Wayfarer

But isn't the greater part of both philosophy and science engaged in the search for reasons? When I was a kid, there was that famous B&W TV show, Juli...

I quite agree, but surely it is relevant. It provides, if you like, the nexus between logic and observation. It provides a way to integrate the princi...

I just think it reads so much better as ‘only one subject’. This is where the translation of ouisia (being) in Aristotle has had such profound consequ...

The story is that of ‘the modern world’. When I enrolled in Comparative Religion, the first class was taken by the Assoc Prof of that Department. It w...

It’s more that: we have a ‘theory of everything’ that presumes that ‘everything’ consists of matter or matter-energy. But that theory excludes or brac...

Can’t you see that this still holds to the basic premises of materialism - that what is real must be understood in terms of ‘the particles that everyt...

:pray:

‘Organisms’ might be preferable. At least organisms are feasibly subjects whereas there’s no grounds to believe that is true of particles.

We can for practical purposes. Agree that numerical values don’t describe or capture everything but that they’re obviously effective within specific r...

But it's also predictive. Mathematical modelling has enabled the discovery of many phenomena which otherwise could have been known at all. The history...

A good point—you’re drawing attention to the distinction between logical necessity and physical causation. Many will say these are separate domains. B...

Adam Schiff announces he's investigating 'insider trading' in the White House - because several hours before his 180, Trump announced on Truth Social ...

A footnote: the philosophical term is 'ipseity'. I saw that in the sayings of the Advaita sage Ramana Maharishi, that he would frequently draw attenti...

Isn’t that just simple relativism? If reasons are nothing more than accepted utterances, and truth has no role except as a vague "sense," then there’s...

Or being obfuscated by you, more likely.

But by saying 'justification ends wherever we want', you're explicitly relativising it. And hand-waving to boot. You’re making a claim about justifica...

:100: And trade policy is only one facet, albeit a highly visible one. There are numerous accounts of DOGE firing a workforce en masse only to realise...

You’ll need to justify that. The Principle of Sufficient Reason doesn’t mandate complete determinism: there’s room within it for hazard and chance. PS...

It's not a matter of what I want. There is such a thing as logical necessity, and not as a matter of belief. If you don't accept the facts of logic, t...

I can see your point about the definition of scissors in terms of their use - it is true that artifacts can be defined in those terms. But as far as t...

There’s an objective distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic causation. Organisms are self-organizing and perpetuating in a way that artifacts are...

Something only reason could differentiate. But scissors only have extrinsic causes whereas life is self-organizing, it has intrinsic reason

Agree. I’m not overly impressed with Albanese, but overall the Labor cabinet seems far more capable to me than the alternative.

On the contrary, there’s enormous anxiety in the US. Wall St is beside itself. Many very large businesses are highly integrated with supply chains tha...

A couple of years back, I read the excellent Chip Wars, by Chris Miller, about the development of the modern microchip industry. Several chapters are ...

For what reason would you say that? Not at all. We regularly distinguish between success and failure precisely because we know what the intention was....

If you invented the law of the excluded middle, then all I can say is you haven't received the recognition you so plainly deserve.

The academic philosophers and scholars are not always representative of culture at large. The changes I'm referring to are more like tectonic shifts. ...

Whereas I think the division is abundantly obvious, as illustrated for example in Taylor's Secular Age. That Hart quote, in case you didn't follow the...

Understanding the nature and scope of reason is a monumental undertaking. (See for instance video on Schopenhauer's Fourfold Root of Sufficient Reason...

Maybe later. But I would have thought that the old saw that ‘things happen for a reason’ is preferable to its negation.

:up: But even so, there are stochastic regularities, which serve as laws. The specifics are unpredictable but they still occur within a range of possi...

@"Banno" - in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus we find: Why do you think Wittgenstein describes this as an ‘illusion’?

Oh, is it. Grounds for boycott. I’ll read about it in the morning.

I watched an illuminating segment by one of Trump’s media critics, Rachel Morrow. She re-told the tale of how Peter Navarro got into the picture. Trum...

Some reflections on those passages: Which we ourselves are - ‘tat tvam asi’, ‘thou art that’ in the lexicon of Vedanta. The source of all suffering is...

The ‘union of knower and known’ is also a strong motif in all of those traditions. That is the meaning of the ‘unio mystica’ is it not?

I wonder if any of the media are keeping a damage report - a tally of all of the valuable agencies, services and programs being cut by the Trump/DOGE ...

What faculty other than reason might be deployed in pursuit of an answer to that question? And vice versa. If I say something that annoys you, it will...

I think the idea you’re reaching for is what John Vervaeke calls ‘participatory knowledge’, one of the ‘four p’s’ (the others being propositional, per...

There are dozens of current lawsuits against Trump’s executive actions. But legal cases take time, and Trump is a seasoned expert in throwing sand int...

Thanks, Josh. I do subscribe to Contrarian (unpaid), joined when Rubin left the Post.

Isn’t that due to the subjective unity of experience? That conscious experience has a quality of integration and intentionality that can’t be resolved...

Have a look at From Physical Causation to Organisms of Meaning.

Towards determinism? That behaviour is determined by physical causes?

How, though? He’s been empowered by the popular vote to do what he’s doing. The Republican voters still approve his actions overall. His campaign spee...

It turns out, that after the Laura Loomer meeting, Trump didn’t just fire the head and deputy head of the NSA. He fired four others as well. These tar...

Very good! (I’ll take it up a little later, it’s sleep time in my timezone.)