Wayfarer

If a species evolves to the point where it can recognise 'the law of the excluded middle', does that entail that 'the law of the included middle' can ...

The above also applies to number.

Thank you, appreciated. I’ve found some articles on the topic also.

Sure humans evolved, and so too the ability to count, speak, tell stories and much else besides. But that doesn't mean that Frege's 'metaphysical prim...

Do you understand the difference between them? Not according to your personal philosophy, but what would be said in an encylopedia or what you would s...

If you mean, materialism is a tendency at a certain point of the development of cultures, then sure. It is also true that it is a belief system that i...

But you've said a number of times that you advocate scientism and materialism. Scientism is the belief that science is the adjuticator of all knowledg...

The blind spot is a well-known phenomenon which arises where the optic nerve attaches to the cornea. As a consequence there is a blind spot in the mid...

Language and the symbolic forms which characterise the cellular activities of organisms cannot be reduced solely to chemistry. That’s one implication ...

There's a very good book that can be found online Thinking Being: An Introduction to Metaphysics in the Classical Tradition, Eric S Perl. The explanat...

Agree. The essay puts it as follows: Put another way, the very fact of the controversy counts against a materialist explanation.

Let's unpack that, there are elements I can go along with, others not so much. That is indeed what reification means, and I agree that 'res cogitans',...

I couldn’t make sense of your comparison. Look at the passage above your post, specifically: Agree or disagree with that proposition? Why? The differe...

This is something h.sapiens can do that no other creature can do. If there’s anything problematic it is the inability to see the significance of that.

We’re talking about the faculty of reason. I think we take it for granted without noticing how significant it is. Consider what it enables.

Very important work - pleased there’s someone else reading it.

Indeed. But also note As I understand platonism, neither would it. This would be a reification, objectification of the act of act of counting. But it ...

You and others might find this essay interesting Aristotle was Right After All, James Franklin. (I don't agree with his depiction of the 'other world'...

Yes, but I'm finding it a real hard slog to maintain focus. I figure that as he has to penetrate the habitual cynicism of the current philosophical pr...

I'm not an admirer of object-oriented ontology, (which I suspect was a catchphrase swiped from information technology.) That distinction it makes betw...

I’ve become very interested in (although not very knowledgeable about) the idea of the ‘divine intellect’ in Aristotle and Platonism generally. The ba...

I see that Tao as being one of the seminal forms of expression of 'the unconditioned' - not actually a hard case to make, considering many of the pass...

So, you say mathematical proofs are empirical? I think you're on shaky ground there but I now know better than to argue with you about such things, so...

You certainly sound a highly imaginative and interesting writer! I am not qualified to comment on the intricacies of Taoist principles, as I mentioned...

However, one has to grasp the concept to make such distinctions, so it is not something that can be ascertained by observation alone. It is deduced.

I beg your pardon, it was a mistake. Interesting further points there on Hegel, with whom I am not well acquainted.

Of course - but there's another 'sub-theme' here which is deeply connected to this whole debate. That is the belief in the pre-modern world that the C...

No doubt. There are very many resonances between Tao, early Buddhism and Stoicism, albeit Taoism and Buddhism both had beliefs in immortality in vario...

Also what Arthur Schopenhauer says, but when he says it, he's a miserable pessimist. When a Taoist master says it, it is Eastern wisdom.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQyE9uqcHj8 Heed Bernie's warning

That sounds like a hard problem ;-)

I'm following your other thread on Rödl and also reading the text. I don't need or expect anything from anyone. We're here to discuss ideas, and these...

I apologize, it was careless of me to use that term and I will not do so again. But then, as I explained, the view that 'mind is to brain as digestion...

But you notice, I presented an argument. I said, the analogy of stomach and enzymes is insufficient as an analogy for brain and thought, on the basis ...

You're not doing your case any favour by citing cartoons.

If you could make lumps from air.... :rofl:

That's an essay question. I cribbed some of the lecture notes but never sat the exam. Regardless, hope the point is clear. It's not that. I've explain...

See this excerpt from some lecture notes on Wittgenstein: This is entirely in keeping with the phenomenological analysis. Again, it does not call into...

:chin: This is your congenital misrepresentation of what I actually say, but no matter how many times I try and set it straight, you never get it. Wha...

And this would be Arthur Schopenhauer's criticism of Armstrong:

Sure. There was a famous expression which circulated in Enlightenment Europe, that 'the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile', spoken by ...

I don't quite follow your argument. Again, I don't see what I'm arguing as exceptionally obtuse or difficult. The element of Platonism that I appeal t...

It might be mentioned in passing that Peirce's academic career was pretty brief. He lectured at Johns Hopkins University from 1879 to 1884, during whi...

Happy New Year to you also, :party: and thanks for the kind words. That's an assertion not an argument. How would you justify that? And what do you me...

Only that the sense of 'is' implicit in 'A=A' seems of a different order to that conveyed in 'The cat is on the mat' or 'that apple is red'. In mathem...

Regardless the general point holds - that Confucian values were sometimes parodied in Taoist literature as representing social custom rather that the ...

It was a single sentence. I’m sure there were many things it doesn’t include.

The customary explanation is that Confucius (Kung Futzu) represents social propriety and custom while the ‘true man of the Way’ is basically unbound b...

Personal predilection. The first non-dualism I encountered was Advaita. I felt I couldn’t form as clear an idea of the subtleties of Tao although it h...

I've had years of dispute on this forum about the meaning of the term 'ontology'. At one point in the past, etymologyonline.com had the etymology of t...