Philosophical Speculations

Professor Schipper makes it very clear that the nature of relationship to the Diety recognized by the Kabbalists as well as Judaism involves 'panentheism' and the question is whether that really lines up with panpsychism or idealism, neither or both. Panentheism is also very clearly the form of theo...

Gary, you could submit an essay to Essentia to demonstrate your interesting pov. But please make it as accessible as you can. That sounds like a good idea, Ben. But I am wondering if I write something and send it in, mostly focusing on the issue of semiosis and temporality/process, if it may be dis...

"...the communal is emphasized and individual is disregarded or suppressed." Ashvin, If the ground rules are that everything is falsifiable, which, in Peircean terms, is the principle of 'fallibilism', then any individual who comes up with a clear counter-example that can be verified by o...

Ashvin, I do not share your ambivalence about the term 'unconscious'...I think that would imply that consciousness is not the single unitary ontological primitive. it is not a helpful term at all because it reinforces the Nominalistic credo that you can only know what you think and speak about, whic...

Yes, Ashvin, but don't you think it is confusing to reject 'Realism' when what is being rejected is the nature of the relationship between perception and actuality. For example, it does not necessarily reject the idea that an understanding of the truth of actuality can be approached through consensu...

A great deal of our real experience of the world has to do with dynamics and the insoluble issue of motion as a truly continuous process. This was the issue that Newton and Leibniz were attempting to address with the invention of the Calculus. But did they really manage to address it? Or just come t...

Peirce writes: “what he adores, if he is a good pragmaticist, is power; not the sham power of brute force, which, even in its own specialty of spoiling things, secures such slight results; but the creative power of reasonableness, which subdues all other powers, and rules over them with its sceptre,...

And that the process of evolution is actually 'Semiosis' which is directed toward the goal of developing increasing Semiotic Freedom (as was originally suggested by biosemiotician Jesper Hoffmeyer), where 'Semiotic Freedom' can be conceptualized as 'Interpretance Capacity'--ie. the level of sophisti...

In reading 'The Idea of the World', the claim is made that there is no basis for 'Realism'. That is, nothing is 'Real' until an observation is made and therefore one concludes that one cannot say anything of certain regarding "reality." I think this is a fundamental error based on a Nomina...

Be wary of any claim that access to the full truth is obtainable purely through individual understanding. That is about the best way of recognizing ego gone awry and the dangers of dogmatic claims. Yes, this may be one way of 'fixating belief' (which include the way of tenacity, the way of imposed a...