Wayfarer

The issue you should be studying is Aristotle's criticism of Plato's 'theory of ideas'. The reason being that the term 'idealism' didn't come into vog...

TRUMP IS NOT A CONSERVATIVE. None of what he says, is, or does, is in the least compatible with conservatism as such. The fact that the co-called ‘Con...

It’s a metaphysical question.

I’m interested in the relationship of matter and form in ‘hylo-morphism’ ‘Hyle’ is matter, ‘morphe’ is form; and ‘the form’ or ‘the idea’ is what comp...

Testability, or falsifiability, is not an attribute of any metaphysic. Falsifiability was devised to distinguish empirical science from metaphysical s...

I think you're making a serious point, somewhat lost in its presentation. I think that for many people, both atheists and believers, 'God' is a figure...

Well, I think so. You can try and do as much as you can, or help as many people as possible.

I think the religions try to observe the commitment to 'lessening suffering', or they ought to, although clearly in practice they often seem to fail. ...

If only it were so simple.... :sad:

I voted 'indeterminable'. The criterion for religious truths is not objective but transcendent. This is because religious commandments and laws - cons...

No, I don’t believe that. I’m talking about trying to understand ‘matter-form’ dualism. I don’t need to be told ‘I haven’t read Aristotle’ as I have a...

That is from Loyd Gerson, and I'm sure he's not confused, as he has published numerous text books on Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy (his web-pag...

*

Except for the important point that Aquinas was a monotheist. There might be many angels - indeed, the medievals famously debated how many of them cou...

But how to arrive at any kind of consensus about what is good, absent something like a Platonic view or its equivalent? Platonic Christianity naturall...

According to the traditional metaphysics, rocks (etc) are the lowest link in the chain of being, i.e. possess the lowest 'degree of reality'. They're ...

From beyond the grave: John McCain Sounds the Alarm on Trump and Russia in New Documentary ‘Active Measures’ if it doesn’t scare the bejesus out of yo...

'Linked to' is not 'the same as'. And I don't recall having appealed to Aristotle as such. I mentioned a forum post on hylomorphic dualism which I wil...

Thanks, very interesting. I daresay Aristotle’s conception of ‘hyle’ was very different from modern notion of matter, but I am endeavouring to learn m...

Because it's not something describable in physical terms. What if it's 'meaning all the way down'? Even physics turns out to be a mathematical model -...

As I have said many times, 'the law of the excluded middle' didn't come into existence with h. sapiens. What evolved was the capacity to understand su...

Again he is using 'information' in terms specific to 'information science' whereas I'm considering it in a broader and more philosophical sense and in...

Quite right. And the principle factor that has changed or been forgotten, is the idea of 'degrees of perfection' in any qualitative sense, which again...

But Shannon's definition of 'information' was wholly and solely concerned with what is required to encode and transmit information. And the same can b...

I really do try and offer my perspective, and it's met with, not so much criticism, as what seems to me to be uncomprehending hostility - 'deeply cont...

It nevertheless is the point that I wished to make when I referred to Hadot. Maybe it’s because you don't understand it.

This is what I had in mind:

They most certainly can, within the appropriate 'domain of discourse' - which has generally what has now been lost. I'm still having a problem with th...

But if 'the form' is located in time, then presumably it's also located in some place. Or, perhaps it is something that unfolds or evolves, in modern ...

I now really see where you're coming from. Although you disagree with 'scientism' or scientific materialism more broadly, as far as you're concerned, ...

In time? I think it has ontological priority, i.e. prior in terms of the hierarchy of being, but not temporally. Well, that's all it ever can be, acco...

It is sourced, click on the ‘one’ at the end of the quoted passage. Billions of words have been written on that. Three years ago when he was starting ...

Maybe its immaterial, because it's an Idea. We are nowadays used to thinking that ideas are 'in the head' or 'in the mind'; for us, they're subjective...

I have been reading about allegorical interpretations of Plato and Pythagoreans. At various times, it has been fashionable to deprecate allegorical in...

About Trump's repeated claims that the 'real collusion' was between the DNC and Russia: "The claim that Ms. Clinton’s 2016 opposition- research activi...

Incidentally at this moment on the way to the library to borrow The Doctrine of Being in the Aristotelian Metaphysics: A Study in the Greek Background...

Which accounts for the possibility of the immortality of the soul, does it not?

If you're good at maths, go hard at it. Maths skills are extremely important and better still they're highly transportable. You can apply them to all ...

I agree. I think this is a really major underlying issue in many of the debates here. One of the philosophers who analyses it in depth is Thomas Nagel...

You got to remember that for Trump-ets facts don't matter, so argument is pointless. New title: Everything Trump Touches Dies, Rick Wilson.

That used to be the kind of question that religions and the religious aspects of philosophy - like virtue ethics, or stoicism - were thought to addres...

Strugging to make the connection between what I said, and what Einstein is trying to say. Although what I am inclined to say, is that, as per Kant, re...

:up: Connected with taking methodological naturalism as a metaphysical principle, which it isn't.

I meant that you don't have to have a philosophy of mathematics, to do mathematics.

You don't have to know what it is in order to use it. For the same reason, expert mathematicians have conflicting philosophies of maths, and scientist...

It’s an inconvenient truth for religious traditions that horrible things were sanctioned in the past which is identified with their origin. Society an...

It's not really. If you had an orchard growing pears, apples, and oranges, and you had to group the output by kind of fruit, that wouldn't be difficul...

I think from my cursory reading of the texts that Aristotle's 'Agent Intellect' amounts to something considerably more than 'awareness'. Again, animal...

It's part of his technique. He sows confusion, chaos and arguments to keep everyone busy and off-balance and to continually change the subject. Works ...

I think actually defining what number is is a very difficult thing to do. If you look at the Wikipedia entry on philosophy of mathematics you will fin...