Wayfarer

with nothing to clean the bones.... As I’ve said before - earth is our spaceship, and it’s the only one.

Aha! I should have thought to translate it back again. Actually I have passed one exam in Latin but that was (let’s see) 1966, so I plead forgetfulnes...

Non enim ex materia gustum (No Latin, either, although I guess you’d still have Google Translate.)

No beaches, forests, wildlife, rivers, cities and towns, habitable land, mainly sub-zero desert landscapes with poisonous atmosphere. Nothing much wro...

Have a look back at my first one or two responses to this thread, about the purported Indian origins of Greek scepticism. Buddhism is, in most people’...

I sometimes wonder if in our age the dream of’the conquest of space’ is the sublimated image of Heaven. We don’t believe in an actual heaven, so the n...

Presumably not so much for someone who actually believes it.

...depending on what you mean by ‘exist’.,..

That's sure a get-out-of-jail-free card, for anything whatever. 'Works for me!'

That's a big statement!

Oh never mind then. But I think the post in which I mentioned it above, gives a pretty good definition, however, there's another thread, namely this o...

That word was cherry-picked and taken out of context. But the way it is interpreted has considerable metaphysical implications. I have no doubt at all...

I've gone back over some of the points you have raised. One that has been lost in the to and fro is that I acknowledged at the outset that universals ...

Don't know, I've always been totally crap with investments. I'm just one of the punters who missed out and is now watching the news with incredulity. ...

So this could actually transform from an interesting speculative bubble, and 'gee I wish I had bought some of them in 2010', to an actual economic AND...

There was a story in the last few days that if Bitcoin's growth were to continue at this exponential rate, it would be using ALL the world's energy re...

This is on my watchlist for tonight https://www.netflix.com/au/title/80154500

It is completely different, in that there is abundant evidence for evolution by natural selection - fossils, DNA studies, geological data - and zero e...

Notation systems, and even numerical systems, are matters of convention - you could calculate in base 12 but it would be very awkward. But whatever no...

I don't think a straight out comparison between religion and science is either accurate or helpful. I think the comparison ought to be between what is...

Actually sorry to digress but just made a Thai beef salad with faux beef. Trying to scale back on meat for environmental and ethical reasons. Jolly ni...

By number, I mean real numbers. I guessed. I think it’s a mistake to believe that you can explain numbers and the like. Mathematics is one of the main...

whatever it is, sounds good to eat.

Intentionality might have been a poor choice of words. All I meant was that the ‘argument from design’ is only one aspect of a much larger issue.

Like I said.....

This is obviously a very complex issue, but one response is to equate numbers with brain processes is a form of category mistake. Obviously, one needs...

We’re waiting for the quantum computer to come along.

(Y) I think similar ideas are found in Varela and Maturana’s work on embodied cognition. What you’re saying makes a lot of sense to me.

The usual expression is ‘methodological naturalism’.

Sure, that’s perfectly true. I think the comment I was reacting to was your ‘comparing humans to alarm clocks’ and what you see as the weird implicati...

So, what do you take 'the allegory of the Cave' to be about, then? Don't you read it as a metaphor for spiritual or noetic illumination?

I don’t think Kant would bother responding. You can’t argue with instinctive realists, they have to begin to question their own sense of the solidity ...

None of them were atheists. No. How about yours, Janus? How is that going for you? I did take the time and trouble to do two degrees which are actuall...

I suppose what I'm getting at, is that the human mentality provides a sense of scale, and a perspective, through which any judgements about 'what exis...

The book I was looking at yesterday was the one I mentioned at the time, 'Spinoza and Medieval Jewish philosophy. Not scholastic Catholicism, obviousl...

I studied Hume under David Stove. He was a great guy, and a terrific teacher. Very sympathetic to me, who was kind of a rebel without a clue. But I do...

Again, that is far too sweeping. Kant didn't reject rationalist philosophies altogether. He critiqued both rationalist and empiricist philosophies of ...

Bitcoin's insane energy consumption, explained Who would have thought that cryptocurrency could significantly contribute to global warming by consumin...

A relevant passage from Bryan Magee's book on Schopenhauer's Philosophy, which addresses this point: I think what the realist does, and this is someth...

Well, we know that now. But I still reckon that the idea of determinism and of life being the 'accidental collocation of atoms' is the go-to philosoph...

The symptom not the cause. In that I would agree with Landru. —?Pierre Simon Laplace, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities Heisenberg has holed that...

Not the point. We had atomistic reductionism rammed down our throats by all the experts in white coats who were ready to assure us that the ultimate t...

They’re a minority in Western philosophy, albeit temporarily influential. But, I don’t want to hijack Possibleaaran’s excellent thread. And also, comp...

You’re in Schrodinger’s Cat territory, which is the graveyard of many a thread. However, I can produce one of my stock quotes on this exact point, fro...

In light of the history of the subject of philosophy. In my view, the discipline of philosophy comprises seeing through the illusion of materialism.

I think the problem with mathematical operations being 'social constructions' is that through them, many genuinely novel discoveries have been made. I...

I think this is very close to the naturalistic fallacy. And besides, none of the quoted passage does anything to address what has been rightly called ...

Further to Spinoza - I have been looking into his well-known phrase 'the intellectual love of God' (amor Dei intellectualis ), and it is thoroughly me...

But in this example there's no 'info'. A random squiggle doesn't convey anything, it literally has no information content. So whether you can form a m...

What I’m trying to do in this thread is to develop an argument for non-material realities, by appealing to the nature of reason, mathematics, and logi...