Yes, but isn't physicalism (the supposed antithesis of the supernatural) considered a metaphysical position?

This is my understanding too, with emotional intelligence, such as it is probably correlating with agreeableness - if you are going to take the OCEAN model as your basis.

'Metaphysical' seems to be, in a certain sense at least, synonymous with 'supernatural'. — Janus

Is it possible to hold a position that isn't metaphysical?

Don't most people think in little maxims like these? — Bartricks

Don't know. I think only dull, literal minded folk take these things as concrete and immutable.

Supernatural' is a very loaded word. — Wayfarer

True. From my perspective, I am not sure what other word to use to get across the idea - of something that transcends the natural world.

Life begins at 40".

No it doesn't. By hypothesis, if you're 40 you've already been alive for at least 40 years. — Bartricks

Fair enough. I think The Mad Fool started a similar thread.

Nevertheless, aren't sayings like miniatures? Behind their austere surface they usually pack in unstated additional material at odds with a more concrete interpretation.

Looking at this one above, isn't a reading of this - You really don't start living (enjoying yourself and utilizing your experience fully) until you are 40? Some people would agree. I get the point of such sayings, but they're not meant to be mathematical equations.

It is better to know some of the questions, than all of the answer" — Bartricks

Well, there's a range of exegetical interpretations possible here. You can be overwhelmed by potential solutions or answers without actually knowing what they connect to in a practical sense. I have had that experience in the social policy world. Sometimes better to develop a set of very clear questions rather than going straight to solutions. For me this saying does not contain the premise "all the answers are true"

Something like that.

Nope. We see.....sense..... something directly. It isn’t a tree until the intellect gets done with it, somewhere downstream in the mental process. — Mww

Yes, and the notion of a tree is an intersubjective agreement, unlikely to be a concept we would acquire unassisted.

Or it's a clash of dogmas. — frank

No question. But I wonder if some expressions of dogma are preferable to others. I would rather wrestle with a Catholic dogmatist than one from Islamic State.

There's nowhere to go. — Wheatley

It's so infuriating.. nothing left to do then but take control, let's storm the Capitol Building... oh... oops...

I agree with Wayfarer. Nobody is wooing any gaps. — frank

The issue here might be that one man's woo is another's dogma.

Would you contend that it is absolutely impossible for phenomenal consciousness to be an emergent property of the brain?

Ha! There is a bit of a Groundhog Day effect to our threads and a concomitant inability to acquire clarity despite problems being repeatedly identified and dealt with.

I thought EQ (although initially based on an old psychology paper) was essentially the creation of a journalist and part of the self-help world. I wonder it the term is almost meaningless and is generally used to separate people on the spectrum or narcissists from the supposedly neurotypicals.

Cool. To me it doesn't seem to make sense to hold that it would be impossible for consciousness to be an emergent property of the brain. An urge to explain consciousness in supernatural terms seems as fraught as the need to use the more speculative aspects of quantum physics as the engine for driving a fresh cult of transcendental obscurantism.

Frank I'm no expert but I'm not sure there is a great functional difference between the two positions.

Who says it's unsolvable? — frank

All the mysterians do - Chomsky, Penrose, McGinn, etc

Yes, and 'how does if feel' implies there is an awareness of feeling which can be described/understood. Does a seagull have a sense of feeling in this way?

"The hard problem of consciousness" is a conspicuous example of a pseudo-problem and remains "unsolvable" in so far as "the explanatory gap" is treated as metaphysical topic rather than a scientific one. — 180 Proof

So do you see phenomenal consciousness as essentially being an emergent property of the brain's processing capabilities? Details to be understood in the fullness of time via a scientific approach?

So far as I can tell, it's the skeptic, not the materialist or atheist, who more accurately marks the boundaries of that space. — Cabbage Farmer

Could be. You raise some interesting points. I would have thought the atheist properly makes just one claim about God and as for the rest of their views, they could believe in astrology or the Loch Ness Monster (like some atheists I have known).

I am an atheist - I am probably not disciplined enough to call my self a skeptic. I am a methodological naturalist - only in so far as the case for the non-natural hasn't been made coherently.

I see figures like Dawkins as essentially fundamentalist busters. I don't think he is doing philosophy, he is simply taking on the literalists. Given how many literalists there are and how influential they can be in politics, law and social policy, the work is not without merit.

