That makes him a 'medieval' realist, i.e. accepts the reality of universals - so not a 'realist' in the modern sense. Review of Paul Forster, Peirce &...
Have a browse of The Cult of Nothingness: The Philosophers and the Buddha, (although, that said, I think Schopenhauer’s interpretation was superior to...
Actually 'hoping not to exist' is one of the hindrances that has to be overcome! Which sounds highly counter-intuitive, but it is expressed in terms o...
One point is, crystals and rock formations don't display any of the recognisable characteristics of organisms, which is the ability to grow, heal, rep...
An interesting point about Buddhism - first, it denies that there are 'essences' in the Aristotelian sense. A being is understood in terms of the skan...
One point that occurs to me, is that if the only real examples of 'design' are those created intentionally by h. sapiens - and obviously we're totally...
Thanks, that is helpful. I am trying to pinpoint exactly where Western culture lost some fundamental elements of Platonist epistemology. I think was c...
There are many different points in that short passage. First, I don’t know if it can be said that sub-atomic particles do exhibit ‘intelligent behavio...
Well, I suppose so. I admit I was trying to make a point which was somewhat tangential to yours. (Although universals are not actually 'objects' excep...
'Outside', in what sense? I think the question is, can the existence of life be understood in terms of known, current science. And I think it's still ...
It’s a fundamental consequence of the constitution of modern science. One of the consequences of ‘the book of nature being written in mathematics’ (Ga...
It is - but when we say that 'one triangle is the same as another' that is an intellectual operation - we're able to say 'this shape is the same as th...
Actually, the Platonic analysis of this apparently obvious point, was that no object truly is, on account of it being an appearance only, without inhe...
Don't be fooled by the claim that science understands how the brain and mind are related. It is unknown. I can see from your posts, you're intelligent...
One of the very first things I learned about on philosophy forums was Eugene WIgner's The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sci...
I think what's happening is that you're seeing through the materialism that almost everyone takes for granted nowadays - the obvious incongruity betwe...
Isn’t this him? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b7/Cosmo_Kramer.jpg/250px-Cosmo_Kramer.jpg He was good on Seinfeld. Should have stuc...
I think a good place to start that question is historically, and in particular, in relation to the history of philosophy, with the Greeks, and with th...
I have no interest in flogging a dead horse. Positivism is one aspect of the whole tendency towards materialism, reductionism, and 'scientism'. It ado...
Not for want of trying. In which case, there is no reason why they can't provide a basis for qualitative judgements concerning metaphysical and episte...
You’ve asked me that a number of times. I mentioned that I did a degree in comparative religion, which encompassed a lot of anthropological studies of...
Totally agree. I read a really significant book in around 2010, Michael Allen Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Modernity. It depicts nominalism i...
Sure, I encountered one reading that very sentence. The rest is typical nominalist evasion. General nouns rely on there being generalisations, which a...
Dean Inge, Christian Mysticism and Speculative Platonism This is from Clement of Alexandria, around first-second century AD, when the idea of there be...
But are there only two options here - fideism, acceptance on faith, or 'scientific demonstration?' Aside from faith (doxa or pistis) and science (scie...
The ontological argument is, basically, in order for us to have an idea of a perfect being, such as God, then it must have some basis in reality, as i...
Well, as the comment attributed to Pseudonym was made in response to one of my posts, I ought to chip in. The proposition that ‘science is investigati...
It’s not a matter of ‘prejudice’. It is simply the case that ‘the nature of experience’ has an intrinsically first-person aspect, which is excluded fr...
The glaring problem in all of this is that T. doesn’t appear to understand what is at issue. He seems to think that he has been accused of personally ...
Except for being no longer subjective, i.e. no longer what it actually is. Which is the ‘hard problem of consciousness’ in a nutshell, and another top...
I don't know. I read that passage you linked to from the Summa, and I really don't think Aquinas does succeed in refuting Objection 1. And I think sub...
All fair points, but it's worth noting that Aquinas says the existence of God remains 'a matter of faith'. And I think it's demonstrably not the case ...
That is really not an idea that is exclusive to religion as such, although the demarcation between religion and philosophy in such questions is proble...
One thing essential to understand is that in ancient philosophy, it was always assumed that 'being' - to be real, to actually exist - is or has an inh...
Indeed, but that is consistent with what I said - that the 'proofs of God' were scholastic arguments, intended for a scholastic audience. I don't thin...
except for -well - any general noun. 'I like apples.' 'Which kind?' 'Oh, Delicious, in particular. Please pass me that one.' Pause 'That's not an appl...
Also, I don't believe that people were generally persuaded to believe that in the Bible by evidence and argumentation. There might have been some exce...
I disagree with Feser on that, at least in part because I think there were hardly any atheists in Aquinas' day, as belief in God was practically unive...
My first ever philosophy lecture was by a professor named Alan Chalmers, whose well-known book is called ‘What is this thing called science?’ Very wel...
None of the scholastic 'arguments' were intended as polemical devices to convert non-believers. Nor were the psuedo-scientific hypothesis purporting t...
Just recall the kinds of matters about which Socrates professed not to know. They were such questions as the nature of virtue, the nature of justice, ...
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