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Wayfarer

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Because we are the phenomenon. We're not observing from a point outside life—we are living, embodied beings whose actions, thoughts, and values are su...
June 17, 2025 at 05:35
I appreciate your thoughtful response. You're right to say that there's a distinction between using teleology as an epistemological paradigm—i.e., as ...
June 17, 2025 at 02:15
Aporia can be seen as precisely the points where dialectic ends and noetic insight is required. The fact that language and symbolic thought is inheren...
June 17, 2025 at 01:13
Let's step back a bit. The question I was responding to was, 'is there good reason to believe teleology'? So to address that we need to clarify exactl...
June 17, 2025 at 00:33
The substrate is what is translated as 'prime matter'. In this, I will defer to the others here with greater knowledge of Aristotle, but based on ency...
June 16, 2025 at 22:29
‘Thought’ is a deficient term, though, as it seems so quotidian; we all think incessantly, often to not much effect. I don’t know if there’s a proper ...
June 16, 2025 at 06:32
Right - hence the distinction in ancient philosophy between praxis and theoria. Might I suggest (pace Hadot) that in modern philosophy, the former is ...
June 16, 2025 at 01:18
All the examples are artificial. It's like those endless discussions of the trolley problem. God knows what you would *actually* do in that circumstan...
June 16, 2025 at 00:46
I see what Count Timothy is getting at, though I don't think it's well expressed. (So I’ll agree with the impulse while questioning the formulation.) ...
June 16, 2025 at 00:15
However, I presume (not having read it) that he would maintain sanctions against pre- or extra-marital sex. I've had a long-running debate (sometimes ...
June 15, 2025 at 23:31
Reword it like this: matter is some thing. If it is 'a thing' then it has form. If it has no form, then it's not a thing. General question: I have the...
June 15, 2025 at 23:14
There’s shamanism, which is one of the very ancient roots of what was to become ‘religion’. So too yogic practices of mystical absorption. Buddhism an...
June 15, 2025 at 22:55
It’s instructive that biology, having rejected the Aristotelian idea of teleology, had to re-introduce telos, purpose, in a neologism, ‘teleonomy’, re...
June 15, 2025 at 22:40
You’re correct, of course. A salutary admonition. I have noticed from time to time a dialog will appear ‘do you like this personality?’ All part of su...
June 15, 2025 at 22:17
Remember what Michelle Obama said - ‘when they go low….’ I agree that Trump has been overall responsible for the atmosphere of threat and the promotio...
June 15, 2025 at 10:55
A recent exchange: "a colour swatch from a Soviet apartment block" :rofl:
June 15, 2025 at 09:49
There's also constructive criticism - those who are willing to have their ideas criticized so as to better understand both them and their critics, whi...
June 15, 2025 at 09:47
I wouldn’t politicise such a heinous act. Politicising it is the kind of thing MAGA would do, had the shoe been on the other foot.
June 15, 2025 at 08:20
DJT will be super annoyed tonight that the assassination and the Iran-Israel war will have stolen all the news minutes from his parade.
June 15, 2025 at 07:58
As I’ve said many a time, my interest in philosophy grew out of my search for enlightenment. This is partially because of when I came of age in the 19...
June 15, 2025 at 06:29
It's notable that there has already been a modification to the mass arrests and deportation strategy, due to the indisputable importance of undocument...
June 15, 2025 at 05:19
Contemporary Hylomorphism: A Reading List
June 15, 2025 at 05:05
P.S. Maybe this is why Étienne Gilson quipped that “philosophy always buries its undertakers.” For generations, we were assured that glorious Science ...
June 14, 2025 at 23:58
Yes, great question—but I think there's actually a deep connection between what Count Timothy said about the immaterial intellect and the point I made...
June 14, 2025 at 23:54
Hi Bob - if I may chip in here. I'm no expert but have been reading up on hylomorphism. First point is that the term 'hyle' literally meant 'lumber' o...
June 14, 2025 at 23:21
It's not so clear cut as you believe. The amount of documentary evidence that Stephenson assembled can't simply be waved away, although as he says, th...
June 14, 2025 at 22:08
As discussed previously in this thread, there are documented cases of children who appear to recall previous lives. Documented in the sense that steps...
June 14, 2025 at 11:27
Might that be on account of the fact that everything we know of reality is disclosed to, by and in consciousness? Not that consciousness is a constitu...
June 14, 2025 at 07:20
I read a book by David Ray Griffin, (although was later dissappointed to learn he was a 9/11 conspiracy theorist.) The view I'm advocating also draws ...
June 14, 2025 at 01:25
Presumably races other than Boer.
June 13, 2025 at 12:59
I know they do, but the article from which that line was taken was very detailed — many thousands of words — and it spells out what that remark means ...
June 13, 2025 at 12:57
June 13, 2025 at 05:45
many deep questions involved. I’ll revert to my initial post - material reality is an aspect of cognitive experience. //although I will mention the ti...
June 13, 2025 at 04:12
Mitch McConnell must rue the day he voted not to confirm Trump's second impeachment, for the disgraceful assault on the Capital Building, on the groun...
June 13, 2025 at 02:54
You mean, the in itself, right?
June 13, 2025 at 02:49
That's the process of decoherence. It explains why we don't ever find a cat that is at once dead and alive, but it still doesn't totally solve the obs...
June 13, 2025 at 02:15
Excellent question. To digress, as I so often do, there's an article I refer to , Quantum mysteries dissolve if possibilities are realities, which ech...
June 13, 2025 at 01:51
Don’t know, I’d have to do the research. But it has been said the last two days that in the Rodney King riots in LA in 1992, the Governor requested th...
June 13, 2025 at 00:23
Perhaps, but it also could be seen as a ‘Bring it on! Show us what you got!’ When Trump and Hegsmeth really start to order American troops to teargas ...
June 12, 2025 at 23:54
Nevertheless, the Buddha is also said to have taught that suffering has a cause, and also an end, and that there is a way to the end of suffering. Whe...
June 12, 2025 at 23:45
I don’t think the two-party system is specifically at fault. Trump is a textbook demagogue - to revisit the definition, a demagogue ‘is a political le...
June 12, 2025 at 23:32
In the context of the discussion with Vera Mont, I was making the point that humans are able to envisage possibilities and then bring them about - whi...
June 12, 2025 at 23:15
Also known as The Way of Tao, I believe. A perennial.
June 12, 2025 at 07:40
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/YBCJ7NFXANDDFOHBMKU75NF6ZU.j...
June 12, 2025 at 06:44
:100: I have an amusing anecdote. Way back in my undergraduate days I was looking for books in the uni library. I noticed one particular volume seem t...
June 12, 2025 at 06:26
I can see what you’re getting at - but in response to the particular question I was trying to address, why the need for faith?, I don’t know if it is ...
June 12, 2025 at 06:11
Don’t know if I agree with that. There are levels and kinds of knowing. In Greek philosophy, for example, there’s the ‘analogy of the divided line’ in...
June 12, 2025 at 05:50
I understand the legal requirement to remove illegal immigrants, but Trump is going about it in a particularly heavy-handed way. All through his campa...
June 12, 2025 at 05:42
First (not wanting to sound pedantic) 'divinity' comes from the Indic root 'deva', God or gods or divine beings. I think divinity can be distinguished...
June 12, 2025 at 04:05
Not from the future - from the possible, from the realm of possibility. Today's techno-industrial culture is able to 'peer into the realm of the possi...
June 12, 2025 at 02:43