Wayfarer

It's not detached from the living of life, but you need to detach yourself from 'what everyone thinks', the consensus reality, to pursue it. Most peop...

Incidentally, the original impulse behind Kant's ding an sich was simply that we can only know things as they appear to us, not as they are in themsel...

That seems very close to 'objectivism', associated with Ayn Rand. I think a seminal text in the history of philosophy, concerning the distinction betw...

true, and it's not something I do. //ps//but then, this is a philosophy forum.

I had an hilarious dream last night, where I was in a service station and wanted to buy a can of Coke Zero. I looked around and noticed that things we...

So, more of the same. Childish insults, exchanging barbs with tv show hosts, more bluster, more narcissism. Meanwhile total incompetence on the legisl...

First post on 'old' forum, January 2009: "Here I want to consider whether there is a difference between what is real and what exists. 'Exist' is deriv...

I think you're fibbing about the 'sometimes'. Learn who to listen to.

Nobody understands that what is real and what exists are not the same.

well I guess, but at least the ceremonial aspects were supposed to invest it with significance. Anyway I get really tired of all these types who bleat...

I think that doesn't do justice to the role of religion in the formation of culture. It also completely fails to grasp the kind of existential issue w...

Yes, I would go along with that, but the question is: what does it mean to 'exist as an abstract object'? Again, I'm not trying to elicit a definite a...

there's a degree of fanaticism, or at least dogmatism, on all sides. Actually my long-standing view is that the dynamics of ecclesiastical power held ...

Karen Armstrong has an interesting take on it in her essay Should we believe in 'belief'?

Hence the significance accorded to marriage in traditional culture.

I too have explored this idea although it is not often mentioned in analytical philosophy. But the definition I would propose is to look at the etymol...

Thanks, love that story, wanted to use it for a talk I'm giving next Tuesday, and didn't know the source.

As much as I disdain materialism, I feel an obvious rejoinder to this claim is that one cannot drop an if-then statement on one's foot. Sure, if one's...

'Named' is a better translation than 'called' in my opinion (any actual Chinese scholar, please feel free to correct me). The point, as I explained ab...

The famous Libet experiments appear to demonstrate that there is a decision to act before one is consciously aware of it. These are often taken to dis...

Google an essay called 'Frege on knowing the Third Realm', Tyler Burge. Interesting read on these topics.

I have decided to assume that in some way I did decide to be born. This can be understood metaphorically, in the sense that the processes leading to m...

Incidentally just to unite these two disparate points about interpretation of physics, and Taoism, hereunder Niels Bohr's familial Coat of Arms, which...

I can see a lot of Mark Twain in Bugs, now you mention it. I loved both when I was a kid. ...of any but physical objects. If Platonic realism is the c...

Again - a lot rides on the meaning of 'to exist'. Bugs Bunny exists - as a cultural reference, a cartoon figure, that will be recognised by billions o...

The whole motivation for the so-called 'relative state formulation' is to avoid the observer effect or the collapse of the wave-function issue. The ba...

It is not 'my quote'. It is a quote from the scientist who devised the term 'many worlds' for this theory (namely, Bryce DeWitt). The quote does not r...

It most assuredly does. It was implicit in Everett's paper, and then made explicit later, that: Bryce Seligman DeWitt, R. Neill Graham, eds, The Many-...

that 'branching' means what it says - every outcome happens in as many universes as there are outcomes - which is infinitely many. It doesn't matter w...

Agree. The fascinating thing is that no two translations are the same, in fact some verses read very differently in different translations. It's parti...

No - don't rephrase it. Consider the meaning of the three words: 'the universe branches'. Leave the double-slit out of it - just think about what is b...

The Catholic Church devised the office of 'the Devil's Advocate', and the intention of the role was to try and disprove claims of miracles. And as Jac...

But by definition, whatever cause science is concerned with, is not of a different order to the natural order, i.e. is not transcendent to the natural...

Just consder what that actually says.

Sure - it was just the phrasing which I was remarking on. they talk in terms of a relationship with the sacred but that has a different connotation to...

The word 'Bible', as I'm sure you know, basically means 'book' (same as 'bibliography'). The point being, 'the book' was the collected wisdom of the w...

I take issue with that. They are more like abductive arguments, i.e. arguments to the most likely cause. But an empirical argument would require that ...

Actually I don't think that is the point - it's overly theist. The standard Taoist description for the phenomenonal domain is 'the ten thousand things...

I asked the question, what would a 'branch' be, in relation to 'a universe which branches'. That's a much bigger deal than a 'thought experiment'.

For the simple reason that 'to speak of' is to locate within the realm of phenomena, 'this' as distinct from 'that'. It is, in the terminology of reli...

But they do imply an infinite number of parallel universes - which is the only rebuttal I believe necessary. Bohr had the good grace to meet with Ever...

Would like to, but a bit flat out at the moment in the real world, can't really give it the attention it might require. Thanks, though! X-)

Have a look at these two OP's in the NY Times Is Free Speech Good for Muslims? The Islamic Dilemma The basic issue in both these essays, written from ...

Actually a really interesting case study in the whole question of the supremacy of scientific realism is that of the Einstein-Bohr debates. There's a ...

I too read and gained a lot from reading Alan Watts - and also D T Suzuki and other authors on those themes. I especially liked Watt's books The Supre...

Trump is notoriously uninformed. There is a quote from one of his 'books', 'The day I realized it can be smart to be shallow was, for me, a deep exper...

Of course he is. He verges on imbecilic.

which it provides in spades....it has pages of statements of his which are shown to be false, in some cases apparently deliberate falsehoods, in other...

Landru said about 14 months ago that Trump represents the American ID - those who want to say, f*** government, f*** muslims, f*** mexicans, f*** ever...

How does a $15.11 an hour guy pay a $375.24 an hour guy? Let alone the teams of professionals required to treat serious accidents or injury? As BC say...