Recent content by autophoron

Gustav, The obvious distinction that comes to mind is that religion relies on transendence (it's about worshipping something both other and greater) whereas politics is, or can be, immanent (when it's about self-determination). I think you are exactly right on this in the manner in which it...

borderpolice, “Why are you telling me this.” I told you this because of your reticence to the term “ideology”. I was clarifying my use of it. “which is tantamount to saying there cannot be adquate ideas because it appears impossible to give a complete enumeration of causal factors affecting...

borderpolice, I disagree with that in the sense that from the point of view of any given interesting theory, some theories are better than others. why else would we use language to talk with others? I am being specific to his theory of the Indeterminacy of Meaning, wherein no amount of...

borderpolice, I have read that you think that I misuse Quine's text and in your response I find the two of you somehow a definitive pair, “However, Quine and myself…” “This is why him and myself…” “… one doesn't have to agree with him or myself” Are the two of you working on a paper...

borderpolice, "please note that Quine compares Homerian Gods in this quote to the rather colourful entities introduced by contemporary phsics" I am unsure of this restriction upon what is posited. Further in the text he says, "Positing does not stop with macroscopic physical objects. Objects...

borderpolice, If you agree with Quine, then what is the "mythology" you imagine that you can ditch in "ditch all the mythology"? Quine is saying essentially that one can only move from one "mythology" to another. autophoron

Borderpolice, “i think it's best to avoid bullshit and say: OK, we can't observe the non-observable that's it. and ditch all the mythology.” What I suppose confuses me is that all theories about reality are not theories about the “unobservable”, but attempts to explain what is “observable”...

borderpolice, "somehow i cannot see this religion taking off." But isn't the point that it is and has been taking off with or without you? Isn't in the end the proper name for this "religion", History? autophoron

borderpolice, "The connection between his ethics and metaphysics. PS i'd prefer not to discuss this or that philosopher in detail. instead, let's stick to the subject matter: religion." As you define as religious anything that connects ethics to metaphysics (I assume that you mean...

borderpolice, "he's a good student of natural science but a bad sociologist" I'm not sure what you mean by a bad sociologist? Are you referring to his political theories? Was Nietzsche a bad sociologist? And exactly what "natural science" understanding did he have that awards such...

Borderpolice, I went through your replies and most of them seem to have broken down into plain anti-religious polemic which is ironic because this is in spirit similar to what motivated Spinoza who suffered much at the hands of religion and lived at a time when religion held real and lethal...

Borderpolice, Consider this definition of Spinoza’s regarding the constitution of a body, and apply this to the concept of what a ritual accomplishes and how it spatializes Time: “When a number of bodies, whether the same or of different size, are so constrained by other bodies that they lie...

Dom, I like all you say here: we don't actually think about most things we do -- we relate to space and time instrumentally and to the extent that ritual is effective, then the ritual is not the object of conscious thought = the ritual is ready-to-hand practice and to the extent that rituals...

borderpolice, well, as i said at the outset, religion is a fuzzy concept. i still maintain that the majority of believers would be unable to understand such philosophical accounts of (their personal) gods. k-punk was exploring something quite far from what the “majority of believers” are able...

borderpolice, Randomness means that the observer (in this case the listener) cannot detect patterns, i.e. cannot predict, not even probabilistically, what's gonna happen next. Yes, and this is exactly the opposite of what happens when space is territorialized, the ability to predict what is...