Tom Storm

My point isn't to identify what is supernatural or not (or even what counts as evidence) just that you can find seemingly reliable people who claim to...

Thanks, yes I did look it up and I have encountered it before but promptly forgotten it. Yes, I have often stated that the idea of god to me isn't coh...

Mainly because the term is new to me.

:up: No worries - didn't take it personally. Interesting perspective.

But that's my entire philosophy, Banno.

Thanks. That's the one I use, partly to get out of the burden of certainty and absolute anything. :wink:

:up:

I like your thinking. Innovation.

I find eating a real drag so that stuff might suit me. I eat 5 to 6 times a week and in the meantime consume a tube of condensed milk each day, which ...

What do you mean by misdirected? Missed opportunities to learn or missed opportunities to improve life for others? Or both?

Indeed. But for anyone thinking of using the wager today this is a problem since it begs the question. Yep.

I've never seen how this wager is meant to work. I personally do not believe that we can cynically choose our beliefs in this way. You are either conv...

I can't believe in something I don't know to be true, even if I don't know if it is not true. Are we having fun yet? :razz:

Sure. Right now we can probably find many thousands of people who claim to have been abducted by aliens and taken away for a probing... They are often...

Interesting. I once had a chat to a surgeon friend who said that he was getting sick of spending hours operating on people who had lung cancer from sm...

Not opinion. I think we are drawn to forms of reasoning and inferences which appeal to our aesthetic sense. The very fact that certain ideas become th...

Thank you. How interesting. Is there a debate about whether Plato is an idealist or not? It becomes a carnival hall of mirrors to me. Thank you.

Your reply resonates with me. And this conclusion is one I have often suspected, as a matter of taste informed or driven by aesthetics. Some varieties...

Thank you. It's been an interesting discussion. I try to keep my atheism as polite and respectful as I can. I think of it more as a case of my not hav...

Thanks for this. I have sometimes wondered about this and I guess I arrived at the idea that the difference between Socrates and the sophists is good ...

I suspect nihilism is impossible. People always believe in something. But as an academic exercise - or a position we might claim to hold - nihilism ca...

It's not a matter of favorite or not. I don't recall a particular conversation about essence. As a would be existentialist in the 1980's, it came up a...

Sounds like many a man cave I have visited... Have you ever read TC Boyle's Water Music? Politically incorrect, but an astonishing, enchanting use of ...

My understanding is that the use of the word 'will' can throw us off. Is it not the case that what S means by will is more like energy - a non-metacog...

:wink: :up:

Ha... were you persuaded?

Really I just provided 'human' as part of our ongoing conversation. This is not a formulation I generally carry around with me in my thinking. As an o...

Nice.

I don't use the word soul or any substitute for it. It's a non starter for me, a poetic or historical term. A soul is an imperishable essence, so it h...

Do you see any particular nuances necessary for post-modern philosophy or versions of phenomenology? I'm not a philosopher, but I tend to think that t...

Yes. I have been conditioned to always smell the whiff of Christianity and Platonism when I hear the word truth.

I was just wondering if you were going to pop up with something similar. You're right. I assumed Ucarr was referring to moral facts from a mysterious ...

I don't have good reason to think there are moral truths or moral facts - just intersubjective or communities of agreement about behaviours - codes of...

Clever bastard, the old Schoppie, right? Nice translation. The section from 35 reads like a more verbose Bernado Kastrup, who, unsurprisingly cites S ...

I don't think we speak the same language on this subject, we certainly speak in different metaphors. What is a soul? Are you referring to an immortal/...

Hmmm... I realize this is not for me, but I don't think this sentiment is accurate. I never believed in a soul as a child. And I grew up in the Baptis...

I think the puppy kicking is just an analogue for any kind of egregious potential human behavior that can be assessed as right or wrong, regardless of...

Thanks for the considered answer. Sounds interesting. There's not much philosophy I can make sense of, but I'll check it out. :up:

That blog was a nice clear read. Appearances and reality and the demarcation between them - 'through the Kantian wall of mystery' are a bit of a mind ...

I'm curious what you mean by a morality regardless of being a human. Can you clarify? Are you a physicalist? I have some sympathy for this as a potent...

Porca puttana!

Yes, that’s what I’m asking. Personally I’m not in the truth business unless it’s about mundane matters like what time the train to Sydney leaves Sout...

Isn't this kind of thinking essentially postulating a golden era when people were closer to truth? Do you think this is an accurate assessment?

Thanks.

:wink:

I'm not sure if this has been covered, but for what reason do you think this is not happening as often today? Fair point - also many people who work i...

Thanks Joshs.

This is like the argument from poor design that some atheists bring out as a counter to the apologist's argument from design and the miraculous functi...

That's very interesting, thanks. I need to work on my conceptual vocabulary.

Is this similar to Lakoff's frames? I think this is an important insight. People slide into 'they're sociopaths, morons' alarmingly quickly. If a worl...