Janus

Fair enough. There is certainly not enough time to study everything.

Is that why you like it?

Yeah, well Michel Henry is not Merleau Ponty, he was a Christian and wrote this book: https://www.amazon.com/Am-Truth-Philosophy-Christianity-Cultural...

Apparently you have no aversion to false modesty, though.

What is "out there" is what has already been determined as some kind of intentional object, I would say. The Henry book I referred to earlier is inter...

For sure some phenomena are only associated with living beings; digestion or homeostasis, for example.

I would say the square root of two exists,but is not precisely determinable. I haven't said that numbers exist in the same way that concrete particula...

Yes, I do seem to remember that distinction between "exist" and "subsist" in Russell. I would still want to say that universals exist, though; for exa...

Numbers "stand apart" from other numbers, and from all other things as well.

Emotions and sensations are phenomena; and yet they cannot be filmed; so, this seems like a ill-though out criterion.

This is simply wrong. Information and representation cannot be "separated", but they can be distinguished between, which is not the same thing at all.

They do exist as phenomena, They don't exist as objects of the senses. They don't exist independently of objects of the senses, either, though. If you...

I am not saying it is; I have asked you what the abstraction is apart from the communication and understanding of it, though. What are you suggesting ...

Abstractions can only be expressed as "concrete particulars of physicality"; what can they be apart from that? Even when you think an abstraction, the...

You're simply assuming that abstractions are something in themselves apart from our communications and understandings of them. It is precisely herein ...

How can an abstraction be communicated or understood except in physical terms? If you think it could then perhaps you could offer an example.

Certainly number, laws. conventions, logic and the like don't exist as objects of the senses. However they certainly exist as phenomena, and we cannot...

Imagined abstractions are always abstracted from, and imagined in forms derived from, the physical world; the experience of the physical world is the ...

The symbol '7' only exists in different physical forms as representations. What it represents is the idea of a quantity; an idea which can only really...

Then I don't understand what basis you think there is for thinking of them as "non-physical". You don't seem to have provided any argument for that. A...

An algebraic cannot be given or understood except in terms of physical marks and symbols; so I'm not sure what you are getting at here. I mean, how co...

From a phenomenological perspective we are "informed" twice by impressions. First there is the primordial 'whatever it is" that impresses us,affects u...

That makes sense to me.

Could the creation of violent music be an act of love (in any sense) as opposed to the music itself being an embodiment of love?

If God is Love, then an act of God is an act of Love, no?

Surely your familiar with the idea of God as Love? When you create a piece of music; is that an act of love?

Creation as an act of love.

I should have said that if the world is created out of nothing then there simply is no problem of evil, rather than saying it would then be a "pseudo-...

Well it could be, as according to science, created out of nothing. And I agree that the problem of evil would in that case be a pseudo-problem. So. it...

Yes, I agree. We have an intuitive feel for them, but no comprehensive discursive understanding. The Christian idea of the "Cloud of Unknowing"; the u...

We think of the absolute as being that which is 'in itself' or beyond our experience and understanding. So absolute goodness would be pure goodness in...

If we are going to be consistent in our projection of an absolute then we are projecting it as that which is beyond our understanding. It would seem a...

Do we have a perfect understanding of good and evil, such that we are justified in saying that the existence of evil is incompatible with perfect good...

I'm enjoying this conversation too, Mike. To answer your question, I would say that time as succession (presuming that is what you mean by "linear tim...

The past is determined insofar as we tell our stories that determine it to be like this, and not that. I don't believe there is any timeline apart for...

Even if we accept for the sake of argument that the path "took a very specific route" how does it follow from that that it must have been determined i...

Of course, according to our understanding a single path was traversed, but does that have any meaning beyond the context of our understanding? In a wa...

How do we know that though?

So we do assume.

I am well familiar with all the kinds of arguments you cited from other threads. the problem is, none of them are compelling to anyone who doesn't emp...

I wouldn't say that. I'd say "a person watching from the future" constructs a story of events that he posits as the path.

Have you hear of the "three body problem"? The point is that complex processes are not predictable in any but a probabilistic way. Think of the weathe...

You seem to be considering determinability and predictability to be coterminous? Or, another question: are determination and predetermination the same...

OK. but the salient point is that semiotics cannot take you beyond naturalism. Just as you can nonetheless think beyond naturalism despite being a sem...

Kant deliberately distinguished 'transcendent' from 'transcendental'. He rejected the coherence of the idea of the transcendent. The transcendental he...

Any example could only be refuted by a counter-example. Can you give an example of a statement by any semiotician that shows that the notion of transc...

Yes, indeed, the deliverances of the human imagination must be eliminated at all costs, or we may, woe betide us, be duped into some illusory understa...

Yes, I think a distinction can be made between communication and understanding. There is probably much that we, along with other animals, understand v...

Sure, but like all "aesthetic pictures" it is subjective, and there are no resources within it with which to form an argument that could be compelling...

For semiotics, there is no meaning 'beyond' the signs; no meaning 'out there' or 'in here' in some transcendent sense. So, it is reductionist, just as...