Janus

There is no point continuing this, I think. You insist that something must be either internal or external; subjective or objective. I don't think in t...

OK, there are a few misunderstandings and seeming contradictions here. First, you say that when we take the beginning dialectical step of analyzing th...

How do we analyze beauty, goodness and truth other than by analyzing the way we think about them. which includes the way we use the words, as you alre...

But God might be precisely the hidden determinant of the apparently uncaused events. How would we ever know? Of course that doesn't fit the vision of ...

In the part of the passage you quoted from but left out I said pretty much what you said here: that it is not beauty, goodness and truth, but our judg...

Fair enough. I don't think appeals to evolution explain anything beyond the metamorphoses of biological forms.

Perhaps another way of thinking about the distinction between the real and being and existence is to say that spirit does not have being or existence ...

Yes, this seems close to what I mean by spiritual intuition. For the one who has it the truth is without question. There are no rational arguments to ...

Yes, without God there can be no overarching purpose, and even then...there is a distinction between what is understood in the light of deity to be ov...

I can't imagine in the context of philosophy for whose benefit something else needs to be said, to be honest. I think spiritual intuition and the pers...

I think Kant rejects the idea that traditional metaphysics is possible. It was traditionally understood that metaphysical truths could be arrived at b...

There is no "object of knowledge" of spiritual experience. The knowing is direct ; the experience is the knowing. Think about love; what is the object...

I think you probably meant to write "distinguishing feature of Christian theology". I certainly don't believe that there is any sharp distinction betw...

But, I have drawn the important distinction between the two kinds of experience. It is further metaphysical conclusions I am refusing to draw. I think...

it's actually worse for Terrapin's incoherent position than you are painting it. He cannot even play a game with himself of assigning unconventional m...

Thanks Andrew, I don't have a ready response to your conjecture here; I'll need to think about it more. Or perhaps it would help if you fleshed it out...

Yes, I agree with you that we can recognize abstract formal patterns as well as material formal patterns. And I do think you are right in the sense yo...

That's right, I don't think spirit is rightly thought of as any kind of being. I don't think that beauty, goodness and truth are rightly thought of as...

Sure, but it's a duality of kinds of experience. That there are these kinds of experience I think is simply irrefutable. But we don't need to, and I b...

Probably not, since I tend to think God is as dependent on us, as we are on Him.

"Tangible" or "material" simply means tangible to human percipients. The spiritual is real insofar as it is experienced. The material exists insofar a...

No, I don't believe in substances of any kind and nor am I a monist, dualist or pluralist of any kind. You may find it inconvenient to be unable to fi...

The way I conceive reality is not in contradistinction to the imaginary. For me the imaginary is simply real in a different way than material existenc...

I agree and I probably only diverge in that I equate being with existence and that I do not think being exhausts reality. I would say there is also sp...

I certainly acknowledge the causal efficacy of thoughts, feelings, institutions and so on, and their reality on account of that. But I do tend to thin...

Yes I wonder about the significance of that. A reference to higher self perhaps? I remembered that quote roughly from some book I read in the last cou...

That's OK, I also find most of what you say ridiculous; so there probably isn't any point in conversing, it's not likely that any point of commonality...

I agree with what you say; I would not claim such things are not real. I just want to say that they do not "have being" or exist, in line with what I ...

Are you only claiming that evolution explains why people use logic, or are you claiming that evolution explains the form that logic itself takes?

Agreed. :)

I would say that since the sea urchin is a living creature it perceives, which is the same as to say intuits, patterns, however minimally. Also, there...

Recognition of patterns equals intuition, no?

It's from The Cherubinic Wanderer 85 (I.1.8) translated by Maria Shardy Here is the same passage translated by J.E. Crawford Flitch 1932 I know God ca...

When you say you want to die, do you mean you want to experience dying or do you mean that you want to be dead? If the former then you may get what yo...

And yet it would seem to be heretical, that is against classic theism, to suggest that God's existence could depend on my own.

I would agree that they are real apart from their instantiations, but I would not agree that they "have Being", because I think 'to be' is coterminous...

OK, I think I get your distinction now. You are saying that we don't choose which particular compulsive and reflective desires are there.. I would say...

If "we don't chose either our reflective desires or our compulsive desires" then we don't choose " which we indulge in", which means we are not free a...

What do you mean by "sort of existing"? I am saying that it makes no sense to say that universals exist independently of the particulars that instanti...

Are you saying that insight is required in order to construct arguments (structures of entailment)? If so, I would agree; insight is certainly require...

I'm not too sure how to characterize classical theism. Would you say this statement, made by Angelus Silesius, is an example of "classical theism": "I...

But Aquinas does marshall many other arguments to support his contention that necessary being should be associated only with God; and that any idea of...

I think insight is required to see entailment. It can't be just be a matter of following rules, because, for a rule to be usable, we must be able to s...

I'm saying that without people there is no world. But this is not to say there would be nothing at all. It isn't intelligible in any but a purely form...

I haven't said that particular meanings are permanent, just that meaning itself is permanently present.

It means that talk about the existence of universals is incoherent. Universals do not exist, they inhere in existents. The existence of an existent, i...

I think this is right. And it follows that definitions, may be considered to be kinds of assertions. Although stipulations cannot be true or false, an...

The empirical is a symbolic representation of the spiritual. The aporias arise when questions about the existence of universals are asked. Questions a...

I think the ability to see what is entailed by propositions and situations must be an intuitive capacity; entailment is simply knowable a priori and c...

By claiming that we must become slaves to either the compulsive or reflective desires you are limiting the scope of freedom. If we are freely choosing...