GENIUS FORUMS

Trevor, I said that I can imagine what it would mean for someone to die without a cause. I am, of course, thinking of life as part of what death is (the end of life) as opposed to a cause of it. If we should say that a thing is caused by what it is, then I'll concede I can't imagine what it would m...

Trevor,

That's an interesting question. The prevailing thought at this board seems to have an odd mix of influences that's quite unique to it. Particularly in the mix of Eastern and Western traditions. It's tough to shoehorn it into anything.

Trevor, If a man is killed, must he have been killed by something? Or could it have been caused by nothing whatsoever? I normally assume that a fella doesn't just die for no reason at all. Nevertheless, my reasons for believing as much are inductive. I can imagine what it would mean for people to j...

David, This is where Hume's arguments on causality break down. They depend on the false perception that successive events are discrete entities with beginnings and ends. No they don't. They only depend upon the fact that it makes sense to say something like "a man will die if he's hit by a tra...

Boyan, To the king George the words Scott and author of Waverly do not necessarily seem like two names for the same person, even though Scott is the author of Waverly. Was that the meaning? Well no. What Russell was interested in was the logical form of the sentence. For a good long while, logician...

Boyan, First thing I read about Russel, which gave me a bad first impression, was how he 'discovered' that saying Scott and later addressing to this person as the author of Veyverly (or something like that), would not make obvious to a person who does not know that Scott is the author of this book ...

I'm a huge fan of minimalism and generally tend towards it when designing websites that feature written word as their primary content. On another note, the mention of Thales reminded me of one of my favorite paragraphs from Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy: "In every history of ...

Trevor, I'm not accusing Mr. Bradbury of being a great thinker. I just don't see him as anti-thought. He does seem to think it inhibits the creative process, which he thinks should be a spontaneous act of passion, but that's about the extent of his anti-intellectualism (if it can be called that). T...

Carl, I'm pretty sure you are wrong. No terms remotely like "self" and "conscious" ever cross his lips Except, y'know, at around the 1:56 mark in the posted vid. Where did you sense any irony whatsoever. It just is ironic. Check out this quote from the same dude: "The whole...

I'm pretty sure that his point was simply that people shouldn't be so self-conscious. He seemed to make his comments in a light-hearted and ironic manner. If you watch the vid, everyone laughs at his comments, and you get the strong impression they're laughing with him rather than at him.

andymonk, If you relax(sit three feet away from the screen)and let the flower slowly draw your eyes out of focus,the flower will open. Try and not focus on any one point,blankly stare,take the flower in as a whole. Do not strain your eyes,it will happen naturally. We do not see with our eyes,we see...

WhorlyWhelk,

In this case materialism and idealism would amount to the same.

That's precisely it right there.

Cory, The falsehood starts when a person 'literally' believes that the things we perceive actually exist as we perceive them outside of our minds, and then proceeds to waste resources trying to understand the how's and why's of existence via science/physics, scientific modeling, etc. I think what y...

I've tried to find an exact definition for what it means for something to be objective or subjective, but I can't seem to ever be able to put my finger on one. The line is blurry between them. Like how many grains of rice can you remove before you no longer have a heap? Blurry. We all know how to us...

To understand what 'choice' is we need to analyze how the word is used. Dammit.

I always think. Why would I not do it when I drink?

I think we make a mistake by evaluating the accomplishments of philosophy as we would those of science or other fields. The greatest triumphs in philosophy are perhaps best shown by demonstrations of why once compelling philosophical notions are now regarded as silly or absurd. Who ascribes to Carte...

In the posted article, Mark Edmundson describes one of Rorty's ideas by saying "What was a good language to speak? The one that helped you to get what you wanted." I was thinking that the other day, except I figured it was just something we naturally did, rather than something we should do...

Ron Paul doesn't really appeal to the base of either major political party in America. That's the main reason he doesn't have much of a chance. Democrats like myself don't like him because he wants to eliminate social security and government spending on what we see as vital infrastructure. Many Repu...

No. Anti-philosophy, namely emotions, justifies their use. Oddly enough, emotions also justify not using them. Or, at least, make up a good chunk of the justification. I've never been able to quite figure out what wisdom is supposed to be, but I suspect, from the context it tends to be used in, tha...

It's amazing what a magician can do if you let him prepare the trick on his terms. Do you think it was a magician or 'mentalist' as the witness called him? Do you think there's a difference? After doing some reading I've discovered that there is a difference. Mentalists tend to do tricks that explo...

Most tricks of that sort are psychological. I imagine that almost everyone chooses 55 if asked to pick a two-digit number higher then 37.

Faust13, No, it isn't "likely" at all that the planet is heating up because of us. Also, it's not the "planet" that is heating up, it's the surface of the earth. If global warming is correct, the atmosphere and troposphere should be heating up, but it's not. According to most ea...

Faust, Wait, do you agree with the global warming theory? Carbon dioxide traps heat. It even works with water vapor to trap more heat then said water vapor alone. Light warms the Earth's surface creating heat. Thus, an increase in atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide can cause an increase in temper...

I've been reading Vonnegut's Timequake recently, in which he attributes to fictional sci-fi author Kilgore Trout the observations that "Science never cheered up anyone. The truth about the human situation is just too awful." In fact, if you pay attention to what scientific theories are mos...