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Janus

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Spinoza's idea of God as the substance of nature is metaphysical and rationalistic. It has nothing to with science (the empirical).
November 20, 2017 at 01:47
Ah, so you've read that work? Perhaps you could proffer a brief account of the key ideas in Hegel's conception of a transcendent God then. My understa...
November 20, 2017 at 01:37
Adoption of one metaphysics or another is not driven by "evidence" if that is taken in the empirical sense. People choose the metaphysics that seems m...
November 20, 2017 at 00:09
Yes, But spirit understood to be immanent in, not transcendent of, nature. So, it is not a supernatural conception of spirit. Nature just is spirit. I...
November 19, 2017 at 23:13
An objective idealist says that objects are ideas, are spiritual in essence, they are manifestations of spirit or mind. Spirit or mind is not separate...
November 19, 2017 at 23:09
And yet it seems obvious that animals' experiences do have meaning for them. One does not have to reflect on one's experience for it to have meaning, ...
November 19, 2017 at 20:51
If the "reality of abstract objects" could be known, then it could only be known experientially, no? By the experience of so-called "intellectual intu...
November 19, 2017 at 20:41
And yet earlier you said this: " I’m interested in the formal study of the Western philosophical tradition. It has an experiential dimension which I t...
November 19, 2017 at 20:34
I haven't denied that the modes of our experience are culturally mediated, but there must be raw experience that underlies that. You can experience th...
November 19, 2017 at 20:26
According to this no non-human animal's experiences can mean anything, and I think to say this is obviously absurd. Have you read A Man Without Words?...
November 19, 2017 at 20:22
This is such a simplistic view. Phenomenology is not empiricism (unless you think along the lines of something akin to Jame's "radical empiricism") be...
November 19, 2017 at 20:19
The experience that is prior to any speaking.
November 19, 2017 at 20:11
Perhaps "internal" has befuddled you. What I mean is that it is an intelligence immanently bound into the nature of things. I can't tell you "how it w...
November 19, 2017 at 20:10
It cannot help but appear to be a "third person account" when I talk about it; but in itself it is not so. That is what you are not getting here. And ...
November 19, 2017 at 19:59
It's not unrelated because under objective idealism experience is fundamental. This is certainly true of Hegel's (the original) objective idealism. Th...
November 19, 2017 at 00:25
Why can't it be organized by an internal intelligence? That would be the central idea of the alternative naturalistic process theology. Your claim tha...
November 19, 2017 at 00:18
What is the relevance of this comment? To what is it addressed?
November 18, 2017 at 22:50
OK, I should have added "loving" or at least "benevolent" to that, but it nonetheless seems to be a conception of love "from afar", all except for the...
November 18, 2017 at 22:41
You make some nice points here from unusual perspectives, and I find nothing to disagree with in what you say.
November 18, 2017 at 22:26
Where we differ is that you believe nothing at all is to be known without the dualistic rational "stepping back" or "stepping out" of the living proce...
November 18, 2017 at 22:20
Doesn't that just mean that nature cannot show us any explanation for being? Does it follow from that that there must be an explanation for being? Wha...
November 18, 2017 at 22:12
The point is that that there is no way to definitively establish whether or not what we experience as 'raw state' is socially constructed or not. In d...
November 18, 2017 at 21:51
This is long-winded, but on close inspection all I'm seeing is a bunch of assertions, and no cogent argument that makes any sincere attempt to address...
November 18, 2017 at 21:30
Why not? Are you at all familiar with Whitehead's or Hartshorne's theologies? Even Spinoza's God is not a supernatural God, it is "deus sive natura": ...
November 17, 2017 at 21:27
The claim that any naturalistic account of religion must also be reductionistic is the very claim I questioned you on in the other thread, by asking i...
November 17, 2017 at 20:59
Your objection is misplaced, because I have already acknowledged that when it comes to empirical claims, the scientific method of collective observati...
November 17, 2017 at 20:33
No, for me it's not an idea at all, but a certain kind of feeling, undifferentiated of course (because pre-conceptual), but it can vary over a vast qu...
November 16, 2017 at 04:59
The point is that such experience is felt as primal; there is nothing beneath it that we can get to experientially; and such experience forms the intu...
November 16, 2017 at 02:58
He can't show you; it's the nature of the beast. You would only ever be convinced by a testimonial if you had a feel for it yourself.
November 16, 2017 at 02:05
Yes, I suppose it's natural enough for people to want to live in accordance with 'ultimate' reality. The problem is that there is such a plethora of d...
November 16, 2017 at 01:22
I'd say that, apart from ancient schools such as Pythagoreanism, Platonism, Neoplatonism, Stoicism, Epicureanism and so on, the only "experiential" pa...
November 16, 2017 at 01:11
This makes me wonder why we need a study of metaphysics, as opposed to, or in addition to, a study of ethics and/or moral philosophy in order to under...
November 15, 2017 at 22:40
I don't agree. "Public opinion" never seems to reach a level of coordination that would be adequate to think of it as an exercise of power. The closes...
November 15, 2017 at 21:46
It seems to be that in militarily sustained dictatorships, a few individuals or even one individual, can possess great power. This is power in the han...
November 15, 2017 at 21:38
I agree, it is possible that capping wealth would be a disincentive to those who, despite their aims, might be thought to create benefits to society. ...
November 15, 2017 at 21:24
This would seem to be a difficult thing to determine. Is Bill Gates more powerful than Rupert Murdoch? Does the degree of power, and kind of power, on...
November 15, 2017 at 21:03
You seem to think that those who are the most successful at accumulating enormous wealth are motivated, not by accumulating an ever greater fortune fo...
November 15, 2017 at 20:24
My understanding is that experience is fundamental. All that is is relation, and substance is merely a convenient idea for understanding the dynamic-a...
November 14, 2017 at 20:41
OK, but in your disdain for physicalism you seem to be assuming that for the physicalist the physical is reducible to objects and/or particles rather ...
November 14, 2017 at 02:35
I'm curious as to how both of you think that what Aaron says here would differ from what naturalism allows. Or to put it another why I wonder whether ...
November 13, 2017 at 19:57
That is really no different than saying that there is no distinction between belief about anything and the the thing the belief is about. You might ob...
November 11, 2017 at 20:50
IT makes perfect sense to me. I believe I have seen it in action, both in myself and others in many diverse ways. When it is observed of course it cea...
November 11, 2017 at 20:42
All the world's religions, mythology, hermeticism, theosophy and anthroposophy, as well as pre-critical philosophy should provide plenty of examples. ...
November 11, 2017 at 20:30
I would say the raw feeling becomes localized as self, allowing the distinction of other (wherever I do not locate the raw feeling). But my experience...
November 10, 2017 at 20:59
Now, that's a distinction I can get behind! It's true that we can talk about ineffability, but we cannot say anything at all about the ineffable by de...
November 10, 2017 at 20:45
If they thought about it at the time; if not then they tell a lie without being conscious of doing so. Quite common I would say.
November 10, 2017 at 18:46
Of course it is possible to deceive others or oneself without consciously intending to. Braggarts who. probably out of a sense of insecurity, bullshit...
November 10, 2017 at 09:10
Not a helpful comment unless you identify just what you are referring to and where it fails according to your criteria, preferably quoting the specifi...
November 10, 2017 at 08:55
Doesn't take much disagreement before you resort to insult does it? I'm not interested in trying to sustain a conversation with someone who doesn't ta...
November 10, 2017 at 02:13
Nothing prevents us from realizing , discussing and theorizing about our inability to discuss and theorize about some kinds of experience. It's not a ...
November 10, 2017 at 02:12