You are viewing the historical archive of The Philosophy Forum.
For current discussions, visit the live forum.
Go to live forum

Wayfarer

Comments

The problem is, such comments represent the very kind of attitude which makes reaching consensus impossible. If, as pointed out, you demand the kind o...
March 02, 2017 at 22:14
Says who? Without even having to quote specifics, it is general knowledge that human consumption of fossil fuels has injected hundreds of billions of ...
March 02, 2017 at 20:53
Agree. That is a bit of a 'bait and switch' I'm afraid. Persons are not objects, but subjects of experience.
March 02, 2017 at 20:34
They're both instances of the same particular; they're effectively duplicated, or cloned. The referent is only important insofar as you need to direct...
March 02, 2017 at 10:25
Incidental to the above, I notice that Galen Strawson has a new book due out: The Subject of Experience by Galen Strawson Link: http://a.co/e1NlB23
March 02, 2017 at 10:17
Indeed you can. I said: But, I also said that experiences are 'undergone by a subject', so that they're not objects in the same way that the objects o...
March 02, 2017 at 10:13
I think panpsychism is trying to extend naturalism. The paper that I read first was the well-known one by Strawson, which was discussed many times on ...
March 02, 2017 at 09:49
Right. So basically, it is a kind of naturalism - that 'experience' must be a feature of the natural world, we just haven't discovered 'experiencum' i...
March 02, 2017 at 09:33
Agree. Embodied cognition draws a lot on phenomenology, mentioned in the OP.
March 02, 2017 at 08:18
Good observation! Please point out where in the OP I said 'we can't know anything', or anything I said that could be taken to imply that claim. That i...
March 02, 2017 at 07:41
I think that signs imply minds, but admit it's not something that could ever be resolved conclusively. If you're wondering how 'reductive materialism'...
March 02, 2017 at 04:01
In other words, it's unbearable to think that someone else might actually be wrong about something. We can only get along if we're all equally right -...
March 02, 2017 at 03:54
I would have thought that this proposition: is exactly the is/ought problem. The 'moral experience' is the subjective sense of 'what ought to be done'...
March 02, 2017 at 00:50
It's the 'is/ought' problem again. What is the warrant for 'it is wrong' beyond subjective opinion? This is what religion and social mores used to und...
March 02, 2017 at 00:34
I have thought about this some more. That is indeed what a Christian would say - this is what I was taught, in religious education. But when I asked '...
March 01, 2017 at 23:56
That is how a Christian would have to see it. Part of what defines Christianity is that it is the 'one true faith'. As someone whose spiritual formati...
March 01, 2017 at 23:33
So what is your interpretation of the verse I quoted? Do you believe that every individual ever born literally lives forever? Then, there's the questi...
March 01, 2017 at 22:42
Question: I would have thought that the ability of the mind to heal itself from brain injury, by re-routing its activities to other areas of the brain...
March 01, 2017 at 20:56
Well, if that's your view, nothing to discuss.
March 01, 2017 at 09:55
That is how I interpret Christian orthodoxy.
March 01, 2017 at 09:46
The Buddhist teaching that 'nothing is self' doesn't deny the reality of agency, or of cause and effect. As long as the individual identifies with the...
March 01, 2017 at 07:53
Well, Buddhists accept the fact of re-birth but they don't worship a creator-god, and it is generally said that they also don't believe in 'the soul',...
March 01, 2017 at 06:17
There is an entire genre of literature devoted to synthesising Platonism, neo-platonism and Biblical eschatology. Some of the early Greek-speaking the...
March 01, 2017 at 05:34
I really don't know. As I said, I'm vague about the details. I think, suffice to say, I don't believe the human is purely physical (actually, nothing ...
March 01, 2017 at 02:03
I agree with you that what is driving the apparent 'right turn' in America, Europe and also here in Australia, is basically dissappointment with the c...
March 01, 2017 at 00:58
