Wayfarer

I think the outlines are beginning to emerge. Don't forget, the publication of Chalmer's book Towards a Theory of Consciousness, and the paper on the ...

It sounds very close to what I had in mind. Anyway - I'm sure you would agree that a large part of philosophy is learning to look at your spectacles i...

But Michel Bitbol the more perceptive philosopher. As far as philosophy goes, Weinberg was a walking talking illustration of the 'Cartesian Divide'. M...

Here’s the Wikipedia article on them https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jingjiao_Documents I read excerpts from Martin Palmer’s book on the subject whils...

By acknowledging the indispensability of the observer. Bitbol (whom you introduced me to, by the way) is a very different kind of thinker to Weinberg.

No, it asks a very good question which draws attention to the incoherence of physicalism and the inability of it to explain the process which you say ...

Hence his well-known quotation 'the more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.' Physics is constructed to as to exclude...

The problem with the question as posed in the thread title, is that ‘pre-existing’ is a temporal description, referring to something that existed befo...

By some process yet to be understood…..

All due respect, I think they’re directly relevant, and if you’re not seeing why they’re relevant, it is because of the way you’re framing the problem...

There is. It’s called ‘scientism’.

Some early schools of Buddhists were said to be atomist, but on closer reading, their version of atoms were 'dhammas' which are actually momentary exp...

Or in more traditional Buddhist parlance, 'all compound things are subject to decay' (reputedly the last words of the Buddha.)

After the First Edition of the CPR was published, many critics said that Kant was no different to Berkeley, which greatly annoyed him. Accordingly in ...

:up: Glad it resonates for you. Hence my frequent mention of Mind and the Cosmic Order, Charles Pinter, which backs this up with solid empirical data.

I agree with you again! My objections are to that vein of popular philosophy which esteems science as the arbiter of reality. Of course many educated ...

I'm no expert, but I think I have enough understanding to pinpoint a problem with this analysis. I think you're misinterpreting the significance of th...

I agree with your analysis, but I don’t see how that affects the argument. In fact what you're saying here could easily be interpreted as a defence of...

I recall something Krishnamurti said. Krishnamurti, in case you don’t know, was an Indian spiritual teacher who lived from the late 19th c until 1983 ...

However, isn’t ‘the Turing machine’ something that only exists in the minds of humans? An actual Turing machine would require infinite memory, so it i...

Well, that's cool. I don't understand either you or him.

No, because the fact of one's own being is neither a physical fact, nor can it be denied (cogito ergo sum). And here, 'supervenes' is able to be defin...

Not so. Mine is a perfectly reasonable paraphrasing of Plantinga’s argument. You’ve presented nothing so far that shows you understand it. The reason ...

Again, it doesn't address the evolutionary argument against naturalism. He doesn't say that we're incapable of communicating, or that we can't convey ...

Doesn’t two plus two equals four qualify? It’s a true statement about natural numbers isn’t it?

Sure: Your objection doesn’t address the argument. I might add, whatever occurs within a social species, is a completely separate matter to what evolv...

But you did say that Thomas Nagel, atheist though he might profess to be, should be categorised along with 'that crank' Alvin Plantinga, and The Disco...

Something which is a cause for concern. I keep telling myself I'm spending far too much time chatting here, but https://youtu.be/UPw-3e_pzqU?si=oA3diy...

also mine :-)

No, you said he was a crank. That is not a word I put in your mouth. I am pointing out that he's an academically-qualified academic and professor of p...

Speaks volumes, don't it. So, an academically-qualified professor of philosophy, but Christian, therefore a crank, right?

No it's not (with the caveat that threads about quantum physics nearly always end up in the long grass.) The revolutionary point about Heisenberg's di...

I see where you're going with all of this, and even agree. You have a rather idiosyncratic way of expressing your ideas, but I do detect a convergence...

Is it coincidental that you're one of the major boosters of MAGA disinformation on this forum?

It's genetics, not simply epigenetics. And don’t overlook the fact that not only are their brains not equipped for language, but neither are their voc...

Well, Roger Penrose said in his Emperor's New Mind that the mind was not reducible to algorithms, although I must say, I bought that book and the math...

https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/s84-27018.jpg The meaning is not clearly defined, but SEP tells us that it 'aims to ally philosophy mo...

Right. Well, unlike Descartes, who thought animals had no soul whatever, many of the pre-modern and Asiatic religions recognised that human beings can...

For nearly 15 years we had a smallish (10kg) sheltie cross, who was a very polite little dog (except towards postmen and motorcyles). This is him: htt...

True, that, although there's some irony in the fact that Zen monasteries generally maintain an enormous library of canoninical literature and commenta...

Throughout this conversation, whenever you seek to justify an argument, you give reasons. If you wish me to justify my position, you ask me to do the ...

:up:

That’s what I thought you would say, although I still say there’s a fundamental distinction you’re not recognising. To think critically one first has ...

So, your argument is that all species are unique - after all, uniqueness is what makes them identifiable as separate species. The ability to speak, th...

Ah, materialist philosophy of mind. I’ll try out some objections. First, you’re up against ‘the hard problem’ - there’s never been a plausible account...

God breathed life into the dust, in the Biblical myth, which is at least an evocative allegory.

:up: As do I. I rather fancy the idea that there might really be a kind of field effect, analogous to but different from electric fields, that is only...

I see what Scheler is driving at, but I don't really agree that 'For the modern thinker, only those experiences that can be proven in a rational or lo...

Try explaining the concept ‘prime number’ to her. Why that’s very courteous of you! An anecdote: the first undergrad essay I ever submitted was in psy...

I know about that story - but what is the point? I've never claimed anywhere in this thread that animals are insensitive, or even that they lack intel...