Wayfarer

I didn't mean to annoy you. I included a link to a book review which was earlier shown to me on this forum. It's Bennett and Hacker, Philosophical Fou...

Australian cities are overwhelmingly motonormative. Partially because of the dictates of distance and geography, as it's a vast landscape with long di...

I don't think that's correct, the honorific name 'Buddha' means 'one who knows'. And according to Buddhist dogma, what is known is 'the cause of suffe...

:up: Thank you :pray:

Thank you both, I’ll chew it over.

I’m thinking of the most basic form, what it is that any being described as conscious has.

Rational consciousness can reflect on that. I’m trying for the bare-bones definition.

Assembled throng of philosophical worthies: I think I have a simple definition of consciousness (which i might as well put here as start a thread). >>...

What’s the ‘free miracle’?

I posted a sketch of a non-materialist metaphysic a few posts above. As I’ve noted, I think Stevenson’s research on children who claim to remember pre...

I will try and explain again. You said: All well and good, but I'm referring to the sense in which even this realist view is itself a mental construct...

Non-Local Consciousness, Pim Van Lommel. It's a kind of summary of his research. He notes this anecdote from a nurse: Although it is clear that replic...

I don’t believe I did that, nor did I wish to imply it. You can't have a conversation you don't like without falling into ad hominems. If I've been cr...

Further to this point. The idea I keep coming back to is that we instinctively accept that mind is 'the product of' matter. The causal chain which sup...

The earth's not flat! It's turtles, all the way down!

All well and good - but that also embodies a perspective, somewhere outside both the mind and the world. A mental picture, if you like, or image of th...

But, are universals themselves physical? I know David Armstrong says they are, but I think his is a revisionist account of universals shoehorned into ...

Not seeing a problem does not amount to grounds for dismissing it.

They’re nearly always joined at the hip. Are there any advocates for ‘scientism’ who do not hold to physicalism? We look to science as the arbiter of ...

An important part of philosophy is criticism, especially of poor analogies and misapplied categories. And I see you as reflexively hanging on to somet...

Never? The point about Van Lommel and Ian Stephenson is simply to indicate that large data sets exist, that researches have wrestled with the question...

Not in the context of physiology and anatomy, but it’s not an apt comparison with cognition and judgement. It appeals to the supposed authority of neu...

I have an issue with the expression 'consciousness surviving the body'. I think it's inherently self-contradictory insofar as consciousness is general...

great work man and we're all in your debt. :pray:

I figured it was a capacity problem. I wonder if there's a way of deleting draft comments by age. I know it saves all mine and they go back years. Eve...

Ship to lighthouse: ‘Change your heading!’

I bought the Kindle edition for a lot less than that. Anyway, never mind, I won't try and sell it. I cover some of the details in the mind-created wor...

I know an oxymoron when I see it. You should look into Pinter's book. The reason I say it will be unsung, is because it was a labour of love on his pa...

I said months ago that the replacement of Biden would completely changed the dynamic of the election - and it has. That’s why MAGA is kvetching about ...

Yeah, well. I'm not all in on him, but still positively disposed. But I still think Mind and the Cosmic Order, Charles S Pinter, is a superior book co...

Despite the appeals to semiosis, signs and meaning, C S Peirce, you default to physicalism where it counts. Who or what presses these buttons, and to ...

Right - my point exactly. I think the assumption that objectivity defines the scope of knowledge is what is at issue. I'm not taking a shot at you in ...

Ed Feser gives the example of the metal detector. Defenders of physicalism will say: 1. The predictive power and technological applications of physics...

Appealing to data in response to a claim is not a fallacy. If you claim that near death experiences must be hallucinatory, then evidence to the contra...

While this is true, it is not really the point. Recall Hoffman is a cognitive scientist and there are many pages devoted to the question of the neural...

It's a mistake to say that brains do anything - that is what is described in Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience as the 'mereological fallacy', ...

It is obviously true that ‘the next life’ is a fertile ground for wish-fulfilment and fantasies of living forever, but in cultures which believe in th...

I raised Pim Van Lommel's book because it is a source of evidence and argument. It's not something I have first-hand experience of, but if you claim t...

Trump is not going to deal with being challenged in the polls. I think there’s a chance he’ll go to pieces.

See Shameless, Brian Tyler Cohen.

:ok:

That text figures in many a list of great philosophical books and is also particularly relevant in our day. While I perfectly agree that Kant’s writin...

. And by the philosophical canon I don’t just mean ancient philosophy, there are many interesting current philosophers. Accountancy companies and engi...

I totally get that. I now have far too many books, and always the nagging realisation of how little I know. Still, I do try and relate what I’m thinki...

:lol: I've skimmed more of the book, and am reading the concluding chapter. But at this point, I must say I don't really understand it, nor do I like ...

Not long ago, nobody knew what ‘an electromagnetic field’ is. Now, fields are more fundamental than atoms, which are said to be only 'excitations of f...

The other point I would definitely include is ‘some reference to the canonical texts of the philosophical tradition’. This thread, for instance, conta...

Maybe, but it's meaningless. It conveys nothing significant. My definition begins with the word itself: philo (love) sophia (wisdom), philo-sophia, 'l...

Yeah right. Say that, and everyone freaks out.

No, I said his definition is idiosyncratic. It doesn't mean that it's incorrect, but it is very much of his own devising, to wit: Compare the orthodox...