The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself. — Carl Sagan, 1980

... does not separate us from what is and what will be — Athena

physicalism treats “the physical” as the fundamental ontological primitive — Wayfarer

Physics is grounded in such irreducible acts of understanding.

So when you insist that everything is “physical,” you are making a metaphysical assertion, not a scientific one ...

More fundamentally still, cognition...

I agree that we are born not so much with innate knowledge but with innate ability.

Carrying this idea forward, we could say that we are not born with an innate knowledge of space and time, but have an innate ability to recognise space and time in our sensibilities. In today’s terms, we could say that my innate ability to recognise space and time is a priori, where a priori is being used in a temporal sense. — RussellA

I surmise that you have no rational justification for your claims, and you have rationalized your position by blaming me for failing to grasp what you're saying. — Relativist

Obviously, 1st person experience is central to a first-person perspective. It's also the epistemic foundation for understanding the world. But it seems an unjustified leap to suggest it is an ontological foundation - as you [@Wayfarer] seem to be doing. — Relativist

Spirituality and the issue of fantasy is important. — Jack Cummins

purpose of 'existence — Jack Cummins

a person's construction of 'reality

'beyond' the physical

I am asking about the nature of intuition and reason and such approaches to understanding? — Jack Cummins

What is the significance of the symbolic approach, mythic understanding and how are these bound up with the idea of consciousness and its emergence in the historical development of human consciousness?

What is human 'consciousness' if it exists and consciousness as qualia?

What does 'consciousness' represent in an understanding and how is this based on the seat of consciousness as a basis for understanding the nature of reality?

Spirituality [dis-embodiment / more-than-embodiment] can be regarded as fantasy...

what lies beyond 'physics' — Jack Cummins

... what harm is there to engage in genocide, enslavement, and anything else for that matter? — Outlander

Philosophy has always grappled with the 'meaning of Being', explicitly or otherwise.
— Wayfarer

I'd say it's more the case that it has grappled with the meaninglessness of being

You're not thinking philosophically, but like an engineer.
— Wayfarer

And in saying that you're pontificating like a fool. — Janus

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
— Steven Weinberg

More bigoted baloney. — T Clark

When I consider the brief span of my life absorbed into the eternity which precedes and will succeed it — memoria hospitis unius diei praetereuntis 
(remembrance of a guest who tarried but a day) — the small space I occupy and which I see swallowed up in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I know nothing and which know nothing of me, I take fright and am amazed to see myself here rather than there: there is no reason for me to be here rather than there, now rather than then.

Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed.

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me. — Blaise Pascal, Pensées

Given that the experiential cannot be given an explanation then suggests that there is no blindspot - which would only be emphasized if one can give computational / information-processing account of the meta-problem of consciousness (i.e. give an account of information processing limitations that cause intelligent information processing agent to hit a brick wall when it comes to accounting for certain things that it perceived or processes). The blindspot is then only apparent if you think that explanations can do more than give predictive or relational accounts and should be about God's eye perspective; but they simply can't ... — Apustimelogist

Surely nobody can describe the feeling of pain such that another on hearing that description will know that particular pain ... — Wayfarer

I had thought that the "2 world view" and the "2 aspect view" were competing interpretations in Kant scholarship. — Janus

The so-called "natural attitude" just consists in the refusal to submit one's thinking, experience and understanding to any dogma, and the "interpretive/ methodological" application "to science, historiography, law, pedagogy religion, etc." is simply the extension of that free-mindedness to the human disciplines. — Janus

... physicalism [naturalism] is the attempt to apply the same mindset to philosophy. — Wayfarer

The subject reality of existence is ine[lim]inable. — Wayfarer

Cogito ergo sum.

# First, Mind (consciousness, thoughts, feelings) is not an entity, but a process.
# Secondly, Mind (power to create imaginary ideas) is not physical — Gnomon

... the ground of metaphysics
— Sirius

Explain how and why "metaphysics" requires a "ground". — 180 Proof

Heidegger, who thought the great final transformation of humanity would come from the rise of Germans to world power, manifesting their potential to live in authenticity. He also believed all Jews would have to die in order for this grand vision to be realized. That's why you'll find in the book Mikie referenced a nod to the 'inner greatness of National Socialism.' That book is partly famous because it contains Heidegger's attempt to cover up his attachment to the Nazis. — frank

The infinite & indivisible substance of Spinoza is a bare substratum, which can never be actual in of itself, since it lacks determination altogether. — Sirius

An undetermined being violates the [Parmenides] unity of being & intellect...

... the ground of metaphysics

Kant [ .... ] he was far more intelligent than Spinoza.

[M]y goal is to make a metaphysical statement true. — ucarr

So, I "believe" naturalism is true - basically I see no good reason to think anything unnatural exists. This is not an expression of certainty - I'm open to having this theory challenged and defeated. But the mere possibility it is false is not a defeater. — Relativist

Kill them then? — Metaphysician Undercover

And how do we get evil people to do good things? — Metaphysician Undercover

More bigoted baloney. — T Clark

... history ["the bronze age"] has devised ways [religions] to make us homicidal [scapegoat "them"]. — ENOAH

I think that many religions understand that they are an issue of faith, not something evidence, which is comes back to my point here. — ssu

I hope you can bear the suspense — bert1

You also need to reconcile how the functions of this non-object "mind" are influenced by the physical (drugs, brain disease, trauma...), and how the mind can have causal efficacy with[/b[ the physical aspects of the body. — Relativist

I keep asking myself "Why I won't kill myself tomorrow?" ... I’ll be disappointed if things change and I won’t be there to see it. I’m curious to see if I’ll ever feel something real. If I’ll ever break the void, the numbness, the existential torture. I’m curious to live and see if I’ll experience something new, and that “new” might be the real I’m looking for. — GreekSkeptic

The only thing I'm opposing, is the application of scientific method to philosophical problems. — Wayfarer

Life is short and death is permanent, and that's the simple equation that keeps me from thinking of suicide. — Mijin

My argument was that suicide harms everyone that valued the suicidal, including the suicidal's own future selves. — hypericin

More generally, this directly relates to "free will". Physicalism entails compatibilism: any choice you make will be the product of deterministic forces, a set beliefs (dispositions) that are weighed by the mental machinery, and can only produce one specific result. In hindsight, it only SEEMS like a different could have been made. In actuality, no other choice could have been made, given the set of dispositions that existed when the choice was made. So the collective set of dispositions necessarily leads to whatever choice that is actually taken. — Relativist

I embrace physicalism (generally, not just as a theory of mind) as an Inference to Best Explanation for all facts. You can defeat this only by providing an alternative that better explains the facts.

The claim that metaphysics is empty (‘otiose’ was Ayer’s term) is itself a metaphysical claim. That’s basically what sunk the positivists. — Wayfarer