Wayfarer

Which undercuts materialism - the main purpose of his philosophical project.

Berkeley devotes volumes to demonstrating that the notion of an existent or mind-independent object can’t be demonstrated. That’s his whole shtick. Wh...

:up: Excellent point, I hadn’t thought of it that way.

I think 'ego' is incorrect terminology here. An all-perceiving mind/consciousness, perhaps; but not 'ego' which is 'one's sense of oneself'. My counte...

My observation about Terrapin Station's naive realism is based on many previous interactions, not simply this one. In any case, even though it might s...

I have yet to see from you anything other than naive realism. Where Berkeley fails, in my opinion, is due to his nominalism. Because of it, he can’t a...

There’s a very useful site called early modern texts which comprises a large set of works of early modern philosophy, including Berkeley, edited into ...

That doesn't amount to saying anything beyond what you believe, but as you make that point clear every time such an idea comes up, there's plainly no ...

If you want to discuss the philosophical concept of ‘substance’ then by all means do, but in its current form that is definitely a question for a chem...

:ok:

That is what Simon LaPlace thought. And then quantum mechanics and the uncertainty principle came along. You can argue on that basis that the so-calle...

Welcome to the Forum. I am very sympathetic to your overall idea but am probably a bit of an outlier in that respect, as philosophy today tends to be ...

I encountered those books and even went to a meeting, but I was suspicious about him and never took it further. Some of his books and the Laughing Man...

I said that because of your dismissive attitude.

You're customarily anti-religious, or 'aggressively secular' in your approach to philosophy. This is not my ascribing motivations to you, you make it ...

What you asked was: So, yes, I do believe in the 'reality of awakening'. I think many beings embody that quality. After all, the word 'bodhi' ( ????) ...

One of the things Krishnamurti would often say, is that in that state there is no concept of 'me'. Maybe that's a bit hyperbolic, because I sure have ...

Dennett's whole life-work is based on the idea that consciousness is the illusory by-product of unconscious cellular automata, orchestrated by the 'al...

It seems not to have born any fruit for you. That hasn’t been my experience. As for whether ‘they’re all phonies’ - I don’t believe so. ‘There would n...

The key is the idea of 'sadhana' which means 'disciplined and dedicated practice or learning'. It's true that some individuals have a spontaneous awak...

I mentioned it, because everyone remembers his saying 'truth is a pathless land', but rarely mention the following sentences: But if he agree that 'no...

I went through a period of fascination with Krishnamurti’s books, starting with the Penguin Krishnamurti Reader. When I read that it had immediate, in...

As an agency. And the issue of agency is central to the philosophical issue. I’m railing against the author of Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, who is the sub...

But it becomes implicit, assumed. It’s a sleight of hand. It’s as if nature is a guiding intelligence, just like you-know-what. But it’s actually not ...

Maritain nails it:

Because it is assumed in all naturalistic accounts that there is no agency at work, and yet in the above, the metaphor is precisely one of agency, som...

And here’s the mother of all rogue metaphors: Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, 1876 ed., 68-69, emphasis added So here you have something, ad...

the selfish gene springs to mind, but when you think about it, examples multiply.

I, personally, coined the lovely expression ‘rogue metaphor’ here on this very forum. But nobody noticed. :sad:

That’s the best you got? Isn’t this a ‘philosophy forum’? I mean, what’s the point of talking philosophy with The Hulk?

Continuing along those lines - if mind is what grasps meaning, then what is it grasping? What is your theory of meaning? Obviously it’s a very broad q...

:up: That's why the book you refer to was widely derided as 'Consciousness Ignored' :smile:

A useful essay to contemplate is Jacques Maritain's criticism of empiricism which lays bare many of the foundational errors in Dennett's worldview.

Whatever 'mind' may be, it's never an object of experience. It's never known as a 'that'. And, if you think about it, that is not true of anything tha...

In other words, materialist. At this point you’ve started to notice the primacy of mind. One thing to understand of fundamental importance, is that th...

Tongue in cheek, of course. Krishnamurti jettisons the image of ‘the path’ by which he means any kind of organisation, church, dogma, or religious ide...

Dennett dissolves the 'hard problem' much more simply than that - simply declares that there is no such problem.

You do wonder how evolution produced a being that could write a book by that means. But then if such a being did evolve and did write a book, it might...

Do you know the story of Krishnamurti? He was a reluctant guru. Fate cast him in the role of ‘world spiritual teacher’. That speech was given when he ...

Well, read the speech.. He makes his meaning pretty clear - doesn't endorse any religion, sect, cult, or such things, which are 'man-made cages' that ...

Still suspect that ‘signs’ don’t make sense in the absence of an interpreting subject. And it seems to me that the ‘degree of freedom’ attributed to p...

What is the difference between a being and a thing? What is the significance of the fact that humans are called ‘beings’?

‘Ekhart’ being....?

Sorry didn’t reply previously, I’m working a contract right now and snatching opportunities to write here and there. I was going to mention a useful e...

Here it is again: I bolded the last, because it’s key to the point. I think that we nowadays instinctively understand the nature of such things in ter...

I studied the Ethics at undergrad level and in fact even wrote an essay on it, but I confess that I still find Spinoza very hard to understand. I rece...

It could be demonstrated with reference to the texts - that’s what I tried to do with those two quotes from Gerson and Feser. I’ve read some books on ...

I think the basic idea is perfectly sound - it is 'therapy', it's about being well, being optimally tuned for existence. All that stuff. The issue is,...

But also do check out Jules Evans' current OP.

Oh. When I was in my mid-twenties, saw a poster in a bookstore, 'Learn Meditation'. The guy that showed up had an entire speil, diagrams and theory, a...