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Janus

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OK, but isn't it also just for the love of it? I misunderstood then; it had seemed you were defending Schopenhauer's thinking about the relation betwe...
September 16, 2017 at 23:29
The way I see it, self-cultivation, provided it is not done for self-aggrandisement, is an end in itself, practiced out of love. Why do you want to be...
September 14, 2017 at 21:07
That's true, but it is only Schopenhauer who advocates negation of the will. If this negation of self-will is not replaced by affirmation of a greater...
September 14, 2017 at 20:05
Contrary to Schopenhauer's assertion, boredom does not ensue upon the satisfaction of desire, but exists where there simply is no desire, no interest,...
September 14, 2017 at 08:31
There's certainly nothing wrong in dispelling mysteries when it comes to empirical enquiry. And I'm not "attacking authoritarianism" or pretending to ...
September 10, 2017 at 04:41
I would say we cannot form any adequate notion of divine purposiveness, because any such attempt will result in an anthropomorphic model of purposiven...
September 10, 2017 at 01:39
Yes, but I would say an adequate notion of the Father just is a notion of "pure unformed potential" and certainly not any "sky daddy". The latter is a...
September 10, 2017 at 00:59
The notion of a triadic relation of "interindependence" (Pannikar) makes the most sense to me. It can be (and has been) conceptualized in so many ways...
September 10, 2017 at 00:25
But wouldn't a holistic physicalist want to say that the top down causality is really nothing more than an emergent manifestation of the interactions ...
September 09, 2017 at 23:01
But does the true irreductionist deny that all out experiences (and for that matter all our explanations) could be the result of interactions of parti...
September 09, 2017 at 00:22
You're misunderstanding: I'm not arguing that we know, or are conscious of, what gives rise to experience; I'm arguing against the idea that we have a...
September 08, 2017 at 02:46
You seem to be saying contradictory, or at least unfounded, things here: that "consciousness integrates all of the momentary impressions..." and that ...
September 07, 2017 at 22:04
It's philosophobabble. It almost makes sense, or rather alludes to the possibility of its making sense, and therein lies the humour. Allen's interlocu...
September 06, 2017 at 21:22
Sounds like an incontinent mental patient with vertigo. ;)
September 04, 2017 at 22:57
Animals may read signs, but they don't understand symbolism. Human languages, linguistic and visual, are the only symbolic languages we know of.
September 04, 2017 at 10:39
A very siri robot?
September 04, 2017 at 10:34
"Out' or "out of it"?
September 04, 2017 at 10:33
Yes, I have no doubt animals' spirits may become depressed.
September 04, 2017 at 10:32
I think self-awareness understood in the ordinary 'human' sense requires symbolic language. If you want to say that animals are, or might be, self-awa...
September 04, 2017 at 10:30
I guess not.
September 04, 2017 at 09:41
Robots don't feel pain. Animals feel pain, but are not self-aware they are feeling it. Humans feel pain and are (sometimes at least) self-aware they a...
September 03, 2017 at 22:24
This is a really important and constantly overlooked point, but making it is often like "speaking in parables to the blind", unfortunately.
September 02, 2017 at 22:54
Yes, Heidegger is more against dualistic metaphysics than monistic metaphysics. There are profound problems with monism too, though. Perhaps Spinoza c...
September 02, 2017 at 22:41
You seem to be conflating the primordial experience with its representation. Being in the world is an experience, the essential human experience, and ...
September 02, 2017 at 22:37
Well, I would say that's just one way of interpreting the situation. We don't "know" the subject as an object at all. "The subject" is really nothing ...
August 29, 2017 at 21:13
I don't know about that, but ideas are certainly usually expressed in some familiar language, whether linguistic, visual, or auditory.
August 29, 2017 at 03:03
And you know that how?
August 28, 2017 at 21:45
Well, I would say the subject is as much of an objective reality as the object is, but science does not concern itself with subjects since they are no...
August 28, 2017 at 01:54
What do you mean, though, in saying that it is 'underpinned by the human cognitive faculties" ? Are you talking about the brain? The idea that the bra...
August 28, 2017 at 00:30
This seems to embody an elementary contradiction and confusion, though, insofar as Greer is saying that it is an objective fact that the whole story i...
August 27, 2017 at 23:41
One of my best friends reads him too, I won't say "religiously", but with much enthusiasm. Personally, I find his writings on philosophy (which my fri...
August 27, 2017 at 22:46
I've never worked for anyone else for any length of time. I was hopeless at school because of a total lack of interest, so when I finished year 12 I h...
August 27, 2017 at 22:28
The lines are somewhat blurred sometimes between egregious exploitation where workers, including children, are paid a pittance for inhumanly long work...
August 27, 2017 at 09:39
How about "What was the point of getting this stoopid tattoo"?
August 27, 2017 at 08:19
To be enslaved by force is more than merely a matter of "equity". If our slaves are on the other side of the world then no amount of "labor laws, publ...
August 27, 2017 at 08:10
Everyone is a slave in the sense that they have to somehow earn or otherwise acquire a living or die, BC. Life itself makes 'slaves' of us all in that...
August 27, 2017 at 08:05
Yes, I am certainly not arguing that no one benefits from the smart phone industry, but the fact that many are helped does not justify the inhuman exp...
August 26, 2017 at 23:50
I think there is a big difference between being a more or less oppressed and stressed out worker who can leave their job if they really are determined...
August 26, 2017 at 23:35
OK, I haven't read those two and nor do I intend to. If what you say exemplifies their view, then I would say that it seems like a myopic, or one-dime...
August 26, 2017 at 23:28
I'm not clear on what you're asking here. Are you offering these: "a moral life" and 'philosophy-as-methodology' as alternative ways of living an exam...
August 26, 2017 at 23:09
Ha, McGregor!
August 26, 2017 at 01:23
No, he has a normal head. McGregor has an abnormally massive head. In any case a small head is a smaller target, and says nothing about skull thicknes...
August 26, 2017 at 00:49
Sure, there are many cases like this, but the point is that we in the prosperous west enjoy lifestyles that, in their levels of comfort, and health ca...
August 26, 2017 at 00:03
The middle classes and even the upper echelons of the working classes live unprecedentedly comfortable and 'material goods rich' lives. Many are lever...
August 25, 2017 at 22:30
"The unexamined life is not worth living" It seems fair to say that both Plato and Aristotle, in their perhaps different ways, recommended the pursuit...
August 25, 2017 at 22:13
I don't understand your objection since I wasn't talking about physical laws in the context of morality, but rather moral laws. The contention, as I u...
August 25, 2017 at 08:53
Our unprecedented prosperity is predicated upon, utterly dependent upon, consumerism and growth economy. So, the [profiteers will by no means be the o...
August 25, 2017 at 08:48
If it is "the nature of humanity to pursue eudamonia" (and this is taken in a positive sense as 'flourishing'), and the "route to this is the good" th...
August 25, 2017 at 08:27
We do not require that physical laws "came into existence" prior to the phenomena they govern in order to qualify as being "objective"; so why should ...
August 25, 2017 at 08:17
The point of the OP seems to be that in order for there to be moral responsibility there must be moral autonomy, and in order for there to be moral au...
August 23, 2017 at 21:40