You are viewing the historical archive of The Philosophy Forum.
For current discussions, visit the live forum.
Go to live forum

Janus

Comments

I would say there have been far greater Lutheran philosophers, at least in the modern era: Leibniz, Kant, Hegel for example. Anyway, the mere existenc...
May 09, 2017 at 08:54
OK, maybe you have a different definition of the term "mapped against". For me, for there to be a genuinely credible belief in divinely given authorit...
May 09, 2017 at 08:48
I certainly don't, and I think never could, believe in any such God, either. But I believe the Catholics do, and that was what I was saying I find inc...
May 09, 2017 at 08:35
What exactly do you mean by "infinite" here? I am not proposing that eternal life could be of infinite duration, because it logically cannot be of any...
May 09, 2017 at 08:28
No, I'm not saying that at all. I acknowledge that people may accept evidence for an afterlife that I would not. What evidence anyone accepts is up to...
May 09, 2017 at 08:20
So, you think he believes the Catholic orthodoxy that those who don't believe in Christ are destined for eternal punishment, or at least Purgatory? I ...
May 09, 2017 at 03:34
No problems; I am often enough guilty of "saying things in haste" myself. I'm not saying all views are interchangeable, but that all views that suppor...
May 09, 2017 at 03:32
That's funny: I also have Secular Age performing the same function. I read Sources of the Self years ago and found it quite interesting (although dens...
May 09, 2017 at 03:24
I respect all religions and the right of their adherents to believe according to their scriptures. It is a thorny social problem, though, when doctrin...
May 09, 2017 at 03:12
Interesting, I wasn't aware that Dreyfus had co-authored a book with Charles Taylor. Looks like an interesting read: https://www.amazon.com/Retrieving...
May 09, 2017 at 02:54
Not at all; I have no problem with the discipline of comparing religions to one another, and I don't know what I said to make you think otherwise. You...
May 09, 2017 at 02:32
It seems likely that you are generalizing and projecting your own desires here; this doesn't resonate with me at all.
May 09, 2017 at 01:53
I disagree entirely with this. The truly admirable part of religious conversion consists in the recognition and realization of something greater that ...
May 09, 2017 at 01:45
If Nietzsche were a "cultural icon" that would be irrelevant to his philosophy, as is your "harshness". If you want to critique Nietzsche's philosophy...
May 07, 2017 at 22:16
I don't recall reading such a qualification of himself anywhere in Nietzsche writings (and I have read most of his works, albeit a long time ago for m...
May 07, 2017 at 10:00
Ah, I missed that Willow asked that; comment should have been addressed to Willow, then.
May 07, 2017 at 09:52
The OP wants to address the question as to whether porn is harmful and/ or immoral, so I don't think the question as to whether it is virtuous is real...
May 07, 2017 at 09:00
I don't think the fact that Nietzsche most likely suffered a brain disorder of some kind, whether brought on by tertiary syphilis or, as some recent s...
May 07, 2017 at 08:53
Morality, as distinct from ethics, is rule based. If the moral rule is 'No adultery', then adultery is immoral by definition.
May 07, 2017 at 05:01
As I see it, Nietzsche certainly achieved an intellectual, and even arguably even an ethical, "higher ground". I wonder what other kinds of "higher gr...
May 07, 2017 at 04:53
Nice points, Willow.
May 07, 2017 at 00:29
His book Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time, Division I was my introduction to Heidegger. His podcasted lectures from Berk...
May 03, 2017 at 21:33
What allows you to say the tree in your backyard is the same tree? Or, if you count the tree as a "living creature", then what allows you to say the m...
May 02, 2017 at 23:04
But it seems it must be a problem for you, though. I suppose when you go home at night you greet a different companion each time. I wonder how it is t...
May 02, 2017 at 08:07
Our taking something to be real has an irreducibly subjective element. But that which we take to be real does not necessarily have any element of huma...
May 02, 2017 at 02:13
Again, Johnson's "refutation" is not an argument. The opinion that the vast majority of people agree with Johnston is not relevant to the argument and...
