How much credence should we give to this supposition? Can a finite limited part know the infinite unlimited whole? — Fooloso4

The mind in being itself eternal is the formal cause of the third kind of knowledge

Tell me...do you even know that the Trump/Russia Collusion thing Was a hoax? — Steven P Clum

Perhaps would it be the reason why he had been excommunicated from his religious authorities?
AFAIK, it was more likely Spinoza's irrefutably rationalist critiques of the Torah specifically and sectarian Judaism broadly, not any explicit statement of "atheism", brought down the cherem upon him. — 180 Proof

Proposition 36
Nothing exists from ​whose nature some effect does not follow.
Proof
Anything that exists expresses the nature or essence of God in a specific and determinate way (by p25c), i.e. (by p34) anything that exists ​expresses the power of God, which is the cause of all things, in a specific and determinate way, and therefore (by p16) some effect must follow from it. Q. E. D.

Appendix
With this I have explained the nature of God and his properties: that he necessarily exists; that he is unique; that he is and acts solely from the necessity of his own nature; that he is the free cause of all things and how this is so; that all things are in God and so depend upon him that without him they can neither be nor be conceived; and finally that all things have been predetermined by God, not however by his freedom of will or at his absolute pleasure but by God’s absolute nature or infinite power. ​

Furthermore, whenever the opportunity arose, I have taken pains to eliminate the prejudices that could prevent my proofs from being grasped. But there are still quite a few prejudices left to deal with that have also been extremely effective in the past, and still are effective, in preventing people from being able to accept the connection of things in the way I have explained it. And so I think it is worthwhile here to subject them 34to the scrutiny of reason. ​Now all the prejudices that I undertake to expose here depend upon a single one: that human beings commonly suppose that, like themselves, all natural things act for a purpose. In fact they take it as certain that God directs all things for some specific purpose. For they say that God made all things for the sake of man, and that he made man to worship him. I will therefore begin by considering this single prejudice, by asking first what is the cause that most people accept this prejudice and are all so ready by nature to embrace it. Then I will prove the falsity of it. Finally I will show how prejudices have arisen from it about good and bad, merit and sin, praise and blame, order and confusion, beauty and ugliness and other things of this kind.

This is not the place to deduce these prejudices from the nature of the human mind. It will be enough here if I take as my foundation something that everyone must acknowledge – namely that all human beings are born ignorant of the causes of things and all have an appetite to pursue what is useful for themselves and are conscious of the fact. For it follows from this, first, that human ​beings believe they are free because they are conscious of their own volitions and their own appetite, and never think, ​even in their dreams, about the causes which dispose them to want and to will, because they are ignorant of them. It follows, secondly, that human ​beings act always for a purpose, i.e. for the sake of something useful that they want. Because of this they require to know only the final causes ​of past events; once they have learned these they are satisfied, clearly because they have no cause to have any more doubts about them. But if they can’t learn these causes from anyone else, they can only turn back on themselves and think of the purposes by which they themselves are normally determined to do similar things, and so they necessarily judge of another person’s character by their own.

Moreover they find in themselves and outside of themselves a good many instruments that help them to obtain something useful for themselves, such as eyes to see with, teeth to chew with, plants and animals for food, the sun to give light and the sea to sustain fish. Because of this they have come to consider all natural things as instruments designed to be useful to themselves. They know that they found these instruments in place and did not make them, and this gave them cause to believe that there is someone else who made these things for them to use. For after they had come to consider the things 35as instruments, they could not believe that the things made themselves, but from the instruments which they regularly made for themselves, they had to conclude that there was a governor or governors of nature, endowed with human freedom, ​who provided everything for them and made it all for their use. But they had not heard anything about the character of these governors, and so they were obliged to conjecture it from their own. This is how they decided that the Gods direct all things for human use in order to form a bond with human beings and receive great kudos from them. This is how it came about that they each invented different ways of worshipping God based on their own character so that God would love them more than other people and direct the whole of nature to the service of their blind desire and insatiable avarice. ​This is how this prejudice turned into a superstition ​and put down deep roots in their minds, and this is the reason why they have each made the most strenuous endeavor to understand and explain the final causes of all things.

