Totally with you Mike. But it's not simply confined to semiotics. I think what's happened is that the debates on the forum about the 'origin of life' ...
If you could support that with a citation or example, it would be useful. I would say there are some who appeal to semiotics who would say that, but o...
But it has nearly always been understood in terms of those 'constituent parts' being physical entities. For centuries, that was 'materialism' or 'atom...
I'm sorry but I think this is totally off the mark. The 'science vs religion conflict' is a fascinating topic and one of the themes I am always intere...
All terrorism is evil, but it is often carried out for some purpose - establishment of the Caliphate, the destruction of the 'satanic' US, or some oth...
Empty minds, rootless minds, minds that have lost any intrinsic connection to reality, to other people, to meaning. 'Demons' can't act save for throug...
Nowadays it is simply assumed that 'what exists' and 'what is real' are synonymous, that 'to be' and 'to exist' means the same, but I think they can b...
Well, here we are again. This time, the perpertrator's motives seem completely impossible to discern. No criminal history, no history of violence, no ...
Well, after my initial years of reading spiritual books, Buddhism seemed to have the best overall product. (No kidding!) I was introduced through Alan...
I have a lot in common with you. A lot of us 'seeker types' have been exposed to all manner of philosophies in today's 'spiritual supermarket'. I spen...
I don't understand the push for independence in Catalonia - had hardly been paying attention, but I did hear on a broadcast that the turn-out was extr...
From Introduction to Plato: Selections, ed. Rafael Demos. In my view, Plato represents the distinctive genius of Western culture; Platonism is one of ...
high minded sentiments but a lot depends on what constitutes 'liberty'. There's an outlink in the Douthat editorial to a piece by an erstwhile Playmat...
Hey there's a recent title, I haven't read it, but it's got good reviews - Plato at the Googleplex, Rebecca Goldstein. She's a smart writer, very phil...
I'm by no means a Plato scholar, not ever having had the benefit of education in the Classics; my knowledge is patchy. But I'm definitely a fan. I bel...
It's a notoriously difficult concept to define, but the short answer is that ??nyat? is not simply nothing, but the insubstantial nature of the object...
But isn't your 'metaphysics' fundamentally a function of physics? There is no reason for life to evolve, save as a consequence of the working out of t...
Which ones, for instance? The one that is said to only be able to account for 4% of what must be 'out there'? Or the one which posits infinite multive...
According to the Western philosophical tradition the whole idea is to return to the divine, or to drop it. But speaking so glibly about such ideas - b...
there is a concept of the eternal being outside time altogether - to the divine intellect, everything which is separated for humans in time, is presen...
if you wrote a description of God, then yes, 'always existed' would be part of it. That is the point at issue - all compounded things begin and end, b...
I was going to say I wasn't being pedantic, but that would've been pedantic.... Trump is a real phoney, I'll give him that. You could hardly pick some...
Just to be clear, I don't believe that for one moment. Prigogine made a genuinely novel discovery that went a long way towards showing how complex sel...
ok then - an unmade vase, a vase which has always existed. (Of course there is no such object, but recall this is an analogy. But my objection stands....
No, because who would decide the criteria? X-) And there's your problem in a nutshell. There was a huge conflict over DSM IV, the diagnostic manual fo...
I'm afraid 'who made God?' is not a valid question, because 'the first cause' is by definition something that is unmade. So if the question is, who ma...
Sign on the door says "philosophy forum". In case it wasn't spelled out, Prigogine was born into a universe whose workings he studied, on the basis of...
also, my arguments are not 'complaints' - the fact that you frequently characterise them as such is condescending, you're assuming the authoritative m...
You've shifted the goalposts. I was responding to your argument of the universe being 'fundamentally a process of disordering'. I pointed out that an ...
And also, please do acknowledge how cynical this statement is. (If those reading don't understand the cynicism behind this apparently glib statement I...
Middle of a 9 hour layover at Dallas. How better to while away the hours but argue about the meaning of life, or lack thereof, on the philosophy forum...
But what was the motivation behind the question in the first place? Why did 'negentropy' become a factor of consideration? It was because it appeared ...
A natural theologian could easily point to the 'six numbers' which are said to be indispensable for the existence of anything whatever, and ask 'why t...
So the 'entropic' theory is this - according to thermodynamics life ought not to exist at all, because things are supposed to get less and less organi...
'No reason to get excited', the thief he kindly spoke. 'For there are many here among us, who think that life is but a joke. But you and I, we've been...
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