Janus

The constant formation of new modes is known only in the formation of the modes themselves. The constancy of this formation of modes is known only fin...

You are the person being dishonest here. You said: You are saying here that my reading a post is a mode; so I am saying 'right, then, it is an activit...

Reading a post is an activity. You say it is a mode, and yet you denied modes are activities. :s

You're just playing with words.

What are modes if they are not activity? Spinoza, I seem to recall, refers to the modes as "affections of substance", thus he sees them not as general...

Agutsino claims God is an activity. I haven't said that God is the modes: I have asked what He is over and above the activity ( the only activity we k...

This is so only because in principle the set of, say, even numbers, can be placed in one to one correspondence with the set of both even and odd numbe...

Coherent alternative. What is it then? Surely you don't mean this?: I've already dealt with that. This is utter garbage, Agustino, and I suspect you k...

Didn't I say in my previous post that it is not possible, actually or logically (in principle in other words) to finish counting an infinite series. I...

You answered the question yourself in the previous paragraph. I think you are being unnecessarily pedantic about what is a self-evident and trivial po...

As someone already pointed out, countability is defined as the ability to place a set, whether finite or infinite, in one to one correspondence with t...

This is a nonsense reading of what I said. You are trying to understand the infinite, eternal process of unification in finite and temporal terms. In ...

Where did I state or imply "God has a beginning"?

True, but I know some highly intelligent well-educated people, who are extremely disaffected with the modern global democratic market machine who have...

Well I find that simply incredible, but since I haven't gone to personally ask "a great number of religious believers" to explain precisely what they ...

God is never merely "a viewpoint"; God always experiences every possible viewpoint, and no one of them in particular. So, you are incorrect, no limita...

Sure, it can only come from the mind; the arse (corrected spelling, yours means a donkey) produces only shit. The mind is an organ of interpretation; ...

Yes, you keep saying that, but I am yet to find a coherent account of an alternative view. Maybe I'll discover one when I get further into the Machere...

Regarding your first point, I was referring specifically to the the decline of religious belief in the advanced industrial societies, because that is ...

Yes, and there is no experience beyond all the many experiences of individuals. These experiences and the individuals are what Spinoza refers to as 'm...

Substance is literally nothing except its modes. Why should I love nothing? In accordance with Spinoza's philosophy, God's experience is nothing witho...

Yes, but organized religion as a whole has declined insofar as it has failed to adapt to the prevailing modern scientific worldview. Now, maybe such i...

Sorry, I missed that. In any case, from Wiki: "Mainline Protestants were a majority of all Christians in the United States until the mid-20th century,...

Have you got any argument to support your claim that religious organizations escape the common condition constraining all things such that they must a...

I said "How do you know it is "new age"?", referring to the Center he founded and you said "look at his videos". Since, as you admit, his videos are n...

Knowledge, in any determinate sense of the term, can only be phenomenal or logical. If we think there are no conditions that do not appear as phenomen...

Rubbish. It's adapt or become extinct. His videos are not the Center..doh! If that's your penchant, then off you go... :-}

Some traditional (or even contemporary) Franciscans might. You cannot possibly speak for all of them. Are you saying there can be no change within rel...

Seems to me you are being quite unnecessarily judgemental. After all, his target audience is not professional or even serious amateur philosophers. Th...

Do you have any actual evidence for your confidence that he is a rich man?

But you're not understanding anything that is not purely tautologous; that self-definition is self-definition, in other words. Sure, anything is defin...

This is absolute nonsense, Willow; any finite entity is defined in terms of its attributes and relations to other entities. These definitions are form...

I don't even know what that could mean unless it means that substance is infinite personalty. Anyway, I am enjoying the book. I do find this a fascina...

Then why should we care about substance one way or another or spend any time thinking about it? As I have pointed out before the idea of substance as ...

The point is Willow, that we can coherently define things only in terms of other things. To say that something can only be defined in itself or throug...

But I have read the Ethics, and Spinoza cannot explain how substance produces its attributes and modes. The whole thing has intuitive appeal for sure,...

All you have done in pretending that we know what self-defining means is to repeat in different words, that we know it defines itself. We define it as...

I said something must be useful, beautiful or personal to you in order to be significant. I could have added other categories like good, admirable, an...

If all we can say about Substance is that it is self-defining; that it's definition is simply that it is self-defining; then that is really no definit...

Yes, I have thought this myself. But the way it is stated in the Ethics certainly makes it seem that Spinoza has a quantitative sense in mind. And I d...

If you understand something that isn't stated by an author then you have no way of knowing whether that understanding is truly a reading of or a readi...

But since we cannot say what that activity is it is not really an activity at all for us. It is a purported, and yet incomprehensible, 'activity'; so ...

Think about entities in the world. An entities can have significance for you only insofar as it is either useful, beautiful, or you can have a persona...

God can be understood to have both an immanent and a transcendent aspect. The same applies to being; it has both a phenomenal and a noumenal aspect; i...

The "materialist" supposition sees to the truth of this. The working of the brain cannot fail to be real - because our brain is embedded within realit...

You haven't shown that at all, you have merely asserted it.

Yes but is it true or knowable beyond the human domain? If you say "No' then it is just logic as understood by us, and it may have no significance bey...

That sounds like a worthwhile and interesting project. I can sympathize insofar as I have been self-employed for pretty much my entire working life an...

I have always found my work, "creative and interesting". But there are different kinds and levels of creativity and interest, and it cannot be expecte...

That book is actually on my shelves, I picked it up cheap somewhere I imagine, and yet I have never opened it. Since Spinoza and Hegel have one thing ...