Wayfarer

I'm tempted to say that philosophy proper spans Plato - Hegel but that might be a bit contentious. But in any case, there's a sense of a vertical dime...

How could you know? Or rather, how could you tell someone else about it? 'One fine bright Sunday morning, a Catholic priest decided to sneak out and h...

Saying they are 'human words' is basically denying it. It is the science that says that only human beings are capable of forming an intention, that is...

But all of that overlooks the purported revelation of God in the Biblical tradition. I know there are plenty who will simply dismiss all of it, but I ...

That's what I'm saying - in ancient philosophy the primary distinction was been 'reality and appearance' - the 'ordinary people' (the hoi polloi) were...

Objectivity as a criterion of truth is very much associated with the rise of modern philosophy; it was never much considered by the medievals. I recal...

Regarding definition of exist - 'ex-', outside of, apart from; 'ist', to stand.

I would never have expected that from you. These are the basic attributes of the first cause, they're part of what the term means. Using words loosely...

It's just pointless wordplay ( this). It's not at all, it has a serious pedigree in neoplatonist and other Western philosophy. There were some seminal...

Anyway, everyone here should realize 'the uncaused cause' could not exist. All kinds of things exist - why, open any encyclopedia - but 'the uncaused ...

Who brought up 'the afterlife'? Anyway, I digress, the point was only about 'being a believer'.

But I wanted to know. I didn't want to believe in 'pie in the sky when you die'. I said there was a way of knowing about ultimate truths, not simply s...

There's a term that is encountered in comparative religion and philosophy, which is that of the 'sapiential traditions'. Sapience originally meant 'wi...

That's what's called 'empiricism'. A fundamental principle is that whatever is to be considered as a datum must be able to be observed by the senses (...

I want to raise a mild objection to this categorisation. I have always resisted 'belief' as such; there is something I don't like about 'people of fai...

Most in our secular world have put everything marked 'religion' in a box and sealed it. Then they're concerned that if anything prized the lid open, i...

'Miracles are not contrary to nature, but only contrary to what we know about nature' ~ Augustine The issue with reincarnation in particular is that i...

I rest my case ;-)

The other point that should be made is that I did bother to get one of Stevenson's books out of the library. It contains masses of data - literally hu...

I know the skeptics forum believes that it has discredited Stevenson's research. Stevenson always only claimed to present evidence that 'suggests the ...

Oh, I just got the impression, that when you asked for documentation of anything actually 'supernatural/magical', that you assumed that of course ther...

Where in the world can that happen? What are instances of that?

You clearly say that without any knowledge of Stevenson's research, which observed the same kinds of empirical protocols of any other social science r...

Thanks, those comments from Kojeve are illuminating (although I read somewhere recently that Kojeve has been outed as a KGB spy.) I had the idea this ...

I once had the idea 'you couldn't have a "theory of everything" because "the theory" would have to be included in the "everything" that is the subject...

Some examples of successful scientific explanations: Germ theory - explained epidemics and communicable diseases Copernican astronomy - explained the ...

It's probably un- or sub-conscious.

A book of note - Weapons of Math Destruction, Cathy O'Neill. In relation to 'technological rationality'.

Ian Stevenson's research on past-life memories has a large body of actual research, of the same kind you would find in support of epidemiological stud...

The many worlds hypothesis, and the multiverse hypothesis, are both supernatural (or metaphysical, means the same) because they're outside/beyond/supe...

Well, they would say they have, that it's in the Bible, that it is indeed big news, and that it's been disregarded by you. But the headline 'JornDoe d...

http://www.iep.utm.edu/substanc/#SH4a

Any arbitrary particle could be taken as an example of something with or without a starting point. Hey, thanks for clearing that up.

What are examples of things that don't begin to exist?

My point is relatively simple: the naive argument that the physical sciences have somehow eliminated the need to a 'supernatural' explanation, is not ...

The problem with panpsychism is that it 'objectifies' mind as some kind of essence or ethereal substance, which can be understood or viewed from the o...

The problem is JornDoe, that 'the beyond' has now become a necessary postulate for many modern cosmologists, in the form of the so-called 'mutlverse s...

How does the model allow for dark matter? Gotta know what it is to model it.

I really don't like the word 'spiritual for what I'm trying to describe, but we're stuck with it - google synonyms and you get 'religious' and 'sacred...

Duplicate post.

One answer is that all religion, art and science can do is point towards it; but it is never a 'that' for us, it is never an object of perception. But...

'Cartesian anxiety refers to the notion that, ever since René Descartes promulgated his influential form of body-mind dualism, Western civilization ha...

What about' What does 2 + 2 equal'? It sounds trite, but in that case, '4' is the terminus of explanation. There is no point asking 'why does 2+2=4'; ...

I think it is indutiably true that everything we know and experience is a 'brain state', to use that inelegant expression. (On the one hand, neural re...

Hitler had strong convictions.

Generally speaking, I have found this forum to be congenial and the moderating pretty light. Most of what annoys me, is either my fault, or the softwa...

But are Newton's laws of motion derived from more general laws? I think not. Certainly it has been found that the classical laws of motion don't apply...

Excellent points. I also recall a blog post I read a few years back to the effect that Aquinas' 'five proofs' were never intended as apologetic argume...

It's not about chemistry, it's about what makes chemistry possible. That is the sense in which it is related to the cosmological argument. Scientific ...

I was going to say that, but I didn't want to muddy the waters, and besides I agreed with the sentiment. But the idea that Buddhists reside in a kind ...