Wayfarer

I think a book that you would really get something out of is The Heretical Imperative, Peter Berger. I encountered his books when doing comparative re...

Rick Wilson on the arrest of the MAGA Bomber.

It’s a pity this thread got derailed so quickly. I take some responsibility for that. But the above point is of crucial significance in understanding ...

I think all of Dennett's work hinges on the premise that scientific method does indeed make an overall ontological claim, namely the materialist claim...

Jim Baggott was the name - not Brodie. I have also been reading Adam Becker’s What is Real? which reconsiders the debate between Bohr and Einstein, an...

and the reason i’m thinking death is not an absolute end, is not because one has an immortal soul, but because we’re inclined to leave a lot of unfini...

It’s not about comfort. A lot of folks seem comforted by the notion that death is the absolute end. What if it’s not? I think if you honestly thought ...

As I said, I think you’re being too obliging. I mean, many people who accept materialism as an attitude might be perfectly fine people - but it’s not ...

You’re not being clunky, jjust too obliging! It’s not a bias, it’s an intimation, an inkling, an intuition. The ‘standpoint which is deeper than they ...

‘In culture’? There is no ‘culture’ now. There are fragments and pieces of various cultures, thrown together like found objects, vying for traction in...

I don't know if 'bias' is the right word for what you're trying to express. Is a 'conviction' a bias? How about a pre-disposition? Is aspiration a for...

That's a pretty good summary of the antinomies of reason. Notice that there have been several scholars who have noticed resemblances with the 'undecla...

I could, but unenlightened already did that in the very first response in this thread, and you just carried on. You're basically talking nonsense.

What nonsense. That is what you would say on an internet forum, it has nothing to do with what you would say if you were really in that situation. I o...

Imagine if you were diagnosed with a dreadful illness, which you were told was going to result in your dying a very painful death whilst undergoing te...

Everyone believes that, but I think they’re mistaken. Mathematical reasoning discloses otherwise unknowable facts about reality. When you learn maths,...

I'm interested by the possibility that (say) the domain of natural numbers doesn't have a beginning and end in time.

You’re probably in the majority. At some stage in 2017, the percentage of Americans who believed Trump ought to be impeached was higher than the perce...

I think ‘conflict’ is an unfortunate choice of word. Differences, divergences of view, different attitudes and philosophies are all to be expected - t...

This is what he had to say: This is despite the fact that just prior to his appearance, crowds of supporters continued to chant 'Lock Her Up', in refe...

That doesn't sound nonsensical, but it is also not what I was commenting on. What I took the passage I was commenting on to say was that the hypotheti...

Sam, it could be said straight out that the reason Tyson, Shermer, and others of that ilk can't accept that near-death experiences really amount to an...

That was the book of which Truman Capote said 'that's not writing, that's typing'. I'm inclined to agree.

Aristotle was still a religious contemplative by today's lights. Maybe he was less mystical than his teacher, but when he talks of 'contemplation of t...

Well, it seems to me that this is a defense of naive realism. I'm sorry to say that I think the first sentence verges on the nonsensical, as it implie...

Have a look at The Western Canon.

I didn't really mean to introduce these long digressions about Kant. I was reacting to Polis' statement that 'The entire structure of Kantian philosop...

I suppose it does. But the point is, what can you say about this supposed 'unknown entity'? You can't say anything about it, because all you actually ...

No, it's not that. In your mind, you are arguing for a rational conclusion from a theistic perspective. I am open to that perspective and I too am sce...

You mean these? Again, I can only repeat what I have already said: that I think all of these statements try to make something out of Kant's 'ding an s...

Alternatively, you could argue that Kant recognised and responded to issues that are particular to the advent of modernity, which the ancients could h...

A denial which I have no problem with. Everything science has told us is compatible with the universe being a simulation. Heck, if you say it’s a comp...

Well, Kantian scholarship is notoriously difficult, and I'm certainly not claiming to be a Kant expert. But I still feel as though this is an erroneou...

Now there's a big statement. You're aware that Coppleson, in his chapter on modern philosophy, says that the attitude that 'all that can be known, can...

your remark reminded me of that quotation, especially in the context of discussion of the bafflements of quantum mechanics And no, he’s not talking ab...

‘What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning’ ~ Werner Heisenberg.

I wouldn't have suggested otherwise - I think the thrust of this comment is not directed at Aristotelian realism, but at the then-emerging modern empi...

A snippet from Kant It is exactly the 'mind-independence of sensible objects' which has been called into question by physics - which is why I think Ka...

Yes, I do understand that - the quote is from the wikipedia entry on 'teleonomy' and, as you say, betrays a misunderstanding of the whole notion of fi...

There's an interesting Wikipedia article on the word 'teleonomy', coined in 1958 to describe the apparent 'purposefulness and goal-directedness of str...

Thanks. Anathaswamy wrote some great New Scientist articles on delayed choice and related subjects - I used to subscrib.

I did already, right at the beginning (here). Not going to go through it all again.

The dictionary definition is that it means 'initiate of the mystery religions'. And they were the various participative religious cults of ancient Gre...

I ran across it, and thought it better to pin it here rather than start a new thread. (I was alerted to the original 'walking droplet' experiments via...

All perfectly true, in my opinion. You will notice that there is generally a strong animus against 'the mystical' in current philosophy; 'mystical' in...

Incidentally, does anyone remember Trump shellacking Obama for bowing to the Saudi king?

You need to go back to the texts and reconsider Kant’s remark about ‘the scandal of philosophy’. All you’re doing is begging the question, which means...

I'm hoping this finally is the 'Hurricane Katrina moment' - the moment when even the so-called 'Trump supporters' start to wake up to how Trump is des...

https://slate.com/culture/2018/10/trevor-noah-jamal-khashoggi-donald-trump-daily-show.html

Agree. The idea that the existence of God is a question for science is indicative of a misunderstanding about the nature of the question. But the idea...