Can you elaborate some? Didn't Plato make a comment like that? Something along the lines of "All of life is just preparation for death." — Nicholas Mihaila

If he did I'm flattered :lol: I mostly just meant that if were all going to die anyway, might as well make your ending something that you are proud of. Although I will be honest, this is just what works for me. It might be better if you try to find out yourself what makes your life worth living, that way no-one can tell you otherwise.

I already taught you that if the state has failed, it's because of those who refuse to distance, mask, vax and boost. The fact that state has NOT forced you to do anything is proof there is no state control, failed or otherwise. DOH! — James Riley

:strong:

Countless prisons have had massive outbreaks, so I’m not sure a “true example of state control” would help any. — NOS4A2

By true I didn't mean perfect. I meant it even being a hint of what your trying to describe.
:lol:

Do you say then that the image of something is the same thing as what it is an image of? In your example, is the image of the dragon the same thing as the dragon itself? — Leghorn

I would say no, they are not the same. One is incomplete because it does not exist, the other is complete because of its existence.

In simpler terms, my view is that existence doesn't require belief. If you have to believe that something exists...well, I dont know. Nothing wrong with that I guess, just maybe its a more subtle form of existence that doesn't necessarily apply to the pursuit of truth in general, but an existence to generate personal truth. One that your happy with.

No it cannot be considered incitement. I agree with the claim that incitement can become our purpose, but not with the claim that it always is our purpose. — Hello Human

I agree. I only wished to demonstrate that it would seem that we do not have control over our purpose because we only control it partially; the remaining bits are left to whatever remains.

Wait did I just do a No Scotsman?

All this science on your side and look how well you’ve done. Mass death, the denial of fundamental liberties, medical discrimination, huge transfers of wealth, police states, rampant authoritarianism. Defenders of freedom? More like defenders of regimented societies, segregation, state control, censorship. — NOS4A2

If it was a true example of state control and censorship, the Covid-19 outbreak would be over already...

A. Reproduce within living ecosystems — Count Timothy von Icarus

Are memes reproducing the memes, or are we creating the memes? Parasites utilize the host to create their own offspring, but I don't think thats exactly the same kind of relationship in terms of "birth" that we have with memes. If we are physically giving birth to a new species called memes, than... I don't know. Can't think of any other thing that's living that gives birth to two species.

I make good money and can afford to do what I like, but there’s nothing I want. Anyway, I’m posting here because I’m hoping to get input from people who have been in a similar position and found some resolution. — Nicholas Mihaila

What works for me is that instead of striving for a happy life, I live for a proper death. After all, Were all gonna kick the can someday.

Sorry, I'm not sure I understand the initial question. Are you asking whether our social responsibility is changing for the better or worse?

Perhaps the first cause simply has different properties than subsequent cause and effects? For example, we include 0 in the number line, even though 0 is the only number to not have a multiplicative inverse. Maybe the first cause willed itself into existence, and we didn't, because were just the first cause in it's subsequent actions(not to say that the first cause is God).

Objection to 1: The idea that we all possess intuitive faculties is a considerable assumption. How does on go about substantiating such a claim? — Wheatley

One could say that this idea is intuitive in and of itself, and if the average, or majority of humanity were to read this text and primarily think yeah, that seems about right, we would all possess an intuitive faculty.

So I have researched a little, and to the best of my understanding because entropy is a measurement of disorder, and because the second law of thermodynamics states that entropy moves towards a maximum, we correlate this with time because time as well only moves in one direction: forward. SO if we were to measure entropy, we were to measure time. Now In correlation to my definition, I would say that the definitions are very very similar, because they are both measuring a thing that tends towards an unattainable maximum, + the fact that the measurement of entropy could be linked to cause and effect.

Why would you not follow it?

Edit:
If an incitement is so strong that it becomes your present purpose, if even for only a second, could it be considered an incitement still?

As well for the ambiguous question that I asked above, I am mostly trying to describe that even if you were to create a separate scenario, It would be guided by a form of emotion, which is a form of physical stimulation e.g I am not eating because I am fasting, and to complete the fast is a task I must do to satisfy myself.

The things you choose to do that do not involve others are simply a question of your preference. Do as you choose. The things you choose to do that do involve others are of a different kind. It is these considerations that are the topic of ethics. — Banno

Is it a question of preference?
I would believe that how you treat yourself and how you treat others are quite related to each other.

And when are we in not in relation to "something"?

As long as we are in relation to something that informs or controls our purpose, could we not create ethics based of that?

