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Count Timothy von Icarus

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This has come up in a few threads. I think the difficulty is that "substance" gets used in two different, but related ways in ancient and medieval log...
June 15, 2025 at 16:21
If philosophy is the love of wisdom, it is presumably the love of something in particular, and it would seem that not all philosophical positions are ...
June 15, 2025 at 13:49
Thank you for confirming my suspicion that my point was not impenetrable and too unclear to understand. I thought it was clear enough, at least clear ...
June 15, 2025 at 11:51
Because you have denied the priority of not only Beauty, but of Being itself to language. So, if I want to move on to Beauty, wouldn't it make sense t...
June 15, 2025 at 11:31
Wouldn't this represent an additional supposition along the lines of reductionism? I.e. that all wholes are just the sum and arrangement of their part...
June 14, 2025 at 21:32
Also, consider that all of the atoms in a man's body are replaced very many times in his lifetime. If something just is its parts, then in virtue of w...
June 14, 2025 at 15:05
Let me see if you accept this rephrasing. "We don't need 'real' potency because it is merely the ways in which something actual has the potential to b...
June 14, 2025 at 14:44
You might be interested in what Aquinas says about angelic beings and intelligences. These are said to be pure form. However, they are not pure actual...
June 14, 2025 at 12:40
The verbage of "grasping being" is yours Banno. You wrote that "being cannot be grasped outside language". Now it is "bad argument" and "merely rhetor...
June 14, 2025 at 12:33
Yes, but in some ways it is surprisingly similar. Also, if you consider that for Aristotle man is also "the political animal," the society part is def...
June 14, 2025 at 03:12
This article is presented quite well. I will point out three things: 1. Are they known as such? This is a topic of huge debate. The author might be in...
June 14, 2025 at 03:07
This goes along with the idea that you cannot change a rabbit into something like a frog. Being a frog is not a potential of rabbits. This is an act o...
June 14, 2025 at 02:10
Matter isn't conceived of as just prime matter. That's a key distinction. For example, man is made of flesh and bone. Each substrate has some form and...
June 14, 2025 at 01:55
This situation is an example of a problem, particularly acute in the US, but seemingly at issue across developed nations, of legislatures being unable...
June 13, 2025 at 18:28
BTW, let me try to break this down into premises: P1: One cannot use language to speak of anything without using language. C: Therefore, being isn't a...
June 13, 2025 at 12:39
We don't grasp being at all with the senses prior to language acquisition? So infants have no grasp of being? Animals as well? The disabled who cannot...
June 13, 2025 at 12:27
Showing that an argument terminates in absurdity is sort of a classic, hardly bad argument. You're hanging a lot on "default' here. There is no reason...
June 13, 2025 at 11:53
Is there any purely rational justification for not doing it? Or not raping? Based on your standards, I would think not. But there are. The Pope for in...
June 13, 2025 at 02:34
We cut that part out of the curriculum because it was variously "not going to get the kids jobs and make them money like STEM," or because we need to ...
June 13, 2025 at 02:28
So all government is the "tools of the biased"? And the authority of parents over their children? Or officers over their enlisted men, deans over thei...
June 13, 2025 at 02:04
Or perhaps not to the biased. Earlier you said non-demonstrable beliefs have absolutely no business in politics. So apparently anti-slavery beliefs sh...
June 13, 2025 at 01:07
Does it? There are differing interpretations vis-á-vis everything. This seems like an appeal to consensus as truth. But I think it's fairly obvious th...
June 13, 2025 at 00:45
I am familiar with this passage. It's in one of the earlier books of Confessions. That people used to often read aloud might also be a reason for the ...
June 12, 2025 at 19:59
So what of all the thinkers who took mysticism and/or God quite seriously? It's sort of a whose who list from East and West: Plato, Aristotle, Shankar...
June 12, 2025 at 18:07
Right, which is dependent on how they are. "Things as they are for us" is, you might say, a slice of how they are (perhaps mixed in with error, i.e. h...
