory!
January 15, 2020 at 09:42
Agree. I don’t have much to go on but a hunch right now but am intending to devote some serious reading to Plato’s theory of forms. My basic intuition...
January 15, 2020 at 09:37
Even Bishop Berkeley had an answer for that! It really isn't so simple. Again, in physics, the question has been suggested by the conundrums sorroundi...
January 15, 2020 at 01:21
You cherry-picked that point from all of the surrounding text which completely changes the intended meaning (as you generally do).
January 15, 2020 at 01:04
The notion that every shape corresponds to a different form is not necessarily what platonism entails. Form doesn't mean shape. For example, the 'form...
January 14, 2020 at 07:56
I do sometimes wonder if the very idea of templates originated with the Platonic forms.The separation of form and substance seems likewise indispensab...
January 14, 2020 at 04:20
This is a big, big controversy in current physics. There is a school of thought which is highly critical of string theory and says it's a dead end tha...
January 14, 2020 at 00:18
I think you're mistaken here. The reason is, it is impossible to conceive of 'pure being' in empirical terms, so we have to try and fit it into our co...
January 13, 2020 at 00:37
I believe that in pre-modern philosophy, there was an (often implicit) idea that individual beings and other denizens of the sensory domain belonged t...
January 12, 2020 at 22:48
I did acknowledge this fact in my response, if you read it carefully. I since thought of another way of putting it - there is no measurement without p...
January 12, 2020 at 10:29
More like a stream of fiction, confabulation, boasts and mendacity. Saying whatever comes into an addled mind is not a virtue. But as we've all learne...
January 12, 2020 at 07:16
In the early days of Christianity, theology absorbed a great deal of what was important from Greek philosophy. Subsequently logic, science, mathematic...
January 12, 2020 at 06:40
fdrake and I have discussed this also. It's obviously the case that there were no rational observers before h. sapiens (leaving aside gods and aliens)...
January 11, 2020 at 04:56
The Americans did it in 1990-something, to an Iranian 747. //correction - airbus//
January 10, 2020 at 23:27
...something which I think is exactly correct. The whole point is, the advent of Galilean science combined with Cartesian dualism posited a complete s...
January 10, 2020 at 08:57
It now seems that it was the air defence system that mis-identified the flight as a hostile, which does seem plausible. However I agree that Trump's p...
January 10, 2020 at 08:38
I wonder why, today, Trump is insisting that the Boeing 737 was shot down over Tehran 'by mistake'? How does he know that? Would it be because if it w...
January 09, 2020 at 22:47
Marvellous. One for the wishlist. Worth reflecting on the opening quote:
January 09, 2020 at 11:49
Agree. That is a subject I would like to read more about. As I said in an earlier post, it seems to have many points of convergence with hylomorphism,...
January 09, 2020 at 09:14
I suspect it is rather because he wanted to distance himself from scholasticism, as all the early moderns were obliged to do. But if you unpack the no...
January 09, 2020 at 08:51
IBM is an entity. As is the Australian Navy. It's a fancy word for 'thing' (as in, 'is that "a thing?"') Speaking of which, there's a Heidegger book c...
January 09, 2020 at 08:40
You're welcome, but as you know, the exchange consisted wholly of pointless impersonal neuronal reactions. ;-) (So, scientifically pointless, not just...
January 09, 2020 at 08:27
the problem with Dennett is that he believes humans are moist robots. Nice guy, and all, but not on account of anything he believes.
January 09, 2020 at 07:56
I was halfway through making that post and posted it accidentally, I’ll come back to it later.
January 09, 2020 at 07:01
https://youtu.be/pYRLapWBqJY
January 09, 2020 at 06:56