TED Community » Rory File

More About Me

I'm passionate about

Philosophy and how it can help someone live their life.

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• A reply on Conversation: Is atheism a religion?

  Jun 16 2011: Agnosticism would be a move towards the facts, that we have no experience of God nor logical proof of his existence OR non-existence. However, we must recognise the need for a necessary explanation of our existence. Therefore, a complete denial of any necessary being is just as much an act of faith as that of any religion!!
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  A reply on Conversation: Is atheism a religion?

  Jun 16 2011: Religious people are atheists as well don't forget!! At least in a world full of atheists we could see a world that put people's needs first and no religious dogma would be used to justify war, kill homosexuals or subjugate women. Benefits of religion? Probably not.
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  A reply on Conversation: What is your belief regarding the concept of the soul?

  Jun 16 2011: Sorry to but in; I agree that personal identity and how we attempt to define personhood and the like is the driving force behind these kinds of debate. And normally I try to stay clear of definitive responses because our reason for some reason is, to me it seems, unable to give us a reason for our existence. However, on the point of why we are able to say "I exist" or "I am", in other words have a developed self awareness, I believe could be explained in a biologically / evolutionary manner. After all self awareness is a belief, and beliefs are clearly present in all animals and this belief / thought clearly had some evolutionary benefit as if we are aware of our existence it follows that we are aware of what will end our existence. What I'm trying to say is that self awareness is a valuable survival trait, and personally I think this has been misinterpreted as a soul. Gilbert Ryle makes a point along similar lines; I think he says the soul is a "category mistake" or something like that as people have come to think it is something that actually exists, like an organ, rather than a expression of the human condition and our nature.

• A comment on Conversation: Where are we ? and What is the shape of the universe

  Apr 25 2011: By definition the Universe is everything. Locating it, therefore, is impossible because it's not within anything; in order for it to be within something that something would be of the universe.
  
  As for a picture of the Universe, perhaps an interesting question would be whether a picture of it would help us understand it!

• A comment on Conversation: What, if any, are the meaningful differences between poetry and philosophy?

  Apr 25 2011: It would certainly seem that many poets also have strong philosophical insights and these heighten the expression of ideas within their work; Shakespeare and Keats prime examples. But as for poetry being philosophy, I don't think this is the case. Dawkins certainly isn't a poet. Perhaps the confusion between the two comes because of the multitude of philosophical lines of enquiry. Shakespeare's and Keat's aesthetic arguments on love and beauty differ greatly from Dawkin's memetics; both arguably are equally philosophical in nature, but not poetical. Maybe poetry is more a subcategory of rhetoric!

• A comment on Conversation: What is a soul?

  Apr 20 2011: Paraphrasing of Gilbert Ryle:
  "A foreigner goes to a cricket match with his friend. He knows what constitutes the game of cricket and he sees the players, the umpires, the wicket, the stumps, the boundary markings etc. Then he turns to his friend and asks where is the 'spirit' of the game? His friend replies, "well, it's there you just can't see it!!""
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  A comment on Conversation: How do you see life after death?

  Apr 20 2011: Through a telescope!!

• A reply on Conversation: What is a fiction and what is real?

  Mar 4 2011: I agree with Ambar. And isn't that pretty much how science works: it explains phenomena and how they feature in the system of reality (whatever it might truly be) and readjusts it's views based on evidence to fit any new explanation that is needed. This would seem reasonable to me and scientific study, although often said to be empirical, is not solely based on our senses, but technological improvements can help us to perceive things we otherwise could not. For example, noone could have a reasonable personal fiction about the nature of quantum reality, but there is a reality. I just can't accept that the lines between fiction and reality will always be blurred!! :)

• A reply on Conversation: Is happiness an emergent property?

  Mar 3 2011: "TED: Ideas worth spreading" ;)

• A comment on Conversation: What is a fiction and what is real?

  Mar 3 2011: And because all these perceptions differ slightly they're not reality; instead they're better referred to as fiction?!
  
  Harald, you admit to a reality although say that we only have the ability to conciously experience a fragment of reality's totality, which I agree with of course, but why are our experiences fiction and not simply a partial represention of the real?