Janus

What if magical thinking leads us to waste time and resources on projects doomed to failure, whereas a realistic, pragmatic attitude might lead us to ...

I don't think it is the non-feasibility of renewable energy per se, which is being challenged by Smil, but the impossibility of replacing the whole en...

Perseuerando in sua stultitia, dum satis agnoscit eam esse stultitiam

OK, I haven't read much of Aristotle's work regarding tragedy, and I haven't read Birth of Tragedy for many years, so I'll have to take your word for ...

You're probably right. I think he disagreed with Aristotle's reasons for considering Tragedy to be the highest from of drama, even though agreeing wit...

The way I read Nietzsche's idea of will to power is in terms of overcoming. I'm not sure what you mean by "growth", but for me growth in any spiritual...

Si persistere stultum in sua stultitia, sapiens fieret

The trope represents the notion of reaching a greater potential than it is commonly believed we are capable of. The symbols Nietzsche used are not sui...

The ape might well have been a common representative figure for what might have been considered to be stupid, low, a joke and so on in Nietzsche's day...

:up:

I agree, but I think much of what he says is driven by the desire to provoke and shock. Remember this well-known reported incident, which if accurate ...

I would be surprised if anything positive said about Nietzsche would be worthwhile to you; mired in your self-imposed ignorance of his work as you see...

I agree; it certainly seems that way. I can't think of anyone I've ever spoken to, who has made the effort to read and understand him who thinks he is...

That's dead wrong. He doesn't recognize anything transcendent might be more to the point.

A facile characterization of a great, but admittedly flawed, thinker. (And who isn't flawed)? Let him cast the first stone...

I haven't read Nietzsche in a while either. Many years ago and over many years I've read Beyond Good and Evil, The Gay Science, Twilight of the Idols,...

Yes, and also the "will to power" is grossly misunderstood by those who have never actually studied Nietzsche. It does not signify power over others, ...

The "very good reasons" are emotional reasons are they not? Reason (logic) itself pertains to the form (coherency, consistency and validity) of though...

Right, I agree that it becomes more elaborate, more complex, but I balk at "richer", and "more transparent to itself" since to assert that would entai...

Thanks for your own excellent summary, Tobias! I think you are exactly right that the conflict, and potential for negation, in ideas arises only when ...

Interesting! I wonder which existentialists you refer to. Relatedly, @"180 Proof" recently somewhere (I couldn't find the post) presented the idea tha...

Blake, like Shakespeare, seems to appear out of nowhere: an impressively original vision and voice. For Blake there is no body apart from the Soul or ...

Nice! I love Blake, and have done since my mid teens!

As opposed to, if you are open to it (whatever that could actually mean), a dumb monkey?

If every idea is in conflict with itself, perhaps you meant "badnight"? :wink:

So, you see the latter as personal attack and not the former? If so, could you point out what you see as the difference? (Just so you know, I don't se...

:up:

I think you misunderstand if you think that according to Hegel ideas, as such, simpliciter or in the very first instance, are in conflict with themsel...

I think you are right. The usual formulation: thesis—antithesis—synthesis was not explicitly enunciated by Hegel, but scholars generally seem to think...

:up: Or to put it another way every idea contains the seed of its own negation.

Did you not mean rejects rather than sees a duality of soul and body? Your last sentence here is way too baselessly speculative for my taste. I'm not ...

Thanks Josh it looks interesting. I've downloaded it and will certainly read it when I have some time.

I agree with you, for what it's worth, and I think it is a lot easier to establish what is good or real evidence in empirical matters. But when it com...

I find something of value and interest in Whitehead's panexperientialism, but the idea that rocks have minds does not convince; nevertheless to each t...

Would you say that anyone finds anything implausible without believing they have reason to think so? And does not believing you have a reason to think...

The question is really asking what would one (typically) experience if one visited Las Vegas, so the answer is not so much ambiguous, as it is pedanti...

OK, thanks Mww, it doesn't seem to me that you understood and/or addressed my points and questions at all, which is evidenced most starkly by this: wh...

Yes, well in the womb is already in the world in some sense (not the shared sense, obviously), and I have no doubt that sentience begins in the womb a...

Isn't "unlikely given the available evidence" a fitting definition of 'implausible'?

:up: Trivial indeed, since the name of any kind of thing has its use on account of resemblances of different instances of the kind of thing named.

You can lose aspects, but not the underlying sense, of self. From my own experience I can say that the underlying sense of being myself does not chang...

There is a general sense of self which underlies and ties all the different aspects of the self together in that they are all aspects of my self, even...

My interjection? My original comment was a response to @"Tom Storm"; I wasn't addressing you at all, so if anyone interjected it was you. The point I ...

My point all along has been that so-called synthetic a priori judgements come after experience, as a result of "grasping" the general character of exp...

If there are two electrons then they're are not one thing; now it may be the case that there only appear to be two or a hundred or whatever electrons,...

It's not an innate ability, but an innate potential if anything. And only experience of the required kind will actuate and develop that potential.

All feelings, which if the person had experienced them, they would recognize. Do you have an actual point of interest to make or are you just enjoying...

No, I spoke in general terms of feelings, not other experiences or resemblances. If I had said skydiving is like bungee jumping that would be "naming ...

OK, logically if some one thing could be in two different places at once, then it would be two different manifestations of the one thing, I suppose. B...

So, is the claim that we have that idea from the moment of birth? When I said "conceive" I was not thinking in terms of linguistic conception; I belie...