Janus

:up:

OK, I was thinking more in terms of answers to questions, but in any case, "learning to accept my intrusive thoughts and not fight them" is a material...

Right, good point; that's a further dimension to the question. If there were no capacity for self-reflection would anything feel like anything?

Exactly! But the point is that the "what is it like" question fosters the illusion that there could be a comparison. Also when you ask "how does it fe...

Example?

You are contradicting yourself. You say they are omnipotent and yet "bound by the possibilities" and "If you can't lift a stone, then you can't".

Seriously? You do set the bar low, don't you?

To say that God is by definition omnipotent just is to say that he must be omnipotent. Unless we are merely speaking about the word 'God', that it jus...

Cheers Manuel. :smile:

I am not sure what you mean here by "twist"; I'm seeing it more as "restrict". I can refer to a sensation that, even though you have no hope of feelin...

Oh, so, you don't claim that God must be omnipotent? In that case, how do you know he is? Have you met him?

Sure, because all you've been saying is "Look, it's true; it must be because I think so!"

I agree that it is something to have experiences; it is to have experiences. But there is nothing it is like to have experiences, because anything tha...

All I can say to that Fartricks is "bollocks!

This is where we disagree profoundly. A stop sign's meaning is out there; exemplified in the behavior it produces, but a toothache's meaning is both i...

Dictionaries offer definitions (meanings) of words. Dictionaries are compendiums of usage. They need to be constantly updated. I pointed out this simp...

I like this: language is indeed a miracle. and a Great Deceiver.

Now you're changing your story. before you said God can give up his omnipotence by creating a stone he cannot lift. Now you claim that God can create ...

Poor analogy! If a bachelor takes a wife they cease to be a bachelor. A bachelor cannot defy logic by remaining a bachelor and at the same time taking...

All solutions to problems are material solutions. What other kind(s) of solutions can you offer an example of? Sure, there are other fantasies and spe...

What is the word "like" doing there, though? "The comparison would be one of color for someone born blind from birth. "What it is" is meant in the lit...

I agree with what you've said, but again I think the phrasing would be better, less apt to mislead, if you had said "when we relate to the world there...

The point made by @"180 Proof", if I understood it right, is that the 'what is it like' phrasing is based on the intuition that a comparison should be...

God cannot overcome logic though. can he? He cannot be both omnipotent and unable to lift a stone.

I agree; there is nothing it is like to be a bat or a human, in this sense of comparison you are alluding to. Since I encountered this question of Nag...

Thanks Josh, that gives me something to think about. Can you recommend any works for further study on these themes?

:up: As Gary Snyder calls it: "the power vision in solitude". I tried some of that in my twenties; living in a beaten down old fisherman's shack in th...

Sounds very similar to my experience; predominately with the Gurdjieff Foundation.

Phenomenology as metaphysics and ontology: Heidegger presents something similar, with the addition of historicity and hermeneutics. Do you think Heide...

As I understand it, phenomenology is non-committal on questions of metaphysics or ontology. It takes the self and world at their word; how it all seem...

:up: As requested, this is to notify that I just posted a poem (not one of mine, but a "real" poem) on this new thread of yours.

For me, the Beats are represented Gary Snyder is a more significant exemplar of the Beats aesthetic than Ginsberg. Kerouac and Snyder were strong infl...

I can't see how that could be a sound enough theory to attract many adherents. We learn, we don't invent, the meanings of words. I agree with @"Joshs"...

Yes, I like how you expanded from criteria of excellence to methods of practice. :up:

That's an interesting take. It would seem to follow, though, that if language games are ways of seeing how utterances can make sense, then theologies,...

:grin: I don't think any of us on this little forum would win it.

Sure, I agree, and I'm familiar with that having studied philosophy as an undergraduate. From what I could tell, though, the marks were awarded not fo...

A reasonable distinction; but you cannot know that you "know by God". unless you know God, or?

This makes me wonder whether, on your interpretation, Wittgenstein would count religions or theologies as language games.

The problem with your tennis analogy is that there is no determinable criteria of excellence in philosophy. Even the so-called experts, the academics,...

Likewise :smile:

OK, I think I see the key difference between what we've each been saying. I would say that for a word to refer it is not necessary to know that it ref...

Good points!

For me the meaning of 'definition' is given by the uses and purposes of dictionaries. (Actually one of the meanings of 'definition' because the word i...

Not clear what your point is there.

I agree knowing what a word means involves knowing how to use it appropriately; but I cannot see how that could be the whole story. If the person who ...

:up: Yes, negation and also generalization (which would be impossible without negation). The question that seems to forefront is as to whether negatio...

I agree that it is impossible in principle to compare headaches. I don't agree that the ""meaning" of "headache"" is learned entirely on account of pu...

I agree with you about "gestures at the mystical". That is why I love poetry at least as much as philosophy. Expressing such things should be, and I t...

Do we need to be able to check referents (whatever that might mean: that they are really there, perhaps?). I see no conceptual problem involved in ref...