Janus

If God can be experienced it would not be like experiencing any empirical object, which may be reliably available as a public object. It would be more...

So, what was the fact prior to its discovery?

Are space aliens purportedly empirical entities?

But who's really doing the ignoring here? I already explained, against this very kind of point, that the mistake you guys are making lies in thinking ...

What it is possible to know from the deliverances of pure reason and empirical observation, yes.

No, he posted here to let would-be philosophers know that he has come to a belief which is precisely not up for discussion because it has not been arr...

But the problem is the bare noumenon hypothesis doesn't actually explain our experience at all, but rather it says that we can never know (discursivel...

So, his judgement is not a matter for him, but rather a matter for... who?,,,You? Whose reason? What kind of evidence? This is hilarious! :s >:O :D X-...

So, for you there are no unknown facts about the universe that are yet to be discovered? Such as for example, whether some particular distant galaxy h...

But what use is a 'reality' which never be real to us; but rather only the source of endless skepticism?

Brain, I think the mistake you are making lies in thinking of the 'entities' encountered in mystical experiences in terms such that they must be eithe...

So, for you there is nothing at all, in the sense of nothing real beyond the phenomenal, then?

Your examples and attitude seems so typical of what I call the 'intellectual mediocracy' as to be somewhat laughable. Although I have to say I find me...

Yes, unless you have had such an experience, you understandably would not be able to imagine it. It would be like a man deaf from birth trying to imag...

I doubt the veracity of the story, and others like it, about the aboriginals not even being able to see the ship. Of course they would not have been a...

So, is "our particular kind of processing system" itself noumenal or phenomenal? Because if you say it is phenomenal and that we have no warrant for s...

No, I don't read it that way. I would say that, if the honesty of his account be granted, he became utterly convinced at the moment of experience, and...

The things in themselves are objectively real in the sense that they are reliably available to be be perceived. It seems obvious from experience that ...

I cannot see anywhere in the OP where he gives a process of reasoning for his belief in God. He specifically says his belief is simply on account of e...

Perhaps the word 'absence' creates confusion here. We may experience the existence of God, as palpably as we experience the existence of a tree. But w...

The consciousness, self-consciousness and non-predictable responses I can understand. Are you saying, though, that if someone possessed no emotions or...

I'm surprised that some of you don't seem to understand that Colin's testimony was never meant to be an argument for the existence of God. I don't thi...

I do think of myself as a kind of realist; I used to say I am a logical realist. I think this is kind of like Kant's notion of being an empirical real...

A dinosaur is only a dinosaur insofar as it is conceived of as such. The name applies only to something familiar to us as an object, or possible objec...

You only included half the picture. Without the existence of others there can be no self; so if the existence of others is neither subjective nor obje...

I don't believe such fundamentalist notions are either widespread or widely preached. I would say that if you don't go to fundamentalist churches or m...

This leaves me wondering what you think personhood consists in.

Sure, that might hold if you are operating under the presupposition that intelligence is mechanistic or modular.

That's a specifically rationalist image of the idea of enlightenment; the project of the West. The Oriental project has actually been quite the opposi...

For me the key to being genuine lies in seeing what is specific to each situation rather than what is general. This ties in with intuition. And to ans...

I don't think of stoicism as a system, so much as a set of recommended exercises; exercises designed to free you of attachments to things, situations ...

Sure, but they only provide an understanding of religious belief, behavior and experience 'from without' as they are seen as objectified empirical phe...

Thanks for your explanation Punshhh, it makes your position clearer to me. I think it would be a great idea to create a thread to discuss these ideas....

You see the red cup via your representation of it. The red cup is what appears via your and others' representations of it. It doesn't make sense to sa...

Since the idea of the thing-in-itself is precisely the (admittedly empty or apophatic) idea of what is not part of the phenomenal realm, what you say ...

I'm not sure what school of thought you refer to here. The central point about the noumenon, which is the idea of the 'in itself', is that we cannot k...

For parsimony's sake it is better to stick with the example at hand. So, explain to me how the chess program obeys the laws of physics.

All this example seems to show is that it is a category error to speak of the chess program either obeying or disobeying the laws of physics.

I would say that how and what we think about the question concerning the dependency and direction of dependency between mind and matter is itself depe...

Yes but on this account "to be itself" is not to be anything at all; and so seems somewhat oxymoronic.

These two statements seem to contradict one another, or to be, at the very least, inconsistent with one another. If states of the world cannot be expl...

The fact is, though, that we really do only know things, know what things are, in the context of them being experienced by us. Put another way, we onl...

Of course whatever is communicated must be communicated in the language and the terms of the culture in which it is communicated; but from that obviou...

This is simply not true, or at least it is merely a perfunctory truism. Because the writings of mystics and sages, like all writings, are associated w...

It sounds to me like you are claiming 'noumenon' and 'subject' are synonymous. I can actually see some logic to this idea, but I doubt it is the logic...

:D X-) >:) Of course, come to think about it, conversely Willow knows just how it feels as well.

That's funny, because the meaning of 'subject' that is alternative to "aware experiencer" or "conscious agent" is something along the lines of "area o...

I'm still trying to understand what it could possibly mean to be a "non-reductive materialist". if the mind is not reducible to material, then "states...

This seems to be an obvious truistic definition of mind. I am trying to find out what the materialist thinks mind is if he wants to say both that mind...

It would be logically inconsistent to claim that there are more than one absolute, supreme, all-encompassing deity; but that is not the claim. Zeus, H...