Janus

You could, as suggested, "ask a lot of questions", but you could not do anything with an experience like that, or the answers to your questions, unles...

(1) I had been talking about personailty in the sense of personhood, though; not in the sense of manifesting an active personailty. If function is los...

IIn a causally closed, deterministic world there is no you making prior decisions; that also is a rationalization after the fact, or an illusory epiph...

It might be true that someone who is brain dead is simply gone from this world, and certainly will no longer be counted as a person if 'person' is def...

That's true if you are referring to the fact of belief and not to the content of beliefs, and I haven't suggested otherwise. I agree, as per above, th...

Great! You've succeeded in saying precisely nothing about what constitutes observable evidence of the existence of intentionality in people generally;...

I don't think it makes sense to say the person is diminished, its just their capabilities that are diminished. We still accord them the same degree of...

How exactly does human behavior display intentionality? Remember we are looking for something that is not merely an interpretation, but something dire...

I can see that there would be no good reason for you to assign anthropomorphic qualities to the world because for you good evidence would be empirical...

I made no claim about "most folks". I said that it's a matter of definition. If any of a person's beliefs contradict a central tenet of a religion, or...

My God...the rigor!

I agree that nothing Hume says entails mysticism, but I think andrewk's point was probably: that since, according to Hume, we can know only representa...

But, all you're saying is that the world doesn't manifest obvious person-hood in its parts. Most of the parts of our bodies do not, merely in themselv...

No, I'm not; it's a mere matter of definition. If you believe something that contradicts a central tenet of s religion, then you are simply not an adh...

They are deluding themselves if they think they are Buddhists (as opposed to people who merely accept some Buddhist tenets) and they also believe in G...

I only said it because it certainly didn't seem as though it was obvious to you that you were doing nothing more than trotting out an unsupported, fas...

Of course it is already obvious that it is correct in your opinion, so that unsupported comment seems redundant, and hence pointless.

Yeah, that's one explanation, and a very fashionable one indeed.

This just shows that you are ignorant about Buddhism. There are Buddhists who believe in gods. It is considered more fortunate in Buddhism to be born ...

Regarding Hume I think it would have been more apposite if you had written "limits within which there is nothing more to expect".

I say you merely repeated yourself, and didn't address anything I (and probably the others) wrote. :-}

Anglo survey, no? Perhaps Anglo/American at best.

Sure there would be practical outcomes that result from praising and blaming behavior, just as there are from any behavior. In a deterministic world t...

Examples? I don't know what this means. No it does not mean an impossibility, and I stated that myself. K chose to pursue his genius, and he could hav...

How many well-documented cases of great, lasting loves can you cite? The practical day to day exigencies of living together and raising a family are n...

This is a very important point you make, and one that is often missed. My only question is: what could it mean for Jesus to be either real or not? Any...

You do.

I think that marrying Regine would have been a mistake, unless he was able to be wholehearted about it, which he obviously was not. What we imagine a ...

Yes, I don't agree that anyone should feel constrained by "normative oughts" in any case. Morality and ethics should be a matter of conscience and int...

Schopenhauer was able to avoid the necessity to work and still live pretty well by all accounts, due to a bursary from his father. So, he didn't reall...

Then it would alternatively be possible to say: 1. If order (laws of nature) do not exist, then God does not exist and anything is possible: that is, ...

I think you may well be right about that, at least for a significant number of cases. But I don't believe that such overweening self-belief is a guara...

Is there any difference between "transcending the ethical" and "being unethical'?

After reading the article you linked, I am inclined to think that K cancelled his engagement to Regine out of an apprehension that he could not both f...

The logic of praise and blame entails that the person to be praised or blamed for some act or achievement is the unconstrained agent and origin of the...

Yes, although I wasn't referring to that kind of "hinge proposition" knowledge. I was concerned more with so-called empirical knowledge; specifically ...

Isn't it just the social instinct to be aligned with peers?

>:O

It depends on what you mean by 'know'. Does anybody ever really know anything in the empirical sphere (in the sense that it is absolutely impossible t...

'Smart-arse' or 'one-upman' Atheism?

I think this is an interesting question. Is the Christian God the only really personal God, due to His human incarnation? On the other hand, the Islam...

I haven't read much about this, so I can only speculate. Perhaps K was expecting to be able to reach a total commitment, and then realized he could no...

Regrettably I have to tootle off now Agustino, so, until later...

Unfortunately I have to stop now ND, but I will return to this conversation as soon as I am able.

Perhaps K was not prepared to be decisive for merely practical reasons; and was waiting until he could commit himself absolutely. Of course this waiti...

To be decisive is not necessarily, or perhaps even often, to be wholly committed in the sense I was meaning, though. Decisiveness is often driven mere...

"How we all see"; that is intersubjectivity. How I see, or how you see; that is subjectivity, or personailty. I agree with you that what is deeply per...

It probably would have been better if I had said "you suspect X is true but you really want to believe Y", since I don't believe we ever know when it ...

This sounds like the Buddhist or Hindu idea of going for satchitananda over transient worldly pleasure or merely comforting belief. How many, if any, ...

You say that 180 Proof is well known; I'm just saying that that fact does not guarantee that his thoughts were truly unique or of high value. To be ho...