Janus

Is not "knowing thyself" the first step to becoming something other than what you already are? I mean, you could merely pay lip service to an imposed ...

Sure, since means are pointless, they are not even means, without ends. I see the pointlessness of arguing about ends as being entailed by the fact th...

It depends on what you mean by science. Science is based on ordinary observations, and they can often, if not always, be determined to be true or fals...

It depends on what you mean by wisdom and virtue. Aristotle spoke of phronesis usually translated as 'practical wisdom'. Wisdom and virtue can be unde...

I see the potentiality as being in both, and the actuality as being in the interaction. I think the changes are real and independent of the observer, ...

I was referring to ancient philosophical "schools" such as Stoicism, Epicureanism, the Cynics, and Neoplatonism and also Eastern teachings such as Bud...

So, apart from the interpretations of altered states by individuals who experience them, and the prevailing prior cultural accretions of such interpre...

Right, but appeal to authority is universally regarded as a philosophical fallacy. Even Gautama said so, reportedly.

Trying to dismiss what I say by associating it with a philosophical position I don't hold is both a red herring, and a strawman. If you want to take i...

Yes, I would agree with tthat. There are people, perhaps not many, who don't like music. If we accept that almost everyone likes some kind of music, a...

I don't doubt that. I haven't said that discourse and practice don't influence one another, and I don't take Hadot to be saying that practice subsumes...

We can talk about the practices themselves, but ideas like Karma, God, the afterlife and so on are too nebulous and underdetermined to be able to form...

Yes, I agree with that. The important aspects of life are precisely those which cannot be publicly demonstrated. The aesthetic dimension in architectu...

:up: Yes, as I said, changes, even absent anyone to observe them, are news "at least potentially".

Glib.

Yes, faith is very much emphasized in Christianity, but I think it is also important in other religions like Buddhism; one of the seminal texts is The...

Competence in many areas is, at least in principle, publicly demonstrable. For example, technical proficiency, if not aesthetic command, is demonstrab...

I agree with a distinction between experienced and consciously experienced, which is what you seem to be aiming at. I was certainly not wanting to dim...

I agree with this, and this is where faith comes in. For those who believe in higher truth it can only be a matter of faith, and even if there is a po...

I have to say I don't really know. I will choose that which motivates me more, and what motivates me more is a characteristic of my nature (my nature ...

Cheers 180 :cool:

What you say basically seems to come down to the idea that if the universe is one, and we are not in any way separate from that one, self-determining ...

I agree with what you say, but I see imagiation as involved in both interpreting or undertsnding something as something and in imagining something tha...

Of course, everyone takes it for granted that others, including animals, have their own inner experiences that are hidden from others. I cannot know y...

Thinking of Whitehead, I understand him to view consciousness as emergent, it is experience he sees as elemental. His concept of experience is broad, ...

Speculation can be a fun exercise of the imagination, but I don't take any of these ideas very seriously because I think what-is in its non-dual natur...

So, what's the difference between saying that about the transcendental subject and saying that the transcendental object must also underlie all percep...

To me this reads as a word salad comprised of assertions which don't actually assert anything coherent, or an attempt at prose poetry. I guess you mus...

Is this a response to my having said that distinctions begin with consciousness? You have expressed it here in reverse; that mind (not consciousness) ...

The emptiness consists only in the fact that we don't know the nature of that existence, since it is inaccessible to the senses it cannot become concr...

Yes, I agree that as long as nature behaves invariantly then it would seem that behavior is physically necessary. As far as we know nature has always ...

In those quotes Bateson speaks of mind at all levels of relational existence, not of consciousness. I know that I am not conscious myself most of the ...

Ah, the old 'if you don't agree then you must not understand' gambit; a tried-and-true deflection. I understand what you're saying but I just don't ag...

They have been observed to be invariant, but it does not follow that they are necessary; as implausible as it might sound there is no logical reason t...

The world from perspectives is not the fusion of subject and object, but the separation of them. Of course, as you must know by now, I agree that we c...

The problem is that there is no way to determine whether the so-called 'laws of nature' are merely descriptive of the invariant ways that nature manif...

If I'm going to be convinced about Bateson's purported panpsychism or deism, I'd want to see quotes from his own work not from some interpreter of it....

I am not getting your drift here—I see the question as decidable two plus two does not equal either three or five. If the question is whether reality ...

For Spinoza substance can take the various forms of matter and of mind, matter is the attribute or mode of extension and mind is the various attribute...

Yes, I think it's just natural human diversity. Can you imagine living in a society where everyone agreed about everything? The salient point about di...

That was my point and I was quite explicit about it. Go back and read again...or not...suit yourself...

Ahh... to be young and gluttonous!

I tried that and I nearly choked. not my idea of fun. :wink:

Right, so it all comes down to personal preference.

I think you're reifying an imagined entity. That's untrue and irrelevant, for three reasons: first I was talking about philosophy, not physics, second...

I would agree that an inconsistent argument is not a viable argument, for obvious reasons. Consistent or valid metaphysical arguments may be sound or ...

nothing to do with relativism and it's not a matter of valid or consistent logic, it's a matter of presuppositions or premises. Valid argument can be ...

My point was only that the importance of their systems (given that we accept for the sake of argument that they are important beyond merely their plac...

Problem is that there is no one rational understanding. Humanity is diverse.

It's a synthetic phenomenological proposition in that it reflects the actual and historical situation, as experienced and reflected upon by me. Have y...