Tom Storm

As I understand it, the Enlightenment was all about rationalism order and secularism - Romanticism was specifically a reaction against these stricture...

Just turned 25.

No question - I was thinking about the rest of us... Which reminds me of the old line - if everyone you meet turns out to be an arsehole, it's you tha...

This is where anti-natalism has it wrong....

That's a very interesting and useful perspective in all of this.

I'm not following this discussion closely but for my money what seems to happen is people have already made up their minds what is true about consciou...

I thought I was agreeing with javi that understanding depression was complex. Not keen on dogmatic rhetoric that sounds like you are trying to make me...

Hmmm.... Tell that to the Uighurs in Xinjiang. Not being interested in reality doesn't mean it can't harm or kill you.

:lol:

No kidding... when I said smarter than me/you I was being ironic. I thought that was obvious. Sorry. Maybe we need an irony font.

Take it up with Searle - he's smarter than you too. I think his point is that the mind is a physical process of an organ (brain). He has a much more d...

Gosh, won't this become another rehash of the hard problem of consciousness... a trip down the Dan Dennett superhighway? John Searle says mind is to b...

I'd be surprised if he wasn't, but yes it is speculative. Psychiatrist Christopher Gillberg has certainly suspected this. Based on W's behaviors as de...

Just do what you have to do, javi - there will always be people with opinions.

Agree with you. I've worked with depressed people for 30 years. Medication is sometimes necessary to help. Some people can take 2 or 3 hours just to s...

No idea about this event but I have assumed for some years that Wittgenstein likely had autism given his presentation and behaviour. This would have m...

No, I said 'thick' not thin. If weight loss is needed, try cutting back on sugar. You probably know that, with a high IQ and all. :razz:

Not sure where you are or what you may have experienced, but based on what I've seen you're describing the opposite of today's approach and talk thera...

No worries. What I wrote: Unpacking that, all I am saying is what people like Sam Harris have said - we may not have free choice, but it sure feels li...

Nowhere did I say I am only interested in what feels true. You really need to read more closely.

I think that needs work. Pretty sure the greedy men who are in charge of making cheap and tasteless shit live in a world of heightened, plastic free l...

My understanding is that for S there is only will. All physical reality is just an instantiation of will - which is also translated as energy. For S w...

Of course.

Depends on the person. Boredom can lead to suicide or an artistic masterpiece. Like most things in life, it depends on what one 'chooses' to do with i...

I don't disagree, but isn't that the act of choosing not to believe based on preferences, aesthetic or otherwise? These sorts of discussions were huge...

Not really. If you look at public mental health campaigns in most Western countries the advice is defiantly not to shut up. It is the opposite. Usuall...

Isn't that more a case of refusing to accept a god on the grounds of personal taste? Would that not be analogous to saying I don't believe in the laws...

Ok. No problems.

You could have made the point you just made in two sentences instead of three paragraphs. :wink: This paragraph is incoherent to me, sorry. Do you wan...

Maybe a dumb idea, but it might help to have a brief glossary of the core terms being used , like 'reason' so that we don't need to keep interrupting ...

Isn't this simply putting things in their order of significance - a rock is less than a mouse; a mouse is less than a human?

Isn't that just a nasty piece of unnecessary ad hominem with no evidence supporting it? What evidence do you have that they choose not to see?

Take care.

You often ask questions and go on tangents when the answer has been given. Sorry bud. Done.

I explained my view of this re-read it. I won't explain it again.

This reads like eccentric speculation. What is your source of this information?

Based on our pragmatic common sense understanding of how driving works in a pragmatic world, a crash is always a possibility. So what? One of the prag...

I was using the word in its ordinary sense not the philosophical one. There is some overlap but basically it means if your belief about the world work...

The theme of freedom (where did that come from?) has never interested me. Life feels like free choice, That'll do me.

And yet we do every day. We couldn't interact with others, hold down a job, study or walk down the street safely if we didn't know pragmatically what ...

I think that's the correct running order - rationalism then romanticism, after that, the hula-hoop followed by where we are now: the yo-yo.

That's because you really needed to wash your hands before you took a whizz.

Thanks, that's a bit clearer.

Typos are fine - I'm big on making them myself. :cool: Ok so a reasoning process is fine. I reason that Berlin is my favorite city in the world becaus...

I don't understand your argument, sorry. What do I need to understand about reason that I don't?

All fair points, TC. I often find myself reflecting upon how most of the things we truly value in life are not rational at all - love, connection to p...

Thanks for clarifying. Reason does seem to separate us from the other animals but it's not as if reason has been very popular with people - politics, ...

I like him a lot and I think he covers a lot of ground.

Is there a reason these premises are written like this, Garrett? To me it sounds like it was translated out of Swahili into broken unclear English. So...

You make that sound like a bad thing. :razz: Thanks for expanding on the topic. I've worked with many people who are depressed - hundreds now. Many of...