Wayfarer

It’s happened again, as it always will in today’s America. (Remember Obama lamenting after Sandy Hook, how the speech he had to give never ought to be...

Excellent post. I was recently musing that science proceeds on the basis of ‘what we can explain’ and metaphysics with ‘what explains us’. That takes ...

Well, not really - there's still the outstanding problem of dark matter.

Just by way of footnote to the above, abstracts of the other two 'greatest problems'

This is close to the heart of the matter. The question is about the reality of concepts. According to (old school) realism, it is the mind's ability t...

It's not 'morality' that's irrational, but the modern conception of what constitutes 'reason'. That's not 'a fine point', it is behaviourism.

Who does that sound like.... :-} So long as everyone reading this understands the kind of person they’re conversing with, then my input would have ser...

I think there’s a problem with your depiction of reason which is this. By “reason” you are implicitly referring to, or thinking of, scientific justifi...

Nails it. The only minor beef I have is that blaming neoliberalism for Trump is a little like blaming a rape victim for dressing provocatively. But I’...

I think it is something that coincides with and may be causally related to the modern period, and that this aspect of Cartesian dualism is a pretty ce...

Well, Descartes himself theorised that res cogitans interacted with the body (which was purely material) through the pituitary gland. So it inevitably...

I don't take that to be the point at all. It take it to symbolise the very advent of knowledge, it was consequence of self-consciousness, of the abili...

A long article by George Monbiot in the Guardian is quite persuasive concerning the faults of neoliberalism, in my opinion. He identifies it primarily...

It is indubitable, in my opinion. If you're familiar with Ryle's criticism of the 'ghost in the machine', that is very much based the problem of treat...

I interpret the ‘fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil’ to be a symbolic reference to the advent of self-consciousness - the ability to ...

Thank you, although I stress again, I’m not writing that because I necessarily believe it, but because it is the teaching of the Christian church as I...

Because you seem a reasonable person in most respects, except for your opinions about politics, such as your frequent dismissals of the importance of ...

Do you think this might explain your dismissive attitude towards democracy, which you frequently express? Along with your admiration for the 'strong m...

Well, as I said, do post some pictures of your planet sometime. Do they have cars? Aeroplanes?

Personally, I agree with you, but that is not what Latin Christianity believes, which, following Augustine, holds that man is corrupted by sin, the re...

'Everyone has a right to their own opinions, but not to their own facts" ~ Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

It's because he's incompetent, narcissistic. demonstrably dishonest, doesn't understand the office that he occupies, has never previously held an elec...

Stone her! Stone her!

You must post some pictures from your planet one day. It must be very different to ours.

So - decentralisation, global localism, efficient downsizing, distributed networks of production and distribution. To be ‘too big to fail’ should mean...

This thread is an exercise in stereotyping. A relative of mine is convinced that Cultural Marxism is to blame, but it’s a bit too much like a conspira...

A particular pet peeve of mine, are the things that are said to nowadays ‘beg the question’. As all of us literati know, ‘begging the question’ is an ...

Actually I’ve realised why the Wall St Journal wants to get rid of Mueller - because of the risk of it delaying the corporate tax cuts, which is the s...

I would have thought that one doctrinally-correct Christian reply would be that whilst the conscience is innate, the will has been corrupted by origin...

I'm not after a definition of meaning, really. It's too fundamental a term to admit of definition - 'what's the meaning of meaning' :-} . I'm simply s...

What I'm referring to, is the fact that the meaning of 'res cogitans' is often interpreted in line with the vernacular understanding of 'substance' - ...

Is all hope vain, and all faith bad? Recall that the 'root of Cartesian anxiety' is the 'feeling that scientific methods, and especially the study of ...

I'm not denying that such theories can't be useful, but that they often occupy a position of exaggerated importance in the landscape. You make my poin...

OK on a more serious note, I think I do have an explanation for that. I’ve said in a number of threads, there’s a very deep problem with the way the u...

Thank heavens for supervenience physicalism, eh? One less thing to clean off your windscreen.

Shannon's work is about 'the quantification of information', and science is also centred around quantification. Well and good, but it's a different ma...

Very true, Metaphysician Undiscovered. From Nagel’s book: (pp. 35-36) By this move, the mind is to all intents declared out of scope for science, righ...

That’s how you get to the absurdity of Dawkin’s ‘apparent’ design - looks like ‘a design’ but really it’s simply a series of accidents. ‘Teleology is ...

How dare a mere philosopher question the scientific consensus. It never ceases to amaze me, the ease with which people seem to assume that 'we're just...

I know! Shannon is of course concerned with quantitative representation of information - about the maximally efficient ways to compress and transmit i...

Have I got some of those? I didn't know I was so lucky.

Thanks! Still reading up on it. But the thing I don't get, is that, as I said, you could represent a particular item of information, using any kind of...

My question was about the equivalence of thermodynamic and logical entropy - the 'equation' which you referred to. So I looked it up, and that is a qu...

Sorry - it was split from this post. Should have said that.

Indeed. Aren't they Kant's 'primary intuitions'? But I'm so glad you see the point. Really this is the single issue that has been my main interest, ev...

You must post some photos of your planet one day Augustino. It must be a very colourful place.

You got it. Not so much ‘outside’ as ‘prior to’. But, right on the money.

I have often pondered the idea that Buddhist cosmology is very like a multi-level, multi-player game. The reason why, is that beings perpetually cycle...

I can't begin to explain. That is why I ignored your posts before - it's not as if I don't think there's an answer, or that I don't have a response, b...

How come that is not the very same subjectivism you’re criticising in the top paragraph of your post? You might mean ‘first person’, rather than ‘priv...