The Philosophy Discussion Forum

this place is like a kindergarten, only a little less educated, and a little less polite. I guess I should have learned my lesson by now.

In the current climate, a hard question to answer, but there is an answer. Among many other things, philosophy entertains many questions of a very general or high-level order. For example, questions about the nature of order are different to questions about the order of nature. Science is generally ...

'Speciation' is still a very vexed question in evolutionary biology. The problem is the absence of fossils that belong to the intermediary forms that the 'gradual change' model seems to require. One example is transitional forms between lizards and snakes, but there are many others. This is one of t...

Kant is often said to be one of the three or four most significant philosophers in the history of the subject (the others being Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas). His writing is famously difficult and dense, and even his greatest admirers (for example Schopenhauer) have found it necessary to provide le...

Maybe another thread should be started on 'multiverse speculations'. It is an interesting topic but has little or no relation to this thread.

You won't get any argument out of me! Evangelical atheism - 'evangatheism' - often seems to arise from a quasi-religious view of life, with 'science' occupying the role previously occupied by the Faith. I am sure that this is because, historically, the 'scientific revolution' arose out of the prior ...

Read Schopenhauer. Probably easiest to start with Bryan Magee's book on him, Philosophy of Schopenhauer . 'THE world is my idea' is a truth valid for every living creature, though only man can consciously contemplate it. In doing so he attains philosophical wisdom. No truth is more absolutely certai...

As regarding whether God can be said to exist, see this column from Huffington Post.

It is worth recalling that Richard Dawkin's main argument against God in The God Delusion is that God, being creator of the whole universe, must be an extremely complex being, given that a being must be more complex than the thing he or she creates. He regards this as a slam-dunk argument, an argume...

The universe is there whether we denote it or not A point of view is always assumed in such statements. In saying this you are imagining a Universe which exists in the absence of an observer - but such a Universe is still imagined from a point of view . The point of view brings to it both space and...

Don't let him make you feel bad, Prof! I can see where you're coming from. (Although I haven't quite taken in all the fine print yet......)

The laws of physics are over-rated. The historical context for that idea is that when Newton discovered them, it appeared to tie up all the observable phenomena in the known universe. Newton himself thought he was discovering 'Gods Laws'. That is why they have been put on such a pedestal. It is part...

Forgedinhell wrote:There is a hatural tendency as a matter of physics and chemistry for the substances that build living organisms to form into living organisms.

In other words, it is just so.

I don't understand how evolutionary biology 'explains' the progression from inert substances, through to living cells, through to intelligent self-aware beings. I know about 'deep time', I understand the fossil record, and I have no doubt about the objective facts. You can't argue with fossils. But ...

Darwinism is not a philosophy, as such. Natural philosophers are interested in what 'is' and not what 'ought', that is as valid a aim for a philosopher as asking what is a good life. This does not make Dawkins an 'anti-philospher', but he does have part of the answer for you too. He is busily engag...