Wayfarer

What you need to do is to find a counselling service, with actual counselors who you can talk to in person. This is an internet philosophy forum, it i...

Here's a book recommendation for you.

One of my all-time favourite spiritual books was very popular in the 1960s and 70's, called The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation (through knowing ...

Agree with all the above, except to note that humans are rather more like 'instantiations' than 'abstractions'. Hereunder a snippet from my first post...

If you can't explain it, I guess you have nothing worth responding to.

I've been waiting for the arrival of Digital Chicken, but haven't sighted (or smelled) it yet. ;-) I imagine it being the kind of thing they will eat ...

I think that in this case you're probably not aware of the nature of apophatic theology, otherwise known as the way of negation. It is not, strictly s...

Fortunately there are some things which TCP/IP does not transmit.

So, this proposed system is not actually mathematics, then. This is because the numerical signifier, '1', is the representation for a single unit. If ...

That's an interesting observation. Notice the use of scare quotes, because we can't be literally sorrounded by abstractions, as they're not in physica...

Your writing is fluent but it is not philosophically informed, it doesn't make any arguments but simply states provocative ideas as if they amount to ...

I always thought it referred to earthquake-resistant building design, shows how much I know.

As it happens, I know Jim Franklin - when I was managing a uni computer store, he used to be one of my customers. I read his paper when it came out, a...

I don't see how dualism can be avoided, although I think of all the various 'standard Western positions' available, the one I'm nearest to is 'dual-as...

And here we all are.

I think your problem (and it's not just your problem), in respect of this question, is what is meant by "real". I think the whole tendency of modern (...

'You can check out, but you can never leave'. Speaking of infinity, I enjoyed the recent movie, The Man who Knew Infinity, about the tradically short ...

Unless it collided with Russell's Teapot, in which case both would be blown to smithereens. The latter, I suspect.

The fact that 'you don't see it', doesn't constitute an argument, especially in so recondite a question as this! And I don't want to try and present m...

I am sympathetic to the idea that 'mind is everywhere', but I think you have to be very careful not to try and 'objectify' the mind. What does that me...

Now now, it is an inforum. (Hey just thought of that.)

I did an undergraduate degree comprising quite a few units of philosophy, on an actual typewriter, using liquid paper for corrections. Seems arcane no...

Well, I like Peter Russell! I've had the pleasure of meeting him once or twice, and interacted via email a couple of times. And that is very much what...

Again, the problem with the way the cosmological argument is generally conducted is that it reduces the first cause to being the kind of cause that sc...

You make my point without even realising it. I wonder what the evolutionary utility of irony would be?

fair enough too, but I was reacting to that particular point about 'carrot and stick'. If you think about that it really means 'reward and punishment'...

I amended that attribution. Alternatives to reductionism, in the case of the question in this thread, would be to consider the topic in terms of moral...

Yes, but it's a difficult idea, and it's not an argument from the Western philosophical tradition, but from Vedanta. 'Reductionism' is generally the a...

doesn't allow for creativity, innovation, much of ethics, altruism...apart from that, it's OK. I think it is probably true that you don't feel you hav...

No you wouldn't. If you wanted to see it another way you wouldn't need someone else to persuade you.

That is straight, traditional Taoism (although in our day and age such a teaching is of course regarded as oppressive). I'm enjoying this book, althou...

Here is a review by Luke Barnes, of Sean Carroll's foray into Natural Philosophy, his book The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the U...

'Maya' is a Hindu term, but never mind.

'They' being who? It is speculative technology, there is currently no large-scale model of the device in existence. If you think there is, show me tha...

Your offer is very kind, and in return I will provide free lessons on how to avoid being taken in by speculative press releases floating around in cyb...

Interesting. Are you translating the texts also? Tao always strikes me as so quinitessentially Chinese. Currently I'm reading Diamond Sutra Explained ...

Hamann seems a very interesting and strangely post-modernist thinker, considering his times. I wonder how much of that underlies 'identity politics'?

any references?

Eriugena is definitely not mainstream, not 'dry', and there is convergence between him and your work. That's why I mentioned it. Oh, and what is 'Paku...

There's something similar that has appeared in legal cases in the last few decades: appealing to temporary insanity or 'underlying psychological cause...

You should acquaint yourself with John Scotus Eriugena's Periphyseon http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scottus-eriugena/#3 Eriugena lived in the 9th c...

You should go to SAND, I think you would find much of interest there. I googled 'reactionless drive' but from my 3.2 minutes of research, I ascertain ...

Nothing you write here will persuade me that you didn't create this thread of your own free will. Nothing compelled you to do it, you could have chose...

True! But in any case: 'Even though we see acts of altruism and sacrifice, one can argue that it's ultimately for one's own contentment/ satisfaction ...

If there were an infinite amount of sand, storing it might be problematical, because there wouldn't be room for anything else.....

I think it is widely recognized that evolutionary biology doesn't actually explain how life began or consciousness first emerged (which might or might...

I think you're seeking resolution to two or maybe three difficult and related issues, one, 'why altruism', if the evolutionary processes are entirely ...

Story in today's media about why Russian and Syrian forces are destroying Aleppo http://www.smh.com.au/world/the-brutal-strategy-behind-russias-massac...

I didn't mean that literally, but it is the kind of line that is typical of Russian disinformation

Interestingly, Kant mounted an argument against Berkeley in the second edition of CPR (annoyed that many of his critics accused him of the same doctri...