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Janus

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Yes.
December 14, 2016 at 20:30
This is a wicked distortion. I have never denied, but on the contrary have explicitly acknowledged, that arbitrary semantic meanings can be assigned t...
December 14, 2016 at 20:28
(Y) I haven't read that much of N?g?rjuna, but I can remember being impressed at how meticulously he strove to formulate what cannot be formulated, wh...
December 14, 2016 at 07:24
God is always and everywhere defined as the necessary being. The five proofs are meant, in their different ways, to show that there must be necessary ...
December 14, 2016 at 05:55
No. you are simply conflating mathematical and semantic meanings. Whether X represents the number of times you went to the shop, cleaned your teeth, f...
December 14, 2016 at 04:01
The whole point of defining something like that as 'X' is to facilitate calculating it in cases where you don't know what it is, but you do know other...
December 14, 2016 at 03:04
Give me an example of the kind of "defined" object you think 'X' represents in algebra.
December 14, 2016 at 02:37
The relationship between X and what it represents (some unknown quantity or other) in algebra is anything but arbitrary. If it was arbitrary we would ...
December 14, 2016 at 02:17
(1) Semantic meaning is inherent to any "meaning of life", at least insofar as we can speak about it. (2) we are enculturated into worlds, into life, ...
December 14, 2016 at 02:05
Yes, but the stipulated meanings in those kinds of cases are not arbitrary.
December 13, 2016 at 21:43
It's pretty obvious. In the process of growing up, of becoming enculturated, you introject the shared meanings of your culture. If you want to deny th...
December 13, 2016 at 21:22
You can stipulate any arbitrary eccentric meaning you like for any word you want to, as in your example; but your stipulation, if it is to be understo...
December 13, 2016 at 21:05
I don't take 'objective' to be synonymous with 'inherent'. The world has no objective meaning because their is no coherent conception of objective mea...
December 13, 2016 at 01:44
Then why are we discussing it rather than something else? Well you have demonstrated that it doesn't take a great deal of imagination to construct a s...
December 12, 2016 at 09:10
Yes, I agree completely with what you say.
December 11, 2016 at 23:06
Yes, but I don't see how it can be claimed that sticking to your principles would be either more or less likely to bring worldly success. It all depen...
December 11, 2016 at 23:02
Losing due to sticking to one's principles I agree is better than winning by being crooked, but I would call that 'spiritual success' not 'worldly suc...
December 11, 2016 at 22:45
OK, but my point is that one should ideally not be at all concerned, in such spiritual or creative endeavours, with the the regard of others, or succe...
December 11, 2016 at 22:13
Yes, but the salient thing is there is never any guarantee of greatness; whether one is recognized or not.
December 11, 2016 at 22:02
I don't believe I can discuss Fyodor and Smerdyakov, or really any of the characters, adequately until I have read the whole book.
December 11, 2016 at 22:00
You say that sooner or later recognition will come, but I wonder to what degree luck may play a part. Let's say you are a great artist and you produce...
December 11, 2016 at 21:54
I think that's still mighty vague on a very broad spectrum, and on that account there would not be many people counted as failures. Not that many peop...
December 11, 2016 at 21:28
Can't see how a stipulation is not a kind of assertion.
December 11, 2016 at 09:09
The body can be known as an object of experience, but not as a subject of experience: is that basically what you are saying? The body can be inferred ...
December 11, 2016 at 09:01
Fyodor Pavlovitch can certainly be seen as an archetypal despicable intruder and ruiner. A man who has so little regard for anything but his own whims...
December 11, 2016 at 08:20
I agree with what you say about authenticity; that it may take the form of emulating, but not slavishly imitating, a hero. To be a valid expression of...
December 11, 2016 at 08:01
No worries. My referring to it as "chest-beating bullshit" was probably just an example of my unfortunate tendency to be provocative; which is amply j...
December 11, 2016 at 07:44
You use the phrase "fail in the world". I want to know exactly what you mean by that. If you don't want to tell me, then fine; that's the end of the c...
December 10, 2016 at 23:39
You first, dude.
December 10, 2016 at 23:34
This sounds like chest-beating bullshit. What exactly does it mean to "fail in the world"?
December 10, 2016 at 23:14
It's interesting you should say that, I searched the book on Amazon earlier and found this in the lone review of it: "It is written with a more unrest...
December 09, 2016 at 23:04
Yes, but is the being of a being something separate from, or independent of, the being? Could the being of a being itself be independently of the bein...
December 09, 2016 at 22:48
You've reminded of some interesting elements of Hegel's dialectic here. I particularly like the idea of "self-relating nothingness" which I think ties...
December 09, 2016 at 22:33
I haven't considered that book yet. You seem to be suggesting it is his magnum opus. If so, why would say it is?
December 09, 2016 at 22:16
Yes, that's right.
December 09, 2016 at 22:07
I have read Slavery and Freedom , Spirit and Reality and am reading Freedom and the Spirit Yes, the story is generally conceived as having a definite ...
December 09, 2016 at 22:06
Perhaps God is thinking, including the thinking and intelligence of animals, and all problems are really God's problems.
December 09, 2016 at 21:53
Ontology 3: A field, within which innumerable bodies and visual fields, none of which exist independently of the field. Ontology 3 is simplest.
December 09, 2016 at 21:30
Yes, but God, by definition, is always thinking about everything.
December 09, 2016 at 21:26
It seems we are talking about different things. I am saying that any form, any general configuration of structure, so to speak, can be represented vis...
December 09, 2016 at 21:24
That's an interesting take on it, and I feel I do have something of a grasp on what you are getting at, although I am not very far into the book yet. ...
December 08, 2016 at 04:49
Ah, now that's a book I haven't yet read, but want to, since I am very much involved in the arts and I really resonate with Berdyaev's philosophy. I a...
December 07, 2016 at 08:19
Some initial questions that spring to mind: Is the totality of being the totality of beings, or something else besides? Is the being of anything somet...
December 07, 2016 at 06:42
The perfect form is just the idealized form, which is the same as the general form. Not just maple leaves have stems and veins. Another kind of leaf m...
December 07, 2016 at 04:50
In your category of "someone" do you include God? Apart from that consideration; did undiscovered textual artifacts stand for or refer to anything dur...
December 07, 2016 at 01:14
Do you think the idea of freedom as primary is compatible with a theologically evolutionary view of spirit, though? Barfield and de Chardin I think, b...
December 07, 2016 at 01:05
Yes, but isn't the real problem that of how to escape oppression and achieve freedom? I think to do that freedom must be presupposed as primary. So, t...
December 06, 2016 at 23:44
Yes, I certainly agree that in one sense general forms are logically prior to particular forms. But from the point of view of the actual development o...
December 06, 2016 at 23:32
Yes, there can certainly be many representations of a general form and all of them are only ever more or less adequate. My argument with MU was actual...
December 06, 2016 at 23:13
Reason to hold positions are always underpinned by presuppositions, and there are no unbiased presuppositions. People usually have great difficulty in...
December 06, 2016 at 22:53