Tom Storm

:100:

I avoid Plato's these days, I hear the nuggets are not free range and they use chemicals...

Yes, some of us have gone on a riff about etiquette. I guess a key point for me in this from the third theses: Calls for civility seek to evade our ca...

:up:

Sure and agree. Nick Cave anyone? Waits is one of the few artists who became less accessible and more difficult with age. Mahler too in the classical ...

Agree on Scriaban. That's why I raised them and hence the expression the evergreen classic. The notion that the themes, wisdom or humanity contained a...

The Cave: Daniel Dennett and his physicalist puppets (also not a bad name for a band) The Sunlight: Topos hyperuranios :razz:

This reminds me of the notion that the hallmark of a classic is a work that endures through time. I think this is just one common perspective. It migh...

The culture wars in a nutshell.

Yes... and the collective pronoun is a paucity of donor kidneys.

Interesting response. I generally work not to intentionally insult people or be hectoring in any discussion. Dialogues don't work when they get abusiv...

I think this probably crystalizes this entire debate (and many others). How would one define or identify the non-physical?

Thank you. I figured it was an issue about usage, as issues so often seem to be.

Nicely put; I like that a lot.

Sorry mate, what am I missing in Shawn's identified problem here?

Depends on what you understand as change. What this saying refers to is when a tradition is disrupted or the change comes after a period of consistenc...

Shawn, I may be missing something, I am not a philosopher but isn't language arbitrary sounds used to describe things we experience differently? I am ...

How is it not context? Can you show me a specific example of how this language imprecision cause harm or an insurmountable problem?

I understand your point but my version for the world doesn't have straight lines or precise definitions (except by explicit agreement) so it is a prob...

My own instinct is that language has usage, not meaning and for everyday functioning such words have been more than adequate. I have more concerns wit...

Thanks. I don't entirely understand syllogism one. But I understand the others. I held a view very similar to this. I see your reasoning. You're essen...

Thanks. And thanks too for the Michel Bitbol referral. I have watched a few of his lectures too. What a lovely man he seems.

:up:

Interesting stuff, Joshs. I have a very limited understanding of phenomenology but that accords with what I have gleaned. I recently saw a couple of l...

And for some of us there is never the right time for certain books and authors. People often read books the way they travel to other countries, to hav...

My sympathy was always with those poor abused folk who preferred to remain in the secure shelter of a cave with a nice fire and a daily puppet show. W...

All this talk about morality and, unless I have missed it, I rarely see an example of a system in practical use by anyone. Is killing a small child wr...

So your moral system starts with suppositions that empiricism is true and you can use language to arrive at meaning and a moral system. Can you do it ...

Resilience is a curious notion. My own intuition is it is likely to be found in people's personality and upbringing which has prepared them (for want ...

I hear you. So how do you tell if someone's ideas are useful? Do you recommend feel or faith? I like the idea of common sense but it has such a broad ...

Interesting - can you give us some examples?

I have no idea. Is water more valuable than a human? Not if you are talking a few thousand gallons in a local swimming pool. But if you are talking al...

And? To me the difference this makes is twofold. 1) We don't need to see nature as something 'other' to exploit and damage 2) if nature is us, we may ...

I take the view that we are part of nature.

You've expounded (amongst other things) a fine example of the is-ought problem. Identifying moral properties with natural properties is generally seen...

Custom and convention - the real answer to almost anything. Lots of people don't fish for sport for precisely this reason.

Please use paragraphs your stuff is dense.

I tried reading some of those metaphysical nocturnal disseminations but the pages were stuck together...

What evidence do you have for that curious claim? I was an atheist when I was broke (years ago) and had to shelter in phone boxes at night to stay dry...

I'm an atheist but I get what you are communicating, your argument is nuanced and reflects philosophy, not dogma. I wonder if there's a way to reconci...

So that sounds like you think prearranged status runs everything and there's no hope. Why would you still participate?

Is it ever based on competence?

I understand - my first response was: .... people often jettison belief systems when things get very hard. - whatever those beliefs may be. An ontolog...

I hear you and I agree. There are, of course, numerous Christian apologists (e.g., Matt Slick) who make the argument that atheism is self-refuting bec...

Hopefully this isn't a pile on Wayfarer thing. :smile: Isn't that a bit of a crude apologist style argument, based around pushing the point too far? I...

"It is possible to accept life, nature, the universe, as it is, no more or less..." "...it is possible to accept the pointless existence of life and t...

Just that it isn't so easy to contrast the barren atheist with the loving believer. Notions of the Absurd are really the domain of faiths where the ab...

Religious people are just as likely to be abject and bereft as anyone else. After 30 plus years of working in the field of mental ill health and subst...

I shook hands with a man who shook hands with a man who knew Oscar Wilde. It doesn't take long for eras and folk to come and go. The only people I've ...

We're fast arriving at the point where some larrikin decides to demonstrate that 20th mass murder is the result of atheism (i.e., godless Communism), ...