Tom Storm

I am very familiar with the various reasons why people hold to this. I am also an atheist. I am asking why you have taken this view. If you wish not t...

Out of interest how do you arrive at a pointlessness of existence?

Are you able to briefly summarize what the alternative to a mind-at-large would be by way of explaining regularities and objectivities in the world?

Start a thread on art and beauty if you haven't already. This is for another discussion.

I don't think it is wrong. It's just not my definition. I generally prefer not to make totalizing statements when it comes to aesthetics. Someone coul...

Agree. I have seen that anger too. The reason this subject sets people off is that there is often an implicit assumption that art has a higher status ...

I've pondered this for some years. My imperfect answer is that such objects are craft works, not art works. One area where this gets tricky is in what...

For me the time to believe something is when there is good evidence for it. So it makes no real difference to the OP's question to me.

Meaning what? Hinduism; Islam; Theosophy; Transcendental Idealism; UFO's; Simulation Theory??

I've rarely thought that existence is meaningless in the sense that this idea would be unsettling. Meaning is found in daily living, relationships, ca...

Think bigger - miracles may just be tricks which have not been explained rationally yet. Also, I have seen magic tricks that look to be defying the la...

The idealists I know argue that the world is objectively the case, it just isn't made of matter. It is mind when seen from a particular perspective. W...

This is a bit odd to me. One genuine miracle? What is a genuine miracle? There are men all over India right now doing miracles. There are healers 'fai...

Maybe a soulless technical performance is just one without much of an interpretation or 'personality'. I have to say the more I think about it the les...

For me craft focuses on skill - a work is loosely or strictly based upon a pattern or formula (eg, song writing, journalism, ship building, making a t...

Good question. Quick brain dump with some opining. We tend to enjoy the things we already appreciate. Why do we like them? Because we like things like...

No doubt. The 'doesn't much matter comment' referred to the question of Jesus; real or fiction.

Actually some better moments went the full hour. Not really. Unless there is good reason to think this, why tie yourself into knots? Can anyone demons...

Sure, it doesn't much matter to me, but I think there may have been an itinerant preacher or two who inspired the stories. There are reasons for this ...

Indeed. And my question about these sorts of Theory of Everything postulates is what difference do they make? Pretty sure people (me certainly) will b...

Fuck!

I hear you. To be perfectly honest, I don't look for explanations. I generally just get on with it and I have rarely been disappointed. My interest in...

The idea of Will, mind-at-large and cosmic consciousness - whatever it is called, from Schopenhauer to Kastrup, seems to be central to many forms of i...

It's worth noting that we should be cautious of books which present tendentious accounts of early Christianity. The area is fraught with polemical hal...

Sure, but using reason to demonstrate the necessity of God is in the traditional repertoire too. Christianity has been big on trying to demonstrate th...

Kind of - it's called presuppositional apologetics. There's also Alvin Plantinga an influential American analytic philosopher who works primarily in t...

They were a very good read. Thanks.

That's helpful, thanks. I see your perspective and I think I intuitively privilege this 'direction of fit' myself to some extent. It sounds a little l...

I'm aware of all that, my question is more of a technical one - the nub of the problem seems to hinge on specific formulations of epistemology. And th...

It's a social justice issue. Hence how we treat others. Here in Australia, we put people into detention centers for seeking asylum. Hence @"Banno" is ...

Human rights; refugee policy; social justice; welfare reform; drug law reform; justice for Aboriginal Australians; economic reform; housing policy ref...

It seems to me that you and @"Banno" are unable to start this 'debate' from the same place. Is this just a matter of holding different presuppositions...

That's a juicy morsel and I think it's true. The physicalist atheist and the dedicated Jesuit often share first principles about how we should treat o...

Agree although I would say that neo-liberalism is a religion...:wink: Indeed. Which is another imagined appeal of being filthy rich. I suspect that fa...

Nice, and very funny.

You raise good questions and I don't have certainty on this, just some ideas. I think conservatism has been coopeted by a more radical right that has ...

I think this is fair. Not thinking of anyone in particular, but some people don't connect with ideas because of personal experiences and the merit of ...

Yes, I think this may explain a lot of it. It's a culture war and tribalism like this is about attack and maintaining the rage. Trumps biggest attract...

:up:

Sure, for the idealist these would just be demonstrating the regularities inherent in an experience produced though mentation - matter being what mind...

Good. That clarifies things. Yes, an odd kind of dualism. This is true, but these are all experiences of the one thing as seen by different beings? It...

Cripes, this thread is like standing before one of those distorting fun house mirrors watching reality bend and dissolve. :gasp: Do you generally foll...

Still mulling over this. It occurred to me then that Nietzsche greatly disliked Kant's formulation of idealism because he saw it as a form of Christia...

Seems to me that the primary answer, by way of idealism, is the space no one has entered yet. And that is the idea of a mind-at-large which holds all ...

The question seems to be, is this a mistake, or a strategic choice of Kant's? Should it matter? I see it. Is this not just a Platonic form or a Jungia...

And I think in idealism, the brain is haunting the spiritual entity (consciousness) and what we call matter is a representational icon or a 'product' ...

My senses mean little without interpretation, I would have thought. And it's not often you look and have to ask yourself, what am I looking at?

No worries, what you popped down seemed interesting and thought it might shed light on noumena. I tend to agree with Eugene Gendlin - "Philosophy is s...

Are you able to clarify what you just said? Then I will go back and try reading you again. It's unclear to me what your point is and the Kant is incom...

Useful information. My mum used to say of economic rationalists and money obsessed people - "The fellow doesn't have any nous.' :cool: I'm also led to...