Janus

Personally, I think semiotics is reductive. All symbolic understanding is reductive, and I think that is the OP's point. I would say there is scientif...

I think you need to distinguish between semiotics as being the notion that describes all processes of human (and perhaps animal) understanding via sig...

That seems to be an eliminativist standpoint. The question is 'who is manipulating the signs in order to do the understanding, and where does the semi...

Any proposal for such an enquiry would fail because an answer is not determinable. The reality seems to be, that despite the fact that many, many peop...

Firstly, I asked what you think being the Word of God means, and secondly I have not been sparing in saying what I think it means, which is to say wha...

I think you underestimate him; or overestimate his peevishness. The many you refer to are not right-thinking persons then. But thanks for letting me t...

If this is truly how you live, then you are already walking with God. And no right thinking person would blame God for how they are. The passage you a...

You meant to write "not worry..." I presume? But yes, anyone should be able to read it with an open heart and mind, and find its poetry working on the...

Have you been reading my responses to you? Here is one regarding the question of the difference between reading and interpretation: Why should I be ne...

I don't believe this is correct. Socrates' method of dialectic consisted in showing what something (Justice, the Good, or whatever) cannot, contrary t...

Here is your question:"Now it’s a simple question: how does the word of God come to fall under any interpretation at all? If the words in a given sequ...

Interpretations could be nuanced in various ways but for me its central meaning is to live with humility keeping God in your heart and mind instead of...

It seems fairly obvious that it is a prophecy of the coming of John the Baptist.

Disingenuity reigns...

I think you're being disingenuous if you claim not to know what that is intended to mean and instead offer such a flippant, obviously ridiculous, inte...

Of course you would know what those words mean (if you did). The revelatory aspect of texts which may be experienced in the (all the more so by inform...

But "reading" then according to you just refers to the act of reading. That act obviously involves skills including knowing the conventional meanings ...

That's true, but by "insight" I was referring to something that is evoked or alluded to by a text, but would (mostly) not be propositionally stated. I...

If you read a text, whether that be a work of philosophy, a poem or a religious work, and something is revealed to you in the form of insight; the int...

How do you understand the distinction between reading and interpretation, and how do think it is relevant to what I have said here?

First they believe it is the word of God, rich with spiritual meaning. And then they endeavour to interpret it in the right spirit, knowing that no hu...

Was it you that did any of the things that you have now forgotten?

If we were able to know exactly when conception is possible then there would be no need of contraceptive devices at all. Apparently you would consider...

How much do you trust your memory? What if you did ask and have forgotten?

"Getting frequent blowjobs" is a form of contraception, and hence murder, according to your own principles.

I don't believe that you don't believe you know anything. Do you know how to find your way home? Do you know the difference between a tree and a pork ...

You have offered no argument as to why we should think that loving someone unconditionally entails that you do anything they ask, even if it would har...

Of course there could be reasons to refuse a loved one's requests; for instance, you would do that if you judged that what they wanted was not in thei...

No, it's a way of expressing unconditionality. You are conflating that fact that 'no matter what' is a condition of the love being unconditional, with...

Unconditional love is when you love someone no matter what. The examples you gave of purported conditions that unconditional love is subject to, such ...

It's not that the spirit must be "guiding", because that suggests it would be external to what is "being guided". Reality is the unfolding of spirit a...

We seem to be talking at cross purposes here. I haven't said that dual aspect monism would be contradictory to objective idealism. Hegel's regard for,...

Yeah, I remember some of those times. :)

I have already acknowledged that 'objective' idealists may be realists (in fact must be) in the sense that they acknowledge the reality of an absolute...

Does it also deny that the mind exists in any way transcendental to the body?

Agree.

Cartesian dualism is not the only logical conclusion here; Spinoza's 'dual aspect' conception is also consistent and coherent with our ordinary unders...

I'm not clear on what you are asking here. Objects are "made of matter" by definition. Just as thoughts and experiences "happen to minds' by definitio...

I think you are taking for granted what you need to demonstrate: that reasoning is "made via means devoid of matter". In any case I am not arguing for...

I can't see the "lot more", I think it is fairly simple: if I imagine something, my imagining it is real, but what is imagined may be merely imaginary...

Sure, and in that case both are acknowledging the existence of "mind independent objects". The materialist says they are independently materially exis...

Yes, but the difference all hinges on what the idealist means by saying that an event did or did not happen. So, it is misleading to say the materiali...

I don't think this is right; I think the distinction is closely related to the question of idealism vs realism. The imaginary is understood by realist...

That's what I think too. Unity over multiplicity cannot be the ultimate reality, reducing multiplicity (and hence individuation) to being an illusion....

Probably. I have always tended not to stick with things, so pursuing things in a consistent, disciplined way has always been a struggle. I believe I'm...

It's true in a certain way that we could be said to understand the created world dualistically, but it may be more accurate to say we understand it 't...

What do you take it that idealism (or at least the form of it you want to question) is saying? It certainly seems that whatever reality "in itself" 'i...

Non-dualism would not recognize this dualistic dichotomy in the first place.

I pursue music, philosophy, painting, and writing in order to understand myself; nothing else, other than intimate human relationship, and generally t...

OK, well, I guess we differ here, I love self-cultivation for its own sake: I haven't progressed to the stage of loving God and the world in the kind ...