If religions aren't symbolic, then what are they? Have you ever encountered a Carl Jung book called Man and his Symbols? They are symbolic expressions...
I would read the reviews and abstracts pretty carefully before ordering it. Lee Smolin is quite well known for a dissident view of physics, look up hi...
A lot of folks here have mentioned this book which is about this topic. In my view the difficulties of quantum physics provide a salutary lesson about...
The question I was asking was where does the assumption of universal human rights (of which equality before the law is one aspect) originate? This was...
Well, in the USA, where I currently am, there are plenty of disparities about how various populations are treated before the law. Poor and black get t...
It relates to Heisenberg's 'uncertainty principle, one of the first discoveries of quantum physics. It says that you can't know both the momentum and ...
I know this will fall on deaf ears, but the notion that such things require empirical evidence is a misunderstanding of the dynamics of faith. I mean,...
No Catholic ought ever to try and prove transubstantiation to be literally true. As I understand it, part of the articles of faith is that it is a mir...
What is meant by 'any moral stand'? What is a typical instance of 'a moral stand'? How do you escape relativism? If you were part of a political party...
Because the so-called 'sub-atomic constituents' of matter are themselves indeterminate in nature. They're not the impenetrable and imperishable materi...
'“Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts a...
The original tradition of philosophical rationalism was actually a form of intellectual mysticism. It was concerned with finding the 'first cause' or ...
The depiction of knowledge as 'interpretive' is of a much more modernist or post-modernist attitude. And I'm not saying that to 'drag everything back ...
I can't see how. It wasn't at all meant in that spirit. I don't think that Einstein really had the insight that Kant said was his 'Copernican revoluti...
My point about compassion being an antidote to solipsism, is simply that the essence of compassion is 'feeling-with' - seeing yourself in others and o...
I think that's more like a description of the jhana states of 'neither perception nor non perception' and the like, which are part of the Buddhist pat...
The transcendental is 'always already the case'. All of Kant's transcendental arguments show that experience is not simply 'given' to us, that the con...
You can give specifications of plenty of things you can't see, like software algorithms, or the chemicals that simulate flavours, and so on. Generally...
But a pain or a sensation is not an object in the same way that a hammer and a nail is, surely. We can deal with them in an objective way, but I can g...
Do you think the 'unity of the subject' is amenable to empirical scrutiny? Is it something you can empirically measure or sense? I mean, a hammer is a...
I'm not saying we don't experience it, I'm saying it is not 'an object of experience'. I mean, it is a characteristic of the nature of the subject, is...
How could it not be? In my view, Wittgenstein is almost always misinterpreted in terms of positivism - remember the Vienna Circle co-opted him - but h...
It’s the ‘hotel management theodicy’: ‘Hey, can’t you see there’s a problem here? People starving to death, wars, diseases, epidemics? What kind of pl...
Probably because trying to explain them is impossible for those who don't have the insight, and unnecessary for those who do. Recall the apocryphal Fl...
Have a look at the very brief entry in Wikipedia on transcendental apperception. Except for I think it’s accurate, and profound. (The reason I object ...
Because the distances involved are staggeringly enormous. Don’t forget that a ‘light year’ is the distance light travels in a year which is roughly ni...
I got Yuval’s first book, but he is a fairly generic sceintific materialist. It was one of those books I read a few chapters from but then regretted h...
Very good post (allthough you should use spel check). But the whole idea of 'prosperity without growth' is contrary to capitalist economics. Constant ...
It hinges on the meaning of 'to exist'. As I said, it sounds a pedantic quibble, but it is a philosophy forum, and this is a basic question of ontolog...
I would try, but it seems to me that the only reason you're interested in discussing is, is because of your intense dislike of 'theism'. So, the argum...
I didn't rule it out, I just made it clear the sense in which I was using the term. It's not a non-traditional interpretation. It is the traditional i...
‘God’ - and I use quotes as here we are discussing a concept in traditional philosophy and not the subject of personal devotion - is indeed not someth...
Whereas the OP is criticizing the kind of stupidity that characterises metaphysics - well, I think that's what it's doing - another kind looms large i...
The 'good' being....? 'Reason' in the modern sense generally assumes the need to be validated empirically i.e. by scientific observation. The concepti...
Isn't that one of the main points of Kant's demonstration of the antinomies of reason? (which you refer to). 'Kant believes that it is part of the fun...
You're conflating a biological theory with an ethical principle - which it isn't. Besides, appealing to evolutionary fitness ss a basis for ethics is ...
Agree with Unenlightened. Sociology and anthropology, in addition to some of the classical works of philosophy - Aristotlean ethics and other classica...
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