Noam Chomsky's book Why Us? is about the sudden emergence of rationality and language (and presumably self-awareness and myth-making along with it) in...
What about Bhutan? Surely a nation with a Gross National Happiness index would have to rate somewhere. Here in Australia, all the pedestrian bridges o...
he's saying that linguistic ability emerged suddenly and 'was designed as a computational system' - although I see that as an analogy in this context....
So you had no choice but to register here and post exactly what you posted, right? And I had no choice but to ask you about it; couldn't have done oth...
And the possibility you reflexively discount, it seems to me, is that you don't have to be. I think what you're referring to is a meta-cognitive defic...
I doubt it. Have a look at the book review I posted earlier this thread - it is of a recent book co-authored by Chomsky on just this question. My view...
No, I don't agree with that, for the reasons given by John Searle, et al, through such arguments as the Chinese Room argument. Besides, computers are ...
I don't think there is much point in speculating about 'an ideal world'. On a practical level, Planet Earth, is clearly imperiled on multiple fronts -...
I agree that the idea of 'submitting' to science is rather odd. It seems like the kind of thing a person from a religious background might say, having...
It's almost been hijacked by the frenetic interest around the possibility of using it as the killer blow against the Trump presidency. To that extent,...
I think there is a sense in which science is 'an arbiter of truth' for the secular world. As Steve Pinker says in his paean to science, Science is not...
That's a muddled take on it, in my opinion. 'Will' is indeed associated with Schopenhauer, but I don't know if he would categorise 'will' as transcend...
You would do well to study philosophy of science, particularly Michael Polanyi, Thomas Kuhn, and Paul Feyerabend. It's actually quite a difficult subj...
I ought to expand on that a little. I think that Wittgenstein was generally opposed to any species of metaphysical idealism - this is in large part wh...
Speaking of which, there's an important NY Times editorial which re-focuses on the question of just what 'the Russia thing' was about in the first pla...
I only know snippets and snatches of Wittgenstein, but one of them is, 'if we were to set a limit to thinking, we would have to think both sides of th...
But that assumes that the capacity to grasp meaning and language is something that can be understood in biological terms - that it is the product of g...
which is a consequence of a deep cognitive flaw.... I think it is indisputable that Nature seems to give rise to endless forms. It has a kind of exube...
It seems to me your post could have been more or less copied verbatim from a text-book on neoliberalism. Self-interest, I can see, but by what's 'enli...
Once language is possible, stories and fictitious characters may be devised. They exist in that sense but only that sense. There is no Thadeus Goldfar...
I have been reading some more about 'the Russia collusion'. Comey testified that he didn't think there was anything in the NY Times story that really ...
Actually Nietzsche spoke admiringly of the Buddha, although in my view his interpretation was incorrect. He described Buddhism as the 'sigh of an exha...
Well, a big part of philosophy used to be 'mastering the passions' and so on. Why do you think celibacy was a part of many religious and spiritual mov...
The biological drive to procreate rarely takes cost into consideration. It is the driving force of nature itself. I think it is very close in meaning ...
You know this how? There are credible reports of Russian hackers leaking DNC emails, and demonstrated links between Paul Manafort and Russian money. W...
Sure, I got that, and I was commenting on that particular meme, which a lot of people give voice to. And, very much resonate with those ideas. My defi...
To which I should add, that feeling of the meaninglessness of vast empty space is very much a product of a particular period of history; Nietzsche's '...
That seems really preachy and a bit patronising. I should add, I'm not a member of any specific Buddhist organisation or formal affiliation. I use the...
They're separate questions. The urge to procreate is a biological drive, actually the fundamental biological drive. I subscribe to a Buddhist philosop...
It seems to me like your rationalising. 'Most folks', said Abe Lincoln, 'are about as happy as they want to be'. I have always found that a very hard ...
I don't want to get into an argument about it, but myself and many other people had truly profound experiences by those means. Of course, the wise rea...
As for how mystical experiences 'happen' by other means - there is a whole range of answers. Sometimes they come unbidden, sometimes as a consequence ...
Interesting fact about the three main hallucinogens (psilocybin, mescaline, and LSD): they're not intoxicants. Particularly in the latter case, the am...
If it has dimensions, then how can it be a simple unity? That is exactly what 'the atom' was supposed to be. A note on this from a modern Catholic phi...
Which is, as I mentioned, very much like 'the singularity' that preceded the big bang, isn't it? Georges LeMaitre's original paper was called, I seem ...
Today's installment is Trump's first Cabinet meeting with everyone assembled singing praises to the greatness of Dear Leader: Source It's very similar...
There's a journal I read from time to time called 'anamnesis', which is of course a Platonist term, for 'unforgetting' or recalling things forgotten. ...
The only problem I see with it is the inelegance of the language. I would prefer 'irreducible' or 'absolute'. It is worth recalling what problem the '...
For which he is now being defamed by the allt right and the person who occupies the office of the President. The only way to defuse the forensic accur...
'imagining a universe with a single thing' seems literally impossible to me. Even the concept of 'in' requires a distinction or a duality - the area o...
What actual entity is a simple unity? Objects themselves are always composite. 'The atom' was supposed to be a simple entity, but atoms in that sense ...
I suppose so, although I don't know if he thought in those terms. In any case, Russell comments, in his entry on Hume in the HWP, that Hume's sceptici...
The latest installment in this ever more bizarre spectacle: that after James Comey's testimony, Trump came out and declared himself 'vindicated' by wh...
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