But it's only true for eyes that are the organs of conscious beings. You might have missed the scientific paper I mentioned above, which mentions the ...
Trump has declared that he will present no defense at the impeachment hearings. Although this declaration was presented on the purported grounds that ...
I think there's a misunderstanding about this (and I'm not writing as a Christian). But the Christian view is that mankind has been offered salvation ...
I'm hoping that Trump is violently expelled, and that this will actually provide the American political system with something like immunity against de...
And speaking of 'fairness' - what about the careers of people like Marie Yovanovich, who lost her State Department career because she was in the way o...
Why is it 'unjust'? Trump willingly released the transcript of the initial phone call with the President of the Ukraine, on the grounds that he though...
This is not at all related to the OP, which I don't understand, but an observation based on the few interactions we've had. The 'form' that I believe ...
Nonsense. You can take frog’s eyes out and place them in solution, and the photo-receptors will still respond to simulation, but ‘responding to stimul...
It’s impossibl to report accurately on a president that makes major foreign policy decisions on an impulse and then announces them via Twitter, and di...
Beings are conscious, that’s why they’re called ‘beings’. ‘Eyes’ are conscious, they’re organs. That attitude is a direct historical consequence of th...
Well argued, C S Stewart, and good to have some educated apologists here. I want to add a footnote however. The name ‘Yahweh’ is a corruption of the H...
I read a lot of the coverage of Trump in what Trumpista's declare 'fake media'. Of course, in reality, despite their biases and occasional errors, the...
Time Magazine cover this week is about how the Trump campaign is exploiting the impeachment enquiry for fund-raising and building support via Facebook...
This is the mereological fallacy- ascribing to parts activities that can only be undertaken by the whole. So, isolated parts of an organism are not co...
Universals are not a result. What ‘emerges’ if anything is the capacity to comprehend universals. But they don’t come into existence purely by dint of...
I think there are intrinsic contradictions in the European Enlightenment. Steve Pinker's latest book, Enlightenment Now! is about more thoroughly impl...
Look at what it says under 'etymology', footnote 2. I'm not picking nits, this is important to the term. It's the contemplation of 'the nature of bein...
We lack a philosophical basis for that outlook. The world's elite have already decided that Earth as we know it is doomed, so are looking for ways to ...
The definition of ontology - 'The compound word ontology ("study of being") combines onto- (Gr. ??, on, gen. ?????, ontos, "being; that which is") and...
All of which are designed artifacts. Furthermore the ‘mechanism’ of the most simple organisms is vastly more complex, not ‘simple’ in the sense of any...
Machines are assembled by external agent, namely , humans. Organisms even at the most basic level exhibit goal-directed behaviours and the ability to ...
We had a long debate on Hoffman a couple of years back. I concluded his resemblance to 'idealist philosophy' is superficial, his program is fundamenta...
But I think there's a connection between the 'fact-value' distinction, and the 'hard problem', as follows. The fact-value dichotomy grew out of Hume's...
One important factor, often overlooked, is to understand these terms in their historical context - what gave rise to rationalism, how empiricism becam...
~ World Nuclear Association. Currency is a treaty or an agreement, for sure. Stop believing in it, and it becomes worthless. Right now it's not, but i...
It's an inherent flaw in capitalism. Mind you, communism sucks, I have never been drawn to it. There needs to be some alternative to capitalism that i...
One enormous need is suggested by the inconvenient truth that the soon-to-be-born largest generation in history will in no way be able to recklessly c...
Is 'just' that, eh? The problem with this is that sticks and stones are demonstrably different to fours and fives. Simply saying that the physical IS ...
Might as well try and adjust the strength of gravity. The point is, global debt is at such a level that it cannot be simply absolved or forgiven. I'm ...
I don’t say this often, but bullshit. Every scientist I know, and most I know of, are truly liberal and most of them also very modest. The problem is ...
You say that, and I might agree, but I’m sure most scientific realists would not. As far as they’re concerned, the first person perspective is complet...
There's a lot of points between 'business as usual' and 'total extinction'. The world is barreling towards a massive population boom at the same time ...
Well, Buddhists like everyone else have to adapt to the modern world. But I think he's right in saying that the basic truths of Buddhism, which are th...
This is a very complicated issue. First as regards to Buddhism: there are many canonical statements in Buddhist texts to the effect that 'those dharma...
Unlike the Ancient Greeks, Buddhists were not especially interested in the forces of nature. The Greeks were much more concerned with naturalism gener...
That's actually pretty close to the point. I would say that no classification of the world is acceptable as a final decision, because all classificati...
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