Tom Storm

I know a number of Catholic mystics and they would certainly agree with Plantigna ('not bad for a Protestant') on this. You can add the Sufi tradition...

In my experience religions are not all that friendly towards metaphysics either.

The hard part is working out what counts as metaphysical insight if we are locked in to a world of appearances and cognitive limitations.

This is a tantalizing notion and you can't help wondering, if we add (as Kant does) space and time to our cognitive apparatus, what is it we are 'real...

Indeed. Many atheists (Massimo Pigliacci, Susan Haack, for two) bemoan Krauss' lack of philosophical knowledge and his crude reasoning.

Nice. Can't help but find this a fascinating and useful insight. Do you think the day will come when we can produce an AI creation that is closer to b...

Gore Vidal made the same point decades ago - I don't think this is just an American issue. Those 'small adjustments' for disadvantaged people keep som...

In urban centres like Melbourne and Sydney people are ostentatious about their love of 'the arts' - opera, ballet, classical music, theatre, literatur...

The atheists I've encountered are often insufferable moralists, hectoring people about what is right and wrong, based on secular values, such as Sam H...

Definitely one possible reading, or Make Yesterday Today Again! Yesterday being a kind of romantic Panglossian reconstruction. The notion of Golden Er...

And of course, the contrapuntal argument is that in the Islamic world and (many other places) notions of transcendent certainty continue rule politics...

:up: that's it I think. It's a veritable supermarket of isms and schisms.

I can see that. It's yin and yang... to purloin an Eastern term. :wink: I suspect that Joshs was using terminology like this in quotations.

Political and aesthetic. I guess there is no Philosophy to make any such promises, only particular philosophies.

Like many issues in philosophy, undecidable.

Could well be the case. But this doesn't address whether or not there actually is transcendent meaning or value. It might just tell us that people hav...

I don't know... it looks like the kind of village where the locals come for you late into the night, with lit torches and pitchforks. https://media.np...

Is your personal ambition the same quality as the kind of ambition present in the wording?

I think paragraphs would be helpful, this slab of text is hard to read. From my perspective those questions seem a bit ambitious, with a focus on util...

:clap: Professor Chomsky - have any recent findings and understandings in neuroscience enhanced or modified your understanding of the innate structure...

Well for adherents it is not a question, it's a faith. But I wonder how people who are not enlightened themselves can recognise revealed wisdom in old...

How would we know if they were revealed truth?

What's an example of good reasoning which leads to theism? Are you thinking along the lines of Aquinas' five ways? What's your definition of truth? It...

Ok. I thought you were asking a different question.

I'd say we developed memory because it had significant utility - remembering what was safe to eat, what caused sickness sand death, how to stay safe f...

Indeed. Sounds like we are in agreement.

Hard to imagine that they don't, given it happens to so many writers, journalists, politicians, artists, etc. Almost anyone who earns a living by tryi...

You're right but that's religion in a nutshell, a community of folk who often know little about their traditions. That's why there are priests and pas...

That's a cool way of framing things.

:up:

Could be. Nicely crystalized.

On the same theme - what is your take on the notion that reason requires some kind of guarantor for it to operate. The logical absolutes; identify, no...

Can you clarify - can you identify how a 'true believer' would behave and how you can tell if someone believes in god, other than making an inference ...

Goodness. That's interesting. Do we come here to sharpen our monomanias, perhaps? :razz:

This is an interesting matter which has range of implications and uses. Which is why the case of math is so interesting. Is it your contention that hu...

I think you are over complicating. It is answered when they say what their beliefs are and why they believe them. Or unreasonable and uneducated specu...

In other words, reason suggests naturalism is false, or at least, incomplete, that there's an explanation needed to account for our preference for suc...

I hear you :up:

Maybe. I think it’s a preference. I like silence. And I can go days without talking. I feel no benefits from it except the joy of silence itself.

Beautifully written OP and interesting that this is your perspective as someone with expertise in the field. I've often held that I am a reluctant pos...

Would not the concept of beautiful and how one sees it depend upon one's wisdom? In people, the beautiful are often amongst our most treacherous. :raz...

Well, there is mysterianism which takes a similar view. But I am not a philosopher - just interested in what the themes and issues are and what some p...

Quick digression. I have no idea what grunge meant and I was there. Nirvana, I take it? Don't know any of their music. I've never participated in popu...

The reasons you (and others) have for taking seriously the possibility of some supernatural claims are: - Worldwide anecdotes and first person account...

I hear you. I think we probably need to take a more deflationary or minimalist view of the subject. Rather than trying to talk about The Supernatural ...

I think this is an entirely fair question. And of course, the only available answer must be that humans can gain 'higher awareness' though certain con...

It's a cool observation. Next stop: metacognition.

Which means what exactly? That we invent concepts and that's enough to be getting on with? Is the metaphor the thing itself? Does by this account Shak...

Out of interest can you site a reference for Hegel actually employing the thesis-antithesis-synthesis model?

No. I think there are plenty of folk here who don't hold to naturalism. Even moderators. :wink: I personally don't have reason to accept any accounts/...