Too pollyannaish, Fool. Philosophy problematizes how rationally or not 'maps are read, made or revised'; religion is just one irrational, or fantasy, map among countless others. — 180 Proof

I don't know about you but I'm particularly fascinated by so-called saints, how each is a patron saint of a particular virtue or divine attribute- things like forgiveness, love, women, doctors, cobblers, fishermen, immigrants, and the list goes on and on - and their lives are, in some cases, living examples of these virtues/divine attributes.

Further, religious rituals are full of meaning - words uttered in prayer, the incense, the rosary, etc. all have a history that stretches centuries back in time.

Then there's the symbolism - I can't get enough of that.

There is no responsibility or demarcation in philosophy? From what then does it distinguish itself? I have long understood philosophy to be criticism. — JerseyFlight

:up:

Sure. As per the mediocrity principle.

I suppose I'm asking, "why the constant realistic pessimistic attitude toward reality?"
The Second Law of Thermodynamics: global disorder (i.e. complexity, proximity-to-maximum-equilibrium) never decreases. — 180 Proof

You took the words right out of my mouth. Entropy is a pain. There being innumerable ways for thing to go wrong and usually only a handful of ways for things to go right, to be realistic = to be pessimistic. :sad:

Do you think there's a strategy that could make optimism a viable option? Imagine if I don't care what happens; anything would be acceptable to me and I'll never face disappointment in my life, granting me and others who adopt a similar attitude full rights to be optimistic. :grin:

Well then, who cares what philosophy has to say about it. A conceptual toy box that strikes your fancy. I'm not sure one can refute a hedonist. — JerseyFlight

In my humble opinion, philosophy, being, above all, an approach to issues, a method of discovering truths, refined over many generations of practitioners, is universal in scope. One could say philosophy is to know how to read a map, religion is just one map among countless others that can be read.

I think that depends on whether (y/our) expectations are realistic or not (e.g. idealistic). — 180 Proof

Thanks! My issue is with the general tendency among people to define/describe reality negatively in the sense that it's always in the form of a warning, "be real unless <insert unpleasant consequences>" and not positively in the sense that to be in touch with reality is a happy, pleasant state. It's like defining roses only by the painfully sharp thorns and completely ignoring the exquisitely gorgeous blossoms.

Reality' isn't anthropic or even biophilic. — 180 Proof

But it isn't completely anthrophobic or biophobic either, right?

I suppose I'm asking, "why the constant realistic pessimistic attitude toward reality?"

A problem, philosophical theology? — JerseyFlight

A philosopher who finds truth in religion is what you should keep an eye on. The believer who uses philosophy to further a religious agenda is not as problematic.

This is far too general to be of any value, most especially when it comes to religion. — JerseyFlight

I feel religion is a truly complex set of beliefs - rich in meaning embodied in rituals, tradition, narratives, symbolism, practices, myth, and emotions, to name a few - and being so is a veritable gold mine of sundry topics for philosophers to sink their teeth into. Not that this hasn't been done already but the effort, and I can only guess, is piecemeal, fragmentary. If one puts these scattered pieces together, a picture of religion may emerge that reveals a harmony and coherence hitherto unseen. In short, your dim view of religion is probably symptomatic of not being privy to such knowledge as I have alluded to above.

There's the contradiction. You cannot approach philosophy with theological biases. If the point of philosophy to a theist is to prove that God exists, is good, is all powerful, and is responsible for everything we are, it is not philosophy at all.

That doesn't forbid philosophical discussion of whether God exists, what he might be like, the ethics of Jesus, etc. As you say, we can philosophise about anything. — Kenosha Kid

Indeed, a theist who turns to philosophy with the sole aim of justifying his/her beliefs is guilty of rationalization but this doesn't devalue philosophy as such. In fact, it's like your rival learning and using your very own fighting techniques against you? What greater compliment than this for philosophy?

