Recent content by Kelly Jones

This thread is unfortunately very typical evidence. Thanks for further proof for the popularity of the belief that philosophy is understood only in academia. Surely you realise that if there are low enrolment numbers in academic philosophy courses, this might well be a sign that directly...

I apologise for the delay in replying. I was so convinced of the futility of continuing any engagement in this forum, that I'd decided to abandon the matter. But an old acquaintance has just reminded me of the thread, and seemed interested in it, so I'll persevere a while longer. Can't promise...

If you want to get angry instead of engaging in a genuine, earnest philosophical discussion, go right ahead. But I won't waste my time on you. The reason why your idea is wrong, is because purely logical, a priori statements are still absolutely true in the empirical world. Take any...

You don't have to have any insight into anyone's psyche to make that assertion. It's illogical in itself, because it makes a leap that sometime decides that the majority of people must be fools (folly being the opposite of wisdom, and philosophy being love of wisdom) based on them knowing what...

What about that idea? It argues that it holds truth value even though it doesn't map anything in the physical world. .

Take Galileo. He probably never attended the Vatican's committee meeting where they decided his astronomical theses disagreed with majority opinion (i.e. statistical norms), so he never saw any such statistics-based information. Nevertheless, wasn't he justified in relying on his own assumption...

Well, that's exactly my point. You don't want life to be meaningless. You don't like that it is meaningless. So, why is that? Why do you feel the need to say life is miserable and ridiculous, i.e. ought to be happy and pleasant? Does it make any difference to the sun whether it is given a...

Saying that most people lack philosophical nous is a figure of speech, generalising my experiences of the quality of thought I encounter in the overwhelming majority of people I observe or interact with. It's demonstrated yet again by the responses in this thread. Q.E.D. Not because everyone...

Hi all. I concluded from the following arguments that there are few genuine philosophers nowadays. I've compiled them for others to read, because I think it's a great shame that such simple intellectual mistakes exist so prolifically in society, which prevent so many people of any hope of...

From wikipedia: Meta- (from Greek: μετά = "after", "beyond", "with", "adjacent", "self"), is a prefix used in English (and other Greek-owing languages) to indicate a concept which is an abstraction from another concept, used to complete or add to the latter. ohcac wrote...

If you realise one's life is truly meaningless, why do you feel the need to make your interpretation of this fact bitter? Words like "clusterfuck", "ridiculous", "miserably short" all give the slant that you feel short-changed. It doesn't sound like you really believe life is meaningless, but...

I see death as the same essential processes of cause and effect responsible for life. There is no actual barrier between the causal processes that create biological organisms, and those that create inanimate objects. So my philosophical approach to death is that it isn't inherently there. Life...

Metaphysics doesn't mean "after physics", but the deeper reality of physics --- of existence, what is real, what matter is. It is the same subject as philosophy, that is, to understand the nature of Ultimate Reality. Philosophy is not science, because it doesn't rely on the a posteriori form of...

Hi Dean, Well, bravo for your persistence. But I think you haven't really given enough thought to your scenario. You're assuming that if you know absolutely everything in the Universe (all universes), then you'd have a perfect model for what reality looks like. Your approach is to try to create...

Yes, I've read the Meme Machine, and while it's obviously true that ideas spread, I don't think you can conclude from her ideas that the Totality (that being the totality of absolutely all realities) is a mindplex. I reckon causality is an excellent tool for understanding the nature of Ultimate...