Hi everyone!

Tell us a little about yourself.

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gurugeorge
Posts: 15
Joined: Wed Aug 03, 2016 2:42 pm

Hi everyone!

Post by gurugeorge »

I'm a refugee from Philosophy Forums, which, sadly, seems to be having a bit of an ongoing digital seizure. As an occasional addict of philosophical discussion, who's currently in an addicted phase, I NEED MY FIX NAAAOWWW!!!! So I'm dropping by to check you guys out :D

I'm a 57 year old amateur who's been round the houses on most of the great problems many times in the course of my life. Currently (and it seems fairly settled now, in my old age :) ), I'm sort of a blend of Direct Realist (Aristotle, Thomas Reid, Ayn Rand) and Externalist - cognitive, semantic and phenomenal.

Wrt this last, I'm particularly interested in Riccardo Manzotti's Process Externalist solution to the "Hard Problem" of consciousness, which I think dovetails nicely with Dennett's, if Dennett is recast in process terms. I also think this general solution ties in with both Direct Realism and the other kinds of Externalism. However, the difficulty is in the recasting into process terms. I'm not entirely sure how to reconcile my commitment to the primacy of object ontology entailed by Direct Realism, with process thinking. I suppose in one sense, process thinking and object thinking are inter-translatable, so in a way it's not that big a problem, but I'm not sure. Always something to work on!

I've also had a lifelong interest in trying to come to an understanding of certain profound types of mystical experiences (the "non-dual" variety, as found in various forms of Buddhism, Daoism and Advaita Vedanta), as I had some when I was a kid, quite to my surprise. I feel there's a way of reconciling their existence, as (I believe) important kinds of genuinely cognitive experience, with the rationalism and physicalism native to me from when I can remember first thinking. (In this, I've been particularly influenced by the mystical naturalism of the philosopher Leonard Angel, who has laid a major part of the groundwork for such a reconciliation.)
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Harbal
Posts: 9563
Joined: Thu Jun 20, 2013 10:03 pm
Location: Yorkshire
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Re: Hi everyone!

Post by Harbal »

gurugeorge wrote: I'm a 57 year old amateur
Wise decision, there's not much prospect of making a successful career out of being 57. I'm 61 but it's only a hobby. :wink:
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