That's a terrible argument. Innocent beings can cause pain and suffer pain. Pain is useful for some species perhaps, but God's goodness is reflected in nature you say. But innocent sheep are sometimes tortured. No good comes from that for the sheep. God dosnt protect the innocent — Gregory

I suppose it is; after all we can make a distinction between innocent pain - accidental - and evil pain - deliberate. Not all pain is evil because it's not true that the innocent never cause pain. I guess we need to examine the necessity for pain - try and square the, some might even say sadistic, inclusion of the ability to feel pain, excruciating pain and suffer, suffer greatly, with a benevolent god.

Perhaps an analogy is in order. Imagine you're driving on a stretch of road, well built and well maintained, and you notice signs with appropriate warnings alerting you to possible dangers. The signs are there for a good reason - to prevent fatal crashes. Our pain sensing apparatus serve in the same capacity - drawing our attention to injury that, if not sensed and dealt with at the right time, could lead to severe disability or death.

Too, if only evil pain is what bothers you, and this must be for innocent pain is amoral, then it's safe to say that only humans are capable of it - deliberately inducing pain for reasons ranging from play to frank sadism. I daresay the only evil in the world is humanity.

However, in a curious twist of fate, homo sapiens (us) is the only species that has developed, notwithstanding the glaring imperfections, a system of morality. It's like god choosing the vilest, most depraved, individual in the world and making him/her a prophet, a divine messenger. This reminds me of the late Christopher Hitchens who, more than once, said that it made zero sense for god to have revealed himself to iron age illiterate tribal people living in the desert but if you really thinks about it, people who are utterly morally bankrupt are the ones actually in need of holy assisstance. Good people don't need god - that would be pointless, no point carrying coal to Newcastle - but bad people are in need of urgent divine intercession. Triage

In summary, pain is necessary for survival given past and current realities. The only evil in this world is humanity and god, like the good doctor he is, has attended to this emergency three times (Moses, Jesus, Mohammed) in the deserts of the middle east. As odd as it sounds, humans are the problem and also the solution - we're the problem because we're the only ones capable of deliberately causing pain, evil, and we're the solution for the reason that we're the only ones to have come into contact with the divine essence - the sense of right and wrong - albeit these encounters were much too brief than we'd have liked or hoped.

I don't know but your coffee preference - you thinking it to be the most delicious drink in the world - is subjective and the word on that is "De gustibus non est disputandum". There's no problem believing anything at all if it's a matter of taste.

I think W. K. Clifford's notion of epistemic responsibility is centered on objective beliefs, beliefs that, all taken together, form the framework of knowledge we operate within.

The difference between the two is that there's no such thing as a wrong subjective belief and if there are any consequences that follow from differences in such beliefs, they're trivial - at most a pointless verbal duel - but objective beliefs are a whole new ballgame in that you can be wrong and the consequences can be serious, even deadly.

The real is that which hurts you badly, often fatally, when you don't respect it, and is as unavoidable as it is whatever preceeds-resists-exceeds all (of our) rational categories and techniques of control (e.g. ambiguity, transfinitude, contingency, uncertainty, randomness). The real encompasses reason (Jaspers) and itself cannot be encompassed (Spinoza / Cantor) ... like that 'void within which all atoms swirl' (Epicurus). Thus, Rosset's principle of 'indispensible yet insufficient' reason (à la Zapffe, Camus, Meillassoux-Brassier). — 180 Proof

@180 Proof...a penny for your thoughts.

The real is that which hurts you badly, often fatally, when you don't respect it, and is as unavoidable as it is whatever preceeds-resists-exceeds all (of our) rational categories and techniques of control (e.g. ambiguity, transfinitude, contingency, uncertainty, randomness). The real encompasses reason (Jaspers) and itself cannot be encompassed (Spinoza / Cantor) ... like that 'void within which all atoms swirl' (Epicurus). Thus, Rosset's principle of 'indispensible yet insufficient' reason (à la Zapffe, Camus, Meillassoux-Brassier). — 180 Proof

Depressing!

Any way you can make it less morose? :chin: Is there a silver lining in the sense there's more to reality than needing to be in touch with it just to avoid injury and fatality? I'd like you to take a moment and look at the brighter side of reality, if there's one. What do you see?