I think one could create ethics based on how one feels, because that is in relation to something that is "other"(being that in my belief, our primitive sense of self and our body appears to be different, to be other).

Addiction is a good example on how the informing principle of our physical stimulation takes control over our purpose. As well, physical stimulation is not only reserved to pain or pleasure. Starvation is simply the bodies way of telling you its hungry, and yet, it would transform, or take control of our purpose to that of searching for a way to find food. That would incite that it has a control over an aspect of our purpose, which would mean that therefore we do not have full control over our purpose.

But senses are still subjective and consciousness is solipsistic. This is where philosophy comes in and turns into spirituality. — Miller

Senses are subjected to what? To whom? the self? well our "self", was constructed by someone else, being our parents. So would our senses be subjected to their self?

Would you agree that whatever is real exists, and that whatever is not real does not exist, and that, similarly, anything that exists is real, and anything that does not exist is not real? — Leghorn

I would disagree solely on the point that assumes that anything that exists is "real", per say. For example, knowing that dragons don't exist, I create an image of a dragon in my mind. That image exists; so would the dragon exist?

I would agree!

I'd be more than happy to.

A question I've asked before (got from a book) is, if you're blowing a tree-stump out of the ground with some dynamite, what exactly "causes" the dynamite to explode? Some folks here who claim expertise on these matters have refused to try to answer. What do you say? — tim wood

I would say that the act of my existence, or perhaps the existence of the universe, caused the dynamite to explode.

It is a measurement of Entropy. — I like sushi

Sorry, I only have a superficial understanding of what entropy is. My belief of entropy is that it is the fact that once once energy has been used or displaced, we cannot know where it started/which particle of energy displaced where. How would this relate to time?

This is entirely plausible. Really interesting take.

To the best of my knowledge, I would say that a cause is an act that creates an effect.

I have a suspicion that in fact we believe in quite similar things. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I would assess that we both have a dangling need to ground ethics, either by denying morality outright or by containing it into something objective for fear of it getting whisked away by intricate illusions.

My main problem with the way you ground morality is this point here:

There is no morality. There is only true behavior or false behavior. Truth is mind that is accurate to the evidence. Accurate mind create accurate behavior. — Miller

How can we assess evidence to be accurate? what was our first truth to kickstart our accurate behaviour, and how did we find that that truth was true?

Ethics is fundamentally about how one relates to others. — Banno

How can one relate to another practically, without any physical confrontation?

The “human shells” you speak of are our bodies, within which our souls abide, and it is the latter, not the former, that ethics or morality is concerned with. — Leghorn

I would describe that our souls are constructed by the body, or formalized if you will; that the belief of a soul is simply the body's projection of it's interests into the real(whatever that means) world. Therefore, a human shell would consist of both the body and soul, since they are one and the same.

We are not constrained by the needs of our bodies. We frequently neglect those needs in order to effect a good greater than that dictated by “physical stimulus”. Tell me how it is “practical” that a soldier go off to war to defend his country and place his physical self in danger? Maybe he can expect, if he survives the war, to get free lunches on Veterans Day, and free hearing aids through the VA, but do you think he is calculating all this when he signs his name on the bottom line? — Leghorn

Is the need of a body to live? Perhaps, due to an inane indoctrination, his environment has placed the perception of his body to receive greater physical stimulus to die for his homeland, than to stave away at home knitting. Than the most practical course of himself would be to, sadly, run into the cannonballs of the enemy.

And this, I think, is the distinction b/w right- and left-wing politics in our day, whether they pertain to the body or to the soul... — Leghorn

I would agree.

I guess the main question to our discussion would be to assess whether the soul is truly different from the body.

Thats an interesting take.

Humans are fifty percent equal and fifty percent different. — Miller

How did you reach that conclusion? Whats the difference between surface and base? is base our primal animalistic behavior? Is surface not related to our base?

Hi Philosophism,

↪john27 I have a forum post here that goes over your subject matter. https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/12098/a-first-cause-is-logically-necessary — Philosophim

Thanks for replying to my post! Actually, a few hours after I posted mine I found your post lol. I agree 100% that a first cause does not necessarily have to be God, I just chose him mostly because he's a good representation for a first cause.

To be completely honest, I'm still not one hundred percent sure that the beginning of the universe started off with a primary cause, but its really hard to imagine an alternative.

Ill definitely check out your other discussions.

Hi Hermeticus, I just read a decent portion of wikipedia on antimatter...blew my mind lol. really cool. I think it might be better if I restate my point to that because a Primary cause is the cause of all things, it incorporates all things within itself. Therefore a complete eradication of the universe would be necessary to create a zero, which would then by necessity need an equal amount of antimatter to eradicate it completely, but because there is a fewer amount of antimatter(or so it is believed)than conventional matter, It cannot happen. Therefore, 0, in the complete sense cannot exist.

