Tom Storm

I find this curious. Does this mean a person in a wheelchair is by definition less than fully human? A blind person? So what is your definition of hum...

Yes, this would seem critical. Not sure I am grasping this. Can't books do both almost simultaneously? I often read books to have something in my head...

I'm one of those minds. Can you briefly sketch how the idea of human nature is of help in our understanding of the world and how it might avoid essent...

Not sure any of that amounts to an essential nature. The fact that we interact with our environment and try to survive (like most creatures) is true. ...

No worries.

What you often hear from idealists (Kastrup and Hoffman are good examples) is that materialism and a physical world is debunked and quantum physics te...

I don't know if I believe in something called human nature, nor to I know what the human condition is meant to refer to. Strikes me that the human con...

I had a similar reaction. Not sure what is expected from a sprawling OP like this. Are you inviting comment or questions? I'm not sure what it is you ...

As someone outside of philosophy, I find the debate about idealism to be somewhat pointless. What changes in our lives, either way? Is it simply the c...

We often have 35-40 degree heat here, for days at a time. I quite like it. Obviously I don't want to be a labourer outdoors during such weather, but I...

I think this is very useful advice and well framed.

Nicely put. I've been searching for the right word and that's it.

Of course. And a significant identity politics in the US now is white Christian nationalism. To a detached observer, Trump seems a very astute propone...

I may be wrong, but I think his account is essentially Kantian. We know phenomena (it works for us; science can achieve extraordinary things, etc) but...

Could be true. I would probably say that the ultimate sacred artifact is money. Funneling it from where it needs to be to do good (infrastructure and ...

Or another interpretation, which I prefer, from Gore Vidal. It's decades old but still seems to resonate. Gore, incidentally, preferred the Greeks to ...

From what I've read @"Wayfarer" takes care to separate his account of idealism from that of Berkeley.

When I was a child in the 1970's, I certainly 'felt' that reality (specifically my experience of it) was in some way manufactured and wasn't entirely ...

There's also the matter of Kastrup's 'dissociated alters' which explain individual (constrained) experiences of consciousness as tiny slithers of the ...

That's a very nicely written essay which sits well as a companion piece to your first essay. Excellent work. This seems to take us back to Kant's noum...

Just trying to understand your reasoning, Which gods you think are the real gods probably does matter when you are trying to please these gods. It see...

I see no reason to accept the idea of any gods. I do believe that humans fear the reality they see before them, especially death, and find themselves ...

I have no idea. I'm not sure if I have met any rational persons. Or even what this means. I have met people who use reasoning and have post hoc justif...

To some extent, yes. But how do they understand 'wrong'? It will be in the context of some aspect of culture. One they might not care for much. Someth...

Yes. Is it Aristotle? For some the philosophical project is presumably to dispel ignorance. My issue is not just this notion of 'ignorance', but also ...

Why do you say this? Can it be demonstrated?

I haven't noticed scholastic value being a priority here. So is the OP an attempt to provide a foundation for morality which somehow manages to quanti...

What is your view about a problem like this? Any suggested directions?

Yes, I agree with you. I don't beleive in moral facts (I don't deny them, but I have heard no good reason to accept the notion) and any underlying axi...

I'm not sure what you are asking. Isn't this dilemma just a situational curiosity which underpins human life - particularly in multi-cultural, plurali...

That seems fair. If this is true, then it would also seem to hold for hatred and resentment. I am inclined to hold that the foundation of morality is ...

Vanity and pride? What you are suggesting seems to correspond to sociopathy, which is often so indifferent towards others that vanity and pride may be...

I don't. I have never been asked why I chose to do a particular thing in moral terms. I generally just do it (feel my way through) and, if pressed, ca...

I'm not an American, but my colleagues and I have been wondering if a shooter would appear at a Trump event for some time. The fact it happened is not...

:up: and it can have brutal effects upon people. I see no demonstration of karma and it is of no use to me as a concept.

You'd need to ask an expert. Inferential thinking (making connections between seemingly unrelated pieces of information to draw conclusions) appears t...

Seems a fairly straightforward matter. Humans look for order and predictability to manage their environment. We see that most things, if not all, appe...

Yes, that was my read of the response. I guess that sounds fair. What I have observed is that a little bit of philosophy can mess with people'e thinki...

Not sure. I have no theory of truth. But mostly it seems to be contingent and an artefact of human culture and linguistic practice.

I guess I prefer the frame of intersubjective communities of agreement such as @"Joshs" posits.

I think that might be an exaggeration and I see why you or others might argue this. I would say that people generally are unsophisticated. Including a...

That seems to be a very good account of morality. I find it interesting how often unsophisticated theists I have met think that if there is no god tha...

Cool. That's the only one I have heard of. Ok, that's interesting. I wouldn't know G.E. Moore from Dudley Moore. I've just read a ChatGPT account of i...

I'm no philosopher, so I may be wrong. I was alluding to it here because people will argue that because nature can be understood as violent and full o...

Seems clear. While I don't want to invoke the naturalistic fallacy, it's hard for a human to look at nature and think that we inhabit a fair world. Na...

That's all I am saying. At last we got there. :wink:

That's hilarious. Might as well say this of theism: By destroying people's freedom and ability to think, theism can cause untold damage. The step from...

While this is true, it does not go to the argument I have been making. This is, perversely, actually an argument I first heard in the Baptist communit...

Explain.

I think we should end this discussion for now. We are talking past each other. I am not talking about objective truth. Whether it exists or not is irr...