Can you explain why you think Stephen Bachelor's separation of the practical aspects of Buddhist teaching and practice from its unfounded, superstitio...
What you say here about the implicit background of pre-critical assumptions against which our understandings of everything are framed is really statin...
I have read somewhat of Derrida, and to be honest I was not impressed by his ideas or his degree of clarity and rigour. If he means 'context' then why...
I didn't say I celebrate scientific materialism, though, but the diversity of philosophical standpoints. As I have said many times, and as you should ...
Meaning as such is simply whatever a theory claims; as distinct from whatever might be claimed about a theory's practical or metaphysical significance...
Understanding the limits of your own knowledge, and prescribing what are the limits of all knowledge are two very different acts. I am a critic of sci...
I don't think it is credible that different scientists would have different interpretations of the meanings,as such, of scientific theories (except in...
I already mentioned that possibility in the post you responded to. But if we assume it is then that would rule out the use of any inquiry. I think we ...
No it doesn't; the very idea of searching for answers presupposes that consciousness is not mysterious. If consciousness were assumed to be ineliminab...
So is it a real expression of "billions of neurons..."? What would an illusory expression of "billions of neurons.." look like? :s In any case wouldn'...
OK, I get it now: it is not merely to understand the past in the terms which the past itself has cemented into the present forms of discourse, but to ...
That's true, but the thing they have in common is the idea of an implicit shared background. The later Wittgenstein employs the idea of "forms of life...
I don't know why you bothered to start another thread on this when there is already a recent one that asks just the question you are asking here. http...
Saying that we know things via the mind is no more to make a statement one way or another about primacy of the mind, than saying food is digested via ...
You're correct; this is perfectly consistent with the physicalist view. Of course according to that standpoint we know things via the mind; it's just ...
Science recognizes two different modes of heating; conduction (or convection) and radiation. In the former heat is conducted from something hotter (ai...
That's right, that's Heidegger's and the late Wittgenstein's point, or really context, of departure. I have been looking into a little known American ...
Really...hyperbole!...I'd never heard of that before.... So, you and Dennett are just indulging in hyperbole on different sides of the fence...some so...
I can relate to this; much of what passes for modern philosophy seems to consist of academic gherkin jerkin'. There is certainly an arrogance in the w...
You're exaggerating to say the least. Nobody seriously thinks humans are descended from apes; the accepted thought is that we share a common ancestor....
Neither that summary nor your remarks say anything whatsoever about how the world exists apart from perceptions. The passage quoted from Schopenhauer ...
Actually that was not quite the question I wanted to ask. The question was more to do with whether we do not need to assume that language refers to th...
You must use language to doubt, no? Which is to assume that language is coherent and represents what you wish to doubt in such a way that doubting it ...
I do agree that we are, in general, excessively prone to rigid categorization; however I think different people settle for different things, and so th...
Yes, but what does that claim mean? How would its being a real domain differ from its being a merely conceptualized or imagined domain? Are you claimi...
To exist and to be real are generally considered to be coterminous. If you want to say that there is an order that is real beyond being inherent in ex...
That causation is not an object of immediate observation seems right. But Hume seems to be assuming the narrow view that belief only in phenomena that...
I don't think it matters provided we don't prescribe for other people our own feelings and the ideas associated with them. To do that is fundamentalis...
Obviously we can only represent the world as it is presented to our senses. Bur if we believe language has emerged and evolved in the context of a liv...
The allegory could be about that; or it could be about what Plato understood to be a pure, rational intuition of the forms. I doubt Plato had any conc...
That's actually questionable; but irrelevant in any case. I have never mentioned them nor claimed they are important in any case; so what's the point ...
Sure, but you wouldn't be able to judge whether what was being proposed was on the mark unless you were familiar with Spinoza's and Maimonidies' philo...
So, you don't believe that our language practices emerged and evolved in a living world context at all then? Language is just "pouring from the empty ...
Spinoza did not give ontological primacy over mind or matter; for him both are aspects of substance, which is eternal. So, the eternal is as much matt...
What do you mean; an anti-realist in what sense? I don't believe numbers are 'out there' floating about in some 'realm' if that is what you mean. But ...
It's not at all contradictory to say that is what now future will become present, just as what is now present will become past. The past is determined...
This doesn't follow, because the future, when it becomes present will be physical in just the same sense as the present is and the past was. It is bet...
It can make a difference to us only in terms of our feelings. If we attempt to think those things and end up only with a feeling of mystery; that feel...
See my other response to you on this. 'Metaphysical' and 'supernatural' could be taken, on a tendentious interpretation, to mean the same thing; but r...
Mysticism is not a supernatural phenomenon, but a natural human one. It consists in imagination, feeling and intuition; what else? I predict you will ...
In ordinary parlance to say that there are. for example, multiple sheep is exactly the same as to say there are a number of sheep. I'm not claiming th...
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