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Janus

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Yes, I understood that. I was just making it clear that I am not.
February 10, 2017 at 03:31
Can you expand some more on what you are saying here? I am not sure what you are getting at.
February 10, 2017 at 02:09
Well, I think that it's far from uncontroversial; but it's a very complex and nuanced issue, so I don't think there would be much point arguing about ...
February 10, 2017 at 01:23
Not really a link but I attached it because you wrote this: "Even so, you underestimate how much the US has put into the military." and I posted it as...
February 10, 2017 at 01:18
What do mean "?" ?
February 10, 2017 at 00:33
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February 10, 2017 at 00:18
Do you imagine it as though you were already in potential existence, so to speak, and then it was kind of like a lottery as to whether you were incarn...
February 09, 2017 at 23:35
I can't see how the odds against being human as opposed to being an animal depend in any way on whether animals have minds.
February 09, 2017 at 21:42
It is generally accepted by science that all the laws of nature are reducible to the laws that define the four fundamental forces or interactions; gra...
February 08, 2017 at 21:42
I'm afraid I have no idea what you are talking about, Rich.
February 08, 2017 at 20:28
If there are not rigidly deterministic laws of nature then there must be statistical or probabilistic laws, such that, for example, chemical elements ...
February 08, 2017 at 19:54
I agree that laws of nature, whatever we might think they are, or whatever we might think their ontological implications to be, are indispensable with...
February 08, 2017 at 19:47
Well what I mean is that scientists expect chemicals for example to behave the same tomorrow as they did today. Or when hypothesizing about, for examp...
February 08, 2017 at 06:30
I am not suggesting limiting options, though. I am all for thinking of every possibility we can imagine, and then working out how we logically conceiv...
February 08, 2017 at 04:20
There may be other logical possibilities than those I outlined. But if so, what are they? The point is that any universal invariance is going to be co...
February 08, 2017 at 02:16
Yes, but logically speaking the possibilities are that the tendency of nature to form habits is universal and invariant or that the tendency of nature...
February 08, 2017 at 00:36
If the tendency of nature to form habits is universal, always and everywhere, then would that tendency not itself be a law of nature?
February 08, 2017 at 00:14
If the behavior of things is actually invariant in some fundamental sense and doesn't evolve, then it would seem the invariant behavior must be determ...
February 08, 2017 at 00:10
I think Descartes is often unfairly maligned and undervalued as a philosopher. Personally, I am not a fan of substance dualism; but then I am not a fa...
February 07, 2017 at 22:42
You are misinterpreting Descartes if you think he believed thought is physical. Textual evidence for this claim?
February 07, 2017 at 22:10
I am referring to disagreement among people who do think a lot about those things; disagreement among philosophers that is. Spinozism, for example, ha...
February 07, 2017 at 22:03
Then why is there so much disagreement? The question is 'coherent according to who, or coherent with what set of presuppositions'?
February 07, 2017 at 21:52
If thought is not physical and it is yet real then there is something real which is non-physical. This brings us back to Descartes. The 'interaction' ...
February 07, 2017 at 21:51
Well, I don't think any untestable explanation like that can rightly be thought of in terms of 'plausibility'. Plausibility is relevant only to hypoth...
February 07, 2017 at 21:42
All this relies on the unproven ( and I would argue, unproveable) hypothesis that thoughts are 'really' nothing more than physical events. I would say...
February 07, 2017 at 21:38
All you are saying boils down to the fact that we don't see minds without bodies; and that no bodies are seen at all without minds. Yes, that is the h...
February 07, 2017 at 21:35
That's obviously a ridiculous example. It's a more subtle matter than that. We simply don't know what the relationship between thought, emotion, desir...
February 07, 2017 at 21:30
That is just an opinion; you have no way of knowing that. That they are always correlated is not "an obvious truth at all". Have you ever seen them be...
February 07, 2017 at 21:20
Perhaps you do, or think you do, but I don't have any idea what that means. If the two were merely perspectives on one thing as Spinoza claims, then h...
February 07, 2017 at 21:07
As I see it you are just playing with words; you haven't explained anything. What is the the "same thing" they are two perspectives on?
February 07, 2017 at 20:59
I don't have an explanation for it. I don't believe any one does. Do you have an explanation for it? I am not trying to make determinate claims about ...
February 07, 2017 at 20:55
What do you mean? I'm here speaking about my own take on these matters. I don't see your point. Again, what do you mean? I don't understand what you a...
February 07, 2017 at 20:45
I think enough has been said on this issue already. I don't think we are going to agree. For me, the identity of seratonin in the brain with happiness...
February 07, 2017 at 20:40
If God has perspectives that consist in knowledge we do not, then we do not know what those perspectives consist in. They are unknowable perspectives ...
February 06, 2017 at 23:38
I have no idea what this means. It seems like empty word play to me. Can you explain it to me? How can we know anything from perspectives that are not...
February 06, 2017 at 21:51
I don't think we can understand even how extensa and cogitans can be "perspectives over the same thing". I think that they are is just assumed to be s...
February 06, 2017 at 21:22
No I was always too afraid, because in that irrational half-dream state I always felt it would mean the end of me. I was between the ages of 17 to may...
February 06, 2017 at 21:07
I agree this is the core of it, so there's no point going over all the other point by point responses, you have made until we clear this up first. So,...
February 06, 2017 at 20:57
None of this has anything to do with what I have been saying. You are just playing with words; conflating 'infinite' in terms of quantity with in-fini...
February 06, 2017 at 04:24
Why change the term to "it in itself"? The 'in itself' is just the logical idea of what cannot be known even in principle due to our finitude, or more...
February 05, 2017 at 22:31
I used to have experiences like that, but not for more than thirty years, I would say. I remember it is as like being dragged down into a dark pit and...
February 05, 2017 at 22:24
Come on this is just dumb. The in itself cannot be for us because it is defined as not being for us. Otherwise it would not be the in itself at all, b...
February 05, 2017 at 21:59
I depends on what you mean; to say that we perceive mediated by space, time and causality is not necessarily the same as to say that we perceive spati...
February 05, 2017 at 21:50
That our conception of the in itself is for us is obvious, but it is conceived precisely as not being for us; in fact that is its definition. So, you ...
February 05, 2017 at 21:38
This passage clearly shows only Schopenhauer's superficial reading of Kant. Kant specifically denies that Space and time and the twelve categories can...
February 05, 2017 at 21:12
Berdyaev's point, as i interpret it, is that being shows itself at all only when there is subject. It is obvious that, understood analytically, being ...
February 05, 2017 at 20:52
To say that there is a transcendent God and the world, ( and the relation between them: Father Son and Holy Spirit, perhaps) is not necessarily to say...
February 05, 2017 at 03:27
It's not an issue of careful reading at all, that is your assumption, as though there is only your interpretation of what Berdyaev writes. It is an in...
February 05, 2017 at 01:22
Your first passage only talks about spinoza's conception of the "body' of God. And of course it is obvious that God is not a body in the world; to say...
February 05, 2017 at 01:10
Can you point to exactly where in that text you think Berdyaev makes the claims you say he does? I couldn't see it. I don't see how you can generally ...
February 05, 2017 at 01:01