One can play chess with no board whatever. (The Arabs used to play chess against each other, riding camels across the desert, with no board. Quite a m...
But when science is applied to subjects where it has no jurisdiction is precisely when it morphs into 'scientism'. And that is no more so than when it...
Actually, it is worth repeating the quotation I provided a couple of days back on the matter of whether machines could be intelligent, from Rene Desca...
But mind can also act on or have causal influences over matter, in fact, it does this all the time. For instance, in the case of brain injury, the min...
I took issue with intitial statement 'every idea is composed of some sensory impression'. I gave mathematics as an example but there are many others -...
Because it is reductionistic, i.e. provides an explanation in terms other than those in which the reports are presented. I have studied comparitive re...
These discussions are more polemics than scholarship. But please answer me this. You say above that you 'ascribe to a neo-platonic hierarchy'. I presu...
I'm inclined to agree - I think Western liberalism (I don't mean liberal in the American political sense, but the broad tradition of Western democrati...
I thought it was simple 'esse', the Latin 'to be', therefore 'essence' being 'what a thing truly is'. But SEP says: I can't help but notice the simila...
Perhaps you could provide a citation showing where a great theologian proposed a model of divinity similar to that critiqued in The God Delusion. Not ...
I agree with you that the OP doesn't constitute any kind of argument. That was actually the first thing I said in this thread. But subsequently it has...
I did philosophy as an undergrad, albeit at a younger age than yourself, but found it very beneficial. And this was the case, even though I was a kind...
If you mean, the point of that post, I'm afraid I don't. What I am saying is that to explain religion in historical or sociological terms, rather than...
What does your ping-pong ball say to that? @Tom - I am more than familiar with the theory of evolution, but I don't accept it is the all-powerful expl...
So a Marxist historian would say, or a sociological theorist. But I don't believe it is, and I don't think it is an empirical question in the sense th...
The testimony of sages is significant in the context of arguing 'from religious experience', because it is they who are able to speak from such experi...
Notice, I corrected my statement about what you write to 'not a source of instruction' rather than 'not a philosophy' as I recognise that your ability...
Why do you think that Dennett has latched onto that phrase 'moist robots' to describe humans, then? I don't buy that. All human beings are conscious, ...
What's depressing is the condescending manner in which you claim to be 'explaining' something that I understand perfectly well, as if your hard-boiled...
No, not at all. Dawkins' writing outside his field of speciality is poor. I'm sure he wouldn't pass an undergraduate examination in philosophy of reli...
As a long-time Dawkins detractor, one thing I could point out is that the idea of 'God' that Richard Dawkins claims doesn't exist, doesn't exist, but ...
I'm wondering what we would be obliged to acknowledge if it became evident that the fundamental constituents of the Universe are not actually physical...
Reasonable points and well expressed. But another thing to consider is that in today's culture, there is an implicit attitude as to what might be cons...
Thankyou - that is an instructive example. I found this summary on Wikipedia: That underlined sentence is the basis for Dennett's 'intentional stance'...
Notice the assumption that curiosity is a product of, or form of, anxiety. Don't you think it's possible that you're generalizing on the basis of your...
I went to Deutsch's site, viewed the videos, read the abstracts, googled discussion of the topic. There is not much discussion. I have also read about...
As one who was accused before of presenting a 'caricature of physicalism', I have to take issue with this statement. First, I think it is a reference ...
I think the OP is actually an attempt to justify Hume's 'reason is a slave to the passions'. But it does this by use of reason, thereby undermining it...
'Particles shifted around' is not in question, but 'shifted by what' is. The materialist must say that they are only shifted around by physical forces...
It reminds me of the famous list that Foucault references at the beginning of his book, The Order of Things, which I encountered in a post-grad tutori...
I am not saying that. That is what materialism is saying. What David Chalmers says in his essay Facing Up to the Hard Problem is: How is that 'reducti...
You're really discussing 'why think logically', rather than 'what is logic'. So you're trying to justify logic, in terms of other criteria that are ex...
But it doesn't! If you were asked to point to a location for 'first person experience', where would you point? (This is fundamental to the topic. In f...
The reason that it is discussed is precisely because it is concerned with the experience of seeing red, not what wavelengths constitute red light, or ...
That's why, if I went to university to study life sciences, I would enrol in biology, rather than physics, although 'biological materialism' is also a...
I don't much care for intelligent design arguments, because they denote a certain the need to justify one's faith (to oneself and/or others), whereas ...
Naively! 'An object' is just what it sounds like - ping-pong balls, computers, cars, trees, planets, stars, to pick a random sample. Objects are just ...
I would say conceptual thought requires it. But see Apokrisis' second post on this page, above - he makes that point, perhaps rhetorically. (However, ...
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