So there is no absolute, objective science for any sport? What about athletics, such as high jump and running? — Cidat

I have never taken any interest in sport of any kind and have only ever seen a few minutes of football and tennis and maybe some other sport on the news by accident - not my thing.

That said, surely for any game you set rules and the 'objectivity', such as it is, comes from measuring the success of players subject to those rules. Umpires uses their flawed human senses, perhaps on occasion they see things wrongly.

The Question is: "Do You Believe In Fate or In Free-Will?" — Lindsay

I don't care either way. We certainly have the illusion of free will. Sit back and enjoy.

Yes, there is always some interpretation. There are rules and referees and umpires to judge how they apply and if they are being followed. — T Clark

This is called the Hard Problem of Umpiring which leads us to the Blindspot of Sport.

What do you mean? By having no texts immediately in front of you? — baker

This. And not reading from the cannon. Buy hey, I may well be wrong. After all, I'm not a philosopher.

And that -- I suggest -- is precisely what people call beauty. — Olivier5

OK

Of course. I've seen some Rodins. But I am not a great enthusiast of art. I like Turner and the odd Matisse. But mostly I like Japanese, Pre-Columbian and Ancient Egyptian art and also Greek, Roman and Etruscan pottery. I like the power of these pieces but beauty has never been the quest. A given work has to give me thrill, I need to feel a sense of vitality or serenity coming from it.

Was your mother a teacher? — 180 Proof

No, she was an autodidact.

But don't say that you sat in a room writhing for an hour and now you're a philosopher. I also think this 'attention' business is a MacGuffin. I have no idea what it means. A plumber pays attention when he fixes pipes. A CEO pays attention when she cuts staff for the sake of efficiency. — StreetlightX

I think we disagree on this. I think it is possible to philosophize alone with no texts. But he didn't say he was Spinoza.

No one, Nagel or any of us, can aptly say what it is "like to be" a human being since each one of us only has a single data-point — 180 Proof

Yes, that resonates with me. I can't even describe coherently what it is to be me if I'm honest.

Thanks for this. My mum was a reader of Spinoza - from the same country - her books and notes were thrown out after she died, unfortunately. They were in Dutch. From memory, you view Spinoza as part of the tradition of acosmism?

Is it any wonder that the OP can be read simply as a post-hoc justification of simply being lazy? I don't think so. I think the OP is after validation, the coziness of doing nothing under the disguise of 'discussion'. — StreetlightX

I see why you would say that but I think this misses something. The OP is very clear about the need to pay attention. This is not easy to do. I would venture to say that there are those who have been immersed in Kant or whoever without ever having thought to pay attention (a kind of critical reflection of experience and upon what can be noticed, about others, things, self.) and thereby missing a level of critical engagement with lived experience. The OP may resent this but it seems to me closer to a mystical tradition of the contemplative.

Nicely done.

Yes, I can't disagree with that.

That's good evidence you're not God: God doesn't know he's God. — Bartricks

But I don't know I'm god, I just said it for a cheap joke. :wink:

if the art market critical consensus is what constitutively determines what is or isn't good or bad art-wise, then Van Gogh's were rubbish when he painted them and are stupendously good now. — Bartricks

The art market doesn't really hold coherent ideas (In the 1980's I worked for a dealer who traded with Christies and Sotheby's). Things come in and out of fashion without good reason. And ironically those who purchase the works (Warhol or Van Gogh doesn't matter) often have no aesthetic interest in them. They are investment pieces which also drives the market up.

It's an interesting approach and I see how it works.

Huh?

Were Van Gogh's paintings shit when he painted them and good now? Or were they good - indeed, quite brilliant - the whole time? — Bartricks

One answer to this is that they are neither good nor bad. They are whatever the art market a critical consensus decides which varies over time.

I am in fact, God...

Not sure if I have understood you properly. I think the issue of 'inheriting' a veritable worldview of philosophical gifts and ideas as a kind of incoherent mosaic, the way we all do is a different matter. Sure, we all use words and ideas that were conceived of by others, often in painstaking conditions. But this no more makes us philosophers than turning on a light switch makes you an electrician.

I would imagine they want to be seen to be doing something, so some tokenistic outcomes will probably be initiated.

André Gide noted that in contrast with Rodin, whose work “quivers, is restless and expressive; cries out with moving pathos, ... Maillol’s Seated Woman [below in bronze] is simply beautiful. — Olivier5

Not having a go at you, Oliver, but I don't like the Seated Woman statue at all. I find it ugly. Rodin I prefer but not the way Gide does.