Necessary suffering. People are not to be used as bridges for your idea of a possible future utopia. Utopia means nowhere. The point was that it doesn't exist anyways. — schopenhauer1

I'm not using people as bridges to my personal fantasia. I'm offering you a possible direction humanity, as a whole, might take in the coming centuries. I'm not 100% certain this will be our collective choice but the comforting truth is there's nothing impossible in this vision of humanity's future. I know my position on the issue is a far cry from being, what some might label as, realistic - practicality is a major issue - but what keeps my spirits up is there's nothing impossible, no insurmountable barrier that could prove to be the final resting place of the hopes of people like myself.

Again, people aren't to be used for future schemes. But necessary suffering doesn't go away unless we are no longer self-conscious beings. We are beings that need to survive, get more comfortable, and entertain ourselves. In short, we are dissatisfied to some extent at almost every moment, and know of this disutility, by way of trying to change it. Necessary suffering doesn't just go away in your year 2300 scenario. Besides which, it seems like we seem to be going the opposite way than a utopia, even if we were to indulge your sci-fi tendencies. But that is a different topic for a different thread.. global warming, pandemics, pollution, overpopulation, etc. etc. — schopenhauer1

I agree, we're the kind who never are satisfied - contentment is a word that fails to describe any one in the entire history of humanity. However, this major issue shouldn't hold us back from fixing the minor problems, right? There's the phrase "to settle for..." and we should appreciate its underlying spirit.

You make it seem like everyone's daily life is one of transforming earth into a possible paradise. No. Collective achievements are not daily life. Naming off things like indoor plumbing and air conditioning do not make life thus utopia. Pointing to some future time of things being utopia due to technological innovations would also miss the point of necessary suffering involved in the human animal. Contingent sufferings, as things that I've listed, are not going to end any time soon either — schopenhauer1

What about a garden of Eden built here on Earth is impossible? I agree that things like natural instincts, human and animal, technological hurdles, and the list goes on and on, are not on our side but these are, by my reckoning, temporary obstacles. Yes, overcoming them is not going to be easy but, the what matters is it's not an impossibility.

Coming to "necessary suffering" and "contingent suffering", I suppose, given the current body design and our technological backwardness, pain is absolutely necessary, serving as warning signs of potential life-threatening physical and mental perturbations. However, technology will, with some amount of luck and a whole lot of sweat and toil, make our pain sensory apparatus obsolete. Just as our vermiform appendix is a vestigial organ serving only to remind us of our herbivorous ancestry, our nociceptive system will become nothing more than a curiosity to our descendants.

I think the Buddha would've remained silent if he were asked this question. I wonder why? I suppose, if I were to second guess the Buddha, this question can't be answered in a way that would put the issue to rest. Again, I wonder why? Perhaps, its an unknowable but what makes it so? Can I answer the question "what does the message say?" with confidence when the messenger's honesty has been called into question?

Empiricism dose not acknowledge emotions role in experience whatsoever.
In light of the philosophical zombie argument, where emotion is essential to consciousness and experience, this seems incoherent.

Edit:
Empiricism posits that all knowledge is derived from experience, but it dose not understand experience. It fails to take into account the role of emotion in experience. — Pop

Sorry to bring this up. If you're not interested, kindly ignore this post. If you are then, I'd like to ask you why you think emotions are, well, non-physical in nature? Love chemical = Oxytocin, Anger/Fear = Epinephrine, Happiness = Endorphins/Dopamine, and the list probably goes one. It seems, given adequate time, neuroscientists will eventually identify for every emotion, a specific brain chemical.

Not to defend religion or anything - I don't wish to swell the already formidable ranks of those who do that - but to take your approach to the relationship between religion and philosophy is to deny that one has anything to do with the other which appears to be false for the simple reason that nothing is not philosophy; after all philosophy is, among other things, an attitude, an attitude of unbiased neutrality. Philosophers bring this attitude to bear on everything under the sun. The scope of philosophy is the universe itself and religion is but one aspect of our universe.

