Wayfarer

Trump's style is just to brazenly lie, ignore, and say f*** you to the law, convention and ethics. That's how he 'trumps'. If the GOP won't stop him t...

That is true, but I'm sure there are plenty of disagreements in the area of 'higher mathematics' - philosophy of number, and so on. The point about ma...

'Naturalism' is a bit more soft-edged than materialism, although in practice they're often used interchangeably. But the referent of 'naturalism' is '...

If natural = material then you're advocating materialism. If as you say, knowledge, meaning, information cannot be reduced to material things, then yo...

The rings in a tree stump mean something to an observer who is capable of interpreting it. The reason meaning is fundamental is not because it is a co...

...says materialism. The thing it leaves out is meaning and that turns out to be just as fundamental.

It's impossible in our current cultural context. That is because no agreed set of values or qualitative norms exist against which to adjudicate such c...

And that is an unsupported assertion. What are examples of materialism that are not interpretive paradigms?

Materialism is an interpretive paradigm - a model. It is quite consistent with the overall tradition of Western philosophy insofar as it is a tyoe of ...

I think that explains a lot of evolutionary-style thinking. Not that I'm for one minute aligned to any form of ID or creationism, but I'm very much aw...

Indeed. Actually behind my polemical bluster, I would like to try and bring out a serious point. I recall reading that neoplatonism talked of the sign...

An anecdote. My very first ever university essay was on the subject of intelligence testing - so called IQ tests. It was in the psychology department....

Nope. Don't accept that.

There are a lot of heavy hitters that believe that the Internet is on the verge of becoming a rea Intelligence. I read a story yesterday that Jeff Bez...

Here, 'philosophy' means 'natural philosophy', that is, science. I have been reading up on the 'counter-enlightenment', of which the Romantics are the...

There have been some discussions of Dennett's latest book on the forum already, and some links to reviews of it by Thomas Nagel in the NY Review of Bo...

In classical Buddhist literature, there is a classificatory system of the eight stages of jhana (meditative absorption). The four higher stages are de...

I think you can be conscious but not aware in some states near sleep.Actually I have had the experience of being conscious of being asleep, very rarel...

Maybe you like being depressed. That would explain the thread title.

I know quite a few people like that. Abraham Lincoln said 'folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be' which I have always fou...

I can't help but see depression (melancholia as it used to be called) as an affective malady. Affective, meaning that it is rooted in a perceptual or ...

Theorising about what God is, is futile in the extreme. All we come up with is what is already in our minds. Secondly dogmas about religion are only l...

Here's where I think the heat is from around this issue: that to say anything about another culture, be it Islam or whatever, is basically racist. In ...

Bollocks. There needs to be an accomodation between Islam and the modern secular state. The fact that Islam finds it almost impossible to come to that...

The idea that secular laws and powers are intrinsically corrupt is not unique to Islam. On Giving Too Much to the Human.

That is the point at issue.

I honestly think there is a fact here that you haven't understood. I am not making up the non-separation of religion and state in Islam; it is an ofte...

Well, it's a Wiki site, so feel free to update it. Let us know how you get on. With respect to the Ahok case, here is an analysis of the Ahok case, (p...

Fair enough! Maybe it is more 'positivism', generally, which you had in mind, which is the general idea that culture tends to evolve towards scientifi...

According to a site called WikiIslam: https://wikiislam.net/wiki/Islamic_Law#Separation_of_.27Church.27_and_State Doubtlessly, one will find dissentin...

The particular issue that is the subject of this thread, is exactly about the question of the 'separation of powers'. The remark that was made, which ...

That is not a contradiction.

It's typical, when debating with teenagers, no matter how apparently articulate and well-read, that they end up resorting to swearing.

You know that no Muslim would agree with that, right? But that doesn't matter, because Islam is what Western liberalism says it is, correct?

Exquisite. I take it that he was one of the 'metaphysical poets', like Dunne? Incidentally, on a similar theme - 'God is your being, but you are not h...

Godel had a generally Platonist view of mathematics: Gödel and the nature of Mathematical Truth, Rebecca Goldstein.

@jorndoe - you might find this review informative.

According to Plato, there's the eidos of a thing, which is its ideal form. I think to say that it exists 'objectively' is already mistaken, because th...

If you deny the theocratic tendencies in Islam then so are you. It is a fact that Islam doesn't recognise the separation of Church and State. To say t...

The thread is about a general issue, in reference to a specific case, which has attracted worldwide media coverage. You said Which are they? //edit// ...

Which are those?

The context is The Bible, if that helps. It is basic to all schools of Christianity. Really as this is a philosophy forum, it is hardly the place to h...

right, I get it.

Well, the original intent of philosophy was to follow a way of life, to attain a state of wisdom, characterised by freedom from worry (apatheia), equa...

This is a very clear-cut case, with clear political, social and cultural implications. The Amnesty International page I cited above reproduces the quo...

Nevertheless, I believe that Islamic culture demonstrably exists, in the same way as any other culture. The fact that this is now contested is however...

No. What is now at issue, is that the White House (=Trump) issued a statement categorically denying that Trump asked Comey to drop the investigation i...

I reckon his goose is cooked. We'll see, but my bet is that we won't have to wait long.

I feel duty bound to post this here. https://www.amnesty.org.au/act-now/iar834-indonesia-ahok/ Along with all mention of 'different', also. It's inher...

It's not a Wiki article, it's simply a search on the phrase 'Islamic culture', which produces X million hits, all apparently in reference to something...