Philosophical Speculations

Velmans' argument seems to be: (a) materialism has a hard problem of consciousness, (b) idealism has an inverse hard problem of consciousness, so (c) the solution must be a middle position bridging consciousness and materiality. But why should it? Couldn't a way exist to get from consciousness to m...

Velmans' argument seems to be: (a) materialism has a hard problem of consciousness, (b) idealism has an inverse hard problem of consciousness, so (c) the solution must be a middle position bridging consciousness and materiality. But why should it? Couldn't a way exist to get from consciousness to ma...

JL, That was a very interesting post, thank you. I have always found Daoist philosophy to be profound and helpful when encountering these deep issues. Carl Jung had many great thinks to say about it and he is one of the 20th century philosophical minds I respect the most. He comments significantly ...

In today's conversation with Curt Jaimungal, Bernardo and John talk at some length about the existence of evil and also touched upon Daoism. Perhaps synchronistically, yesterday I finished a translation of the Daoist take on evil. This issue of course is important for any idealist account of reality...

Great quote! I also mention Teilhard de Chardin in Part 2, Incarnating the Christ . We should remember mythology is always taken from sense-perceptible phenomenon. In that sense, the literalists who say Genesis is an accurate account of what actually happened are correct, but they have no idea why ...

To add again to the previous submission, Marco, Teilhard de Chardin certainly understood the challenge he faced in bridging idealism and realism, his religion with his science. In the epilogue of The Phenomenology of Man , he states: It is relatively easy to build up a theory of the world. But it is...

To add to the above submission, if you haven't already, you might also want to consider Teilhard de Chardin, of course another French scientist. In The Phenomenon of Man , he discusses evolution within his idealist vision. With respect to Lamarck and Darwin, in Chapter 3 "Demeter" he foot...

To add to the above submission, if you haven't already, you might also want to consider Teilhard de Chardin, of course another French scientist. In The Phenomenon of Man , he discusses evolution within his idealist vision. With respect to Lamarck and Darwin, in Chapter 3 "Demeter" he footn...

You might also consider the Zhuangzi for an explanation of how idealism accounts for the evolutionary aspect of life. The last paragraph of Chapter 18 of the Zhuangzi , in particular, depicts the transmutation of species and characterizes it as a qualitative evolution involving a conscious return to...

Daoist, Buddhist, Hindu, and Ubuntu traditions would probably say that the problem is not whether "pure Consciousness" exists, the problem is that people think other things exist. Exactly, I think it's a common ground of all versions of idealism: "consciousness is all there is" ...