Janus

I'm not clear which observation you are referring to. Personally, I am never impressed by the fact that many intelligent people are devout Christians,...

Perhaps that's all any of us can reasonably hope for.

The question of whether there is a "governing intelligence of the Cosmos" is answerable only by faith. There can be no evidence of such a thing, which...

Anti-religion and its concerns are as much a distraction from what really matters as religion and its concerns. You don't need to worry about saving a...

I agree with everything you've said there, particularly this: If that lesson were more generally taken on board, with the realization that we are not ...

Into whatever the nature of the human organism makes possible. Into a less self-obsessed, egocentric state of mind. Into a less anxious, more open sta...

Unlike you, I don't believe that enlightenment or ego loss are philosophical matters. As Hadot tells us the old philosophical schools had different se...

Do you mean relations between the smallest possible things?

I think that the only information about things is given by their relations, not by their identity. Identity itself is nothing without difference. But ...

These days I tend to think that religion is the last thing we need to motivate interest in ecology and economic fairness. The idea of karma justifies ...

I think that is a good analogy. Obsession with personal spiritual growth, in some of its forms and in relation to some of its attendant beliefs, seems...

It seems we part company here, as I don't believe our interest in sex is entirely down to its reproductive function. Sexual interest can be cultivated...

I think we are addressing different questions. I agree that sexual activity in animals is, and has been, driven by reproduction on account of natural ...

This account seems too reductive to me. For me, it is simply loss of egoic attachment, a kind of "flow state", and there is no explanation that can re...

It seems you are saying that the reproduction part (given safe and effective contraceptive and/ or abortive methods) is optional, not necessarily the ...

It's not "some genetic theory" it's simply genetic diversity; even my dogs have different preferences for various foods. In any case, I think the evid...

It's not "artifice" it's desire. Bad analogy...we don't try a whole lot of types of sexual partners and then decide that we like some types and dislik...

:up: I'm like you in that I find the current situation not at all "a crisis of meaning" in the sense that we have lost anything worth having, but an e...

:up: That's the spirit!

Plausibility is the whole issue since we cannot know for certain, obviously. But everything we know about animal sexuality and the endocrinal and soci...

Tautologies don't tell us anything about the nature of things. It means 'not relative', not relative to any other thing or context. Meaning what? All ...

Yes, we know that because it is impossible. I think what is being asked is more than that. Some things are indubitable, but only within a context or c...

I have read the discussion thus far. It wasn't a rant, it was pointing out things which are obvious and not in the least controversial. Your viewpoint...

If you seek to deny that sex in humans has a biological, instinctive basis shared with animals then you are promoting an absurdity. Sexual desire is u...

I don't think I'm the one who needs it...

You don't seem to know what 'non sequitur' means. So, you don't accept the premise that we are basically animals evolved from other animals?

The cogito is a tautology; if it is true that I think, that there is an "I" that thinks, then of course it is also true that I exist. Something is goi...

The most plausible explanation would have to apply to both humans and animals, since it is with animality that we begin. I already have too many thing...

I haven't read much Sartre, and that explanation makes no sense at all to me, I'm afraid. Is it supposed to explain how things stand out for animals t...

Firstly I agree that experiencing is modeling, but I was referring to linguistic judgements which do map, model, denote etc what is experienced as wel...

Taking vision as paradigmatic, what you seem to be saying is that we can, prior to any learning or influence of culture and language, see things and t...

it seems there must be, but we cannot say what it is...

Leaving aside all the other things language may do like commanding, promising, imploring, implying, coercing, coaxing, consoling, belittling, berating...

Nothing I've said contradicts any of that. I haven't forgotten any of that and yet I say it, and my saying it is not inconsistent with my not forgetti...

As I said, the relative is what is relative to human experience, and the absolute is what cannot be experienced, which in the context of this discussi...

We come to know things via experience, how else? Experience does not consist in "working outwards to the world" (whatever that little bit of nonsense ...

The world doesn't perform for us, but is given as always already interpreted. Of course we think there must be a pre-interpretive world, and must ackn...

Perhaps not, but then so what? That fossils, among other things, have meaning for us is a truism the significance of which is itself a matter of inter...

Which is really more an interpretation than a fact. I mean the fact that conjectures are always made by people is a truism; the interpretive part come...

Our understanding may or may not affect the world. The world certainly presents itself as being largely independent of human control, so that was not ...

There is a sense in which the world is relstive to human experience; we only know things as they are experienced and understood by us.

No, I can't improve on that; I think what you said expresses the pragmatic truth of our situation. I'm guessing Banno would say the word 'reality' der...

Cups, whether observed or not, are a part of our experience. Not knowing of "things" whether or not they are physical "in themselves" is really not an...

That's where your misunderstanding lies: I haven't said the cup isn't physical when not being observed.

Such an existence is not unintelligible, but is rather intelligible, but yet to be understood, meaningful although the meaning is yet to be discovered...

You're talking gibberish, meaning I have nothing to base a response on, so effectively you have done nothing other than to "leave me to it".

I have never said, nor implied, that I am not sure cups are physical. They are tangible, can be picked up, drunk from, moved around. measured, so of c...

That seems to be a ridiculous analogy on the face of it; perhaps I'm not getting your point, or what seems more likely is you're not getting mine.

:up: I like that you say "not necessarily", as we don't know whether the physicality of things is or isn't a truth beyond our experience. Also, I agre...

I think you're right—language is, in effect, like our phenomenal world, since our perceptions of the phenomenal world, and how much more so our judgem...