Philosophical Speculations

There are some fine points that need to be established here, which may take a few turns. This first is important: Being is not a quality, but the very truth of existence. Being, as the ground of existence, cannot be a quality of something else, and as such cannot be compared to experience. There is...

Before I can go further, there is another little twist that I need to straighten. I was not referring to any distinction between knowing and thinking, I was strictly talking about poetic thought and representational thought. Perhaps you think of these as abstract concepts, but you need not do so, a...

This is an excellent question which puts me in the position of giving an objective answer to a a situation that defies objectivism, but I will try it. The only thing that does apply to everything is that it exists, therefore Being. The question then becomes the nature of this Being, which we can on...

Just so it's clear this isn't a 'trick question', but really at the heart of this entire discussion, as is so often the case in modern philosophical debates, I will provide a helpful quote: This looks like another misunderstanding of my approach. I never deny thinking in the question of Being, but ...

Anyway, the key questions I want you to ask you at this point, and would appreciate a reply to, are as follows - are you aware that when you write reasoned conclusions about "energy", "esthetic knowledge", etc. that you are, in fact, thinking, even if you normally don't pay atte...

Of course, you are quite right it’s reductionist. My preferred approach is a non-reductionist acknowledgment that we can’t even know if there is an “ontological primitive”, let alone say what it is. But Kastrup explicitly makes his argument as a reductionist, for which I have played clips in both m...

What I see here is you imposing your metaphysical framework to work your own reductionism. A couple quick examples: 1. You refer to the “thought system of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra”, although Nietzsche emphatically rejected any systematization at all. Nietzsche speculated that reason itself might be ...

3. The highest level of those who are acutely sensitive to the “vibrations” in the room and channel them unmediated by theory or artifice of any kind. Like Miles or John Coltrane. They barely even hear what they are playing, but are rather a pure conduit through which Being speaks. Another one of t...

2. Heidegger did say that, and it is a point of disagreement I have with him. Heidegger had no understanding of music, and that perhaps impeded his understanding of Zarathustra. The deep bells that brought Zarathustra to his understanding of the abyss did not come from beyond, but from the bowels o...

I've been thinking of starting a topic on the connection between music and metaphysics/ontology, whether as being immanent and integral, or more contingent, but I've been struggling to actually articulate the basis for a discussion. Then with the usual synchronicity, inspired by some recent comment...