But it is unquestionable, it's beyond doubt. The whole problem in this area is that various interests have created the FUD factor - fear, uncertainty ...
March 01, 2017 at 00:52
I think 'avoiding burning fossil fuels' should unquestionably be a major policy goal. Solar and wind power are certainly less polluting, the only real...
March 01, 2017 at 00:43
that kind of expression plays right into the hands of petro-chemical industry scare-mongering. Today's news from Australia - 'Disastrous': Australia's...
February 28, 2017 at 22:46
Reincarnation is a bad word. But I think there has to be some kind of means by which cultural and other forms of knowledge are transmitted, and I don'...
February 28, 2017 at 21:54
Trump has displayed a lot of fascist tendencies, but I think it's a stretch to say that he's actually facist. But notice the constant tendency to say ...
February 28, 2017 at 21:46
Yeah, sorry, uranium. Apparently there's an alternative nuclear technology based on thorium (I think it is) which is said to be a lot less polluting. ...
February 28, 2017 at 20:54
'False arrest is a common law tort, where a plaintiff alleges he or she was held in custody without probable cause, or without an order issued by a co...
February 28, 2017 at 20:51
That's interesting, if it's true. But I had read that account of the emergency of 18th Sept 2008 from a number of sources. Recall, it was three days a...
February 28, 2017 at 09:46
'Oh, you're saying Trump is untruthful? So, you're saying that he's "like Hitler"! Hey, that's an hysterical reaction.' Kind of apt, in a thread calle...
February 28, 2017 at 09:18
It doesn't make any difference to the price of real estate, though.
February 28, 2017 at 08:49
My instinctive answer to your question is that most people believe there is nothing beyond, because nowadays they totally identify with the physical b...
February 28, 2017 at 08:37
Although I will add again that an event can neither be true or false. An event either happens or if doesn't, and an account of it might be true or fal...
February 28, 2017 at 08:00
Still reckon 'based on actual events' or 'based on a true story' are better English, but I'll admit it's a very pedantic distinction.
February 28, 2017 at 07:05
Don't forget oil is the basis of plastics also. It is indispensable for an enormous range of products and industrial ingredients aside from its obviou...
February 28, 2017 at 07:03
in response to the suggestion that fears of catastrophe are overblown when it almost occurred recently. A couple of recent quotes from Republicans on ...
February 28, 2017 at 01:17
Actually I think CBT is nearer to Stoicism - there's a really good, current, practical philosopher, Jules Evans, who has made a career out of that - a...
February 27, 2017 at 23:50
Apologies. You're a tough adversary, but I need to get off my high horse. Will refrain from that henceforth. Well, obviously, these are theologically ...
February 27, 2017 at 22:30
It has been the case, since the 1950's, that there are sufficient thermonuclear weapons to effectively end life on earth. Short of that, the global ec...
February 27, 2017 at 21:10
If you're a politician or a pilot, then you have to deal with it. I recall reading that Obama was enormously conflicted over the drone programme. But ...
February 27, 2017 at 10:12
I am very dubious about 'the trolley problem' because of its artificiality. I suppose as a classroom exercise it's useful for focussing the mind on th...
February 27, 2017 at 09:48
What about stealing office stationary? Underpaying staff? Freeloading on your neighbour's WIFI because they didn't change their default password? The ...
February 27, 2017 at 09:12
You said it!
February 27, 2017 at 04:50
An interesting, insightful, and balanced article on Steve Bannon, in today's New Satan, er New York Times here. Some snippets: --- --- Especially now.
February 26, 2017 at 23:55
I don't think it's really robust. A moral realist acts like 'his life depends on it', whereas if it's simply pragmatic, then there's no such principle...
February 26, 2017 at 23:30
Did you notice the story a couple of years back on the mysterious Siberian craters? These are thought to be 'methane burps'. The earth bursts a pimple...
February 26, 2017 at 22:22