Of course we know vastly more about physical cosmology than did the ancients, but mysteries have a way of re-appearing in new guises. We have discusse...
Comey also dismissed Republican criticisms of how the FBI handled its interview of Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser who pleaded...
Agree. And I think that's because of the way that 'mind/spirit/reason' became conceived after Descartes. It was Descartes' error to posit 'res cogitan...
Due mainly to Protestantism, which 'internalised' the entire vast salvific machinery of medieval religion. Indeed - embedded in the Great Chain of Bei...
Certainly the objects of common experience exist in a common-sense way - which is the attitude of empirical realism. But when you really examine the n...
Actually it was a quote about Aquinas' theory of knowledge, which draws on and elaborates Aristotle's hylomorphic dualism. I'm really labouring to try...
But the point is, the manner in which either 'the universe' or 'the object' exists 'independent of our describing' is never known to us (as per Kant)....
Compare: 1. Aristotle's Greek word, that is commonly and traditionally translated as " image" is “phantasma” (plural: phantasmata), a term used by Pla...
Well, we're coming at it from slightly different perspectives. My approach has generally been a 'where did we go wrong?' type of approach. What I mean...
I think the key term to understand in what Hegel is talking of is the Aristotelian/Platonic idea of 'intelligibility'. It is that which actually preve...
Actually you're correct in that. I now recall that Locke explained abstractions very much as generalisations or general ideas, and that Berkeley criti...
I don't think that is true of Locke at all. His 'representative realism' is rather that ideas are 'inscribed' on the mind by experience, that we are b...
Very large numbers of people - whole populations - do and believe in stupid things - like electing a self-serving businessman with no discernible skil...
What kind of wall do you prefer to bang your head against? Brick or concrete? One with sharp extruding bits that draw blood, or more a smooth surface ...
You say that the 'objective world' exists irrespective of whether anyone is around to observe it. I say not. Why? Because the very image of the 'objec...
It hasn't done it 'de novo' i.e. starting from elements and building all the proteins. It's trying to reverse-engineer living cells. Science couldn't ...
We don't know what matter is. The largest and most expensive machine in the history of the world has been designed to disentangle just that question, ...
Immensely sympathetic to Husserl. His criticism of Descartes is a must-read. I think you're in a bit of a tangle here with what Berkeley is really say...
Incel, I know about. As for idealism - have a browse through some of the pages about Timothy Sprigge. Only learned of him when his obituary was publis...
That's where maths comes in so handy! Nobody has to say 'whaddya mean, "7" '? I certainly get it. But idealism, Hegelian and anything like it, pretty ...
That is not known, but assumed. I don’t think it is ever likely to be definitively proven but even so it is used to underwrite a whole set of attitude...
I am learning coding as my occupation (tech writer) nowadays requires it. Whereas 10 years ago programmers coded and tech writers wrote, nowadays the ...
If you think back to the Greeks, try and imagine the immensity of the realisation that accompanied the discovery of the faculty of reason. Consider th...
Locke's view is close to deism, God as a remote 'first cause' who no longer has anything to do with the running of the world which unfolds according t...
In all pre-modern philosophy, there is an underlying architecture or archetype of the ‘great chain of being’, such that what is the source of being or...
Not sure, but I suppose the doctrinal answer would be that, being omnipotent, He sees everything. I would also imagine that classical theology surmise...
I agree with Berkeley in that regard. He reminds us that it’s a conceit to believe we can see the world as if from no perspective whatever, as if sens...
Which one is original ‘ship of theseus’? :razz: The original impulse behind philosophy was soteriological, in the sense of seeking an unconditional tr...
Of course. There are three and only three options: May’s deal, no deal, or another referendum. ‘Nothing concentrates the mind so well as the knowledge...
Don't get me wrong, today’s computing technology is fabulous. I owe my livelihood to them. But I still think there’s a lot of confusion around the que...
I think this is one of the tragic delusions of modern culture. There's an ontological distinction between computers and beings, but due to the 'flatte...
Agree with the OP. As it happens I’m working at an AI start-up right now. The system has been given a human name, and is supposed to be like Siri on t...
I think the lurking, profound difficulty in this conversation is something like this. We will recall that Plato believed that the soul was all-knowing...
The statement 'all that exists are particulars' is a general statement. So if 'all' denotes anything, then the word 'all' must be general, which means...
I think it's a total cock-up. Cameron miscalculated disastrously calling it, but now the genie is out of the bottle. I'm really hoping the net result ...
The wind - masses of air in motion - is physical. Theories and ideas are not. That is the point of the argument - quite a simple point, which has trig...
No it’s a physical atttibute. Physical entities have such attributes - mass, location, and so on. Abstract entities, including numbers, do not, becaus...
In actual fact, it was a slightly tongue-in-cheek response to Terrapin's contention that 'ideas are physical'. Of course, but that is not the point at...
It’s a customary practice in philosophy to pose arguments in the form of dialogue between contesting views. The fact of using that technique is not im...
Of course you can. Wind has velocity, it exerts force, You measure it with a meter. Name me a 'physical thing' which has no location and no mass. But ...
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