Janus

It seems to be "stuff-ing" all the way down, but then that's the nature of thought I guess. Maybe it's really "nuff-ing" all the way down, and really ...

Thanks. Right, it is not productive, healthy or even tenable to focus too exclusively on the obvious plethora of evils that seem to be an integral (or...

No, not addressing the question of blame. but rather of value and disvalue. Love is generally preferred over hate, courage over cowardice, selflessnes...

Thanks, I'll have a look. I hadn't thought of the Gnostics considering matter as such to be evil, but rather the forms it takes and their activities i...

Now, I would say there's no "stuff" of mind or minding, because it is an activity, and as such is merely conceptual unless it is equated with brain pr...

Cheers, whenever you find both the time and inclination...

It seems that there is almost universal agreement about the most serious ethical issues. Physics on the other hand is rife with disagreement (regardin...

This is a very interesting comment. I've recently been reading Cormac McCarthy's works and a book, A Bloody and Barbarous God the Metaphysics of Corma...

Right, the living, aware body is minding, so mind is more of a verb than a noun, an activity rather than an entity. I think the question as to how a "...

:up: Of course.

I was referring to the idea that the self is something more than the experiencing/thinking/aspiring/acting bodymind. Note; I changed body to bodymind ...

Agreed, that is to say the self is not anything beyond the experiencing/thinking/aspiring/acting bodymind. We can be an object to ourselves, and we ca...

I agree.

This intrigues me; are you saying that claims that (some of) the ancients were wise depend on current interpretations of what they have written? The p...

:cool:

:up: I would add that I think freedom comes with the self-examination necessary to identify where we are under the thrall of bodily appetites or intro...

It is perhaps unlikely, but not impossible. Some may live solely by the principle of "do no harm", for eample. Also I was thinking more of sitiations ...

That we would need an infinite amount of energy is a central plank of the theory, but the theory might turn out to be wrong. Or there might be things ...

Sure, they can be realized in actions, but they are not necessarily. That was just what I was saying, only I used the term "higher" instead of better ...

:cool:

It is my inexpert interpretation of one of Wittgenstein's ideas.

There are no "false states of affairs", there are only states of affairs. I think Wittgenstein's statement shows a kind of relational 'process' view o...

I take him to be referring to actual states of affairs, the point being that things are not 'stand alone' but are relational. Facts are not debatable,...

I would say they are knowledge in the sense of being kinds of know-how. No, I wouldn't say that. Aspects may be false, for example Einstein's idea tha...

I would say they are knowledge in the sense of being kinds of know-how. No, I wouldn't say that. Aspects may be false, for example Einstein's idea tha...

Well, he did say that the world is the totality of facts not of things.

I'm not sure what you are addressing here Ludwig; I was making a distinction between moral imperatives and moral intuitions and relating the latter to...

I don't see the problem. A reality made up of objects is always already a linguistically mediated or interpreted reality.

Animal knowing is equivalent to what I would call 'directly seeing actualities'. Thought comes later

Only in terms of degree of caring and commitment. If you think I was aiming to set up any kind of opposition, then you have misunderstood my intention...

In that conception I'm speaking only about so-called propositional knowledge, not know-how, knowledge by participation or acquaintance. Why would you ...

I'm not getting your point. Are you claimimg I don't know what knowledge is? Or that you do?

It is not really knowledge, but a stipulative definition of it, based on the logic I understand to be inherent in the idea of knowing. You may have a ...

Perhaps the problem lies with presenting it or parsing it as a claim, rather than seeing it as being merely a statement of what would be obvious to ev...

I haven't said that everyday mundane reality is low, in fact I have explicitly said that it is our disposition towards things which could be higher or...

You are equivocating between what it means to know and what it means to claim to know. They are not the same. If something is not true then we don't k...

How could we have, and why would we need, proof against radical skepticism, if it is incoherent? I think the counterpoint would be something like 'Wha...

They believe the theory is true or false, so they do not know it be one or the other. On the other hand, in a different sense, theories are forms of '...

Yes, the philosopher questions accepted beliefs, doubts them and subjects them to examination to try to determine whether they are actually true. But ...

I referred earlier (might have been in another thread) to a distinction between 'nonsense' and 'non-sense'. It is the things of sense which we can tre...

'A' is a contradiction of orthodoxy which denies the heretical Gnostic principle that God can be known. So, it should be "I am convinced there is a Go...

It's natural for humans to think they are worth more than other animals, just as other animals care only, or at least predominately, for their own.

Science is a form of knowing in a participatory and a practical sense. We know the world, in the sense of participating in it, via science. It is prac...

I see, not knowing and doubting, but believing and doubting as more inextricably tied. The problem I have with the idea that knowing involves uncertai...

You assume that other "truths" can be established to be so, presumably in some way other than emprically, logically, mathematically. Can you give an e...

This ignores the possibility that there may not be "lots of civilizations". In other words, the three alternatives present no cogent assessment of lik...

True, Kant doesn't tell us that the only truth is synthetic a posteriori, but then neither does Wittgenstein. I mean he doesn't talk in those terms, a...

There's a valid distinction between propositions which can be confirmed or disconfirmed by the senses, and in accordance with the ways in which we mak...

The idea that there could be an objective moral truth or authority might serve to blunt peoples' moral senses, undermine their trust in their own mora...

I agree with this; we can never grasp the whole, and as I often say any grasping is necessarily dualistic, whereas the whole would not be, so... So So...