But, sir, you seem to be dismissive of the whole notion. You ask 'what's beyond material existence', in a way that seems dismissive of the question. S...
I recommend a reading of Vladimir Lossky's The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, where these issues are discussed in detail. 'Breaking out of t...
Oh yes. They were noted atomic physicists, right? I got no time for Stenger, sorry. His last published piece was 'Why Particles are for Real' , which ...
Epicurus and Plotinus were very different indeed. The former was a materialist who didn't believe in anything beyond material existence. Plotinus, as ...
What do you reckon Epicurus would make of that? See, here Plotinus is being a 'classical sage' - heaven lies within, etc - which is is why Plotinus' i...
That's not my argument, that is a paraphrase of the arguments against atomism by early philosophers. In any case, a spherical object of any kind is no...
Well, think about it. The word 'atom' is derived from the Greek 'atomos', where a- is the negative particle, so the compound word means 'not divisible...
Explanation here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinamen I suppose it is uncannily like a premonition of the 'quantum leap'. Nevertheless there were so...
It's a big question, but one I have some knowledge about, so will try and assist. Early Buddhism, as preserved in the so-called 'early Buddhist texts'...
You might say religions make it too easy, that the kind of truth they offer are rather too settled - 'sign here'. That's where the Platonist tradition...
There was a fork in the road 500 years ago, now we're so far along the road that was taken that the alternative has almost faded from memory. But the ...
If you were doing one of those tests where they asked you to identify the anomolous members of a set, then 'numbers' and 'ideas' would certainly jump ...
You're welcome. I had previously read an account of Peirce's criticism of nominalism, so I simply googled the term 'Peirce, Nominalism', and that revi...
Greetings and welcome. Here are some web essays and articles on the (scholastic) realism v nominalism debate that you might find useful. What's Wrong ...
In Plato's philosophy there is an explicit assertion of the 'true good' in many of the dialogues. The archetype is the calm resignation of Socrates in...
'A theory of substantial forms asserts that forms (or ideas) organize matter and make it intelligible. Substantial forms are the source of properties,...
Because nobody understands what it could mean to 'constitute an object from predicate logic'? An object, after all, is something that one can pick up ...
I would say that they're not 'existing things' - to say that they are is to reify them - but they're nevertheless real, in the same sense that the nat...
Great quote. I would nominate St Augustine, not because he's the winner of the contest but because of his seminal influence on the development of Chri...
It's not a matter of opinion. Also, for the record, I'm not saying there is no objective reality. There are innummerable particular issues for which t...
I'm afraid you're misinformed. I've just completed the excellent Quantum : Einstein, Bohr, and the Great Debate about the Nature of Reality Manjit Kum...
The facts which are at issue in these matters are usually considerably more complex than simple measurements. Has human activity caused global warming...
The Einstein-Bohr debates were all about this very point. Einstein - the scientific realist - insisted there must be an objective reality regarding th...
Well, I think you are. I think at many points in this thread, you claim that there are the facts, X, and here our concept of them, as if facts and our...
Apparently not. The point never seems to be understood. I presume you're familiar with A J Ayer's Language Truth and Logic, which was based around the...
Well, some people seem to think so. But, anyway, back to the point, which is the notion of 'mind-independence'. I think that the passage quoted from M...
Well, as a matter of fact, I have written quite a few essays on the subject of philosophy, including a master's dissertation on Buddhist philosophy, w...
This thread is about that very point, and nothing you have written in it demonstrates that you understand it. I notice also your non-response to the '...
It's not 'conflating' anything. It is the observation that you can't ultimately separate facts and concepts, reality and perception. Problems of Philo...
Again, you're picturing 'a world in which there are no mind' - the early earth, drifting silently through the empty void. But that is still a concept,...
You think so? In developed economies, are high rates of sexually-transmitted diseases, and large numbers of children born outside marriage, not to men...
It would be good to provide a citation for those claims. I am a bit familiar with Fodor, but I can't really see the point of the first sentence, becau...
God doesn't 'happen to a part of it', but is the foundation of it. So if you want to get rid of the tradition, then start with the foundation. Replace...
I think it's an historical question - in the context of modern Western culture, belief in God is the tradition, atheism is the challenger. Who are the...
Because conservatism by its very nature wishes to conserve tradition - that which has been found to be true and good, that which is handed down by the...
That seems intuitively obvious, but I think that the 'nature' which you say our minds 'reproduce', is also a mental artefact. --- Einstein said that '...
Actually I had in mind more the PRC government's routine and complete disregard for basic human rights and Tibetan autonomy, among other things. And, ...
The idea that there is a world in which no minds are present, is also a mental construction. You think you can imagine a world with no minds in it, bu...
7 is a number, and a number can only be grasped by a mind capable of counting; it is the ability of a rational intelligence to count that is one of it...
The fact that an animal gives birth to a litter of 7 is not in itself an abstraction. It is an event. It is only when someone comes along and says 'ah...
Does '7' exist? You can't point at the symbol, 7, because that is arbitrary, and indeed physical - it can be written as VII, seven, or 7, but always h...
Look - what is at issue in all of this discussion is the reality, or otherwise, as such basic concepts as the law of identity, and the like. Realists ...
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