Wayfarer

You know this - how? That is simply question-begging, i.e. 'assuming what needs to be proven'. Of course, humans are often irrational. I am not saying...

That essay of Bayman's says the N. was 'simultaneously the opponent, proponent and victim of the nihilism he foresaw.'

For Nietzsche, there is no 'beyond'. For Schopenhauer, there is - he might describe himself as atheist (in which case, then, I am also) - but he recog...

Humans aren't always rational - but you have to be rational to know what 'exaggeration' means, or to argue any case whatever. An animal is not going t...

The answer is: both given, and interpreted. it's not one or the other. We're embedded in a 'web of meaning' which we can't be extricated from as it is...

What strikes me, is the unending stream of folks who turn up on philosophy forums - and I've been on them since 2009 - with posts just like this OP. I...

I think an intriguing point about all of this is that now evolutionary biology has been accepted as the kind of secular/scientific equivalent of 'a cr...

...if you view life through the prism of evolutionary biology.

But the distinguishing feature of humans is not simply another biological attribute. While it's true that spiders can make webs, birds can fly, and so...

You will find this article of interest - a reflection on the debate between Einstein and Bergson, by Adam Frank, a science writer whom I respect.

H. Sapiens has abilities which demonstrably are absent in all animals. Nobody here is disputing that humans are in some sense animals, but that they a...

I'm sure that all politicians stretch the truth and lie on occasions. But Trump is a congenital liar, of a completely different magnitude to anyone wh...

They're all good questions. Is experience a kind of proposition? Well, I would have said not, a proposition is by definition a verbal statement. I sup...

There are several contributors here who represent an attitude that Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and the DNC, are the root of all evil in US politics...

Well, if you've said that, you've fallen into the pit of relativism, solipsism, and various other isms, none of them healthy. Surely any proposition c...

There is a stock example in Indian philosophy of 'mistaking a rope for a snake'. The analogy is used to illustrate that we misunderstand what we're lo...

Not. Physicalism is a description of what can be measured physically.

(Y)

All you need do, is realise the Universe is not physical - it's more than, or other than, physical. This falls naturally out of not accepting material...

The point I'm making is: beware the science vs religion narrative in contemporary culture. There is a conflict between religious literalism and scient...

On a more serious note, I was skimming a chapter in a book the other day, about various progressive Christians who were around when Origin of Species ...

And another: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_wKGNetZTKHo/TBv2jHfUjSI/AAAAAAAAIwY/IqDtsxtG5mo/s1600/Manhattan+Island.jpg Examples could be multiplied.....whi...

Another point, and to draw on another philosophical tradition, namely, Vedanta (Hinduism). There is a lovely word in that tradition, namely, Sat-Chit-...

Great! So we do it to survive, but there's actually no reason to survive. Welcome to the modern world.

I think there's an historical factor that ought to be introduced here. I'm referring to the notion of the hierarchy of truth, which is implicit in Pla...

What's disturbing about the politics, are the kinds of truths that Trump doesn't understand. The 'Russia Collusion' story - it has now been documented...

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I often say that a major part of philosophy is learning to to look at your spectacles instead of only through them.

So, everything is already so f***ed that there's no use complaining about how f***ed Trump is. The fact that you put all of your opinions in bold face...

I studied a book about that general idea back in the day, in Philosophy of Science - 'The Structure of Scientific Revolution' by Thomas Kuhn. But the ...

Obama introduced the Dodds Frank Act: Trump announced as soon as he got into office that he was going to abolish it, which he has. Trump can't pass an...

That's because there needs to be some distinction between the scientific and (for want of a better word) the spiritual. I don't say we can't know anyt...

But it's also fundamental to philosophy and science. If there is no ultimate truth - well, that itself then becomes a kind of ultimate truth, namely t...

Philosophy is often difficult to fathom, but that doesn't mean it's 'tangled'. It all goes back to the ruminations of the difference between reality a...

and what I say is that you're not actually engaged in philosophy any more. You're just talking about talking. @John - reply later, I'm sitting in my c...

I am also not materialist indeed have always argued against it since first joining forums. BUt I still think you're misunderstanding the 'observer pro...

I still don't agre that objects are all in the mind. The mind plays a foundational role in 'constructing' or 'creating' objects. It is this role which...

Debates with Banno inevitably end up with long discussions about The Real Cup. It's a placeholder for 'reality' itself but when you discuss it in thos...

Is that a literal statement, because it seems to me a completely unprovable assertion. Or do you mean, 'the kinds of objects which astronomy and cosmo...

Thanks for the words of encouragement. I am indeed also committed to my life's work but it's the 'means of livelihood' that I find challenging.

That's not what is at issue. The assertion that 'nothing is real' is nihilism pure and simple. You general attitude seems to be realism. There are alt...

Not at all! The idea of there being an ultimate point-particle, the indivisible atom, was indubitably undermined by the discoveries of quantum mechani...

It's a very subtle and complicated argument. My take on it is: there is an irreducibly subjective pole, aspect or element to reality. That is, there i...

Precisely the reason analytical philosophy became a wasteland.

I didn't 'change the subject'. The subject is the unconscious, and Jung was one of the foremost commentators on that very subject in the 20th century....

That is really a 'thought-experiment' type of point, intended to show that what we apprehend to be an unambiguously real object - 'the cup' - is also ...

I don't think so. I think the interpretation you're referring to - the 'instinctive animal ID' - is only one aspect of the story. And indeed, Freud wa...

I first read Berger and Luckmann's book, Social Construction of Reality, in a comparative religion tutorial, decades back. I railed against it: do we ...

I don't see how it could possibly be. Quite apart from psycho-analytic theories, it is a physiological fact that many of the regulatory, hormonal, and...