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Babadook was good by horror standards.

So who else loved Ghostbusters?

Well cool. If you'd like to talk about those critical theorists (I don't even know if that's the right name for them) sometime, I'd love to hear what you have to say.

Do you take him to have substantive insights into the issues he talks about? What do you take away from reading him?

Critical theorists. But it sounds like that whole approach makes a lot more sense to you than it does to me. Sorry for hurting your feelings by finding Zizek incomprehensible by the way.

Just for the record, a lot of people I know find Zizek and co to be nonsense. I find him incomprehensible and some of the things he says seem arbitrary. Almost as if he is more a performer than anything else. But I'd love to understand what he is on about.

You'd be surprised what's been going on since David Lewis and possible worlds semantics.

Real dry, Martin.

So since you've found no argument, it's logically impossible? That seems too strong. A more sensible stance is to say that you want an argument that has some independent empirical support, and all the spooky stuff is simply not empirically supported. As for panpsychism (which I frankly like), I...

I'm not after anything. You sound exasperated for some reason.

Was that a subtle barb, suggesting analytics can be as bad, if not worse? :)

Both sides imply metaphysical claims. The crude reductive naturalist only conceals it better. But beneath the concealment, their position implies that the totality of facts about persons are determined by happenings on the physical substrate, and there is nothing more going on. So I don't think...

What was your impression of them, as opposed to the analytics?

Oh. Them... *shudder*

But are we special because we have these features? What makes these particular features unique from, say, a pig's cognitive capacities, or those of a water buffalo? Maybe there's no special difference between "humanity" and "buffaloanity". Our intellect and rationality might be features unique...

But then you're forced to appeal to transcendence. Something beyond the purely naturalistic explanation of human beings as a species sculpted by evolutionary forces.

If anything this goes to show the inadequacy of a purely evolutionary explanation, doesn't it?

To survive and reproduce to the best of your ability. All other concerns, whether justice, or love, or equality, are illusions.

One puzzle for philosophers is in the area of intentionality, or "aboutness". How can objects in the physical world be intentional? Intentionality is the property of thoughts and language to refer, or "intend" to something else. For instance, the phrase "current president of the United States"...

I've started this thread dedicated to philosophy, as opposed to religion. Requesting a mod to sticky it please. Academically my research interests lie in experimental philosophy, where cognitive science meets philosophy of mind. But I like to think about other areas, especially areas that...