Wayfarer

If you look at the context in which I was distinguishing the limitations of 'natural', the point I had in mind, was much nearer in terms of meaning, p...

I only noticed this now. I think, if you look at history, much of the impetus behind modern cosmology has been to arrive at a complete explanation in ...

That's too easy a solution. The blind spot is a literal cognitive function, exactly comparable to the optical blind spot, which is caused by where the...

Naturalism is very much focussed on finding natural explanations for causal relationships - causes, effects, and causal patterns or laws. So, any form...

noted, and amended.

Don't overlook Jules Evans - he's made a splash, and a living, as a working philosopher. https://g.co/kgs/T6zikf . Alain de Botton is another - he's g...

You two are bound to hit it off. :wink:

Actually, the 'hard question of consciousness', which is relevant to this thread, is The other questions are very interesting, but a different topic.

I am a firm believer in power of reason. I’m inclined to think that life overflows or exceeds the bounds of reason, but that doesn’t make it irrationa...

Yes. I believe that is what those quaint old philosophy types called ‘the mystery of being’.

Case in point. I was going through a dataset of supermarket sales quarter by quarter. One of the selection criteria was ‘shopper type’ - like, single ...

What does it take to ‘contextualise’? I worked at an A.I. startup over Christmas and they were finding it extremely difficult to get their system to c...

Not so - it is exactly what Dennett says. In 'Darwin's Dangerous Idea', he says “through the microscope of molecular biology, we get to witness the bi...

Well, there's a million-dollar question for you. I suppose one way to tackle it, is to suggest that, whatever this is, it is just precisely what 'elim...

He's drawing attention to the fact that bats (by extension, us also) are subjects of experience. The phrase 'what it is like' is rather awkward, but I...

The demand to know what you are doing is not.

gOd of many faces, right? ;-)

:up: What I think this demonstrates is a kind of 'presumptive naturalism', i.e. it arises from the very 'blind spot' at issue. And please don't take t...

Which starts, unpromisingly, with a quotation from The Amazing Randi. I started reading it, but as I see it, any appeal to 'illusionism' has to fail, ...

I think the idea of there being wisdom is nowadays treated rather coyly, because of its religious overtones; but that in traditional philosophy ‘sapie...

Well, if philosophy is the pursuit of wisdom, then in what does wisdom inhere? How are we to judge whether we have it, or others, or by which standard...

I watched the first episode of the acclaimed new Chernobyl. THe opening lines were something along the lines of becoming so surrounded by lies that th...

I think the description of anyone critical about Trump as 'haters' is part of Trump's dishonest rhetorics. I mean, this man is threatening world peace...

Isn't just obvious that Dennett is flogging a dead horse? The only thing his books plausibly do is illustrate, again and again, in exhaustive detail, ...

Kind of you to say so. https://youtu.be/vMn6q1z7Oxk?t=449

Actually the process of assimilation of Greek philosophy with Christian theology took quite a few centuries, and is a profound and deep subject. I say...

It's thoroughly documented in books such as Quantum, by Manjit Kumar, and Uncertainty: The Battle for the Soul of Science, by David Lindley. The forme...

That is not obvious in the least. It is one of the major contentions of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, elucidated over hundreds of pages of tortuousl...

Differentiation of 'religion' and 'dharma' - http://veda.wikidot.com/dharma-and-religion

Worth remembering about the Straits of Hormuz: Iran on one side, UAE on the other. A blockage there would be the rough equivalent of a cerebral aneury...

Well sure. I took acid when it was still legal to so, and experienced the clear light. Had a big impact. I read The Politics of Ecstasy when it came o...

First, it's not a bad list, but it lacks an entry for 'encountering the numinous'; although 'changed states of consciousness' comes close, it doesn't ...

Is it possible that it is the action of some kind of Hezbollah-like militia or terrorist group loosely in the Iranian orbit, but not acting under orde...

Indeed. ‘There are none so blind as those who will not see’, and Trumpworld is going to town on their dime.

https://nyti.ms/2ICaC4y Thereby demonstrating his total incomprehension of what the Mueller probe was about, what 'probity in office' comprises.... an...

In the context, it was a discussion about whether, or in what sense, modern physics tends to support a kind of idealist philosophy (which is suggested...

I understand perfectly well that h. sapiens is classified as a primate, and the line descended from a common ancestor of other ape species. However I ...

Can’t you see the hot button now? It’s totally obvious.

But observation does, that is irrefutable.

How is ‘reality a construction’ reconcilable with scientific realism, objectivism, and physicalism? Wheeler says in the section Phenomenon that ‘the d...

He says that ‘what we call reality is a construction’. In the same article he says this is the very thing that Einstein could not concede. It’s not de...

Then how do you interpret that statement that Wheeler makes, that 'what we think of as reality consists of an elaborate paper-mache construction', und...

We're clearly not apes. And furthermore, it's not even the point at issue. The point at issue is 'the role of the mind in the construction of reality'...

I will sign off with the quotation of the concluding paragraph of the article:

No f***ing kidding?? Remember Thomas Nagel’s book, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False ....

Fair point! I have to cop to that. But the article is explicitly aimed at physicalism and objectivism. Do you think these are essential to science? Yo...

This needs a response, even if it will probably be futile. There was a particularly vitriolic couple of threads, one on Bernard Kastrup, and another o...

BUT IT DOESN'T CLAIM THAT. It is specifically NOT what is being claimed. And yet, that is the basis of the criticisms here. That's where the actual st...

The authors address that exact point, with reference to Hempel's dilemma: The article in question is not about science, nor hostile to science; it is ...