Janus

MO does not understand and/or accept the logical distinction between validity and soundness. I've been around and around this very not-so-merry-go-rou...

From one of the footnotes in that paper: "Wittgenstein hereby denies the Principle of Sufficient Reason for propositions and facts while he preserves ...

The PSR is applicable to both, I would say, but in different ways. The PSR, as I understand it, covers both causes and reasons. So, causes are underst...

What does the energy look like?

Explain your understanding of kinetic energy so that I can see how it differs from mine.

I take the PSR to be an epistemological, not an ontological, principle. So @"Thorongil" is right to say that it cannot be refuted, epistemologically a...

I don't know; I think the attempt to explain context mechanistically is wrong-headed and doomed to failure. To explain something mechanistically is to...

Well, all I can say is that your hypothesis is falsified: I understand kinetic energy and yet I certainly don't see it when I watch moving billiard ba...

OK, well, you're entitled to your views, of course. For me though, they come across as tendentious; I agree with @"Noble Dust" that your account of in...

I think you meant to say 'what criteria are we applying here to validate or invalidate ?u?n?f?a?l?s?i?f?i?a?b?l?e? claims as 'unfalsifiable'', no? A c...

You're only addressing the role of intuition vis a vis empirical matters, so since I already more or less agree, I can't find much to respond to.

Also found some lectures by Dreyfus on Merleau Ponty which i haven't listened to: http://afterxnature.blogspot.com.au/2017/03/complete-recordings-of-d...

I think you're right; there is always a competitive element and an element of self-justification and even self-protection that I can see in myself whe...

I am not familiar with that exchange, but I would say that we inhabit a kind of "hermeneutic circle" of culturally mediated knowledge wherein the plau...

I think it follows that we would have to know the truth to know how close we're getting to it, but then if we knew the truth we would not merely be cl...

I think Bernard Lonergan nailed it with his formulation of the transcendental conditions for good enquiry in any field: "Be attentive, be intelligent,...

You don't need to worry about me taking anything personally. In fact I cannot imagine how you could have read that into my responses. Yes, well my onl...

You say "No one reads". What does that mean? Does it mean that no one interprets what you have written the way you insist that they should? That no on...

That's nonsense to me I'm afraid. I understand the idea of kinetic energy and yet I don't see it when I look at a moving object. Do you think someone ...

It makes no sense to me to think that we see the kinetic energy; we see the ball moving is all.

I think so...

Or not...

So it follows that to be alive is to be stupid?

Maybe, but how could we know how stupid he was?

I just want to point out that I have not claimed that intuition is necessarily a good guide when it comes to empirical, scientific or even everyday kn...

:cool:

Hume's point in the 'billiard ball' example is that the cause (kinetic energy) is not actually observed, and he concludes that causation cannot be dir...

Is there an actual argument for the claim that all unfalsifiable claims are meaningless, as opposed to being merely...well, unfalsifiable? Do we need ...

Again, I agree; although the big question is what it means to say that it is real. We know what we mean when we say that a phenomenon of the senses is...

I think the points of agreement between religions are mostly ethical, most notably versions of the Golden Rule and elaborations of that. Materialists ...

There are yous in all the others, to whom those realities are apparent? edit: I should have read the thread before answering; not surprisingly someone...

Sure, you can entertain the idea, or even believe that it is so. But if you believe, for example, that the Christian, or the Buddhist, revelation is a...

:cool:

Studying the brain with FMRI nonetheless relies on first person reports in order to know what is purportedly being thought, felt or experienced and to...

If we think matter is mechanical rather than organic (or semiotic, which is arguably the same thing) then of course the hard problem arises. The hard ...

Of course I have never denied that there are traditional methods of validation within religious domains of discourse. For examples, the infallibility ...

So, you don't really believe that Bitter Crank "probably lacks an understanding of what the story means", then? You were just being provocative? Have ...

"Bitette", and earlier: "Butter Crack"! Who's the "cat person", now? Do you really think the human dynamics are so different in gay male relations? Ho...

Intuition yields a different kind of knowledge (knowledge by feeling, by familiarity) than rational, empirical knowledge. It is when the former is con...

Sometimes wisdom has to be softened if it is unpalatable in its natural state, just as apples need to be peeled and blended to produce 'baby food' for...

I'm not sure that the idea of karma can be associated with the idea of free will in the full libertarian sense that is to be found within some forms o...

This is a really important point that I did not explicitly state. A person can be incredibly intelligent about all kinds of things, and yet remain emb...

I practiced meditation diligently for perhaps 18 years, and I think it is a great tool for calming the mind. But from my own experience, the greatest ...

You're right and I've already alluded to this: it is not unwise to ask questions, the unwisdom consists in not actively assessing the answers against ...

That was the impression I got from the emphasis on wisdom consisting in culturally embedded habits and, for example, the mention of the Golden Rule. I...

You seem to reading what I say through the lens of your own definitions. Wisdom for me does not consist in following rules but in having creative insi...

This can be inverted as knowing what particularities to pay attention to. And it's not as though we run through all the generalities saying "Not this,...

Probably we are not disagreeing; it might be just a matter of emphasis. For me, wisdom consists in how the 'golden maxims' and "topspin backhands" are...

OK, that makes sense. I see what you were getting at now. :smile:

See, you've done the unwise thing and asked another what bullshit and self-hatred are. But all is not lost; that is not necessarily unwise; it depends...