Too, the historical marriage between religion and philosophy is an inequality - religion seems almost desperate to earn philosophical favor while philosophy has been steadily undermining religion.

If the religious are inclined to be philosophical, it's a sign that they, whoever they are, finally see the light, so to speak. Their attempts to philosophize religion is to be taken as an homage to philosophy, its rightful claim as one of the best available routes to the truth whatever that may be.

What maybe more problematic for you - given the views expressed in the OP which likely is just a passing thought - is not the philsophical believer but the believing philosopher. The philosophical believer may eventually join your ranks but the religious philsopher is the one thinning your crowd, if you're an atheist philosopher. The religious philosopher might be onto something and you'll never know if you decide not to engage them and the catch is one place you might meet religious philosophers is a forum like this.

It isn’t about ‘wrong’, it’s about accuracy. You’re inferring from the word ‘knowledge’ that all of it is justified, true belief. But is it? The knowledge they gain is of ‘good’ and ‘evil’, not about it. They know a distinction exists between their own ‘good’ feeling and ‘bad’, that’s all. Everything else is incorrect inference on their part - cognitive bias. Morality - as a set of principles or codes for ‘good’ and ‘bad’ behaviour - is then constructed from this initial faulty reasoning, to be refined and corrected according to further knowledge, acquired through practical, theoretical and apparent experience over time — Possibility

What's the difference between "wrong" and "inaccurate" and "imprecise" to add? As far as I can tell, you're on a path that takes you to meta-ethics, about the very meaning of right and wrong - the foundations of morality so to speak. You think that Adam and Eve caught but a glimpse of morality and from that brief encounter all they could discern was the what? (such and such behavior is good, such and such behavior is bad) but they failed to find out the why? (why is such and such behavior good and why is such and such behavior bad). The full extent of moral knowledge is yet to be revealed/discovered - a work in progress even as I speak. Am I on the right track?

It often appears that way, but what moral theories do is clearly define the lower limits of unacceptable behaviour - the event horizon, so to speak — Possibility

Good analogy. Is the emphasis on a [moral] point of no return a reasonable approach to the issue of right and wrong? I guess it makes sense to red-flag extreme immorality - it dissuades us from going to those dander zones in a manner speaking.

Not all of the positive feelings would be sexual in nature; much of it would be aesthetic. But one would need to interact more with the experience in order to distinguish between these feelings, which would entail getting past this ‘nakedness is bad’ judgement.

Morality does seem to be marketed as an a priori knowledge that ‘just is’. After all, it’s grounded in interoception of affect (which we are only recently beginning to understand) and our many cognitive biases. When we get past this essentialist view of morality, and see it instead as a constructed system of value-attributed behaviour concepts, then we can engage in a disinterested harmony of our faculties (imagination, understanding and judgement) in relation to behaviour. — Possibility

I think there's only a thin line between aesthetic appreciation and sexual arousal as far as our bodies are concerned. I guess I'm speaking from a lack of experience than from experience here? I'd like to know what kind of experiences enable a person to disentangle aesthetics from sex. The two seem inseparable. If this is off-topic, please ignore it.

What is it with subsuming experiences under ‘psychological phenomenon’, as if that justifies indeterminate reasoning? It’s not about defenselessness, but about being open to reality. We put up walls and make laws and employ police and lock our doors and put on clothes and restrict online access to our information, and convince ourselves that we’re not vulnerable because we have all of this - but we are. Because at the end of the day, we live only to the extent that we interact openly with the world - and none of this will actually stop directed, intentional and motivated harm, or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. What is moral judgement, but an attempt to define the event horizon of our vulnerability? — Possibility

You said we're deeply concerned about exposing ourselves because it causes fear for the reason that in the nude we're vulnerable. I just took what you said to its logical conclusion - nakedness represents either the event horizon of our vulnerability or is the canary in a coal mine of our vulnerability - it demands immediate action, constant attention.

When did I say no one is innocent? — Gregory

If there's such a thing as innocence then, pain can't be used as a metric for evil for the simple reason that the innocent can cause pain, accidentally.

