Wayfarer

Here is the Amazon list of the spiritual books that influenced me during my formative years. Most of those I read in the 1970's and 80's. There is som...

The categories of the understanding in Kant were adapted from Aristotle. 'Kant does not believe that material objects are unknowable or impossible. Wh...

Well, that's true from a common-sense viewpoint, but from the viewpoint of philosophical analysis, it leaves many questions unanswered. (And to be hon...

A lot of this debate hinges on the fact that in Western culture, there are stark dichotomies between 'belief' and 'knowledge', 'religion' and 'science...

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I have nothing further to say to you.

Well, that's better - at least that's a discussion. I read in one of your other threads you were brought up in a dogmatic Christian household, I can u...

You've asked a lot of questions in this thread, and I have tried to answer them. That article, which I found when you asked, gives a reasonable accoun...

It's not 'my article', it is the first thing that came up on a google search. Obviously you can't understand the distinction made in the article betwe...

I really do understand it - secularism is the principle that one is free to follow any religion or none, but this particular conversation started off ...

Here's a short overview of the kind of thing I have in mind.

you can work that out.

money is an excellent means of exchange but there are things that can't be bought.

Well, science is one thing - scientific method, the discovery of principles, making of predictions, testing hypotheses. It can be used across an enorm...

It's not necessarily at all! But, it's beyond the scope of materialism. And they're actually two different things. But there are neuro-scientists, and...

My most moving experiences of Christian mercy were at a Catholic teaching hospital. I worked there as a wardsman in my teens, and witnessed how the nu...

Why do you say that I think that? I don't actually believe it, I was simply pointing out rhetorically, that if a machine really was able to think, the...

The neo-darwinian, materialist account of mind is the dominant paradigm in the secular west. It is in some respects a secular religion, i.e. it define...

I tried to explain it, sorry if I wasn't clear. That story is bona fide, Banks as you know was a scientist, he was meticulous in his journal notes, al...

I would agree that intelligence is likely a product of matter and energy. I don't agree. I don't think there's anything in the sciences that justifies...

But one can respond that they are still reliant on species-specific perceptions, i.e. they appear to h. sapiens with the senses we have, and in accord...

For Venter and many other scientists, the Universe is essentially matter and energy, unendowed or undirected by intelligence. Intelligence, they say, ...

To which a Christian would answer "what has been revealed in the Bible"! That is what "revelation" means. Now I don't want to come off as preaching, a...

This quotation seems relevant to the OP: From the SEP entry on Jacques Maritain (a noted neo-Thomist philosopher). I also know of a comparitive study ...

I was referring to the meaning of the term - it is from the root 'nous', so the noumenon is an 'ideal object' in the sense that it is what nous is cap...

I studied under Stove; liked him a lot but I think his 'gem' only indicates a lack of insight into Kant and idealism generally.

The Wiki article on 'noumenon' says 'The Greek word ???????o? nooúmenon, plural ???????? nooúmena, is the neuter middle-passive present participle of ...

You're right there!

'Epistemic idealism', i.e. whatever we can say exists, is in some sense dependent on our knowledge of the nature of existence. So when we say that suc...

No, we speak

Well, asking for proof is an implicit acceptance that you and I can agree on what constitutes 'proof'. Besides which, logical proofs, like if B>A and ...

One of the facts of life that I've come to terms with, is that I will never understand Spinoza.

Another line of research that I think is suggested by this idea is Chomsky's 'Universal Grammar'. As to whether 'statements of logical principles migh...

Noticed a review that might be of interest to folks here Are we really so modern?, a review of Antony Gottlieb's “The Dream of Enlightenment” (second ...

I get that. I think the bottom line is, that the 'fundamental ground' - that from which everything is derived - is not an 'it', any kind of stuff, ene...

In which, he demonstrates his non-understanding of what it is that he is criticizing. It is an anthropomorphic projection. He is projecting God as a k...

That is where we started! I was arguing that Dawkins' depiction of an 'infinitely complex being' - larger and more complex than the universe itself - ...

If indeed, as you say, I am not articulating in terms of the Western philosophical tradition, what would such an articulation (in broad outline) look ...

If you're speaking of 'spiritual enlightenment', which I think you are, it's actually quite a recent arrival in Western thought, due mainly to the inf...

No, it's basic intellectual skills that are needed, and they're not reliant on technology. Use technology by all means, but don't look to it for the w...

Provided a pretext for one of my favourite topics, though.

Definitely not. One of my (controversial) slogans is 'philosophy requires no apparatus'. I favour the Kantian ideal that persons are ends in themselve...

I was a consultant at Apple Computer in the mid 1990's when all this started to happen, and saw all the predictions and forecasts (and if I had been s...

How could they, when they've been invented about 5 minutes ago (figuratively speaking), and 'overarching meaning' is forever? I think many hundreds of...

Maybe that's because they've literally started to see through the space-time matrix which, until now, science has taken for granted. But I think it ne...

Right - but not the only one. If 'accounts of religious experience' are only ever understood in such terms, then they have no intrinsic value or purpo...

Is that so? Thanks, I hadn't known that. I'm not much of a biblical scholar.

Hi Anon - I have been following your progress with interest. Re 'atheist Christian' - I think your issue might be with the image or idea of God. It's ...

Agree with your post although it was Jesus who said 'love your neighbour as yourself'.

What 'science' deals with that? How do you go about it 'scientifically'? I mentioned before, although apparently I need not have bothered, that I have...