But in striving to prove that nature never acts in vain (i.e. not for the use of human beings), they seem to have proved only that nature and the Gods are as deluded as human beings. I mean, look how things have turned out! Among the many advantages of nature they were bound to ​find quite a few disadvantages, such as storms, earthquakes, diseases and so on. They decided that these things happened because the Gods were angry about the offenses that human beings had committed against them or the sins ​they had perpetrated in their ritual. Despite the daily evidence of experience to the contrary, which proves by any number of examples that advantages and disadvantages indiscriminately befall the pious and the impious alike, they did not abandon their inveterate prejudice. It was easier for them to add this to all the other unknown things whose use they did not know, and so maintain the existing state of ignorance ​they were born in rather than overthrow the whole structure and think out a new one. — Ethics, Spinoza, translated by Silverthorne and Kisner

Even without such a presumption, ordinary statutory interpretation demonstrates that the Attorney General received no power to appoint Special Counsels as inferior officers. None of the statutes canvassed in the previous section contains any such authorization. — Docket 23-624

§ 600.1 Grounds for appointing a Special Counsel.
The Attorney General, or in cases in which the Attorney General is recused, the Acting Attorney General, will appoint a Special Counsel when he or she determines that criminal investigation of a person or matter is warranted and—
(a) That investigation or prosecution of that person or matter by a United
States Attorney’s Office or litigating Division of the Department of Justice would present a conflict of interest for the Department or other extraordinary circumstances; and
(b) That under the circumstances, it would be in the public interest to ap-
point an outside Special Counsel to assume responsibility for the matter.

From 600.3

The Special Counsel shall be selected from outside the United States Government. Special Counsels shall agree that their responsibilities as Special Counsel
shall take first precedence in their professional lives, and that it may be necessary to devote their full time to the investigation, depending on its complexity and the stage of the investigation.

From 600.4
(a) Original jurisdiction. The jurisdiction of a Special Counsel shall be established by the Attorney General. The Special Counsel will be provided with a specific factual statement of the matter to be investigated. The jurisdiction of a Special Counsel shall also include the authority to investigate and prosecute federal crimes committed in the course of, and with intent to interfere with, the Special Counsel’s investigation, such as perjury, obstruction of justice, destruction of evidence, and intimidation of witnesses; and to conduct appeals arising out of the matter being investigated and/or prosecuted. — Federal Regulations

One has to grow up, and become independent. So we arrive at Freudian territory. — unenlightened

Plato doesn't like the analogy because it would imply that the soul (harmony) must disappear when the body (instrument) is destroyed. — Count Timothy von Icarus

There is another absurdity, however, that follows both from this account and from most of the ones concerning the soul, since in fact they attach the soul to a body, and place it in a body, without |407b15| further determining the cause due to which this attachment comes about or the condition of the body required for it. Yet this would seem to be necessary. For it is because of their association that the one acts, whereas the other is acted upon, and the one is moved, whereas the other moves it. None of these relations, though, holds between things taken at random. These people, however, merely undertake to say what sort of thing the soul is, but about the |407b20| sort of body that is receptive of it they determine nothing further, as if it were possible, as in the Pythagorean stories, for any random soul to be inserted into any random body, whereas it seems that in fact each body has its own special form and shape.96 But what they say is somewhat like saying that the craft of {13} carpentry could be inserted into flutes, whereas in fact the |407b25| craft must use its instruments, and the soul its body. — Aristotle, De Anima, Bk 1:3, 407b14, translated by CDC Reeve

I responded to this:

Also, My point was, and this is undeniable: It is incomprehensible to the other side. The mere fact that Biden has said such utter, and complete shit as accusing blacks who vote for Trump of not being black wouuld lead to this. I'm not saying their right, or across the issues.
— AmadeusD — Paine

Also, My point was, and this is undeniable: It is incomprehensible to the other side. The mere fact that Biden has said such utter, and complete shit as accusing blacks who vote for Trump of not being black wouuld lead to this. I'm not saying their right, or across the issues. — AmadeusD

In other words, to what extent is the idea and emotions of despair different when focused upon personal or artistic concerns or wider ones about how humanity and the planet? — Jack Cummins

I believe he is targeting Kant's philosophical arguments on the limitations of knowledge because they were influential, and certainly conflicts with his project of establishing knowledge in philosophy, including metaphysical knowledge. — Moliere

Also, My point was, and this is undeniable: It is incomprehensible to the other side. The mere fact that Biden has said such utter, and complete shit as accusing blacks who vote for Trump of not being black wouuld lead to this. I'm not saying their right, or across the issues. — AmadeusD

The cunning of geist is that the mind/spirit of the age will use what you think of as your mind for its own grander purposes without you necessarily being aware of it or of its purposes. — unenlightened

Henceforth I intend to fact-check anything you write in this thread. — Wayfarer

I’m just passing the time. — NOS4A2

I’m just passing the time. — NOS4A2

Does dissent from The Narrative frighten you? Because I haven’t seen try to impugn anyone else’s motives. — NOS4A2