June 12, 2025 at 17:55
Yes, this is a difficulty with the application of game theory. It must assume "benefit" and pay-offs in ways that sometimes do not conform to life. Ut...
June 12, 2025 at 15:51
It occurred to me that Cicero might be an example of an ethics grounded in an understanding of human nature and telos that is more "naturalistic." I'm...
June 12, 2025 at 15:42
This has "hence" so I assume the third claim follows from the other two. But does it? P1: Being is not contained in anything (including language). P2:...
June 12, 2025 at 15:27
Are you sure you were teaching them addition and plus, not quaddition and quus? Or maybe it was laddition and luus?
June 12, 2025 at 00:54
Probably lol, I think you're right. Strictly empiricist starting positions seem to make for bizarre anthropology in general. "Understanding" seems pro...
June 11, 2025 at 22:03
I was going to present that standpoint. In this case, "understanding" just means producing appropriate behavioral outputs given certain behavioral inp...
June 11, 2025 at 21:06
Do you think we need transcendence to speak of the goal-directedness of life? Really? Certainly, I've responded to a lot of critique. I don't know wha...
June 11, 2025 at 20:48
Prior and posterior are "loaded terms" now? The bronze of a statue and the art of sculpting are prior, the finished statue is posterior. Parents are p...
June 11, 2025 at 20:40
I don't think it does. There is a difference, it's just that the ethical good is not sui generis, and it is desirable. But at any rate, I was speaking...
June 11, 2025 at 19:22
And nothing can be known about what is good for a rat and a fox either?
June 11, 2025 at 16:05
Right, and this is fairly obvious as regards statements that are straightforwardly self-undermining, if not fully self-refuting. However, the tricky p...
June 11, 2025 at 16:03
Sure. I would argue that such a view ultimately runs into many other problems, but such a view of man's telos does not seem prima facie unreasonable, ...
June 11, 2025 at 14:53
I agree to some extent with this sentiment, but I think identity can be an important, even essential element of particularity, as does situatedness in...
June 11, 2025 at 11:39
There is also nothing similar in regards to truth or goodness. But, at any rate, we're talking about dependence and priority, not agreement. If beauty...
June 11, 2025 at 02:42
Transcendent in what way? I am saying something about the things judged good/beautiful must be prior to the act of judging/thinking itself, else the o...
June 10, 2025 at 17:30
:up: And indeed, there is an issue with feedback between educated/elite opinion and majority opinion, in that the two shape each other. What gets taug...
June 10, 2025 at 16:30
I'm puzzled by this reply because the post says this follows from Hamlet's position, not from a lack of "transcendental or foundational basis." The qu...
June 10, 2025 at 14:58
I think this is a false dichotomy. I mentioned Rorty above to head of exactly this sort of false dichotomy, whereby the later empiricst trots out the ...
June 10, 2025 at 13:33
If beauty were created by man and his practices, I'd contend that there would be no proper orientation towards the world. And if there is no proper or...
June 10, 2025 at 11:44
Right, we are embedded in the world, its beauty, truth, etc.—the world is not embedded in our communities, practices, and "language games." One is pri...
June 10, 2025 at 11:30
And that's all? If one thing can come from nothing, why not anything more? Why just this one thing? Goodness, and to a lesser extent, Truth are often ...
June 10, 2025 at 11:22
Can man create something from nothing?
June 10, 2025 at 10:52
Wouldn't a "simple statements of fact" also involve: "an interpretation within a context of belief, intention, tradition, form, and reception?" I'd ar...
June 10, 2025 at 01:24
My point was merely that disagreement is poor evidence for a lack of objective aesthetic value/criteria. People disagree about virtually everything. N...
June 09, 2025 at 14:34
I think this sort of disagreement only helps to support to the position that there is nothing objective to agree about if one has already presupposed ...
June 09, 2025 at 13:37