Janus

I have no problem with saying that we ought to believe facts if that is taken to mean that we ought to acknowledge facts as facts, but like I said thi...

Data on what exactly? References?

I do and I can't. :cry:

Music is akin to visualization in that it does not necessarily involve linguistically mediated conceptual thought. Of course the writing of fiction, s...

You just laid out the distinction between describing what is witnessed and visualizing what is described for yourself. The first requires language, th...

Willfully obtuse as usual; go back and read; I'm not going to repeat myself.

You don't need imagination to describe an event you have witnessed, you just need to be articulate to the required degree.

Descriptions are not imagined, they are thought so you are talking nonsense again. In any case if you sit there watching a film and describing to your...

When I read a novel I do visualize the events, characters and places described. If you don't or cannot so this, then I can only conclude that you are ...

That's nonsense. When we witness events, whether in a film or not, no description is required in order to understand what is going on unless there is ...

I can only speak from my own experience, and I find myself incapable of willfully disbelieving anything that I see as being a fact. The question is wh...

If we cannot but believe something we acknowledge as fact, doesn't that leave the only place for an "ought" as consisting in the condition that we oug...

The problem I see with this argument is that it is not so much that we ought to believe facts but rather that if we accept something as a fact we cann...

I don't see why you would say that. I haven't been arguing that literature is somehow "greater" than film, just that it requires more imagination by v...

It's kind of you to say so. :smile:

I said "IF God is love". And I said it two years ago. This was a dead thread. In some Gnostic cosmology Yaldabaoth, a lesser demiurge associated with ...

Yeah, I wasn't suggesting FNM are the greatest rock or metal band, they're not; but they're pretty good. Mike Patron is arguably the most versatile si...

Anything described, as opposed to being directly shown, must be imagined, so your point remains irrelevant.

Yes, I am a fan of Faith No More and have long thought Mike Patton to be the best rock/metal vocalist; with probably the widest vocal range (about 6 o...

Yes what of it? All those must be imagined too,

The 'marks on paper, film' thing is irrelevant to the fact that when watching a film we don't have to imagine what the characters and places look like...

From an artificially de-lifed perspective books may be thought of as "just marks on paper, etc.", but that is not our ordinary experience. This kind o...

I would say the skill of the writer to describe and evoke places demands on your imagination, and the greater your engagement with the work and your i...

I agree with what you say, and would only add that most decent novels would require a series (or a very long movie) to adapt them adequately, if every...

Fairy Nuff :smile:

That's true, and the more emotionally engaging a film or book is the more associationally or imaginationally rich it will be. Indeed it would seem tha...

AS I say at the end of the last post, I contend it will be required that the film and book being compared are stipulated to be of roughly equal semant...

People may "disagree", but it's quite clearly the case that when reading a novel you must use your imagination to visualize the characters, things, pl...

You say in the title of this thread that existence is relative, not absolute. And in the above quoted you say that the term 'existence is relative to ...

Dead to those for whom it has no meaning, to be sure. :grin:

I am not actually saying that they are. I think they are essentially human insights; insights which belong to the human as surely as instinct does to ...

More challenging than tiresome, I'll warrant! I keep making it clear in the hope that it will eventually become clear to you. Anyway, I'm just express...

As everybody knows, when anything goes, then it's like the song by Leonard Cohen in the 1980's, so unlikely to be a hit: Everybody knows that the dice...

I agree there is such an "antinomy", but that is only because the two are inherently very different. By using the word "contrarian" you seem to introd...

In the kinds of animistic worldviews found in hunter/ gatherer cultures humans are not the focus of creation. That idea came later, most notably with ...

Of course existence is irreducible, insofar as it is not an idea, just as anything cannot be reduced to the mere idea of it. The idea of existence or ...

I share something of Wayfarer's view. Religious feeling is native to us. When it comes to my own practice I have little time for organized religion th...

Your view is too simplistic. What is lost in worldviews dominated by reductionist thinking is the sense of the sacred. Of course, religions themselves...

Illusion can have a meaning in relation to an imagined reality. Think of the idea of naive realism; I have no doubt you would call that an illusion. W...

Yes, the very notion of an "outgroup" could arguably be based on the idea of the separation of self and world. If there is no notion of self and world...

That's like saying there would be no false self if there were no real self. Or no illusory external world if there were no real external world. I thin...

You are projecting to the general what applies only to the particular: what applies to you. Some people need organized religion and others don't. It's...

:smile:

I think it depends on how much that thinking is dominated by the 'subject/object, internal/external' paradigm which has dominated the West and more in...

Meaninglessness; the illusion of discreteness, separation and threat.

Sensory stimuli must be modeled by the animal brain just as is the case with humans. It has nothing to do with "being able to imagine how things could...

You've lifted that out of its context. So, I'm not saying "that reason can be understood through the perspective of evolutionary naturalism." if that ...

Language enables questioning. Sure, with the knowledge and understanding that is enabled by language we can question whatever we want; the only prereq...

The world is intelligible only because of identity and difference. The inherent logic of identity and difference grows out of our ability to distingui...

That's right it isn't; and I was responding to Joshs' apparent assertion that it is. I don't think it is a "wacky" interpretation at all. It is not a ...