Descartes - A Tippling Philosopher

A Tippling Philosopher

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Descartes

A collection of 9 posts

The Foundation to My Whole Worldview

The Foundation to My Whole Worldview

In a sense, this is about the most important piece I can write because out of it comes my whole philosophy. What you are about to read pertains to any abstract object: morality, meaning (of life or words), maths, purpose, and so on. I am just about to release a

What Constitutes an Awakening?

Here is another look at spiritualism from a nonreligious point of view, another guest post from Dana Horton: What Constitutes an Awakening? (5 minute read) It is said that soon after his enlightenment the Buddha passed a man on the road who was struck by the Buddha’s extraordinary radiance

Interactionism, Descartes and Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia

René Descartes was famous for his belief in substance dualism - that the mind and the body are two separate substances and, in his view, they interacted with each other in the pineal gland. Forgetting the nonsense of the pineal gland being where it all happens, the general notion of

What Is a Soul and What Does It Do?

Soul this and soul that. The idea of a soul permeates popular culture, from soul music, to feeling things in your soul, to having soul, to this and, indeed, that. Theologically, souls are a really important part of many theists' theological frameworks. But what is a soul? And what

By Inside_my_head.jpg: Andrew Mason from London, UK derivative work: -- Jtneill - Talk (Inside_my_head.jpg) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Answering Questions about Empiricism as Foundational: Knowing that We Know

I recently wrote a piece on empiricism as being foundational to philosophical approaches to epistemology. See Noevo got involved and gave a rare substantive comment. I’ll try a comment. Perhaps my much younger 61 year old mind, which broke free from atheism about 28 years ago and became ever

By Joreth (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Philosophy 101 (philpapers induced) #10: Knowledge: Empiricism or Rationalism

Having posted the Philpapers survey results, the biggest ever survey of philosophers conducted in 2009, several readers were not aware of it (the reason for re-communicating it) and were unsure as to what some of the questions meant. I offered to do a series on them, so here it is

The Argument from Format - How the Cartesian soul cannot be the originator of free will

This is a piece I wrote a number of years ago and I always interested in what people think of such ideas. It's a longer essay, so settle down this Sunday with a coffee of tea and take it in... How souls and any identifiable entity with a

Awesome Philosophical 3 Minute Bites!

I came across these on my journey through You Tube today. I love them. They are great little chunks of fun, covering all the philosophical greats, including some very early Greek ones.

An Essay on Epistemology: Can there be very strong reasons for believing something although it is false?

Partly in response to some feedback, and partly because it is about time, I thought I'd post a philosophical essay of mine looking at epistemology. Here, I hope to set out how I come by knowledge. Let me know what you think, as ever.