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Karma and Rebirth: The Basics

For a couple of years now, I've been working on turning some of my essays into a book on Karma and Rebirth. It's slow progress, but the book is currently about 175,000 words with quite a bit more...

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The Problem of Relativism

"Reality at its deepest level could be something utterly different than we have ever imagined, but we still have a good handle on how it behaves in front of our noses." - Sean Carroll, Fear of...

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Substance & Structure

This is a long-read (~ 5000 words) polemical essay about parts and wholes; about analysis and synthesis; about substance and structure. It's about the tension that exists between modern ways of...

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Buddhism and Existence

An important axiom of Buddhist philosophy is that existence is always associated with permanence. "Temporary existence" is an oxymoron in Buddhist thought, as is the phrase "contingent existence". By...

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The Citta Bottleneck

This essay critiques one of the central propositions of the Doctrine of Momentariness (kṣaṇavāda), the idea that mental activity occurs in serial, i.e. as a series of moments of mental activity (citta)...

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A Layered Approach to Reality. Part I.

This essay will come in several parts. In Part I, I outline an approach to knowledge about the world that combines substance reductionism and structure antireductionism. I try to show how this...

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A Layered Approach to Reality. Part II.1

Following on from A Layered Approach to Reality. Part I.What I aim to do in the rest of this essay is make some observations and generalisations about the relations between levels of description. A...

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A Layered Approach to Reality. Part II.2

Following on from A Layered Approach to Reality. Part II.1In this part of the essay I continue to explore how different layers of description of the world relate to each other, but begin to look for...

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There is No Cause & Effect.

"All philosophers, of every school, imagine that causation is one of the fundamental axioms or postulates of science, yet, oddly enough, in advanced sciences such as gravitational astronomy, the word...

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Buddhism and Naturalism

Hubble Ultra Deep Field 2014 In the four previous essays I have been outlining a philosophical framework for thinking about the world. This is something I never thought I'd do as I don't really like...

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Searle on Consciousness & Implications for Buddhism

In this essay I will outline John Searle's approach to philosophy of mind. I've been making use of it for most of this year, but wish I'd read The Rediscovery of the Mind twenty years ago, because...

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Components of Social Reality: Social Reality (I)

This is part one of a five part essay on the philosophy of society, mainly based on John Searle's book The Construction of Social Reality, but drawing on sources that will be familiar to my readers:,...

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Institutional Facts & Language: Social Reality (II)

Part II of a V part essay. Begin with Part I."The central span on the bridge from physics to society is collective intentionality."- John SearleStipulating the nature of functions, we now need only add...

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Deontology: Social Reality (III)

Part III of a V part essay. Begin with Part I, continue with Part II, before reading this part. The word deontology refers to rights, responsibilities, obligations, duties, privileges, entitlements,...

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Power: Social Reality (IV)

This is part IV of a V part essay. Click here for Part I. "The structure of institutional facts is the structure of power relations" (Searle 1995: 94)I've been working through John Searle's philosophy...

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Norms without Conscious Rule Following. Social reality (V)

This is Part V of five. Part I is here. “It is the duty of every citizen/resident of any country, nationals as well as expatriates to know the basics of the governing laws of the country one resides....

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The Evolution of Morality. Introduction and Deontology

"...the moral sense is fundamentally identical with the social instincts; and in the case of the lower animals is would be absurd to speak of these instincts as having been developed from selfishness,...

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The Evolution of Morality. Two Pillars of Morality - Reciprocity

So these are the pillars of morality. If you ask anyone, "What is morality based on?" these are the two factors that always come out. One is reciprocity, and associated with it is a sense of justice...

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The Evolution of Morality. Two Pillars of Morality - Empathy.

"I sometimes try to imagine what would have happened if we’d known the bonobo first and the chimpanzee only later—or not at all. The discussion about human evolution might not revolve as much around...

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Continuity & Philosophy

I recently used our Order Facebook group to discuss some aspects of karma doctrine. I discovered, with no great surprise, that there were a multitude of views on the subject that spanned the spectrum...

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