Wayfarer

Dennett denies that experience is anything other than physical. He says experience merely plays tricks on people so that it appears nonphysical—in oth...

I tried to explain my understanding of 'ground of being' in another thread. (The next post down of mine, on the symbolic nature of scriptures, is also...

I would suggest that a great deal of the 'talking about organisms' that has been done up until recently, was 'deflationary' in respect to the idea tha...

Interestingly, I have just read in another account of the case that Jacalyn Duffin commented on, which says that this case was rejected by the Vatican...

The article I referred to is about a medical specialist who was called in to adjudicate whether a particular case could be accounted for scientificall...

What if you put Mary in a room with a blue, yellow and red ball and said 'which one is red?' if until that moment she had never seen any colours how w...

They do ask those questions. That's why I brought up these cases. And if I or a loved one were diagnosed with cancer (heaven forbid) there is no way I...

So you would put Catholicism generally in the same box? The literature i mentioned concerned cases that were examined by medical specialists specifica...

I really do get that. I have had quite a few relatives die and others permanently disabled, and it raised very tough questions. But the article I refe...

I don't know if I have mentioned these before, but have a look at these sources: http://katjavogt.com Professor of Philosophy at Columbia. She is also...

agree it's an odd title but I will take any excuse to wax about one of my favourite subjects.

Physical facts don't include experience. There's your 'hard problem' in few words.

It is instructive how, nowadays, everything that is said in the various revelatory religions is dismissed. All of what would be presented as evidence ...

Yes, that is very much what appealed to me. I have read parts of it over the years, also Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectics of Enlightenment and Horkh...

'Objecitification' is not quite the same as self-awareness. Certainly I can reflect on my own experience, and indeed on what it is to be aware, but aw...

Thereby instantly curing my nascent interest.....

Well, it's the difference between believing and knowing! That sounds trite, I suppose. I keep harking back to the spiritual books I read as a youth - ...

Anyone here familiar with Herbert Marcuse, and the other 'new left'? I suppose they're passé now (hey even the word 'passé ' is passé ) but a lot of w...

I think that's the signal of something important, and not to be belittled. As for Plato - my knowledge of Plato is sketchy, although I have an intuiti...

You're not really coming to terms with the original arguments from idealist and sceptical philosophers. If it was as obvious and simple as you say it ...

I feel the same way. I think it's a memory or an intuition - possibly it's even what Plato meant, in his idea of 'anamnesis' - that at some time, befo...

I know what you mean. I have liked Jean Luc Ponty at times, but other times, I too get a bit tired of fusion violin. Nevertheless, stellar musicianshi...

Illusions only exist in consciousness. There is a long-standing explanatory issue which is one of the various forms of 'neural binding problem'. The n...

I sometimes think that space travel, science fiction movies, and the belief in interstellar travel and the occupation of other planets is the sublimat...

You say this, but it overlooks something very important. And that is that people are not naturally disposed to recognising meaning or living free from...

Unfortunately there is no Western equivalent of the word 'dharma' which is preferable to 'religion'.

They're not conscious. That is the definition of 'zombie'. They appear to be conscious, but they're zombies. They act like 'conscious beings' but they...

As are sponges. The difference is, you're supposed to be able to converse with them. That is not a straw man argument, to say so simply shows you're n...

Are you going to say you can converse with a sponge?

I gave the original definition of the term 'zombie', which has been adapted for the purposes of a thought experiment because it is said to lack any ki...

The difference being what? A 'philosophical zombie' has no inner life - no thoughts or feelings. That's what makes it a zombie. Otherwise, it would be...

The point about zombies is, they're dead. That's why they're used as a 'thought experiment' - they look like 'a being' but they're not actually beings...

No, it doesn't dissolve it, it dodges it. Meanings are not elsewhere in the sense that they are basic to the process of analysis of any kind of questi...

zombies are dead already, so it wouldn't make any difference. That's part of their shtick.

'From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs', was one suggested solution of a well-known successor of Hegel.

I'll pass it on.

Of course it wouldn't work, and would never seriously be entertained. I only said it by way of highlighting the issue. It's all very well to say 'live...

..because through the Glorious Revolution, the workers will create Heaven on Earth, and have no further need of the imaginary Heaven of religion.

Californians do a damn sight more than that. They're not New Englanders, you know. ;-)

Interesting, and plausible. It might also be a good place to recall the two derivations given for the word 'religion' when I studied comparative relig...

That doesn't answer the question.

But nevertheless, if you asked him 'how do you feel'? or 'what is your favourite movie?' or 'do you prefer dogs or cats?' he would at least have some ...

However, it will leave behind quite a large footprint.

RIght - so they would lie, or mimic. But that is not the same as knowing. Do you think they would pass the turing test?

Isn't 'Western culture' a term for global 'liberal' capitalist culture? It is an identifiable aggregate of ideas, practices, and so on, loosely arrang...

Because if you asked them 'how do you feel', then they wouldn't be able to answer.

Fair point. It was not very well expressed in the first post.

This is the same question as asked by Ross Douthat in his OP a few months back: I referenced this before, it was dismissed as 'rubbish', but I think D...

It was a rhetorical question, not a policy proposal. It is along the lines: the West requires and expects that Muslims consider revising the aspects o...

It might interest you that 'salve' and 'salvation' have the same root (obvious, when pointed out.) But I think from a philosophy of religion viewpoint...