Oh, this has to do with your pathological aversion to anything scientific. I'm afraid I can't help you there. I am just going back to the chapter on P...
In the past, I would have said 'revelation means 'The Bible'. 'Realisation' was more characteristic of the language of Indian gurus, like Ramana Mahar...
I don't hold out a lot of hope, really. There are powerful historical forces behind the rejection of the concept of an hierarchical ontology. There wi...
That's a pretty weak effort. Only revelation? How about - the realisation that what most people understand reality to be, is only a shadow on the wall...
In Buddhism and Hinduism, the method is referred to as 'sadhana', which means, 'means of accomplishing'. I suppose that has equivalents in other philo...
Actually I'll have another stab at this question because my previous response was about the notion of 'purpose' generally, whereas here you're asking ...
I will try and answer, but first it might be useful to consider it from a meta-philosophical perspective i.e. what draws us to philosophy. My motivati...
By finding the fastest route to maximum entropy? That's intelligent? I don't want my understanding to be 'faith-based' but it is instructive that it m...
I understand that your approach is not materialistic, but you still say that 'the idea that life has the global purpose of surviving is being replaced...
Nowadays we presume that such things as religious ideas are subjective, personal, private, or internal. Nature, studied by science, is external, share...
I don't recognise that as 'purpose', I think it simply reflects the emptiness of physicalism. The net sum is zero. Really the only appropriate philoso...
I majored in comparative religion, and also studied anthropology, in which I covered a range of theories of religion and religious psychology. The poi...
In mitigation, I hope that the below deconstruction is for good reason. I think the choice of 'billiard balls' as the illustrative metaphor is signifi...
Right. Well, you're illustrating my point, which is the exaggerated role of biology in Western culture. I say that this approach is reductionist in th...
X-) A splendid post, overall, but I would take issue with this characterisation. There is certainly some truth in idea of the opposition, or even the ...
The concept of the "Great Chain of Being" begins with a marriage of Plato's Idea of the Good who is bound by its own principle of plenitude to generat...
OK, I will try and spell out what I see as a basic problem with Hoffman's evolutionary argument. He says that we are cognitively adapted to the needs ...
I'm sure he's a top guy, but the issue I have is that I think there are more simple and direct ways of making his basic argument. When he tries to arg...
'Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of...
Thank you! I did eventually come to a similar conclusion after having started this thread, although I do note that the 'giganticism' of dinosaurs is s...
You have misinterpreted the point. The 'blind spot' was simply for illustrative purposes - the actual processes involved are of far greater depth and ...
But that is common knowledge. You yourself are not conscious of the fact that your perception is a stream of momentary saccades which the mind then in...
Consider these biblical injunctions: 'For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for My sake shall find it. '(Ma...
Harris is no different to utilitarianism. He would have nothing but utter contempt for your Orthodox faith, he thinks it is a brain-destroying delusio...
Considerably more. The whole purpose of the Schrodinger's Cat thought experiment, was to try and depict the strangeness inherent in quantum mechanics ...
OK. I had interpreted your frequent appeal to 'immanence' to imply that you believe the fundamental organising principle, whatever that might turn out...
But he seems to be saying objects consist of conscious agents - that objects are constituted by conscious agents, not that objects are constituted by ...
Actually he does have an answer for that - which is that our MUI (multi-modal user interface) is species-specific. So it generates a shared pool of 'i...
Yeah but Hoffman appears to be saying that what we perceive to be the objects of experience - the metaphorical table of philosophical debates - are re...
I really don't think he's a crackpot, but I too am struggling with this concept of 'conscious agents'. I can see how consciousness creates or construc...
All due respect, there is a change in perspective required. You're arguing from a position of dogmatic realism. The indignation you're expressing is b...
The Buddhist ??nyat? is not nihilism, although often misunderstood as such. From a Christian perspective, I think the most appropriate Biblical analog...
However, there are very broad areas across which we do indeed find common experiences, which is essential to science. Imagine if every experiment yiel...
I agree that it's problematical. But then, try defining 'mind'! As he points out, the 'mind-body' problem has been going around in circles for centuri...
I get that, but what I don't get is the gap between 'bio-' and 'pan-', still. I can see that, given DNA, then something language-like exists. But how ...
Something to do with meaning, one suspects. Still struggling with the meaningfulness of tornadoes, or any sense in which they embody the meaning that ...
Thanks, started on that, it looks very engaging. I also read the first half-dozen posts in the blog you linked to. I think this 'Cartesian theater' is...
What do you think Buddhists would make of it? They don't believe that God created the Universe, but they also don't think that things just randomly ha...
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