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Janus

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If they think philosophically I would say they are philosophers. If someone follows Christian morals then I would say they are Christians. I asked bef...
November 30, 2021 at 22:05
I don't take Thanissaro's words as authoritative, and I have seen no cogent argument; merely more assertions. Gotama accepted the general opinion of h...
November 30, 2021 at 22:00
I already know that one's socioeconomic conditions may colour one's views. But people differ; so no hard and fast generalized conclusions are justifie...
November 30, 2021 at 21:53
But don't you think people are free to define themselves in ways differently than you would?
November 30, 2021 at 21:51
Whose life situation are you referring to? This is nothing but your own prejudicial view, and it has nothing to do with that passage you quoted from m...
November 30, 2021 at 21:50
As I thought; you have no argument. So instead of argument you just repeat your assertion?
November 30, 2021 at 21:41
Your pompous generalizing pronouncements are impossible to take seriously.
November 30, 2021 at 21:35
Not true according to my reading; they just interpret the idea differently. Do you have an argument to support that?
November 30, 2021 at 21:33
So, what beliefs exactly do you think are indispensable for one to hold in order to qualify as a Christian?
November 30, 2021 at 21:17
Secular Buiddhists, as far as I am aware, practice the same core way as traditionalists.
November 30, 2021 at 21:12
In my view it's the core principles of practice and ethical principles which matter; the rest is disposable furniture. If the guy you spoke about foll...
November 30, 2021 at 21:11
I think all that matters is whether the practice of the so-called secular Buddhists is as effective as the practice of traditionally oriented adherent...
November 30, 2021 at 21:05
:up: Right, I tend to think that direct and indirect realism are just two ways of speaking about the same thing. Indirect realism says that sense data...
November 30, 2021 at 20:56
I agree with that. I interpret ??nyat? to mean that things have no stable identity. If the idea of stable identity is due to our attachments to things...
November 30, 2021 at 06:39
According to Batchelor there is little or no evidence in the Pali texts to suggest that Gotama was concerned with ontology or the question of truth. H...
November 30, 2021 at 04:54
If this were actually possible then the (same) flower would look red to me and blue to a bee. What's the problem? To @"Hanover": The problem I see wit...
November 30, 2021 at 04:30
I read the article and, sorry to say, I found no counterargument to Batchelor's interpretation there. The states you say that some Buddhists devote th...
November 30, 2021 at 04:06
"Faith in humanity" is too too general, too abstract. Faith in humanity's what? Faith in humanity's love and compassion? Not everyone is loving and co...
November 30, 2021 at 00:47
How do you know that if we have, as you claim, no knowledge of the external world?
November 30, 2021 at 00:09
Batchelor seems to me to be asserting that the view of Buddha as life-denying is mistaken and that satisfaction is to be found, if at all, only in "li...
November 29, 2021 at 21:14
Because we'd starve or die of boredom?
November 28, 2021 at 22:54
From the Wikipedia article you cited: In the Pali canon, the distinction is not made between a lower truth and a higher truth, but rather between two ...
November 28, 2021 at 22:00
Right and what were we disagreeing over earlier regarding interpretation? If the most reliable testament we have as to what Gotama actually said is th...
November 28, 2021 at 21:52
I agree,. Schopenhauer's critique of Kant's "things in themselves" was that they can't be plural because difference and change is nothing more than a ...
November 28, 2021 at 02:47
I may have said that the distinction is a valid logical one, which I think it is. But I agree with Hegel's critique; that the idea of the thing in its...
November 28, 2021 at 02:15
What possible stake could anyone have in something completely unknowable? The "religious, the spiritual, the theists", contradicting themselves, think...
November 28, 2021 at 01:35
The reason I disagree with this is that the idea of the thing in itself becomes irrelevant if we absolutely can't know what it is, which is exactly ho...
November 28, 2021 at 01:32
Do you know that you don't know what it is? Or do you merely not know whether you know what it is or not, because you are seeking an impossible, incoh...
November 27, 2021 at 23:43
That is not even recognizable as the same text and nor is it titled "Chapter of Eights". The issue was not about whther the Gotama of the Pali Canon p...
November 27, 2021 at 23:24
Regarding the idea that sages can, "above and beyond interpretation" directly and infallibly see "the ultimate truth", consider the following from Ste...
November 27, 2021 at 22:30
Why should a "noumenal whatever" with unknowable or no attributes reliably produce the experience of a particular flower? Who wrote the algorithm? Thi...
November 27, 2021 at 21:22
As the old saying goes, there are no flowers in my head, but you can see where they've been, :wink: (Well actually you can't; you'll need to open the ...
November 27, 2021 at 03:54
Is idealism coherent? What about my perception of the flower, or the bees? Being different how can they all be the same flower?
November 27, 2021 at 00:36
I didn't find what you wrote there understandable without putting in considerable effort. My point was only that it is not the process of perception o...
November 27, 2021 at 00:05
In that view it is not that a perception is an object that bears properties like a flower bears properties, but that it is an object that bears proper...
November 26, 2021 at 23:11
Words are multiplying unnecessarily here and causing you some confusion it seems. Your perception of the flower is neither a representation of the flo...
November 26, 2021 at 23:04
As far as I know, it's not a classic example, but the only example. Do you have another?
November 26, 2021 at 21:35
It seems story facts can't be true or false until irrevocably committed to print, because otherwise the author might change her mind. They could be tr...
November 26, 2021 at 05:20
Sounds like a good option. Maybe that's the salient difference between the logic of fiction and logic of fact. We say that propositions concerning wha...
November 26, 2021 at 01:03
Right, so the incompleteness of fictional characters means that we can only infer about them what follows from what is told, and much may remain untol...
November 26, 2021 at 00:40
Does the thrice-telling make it true, or does the Bellman tell it three times because it is true? Perhaps this is the much that yet remains to be said...
November 26, 2021 at 00:25
I haven't read Lewis Carrol since I was a kid. I have read that he was also a logician. According to that logic, If you say three times that if you sa...
November 25, 2021 at 23:58
Do you mean literature in which inconsistencies and contradictions abound. I'm trying to think of an example. Twain attributes some inconsistency to F...
November 25, 2021 at 23:17
If it is stipulated that Frodo walked into Mordor, then it is stipulated that something walked into Mordor; I'll grant that logic.
November 25, 2021 at 23:00
More aptly referred to as being stipulated or written, rather than being true. no? We have good reason to believe it is true that it is written that H...
November 25, 2021 at 22:49
That possibility (even if it is a possibility) cannot mean anything to me. I think enlightenment is possible, but I don't see how it could consist in ...
November 25, 2021 at 22:24
The more I think about that question, the more incoherent it seems. To be something is to instantiate some attribute or set of attributes, no? Attribu...
November 25, 2021 at 22:09
If they are mired in dogma I wouldn't bother. If they are open to other ideas then they must acknowledge the role of interpretation.
November 25, 2021 at 22:01
Apples are just fruit. Fruit is just apples. Que? Son lo mismo?
November 25, 2021 at 07:13
Did I say it was all that matters? I said that interpretation is significantly involved in areas other than in directly observed events where, it coul...
November 25, 2021 at 07:11