We know our situation, the context for which this situation is situated in the broader picture. Other animals do not. We know that things can be better or different, or we can at least imagine so, yet know the reality of the situation is different than what can be. We know there is no utopia, yet we are born in non-ideal worlds.

Yet presented with this, people simply downplay it. They don't want to discuss it. Keep ignoring, sublimating, etc. — schopenhauer1

Look, if I didn't know better I might've said that the game is rigged. We're intelligent for sure, we can learn, gain knowledge and skills, and use that to change the world - make alterations in it to suit our needs or, in a moral sense, we have the ability to, if committed enough, to transform Earth into the Garden of Eden. Surely, this ability to transform our world needs to go hand in hand with the ability to imagine a different world - the ability to create an Eden is pointless if we can't imagine one, right? The downside is if we can imagine Eden, we're going to be deeply disappointed by Earth despite all its wonders.

There is nothing logically inconsistent with an electron displaying wave and particle properties.

Paradox: a seemingly absurd or contradictory statement or proposition which when investigated may prove to be well founded or true. — khaled

Please visit the wikipedia page on Paradoxes and scroll down to Double-slit experiment

These are examples of things that seem not to make sense. What's being asked here is entirely different from creating an electron that behaves two different ways. It is asking for something that doesn't make sense. Something that can't exist by definition. — khaled

A contradiction is the linchpin of the refutation of the obvious solution to the omnipotence or stone paradox. The solution is that god can lift the stone god can't lift. The refutation is that that's a contradiction: god can't life the stone AND god can lift the stone. Contradictions are a part of our reality as the list of paradoxes I've linked you to demonstrate. In other words, assuming God created this universe, contradictions are as easy as ABC for God.

Have you ever watched how children learn to talk? They do not learn how to use words by learning definitions. — Metaphysician Undercover

I aksed how can you use a word "properly" without knowing its definition?

But the point of the op, I think, is that perhaps logic cannot maintain truth. Maybe the world is so strangely complex that human beings are incapable of producing a logic which is guaranteed to maintain truth. — Metaphysician Undercover

All I can say is that many different kinds inconsistency tolerant logics have spawned from the possibility that the world could be is "strangely complex". Nevertheless, it must possess the attribute of being truth preserving, otherwise it loses its raison d'être, right? The very reason we need logic, whatever shape or form it may assume, is to have a system that handles propositions in such a way that, ceteris paribus, we arrive at other true propositions.

There's also multi-valued logic and fuzzy logic to consider - attempts to capture other aspects of reality like partial truths.

I think that this is a mistaken perspective, and where logic applies to the ineffable is where we need to proceed with the most caution. This is what I tried to describe already. A person might observe something as ineffable. This means that the occurrence is fundamentally unintelligible. However, this person wants to understand what happened, wants to remember it in words, so the person then applies some sort of natural reason to determine which words are best suited for describing the event.

So logic does have a stake in the ineffable, otherwise knowledge could not proceed from unknown to known. We must allow that knowledge evolves, and progresses, such that some things which were ineffable when human language was young, can now be described. How else can these things come into the realm of being describable if not through the application of some logic? — Metaphysician Undercover

To me, once something is ineffable, knowledge is impossible because the basic requirement for a thing to count as knowledge is that it should be possible to render it as a proposition, something that can't be done with the ineffable. The unknown becomes a known only if we can construct the relevant meaningful proposition.

That said, I agree with you that we're most at risk of being led away from the truth when our experiences (observations ,etc.) can't be put into words. There's this natural drive to understand, to make sense of, our encounters with reality and it has the power to force us to take a stand even when the most rational option is to withhold judgement. Misunderstanding, dangerous misunderstanding, seems almost inevitable.

As I said, we ought to be skeptical of both the logic and the observations. The two go hand in hand. The logical systems (what I called artificial logic) are conformed to correspond with the observations if there is a desire to preserve truth. But the observations (descriptions) are conformed by the underlying natural reason, as described above. So, the observations may be faulty, and this would lead to the production of faulty logic therefore we must be skeptical of both. — Metaphysician Undercover

I agree but this leads to Pyrrhonian Skepticism - a state of global uncertainty and extreme doubt. Are you proposing that as the only reasonable option?