May 02, 2017 at 01:24
You are conflating two ideas: the correct (by definition) idea that all appearances are correlated with perceptions, with the incorrect idea that the ...
May 02, 2017 at 00:55
This is incorrect. We don't say of things only what we can "see". We infer that objects are real apart from their appearances, because it is necessary...
May 02, 2017 at 00:07
The reason I said it was nonsensical is that the idea of a human (me) perceiving a flower "independently of how a human perceives it" is just that: no...
May 01, 2017 at 23:03
Yes, Kant's arguments in the CPR do reject Transcendental Realism, but he later addressed that problematic weakness in his position, firstly in the CJ...
May 01, 2017 at 09:45
I think where my puzzlement starts is that I had thought you were well aware that I am adequately familiar with Kant's conceptions of Transcendental I...
May 01, 2017 at 09:40
All this is nothing more than baseless assertion. How do you know that the so-called laws of nature do not reflect any reality beyond that which you p...
May 01, 2017 at 00:39
I did say "more or less invariant". Objects are obviously stable enough that we can recognize and speak about them, and we routinely observe others, i...
May 01, 2017 at 00:10
When the going gets tough, eh... Come on, what you wrote was patronizing inasmuch as you should know by now I am familiar with all that stuff, and yet...
April 30, 2017 at 22:36
I should get around to reading Soames: his two volumes are already on my shelves. :) Hmmm...Scientology...jargon....no actual thought...I would say......
April 30, 2017 at 22:29
None of what you have said is relevant, as I see it. I am well familiar with all those old arguments and interpretations of Kant, and so on. I am not ...
April 30, 2017 at 22:23
If laws are purely formal, then they don't reflect anything real about nature. To my way of thinking, it would only be under this assumption that it c...
April 30, 2017 at 22:10
In: Causality  — view comment
Yes, but do we have any model of those interactions that are not understood in terms of efficient causation? If you want to support a model other than...
April 30, 2017 at 21:57
In: Causality  — view comment
Sure, the mathematical models are themselves intelligible, but that is not relevant to what I have said: the point is that there is no intuitively int...
April 30, 2017 at 21:54
I have no problem with your support for your position. But if you tendentiously distort what I say through its lens, and thereby fabricate figures of ...
April 29, 2017 at 23:39
This is where you make your mistake. I haven't said we can "determine" (in the sense of 'prove' or be 'absolutely certain of') whether other animals s...
April 29, 2017 at 23:35
What you say is entirely in accordance with what I was getting at, though; which is that philosophers formulate new definitions and qualifications of ...
April 29, 2017 at 23:21
That's a nonsensical idea that I was in no way suggesting. It would be better if you stuck to addressing what I actually wrote. Nothing you say here a...
April 29, 2017 at 23:16
For example, the exclusively philosophical use of the term 'substance'. Or Heidegger's use of 'dasein'. You must be aware that philosophers have devel...
April 29, 2017 at 21:57
"Perceptual and cognitive faculties" certainly condition how things are perceived. A bee and a human will not perceive a flower in the same way. But w...
April 29, 2017 at 21:45
Human beings formulate laws, and we don't know for sure whether those formulations reflect actuality in any absolute sense. I think you are quibbling ...
April 29, 2017 at 21:40
In: Causality  — view comment
The problem is that we never know the whole system. An enormous part of it is always inferred from what we do 'know'. Causation itself is inferential....
April 29, 2017 at 21:32
Yes, but the knowledge of, meaning recognition of, or familiarity with, stable objects in an environment is displayed even by animals. There must be s...
April 28, 2017 at 23:36
Doesn't that kind of strict philosophical use (somewhat ironically) occur when, as Wittgenstein puts it, language goes on holiday? He says that the ge...
April 28, 2017 at 22:48
You are creating a figure of straw, if you assert that when it is commonly said that matter follows laws, the implication is that matter is somehow in...
April 28, 2017 at 22:06