Akrasia and Will
To begin with, it is a matter of scholarly consensus among Classicists and philosophers that the concept of “Will” was absent from Greek thought and that St. Augustine was the first to…
Read moreIs Worship a Human Invention?
1. Let us assume that the Church Fathers (or the Apostles or whoever else) planned to introduce an eschatological doctrine and some mode of worship. (Let us further assume that their reasoning…
Read moreTruth vs Usefulness of Theories
1. Speaking about the ‘use’ or the ‘results and effects’ of theories has a very venerable ancestry in the western philosophy. It is called “pragmatism”, if the ‘truth’ is coupled to the…
Read moreCausality
“Causality” is not a notion in physics but comes from philosophy. Perhaps, you have forgotten that there existed (and exist) generations of scientists and philosophers of science who deny that “causality” has anything…
Read moreSecularization of Communitas
The Ancient Romans spoke of ‘Peoples’ and ‘Nations’. They saw traditions making a group into a people and distinguishing people (and, sometimes, ‘nations’) from each other. Different peoples (distinguished from…
Read moreGettier Problem, Doxa, and Episteme
The Ancient (and modern) philosophers make the distinction between beliefs that are merely opinions of individuals and beliefs that are knowledge claims. Today, when modern philosophers speak of ‘doxastic coherence’…
Read moreFalsification
Imagine I ‘hypothesize’ that I will win the lottery. If I buy a ticket and do not win, clearly my ‘hypothesis’ is ‘falsified’. Is it, therefore, scientific? Such silly hypotheses…
Read morePsychological Traits and Enlightenment: Ignorance and Knowledge
About the relationship between scientific knowledge and enlightenment: If every human being can become enlightened (at any time, place or culture), it logically follows that some or another hypothesis about…
Read moreHumility is a despicable vice
1. Christianity (to some extent Judaism), presented an idea, unknown to the world in which it grew, namely the Pagan world of Rome. The idea was that human beings are…
Read moreAlleged conflict between ‘Buddhism’ and ‘Brahmanism’
If the ‘I’ cannot be individuated or described, then there is no possible distinction between the ‘I’ and ‘the Brahman’. They are different names for ‘self-awareness’ which pick out the…
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