Of course, if we happen to make a discovery that antimatter is equivalent to matter, than my argument goes kaput. Thanks for showing me something cool!

Or in short, you can have cause-and-effect as a very useful fiction. — tim wood

Huh. Just to make sure I understand, Humes attack on cause and effect was that it is impossible for theoretical reason to generate theoretical reason from necessity? And since cause and effect creates necessity from the fact that cause must form an effect, it is therefore not a principle of reason but our own false experience?

Sorry, Im pretty new to philosophy so I probably didn't get all of it. Thanks for replying to my discussion though!

A mental picture of an apple, for example. — Heiko

I agree. Is this mental picture of an apple in your opinion in existence?

Existence is not like being a video, or a simulation, or a story. — Banno

I agree. I think this statement is what differentiates thought from existence, being that my point was thought is similar to that of a simulation, a video, an image, or an intricate story of existence the we perpetrate ourselves. An abstraction.

Would you buy front-row tickets to a concert, with back stage pass and after-gig party, if the only catch was that it didn't exist? — Banno

I would buy a ticket, and walk through the door. Unfortunately, as I open the door to this concert, I find there is nothing there; a complete absence of existence. For no particular reason, I close my eyes. I then create a simulation of the concert within my mental capacities; incomplete of course, I cannot know what the ambience of the concert was, and heck, I probably can't even pinpoint what song is being played, but my simulation is correct enough to make my way back stage and enjoy the supposed concert nonetheless.

What a rip off!

I would much rather buy a ticket that doesn't exist to go to a real concert. At least then, if they don't accept my mentally simulated image of a ticket, I could just hop the fence.

"an abstraction"...? What's that? What sort of thing is an abstraction? — Banno

I would argue an abstraction is simply that; the vivid image of a red, juicy, sweet apple without its direct connection to our material world. I think the crux of this argument can be assessed as:

Do thoughts generate existence?

If yes then, I would find that you are correct, as there would not be any innate difference between two red apples "existing" per say.

If no however, and a thought remains solely the image of a red juicy and sweet apple without any substance beneath, no physical properties constraining it, then I would be more inclined to say that I am correct.

Whats the difference between an apple that exists and one that is generated by thought? well one you can eat, one you can't.

I don't know if I have fully understood Meinongianism so i'm going to refrain from saying anything right now :sweat:

It also might be more accurate to say that instead of do thoughts generate existence, do thoughts exist?

I forgot to address a point oops. Ill state it here:

"...an apple physically realized" is an apple. Is an apple that is not physically realised an apple? It might well be a thought about an apple, or an imagined apple, or a story about an apple, but is it an apple? — Banno

I would argue in this sense it is an apple, but incomplete, because it does not contain a major part of the apple which is its physical properties. My thinking kind of falls in line like this:

You watch a Bruce Springsteen show on youtube. then, you go to see one in real life, where it has the ambience, the entirety of the sound, hundreds of thousands of people around you etc.
The video could be considered the same thing as the real concert, but obviously its lacking something, which were physical properties that you could enjoy had you been there, had you entertained its physical existence.

"subject to an individual perception..." Do you often see nonexistent apples? — Banno

Well when I read I see things that aren't "there"(physically-or in a way that I can perceive naturally) all the time.

1. What is the difference between a sweet, juicy, red apple and a sweet, juicy red apple that exists? The difference between a red apple and a green apple, or a sweet apple and a sour apple, is pretty clear. But explaining clearly what is added to an apple by existing...? — Banno

Wouldn't the difference be that one is an abstraction, subject to an individual perception, and the other an apple physically realized? I would say that existence adds a quality that denies human intervention for it to be perceived as true, e.g even I can't see something, it can exist. I may be wrong in this though.

I forgot to add a fourth possibility that cause does not create effect. Oops!

I argue that human beings, and sentient beings in general have control over thir purpose. As Kant said, they are autonomous, which means they are self-law giving. This means that the purpose of a sentient being is subjective. — Hello Human

I would argue that because we are constrained by physical stimulation, such as pain or pleasure, we would not have full control over our purpose. Positive and negative stimulus gives us incentive to adjust our morality to align with more positive reinforcement, which is a form of control. However, this is not all bad; because there then would be objective reasoning as to why we perform moral tasks, it protects us from other subjective philosophical traditions such as nihilism(due to the intrinsic objective meaning that objectivity grants).