No it's actually easy. The world allows evil for no reason when a puppy is tortured to death (sorry). Sorry again, but that seems to be the obvious. But it doesn't taint the whole. Evil intent is when a human violates his conscience — Gregory

So, you want to run with pain as your yardstick? No one is innocent then, not even the bunny that accidentally tips over the kettle of scalding hot water on your lap, causing you painful third degree burns?

I don't know about hyenas, but some animals are innocent. A bunny is innocent, obviously. So if you beat a bunny to death and he has no afterlife, what good does the pain do the bunny?

It seems that saying pain is good to creatures would only apply to humans. Maybe we need pain to grow. But how can this apply to animals? If a kitten is innocent, any pain that befalls it must be good for it. But then, how does this situation reflect infinite goodness? If God is perfect, horrible things should not happen in this world. The pain should make sense. — Gregory

If one believes animals are innocent and incapable of evil then, it follows that there is no evil in the world - all is good whether there is pain or not. Pain is no longer relevant to the measure of evil.

On the other hand if one feels pain is evil then there can be no such thing as innocence, all are evil those that cause pain.

You have to make a choice between innocence and pain to decide whether our world is evil or not? Not an easy choice by any standard.

You’re assuming the necessary truth of ‘nakedness is bad’, and then trying to justify the statement. — Possibility

I'm not assuming anything. Something happened to Adam and Eve that made them go from stark naked to strategic parts covered with fig leaves. That something was knowledge of morality. Am I wrong then to infer that nakedness is bad/immoral?

So it seems clear to me that it’s this second form of knowledge that is gained by Adam and Eve — Possibility

Nevertheless, moral knowledge, right?

Imagine two people X and Y and they never did F before and then they experience M after which I start doing F. The cause of X and Y doing F is M, correct? It fits the bill insofar as a causal agent is being considered. In other words, F is a matter of M. Replace X with Adam, Y with Eve, M with morality, F with covering private parts with fig leaves, and it becomes clear that covering private parts with fig leaves is a matter of morality. Put simply, nakedness is immoral, at least for Adam and Eve.

There are two main forms of ‘knowledge’: — Possibility

I thought knowledge is justified, true, belief.

But only positive value-attributed concepts are refined in this way. When a negative value is attributed (eg. ‘Nakedness is bad’), we avoid future interaction, and any possible knowledge to be gained from a similar experience is then ignored, isolated or excluded, based on this singular experience (which I can almost guarantee would have consisted of a mixture of both positive and negative feelings, even if overall its quality appeared negative). — Possibility

I beg to differ. Moral theories, all of them, are exceptionally clear and specific about the immoral (negatives) and are hopelessly vague about the moral (positives) indicating, by my reckoning, a greater familiarity and deeper understanding of the negatively valued than the positively valued.

which I can almost guarantee would have consisted of a mixture of both positive and negative feelings, even if overall its quality appeared negative — Possibility

I suppose the "positive" feelings Adam and Eve experienced were sexual in nature. That's not how morality works. Morality is, to my knowledge, marketed as something that transcends the physical, sexuality and all.

It can seem that way: we feel vulnerable because we’re naked. But the truth is that we’re still vulnerable in so many ways, even when fully clothed. We’re vulnerable because we’re alive. It is in the appearance of nakedness that we so unavoidably perceive this vulnerability as a negative experience, which if we conceptualise as self-attributed ‘fear’ would only affirm it. So instead we attribute this negative quality to the concept ‘nakedness’, which we then strive to avoid, lest we are confronted once again with the truth that this vulnerability is inherent to all living beings. — Possibility

So, this is some kind of a psychological phenomenon in which we, for some reason, associate all our fears with our naked bodies? Our state of complete undress then perceived as us utterly defenseless? :up: If this is what you're getting at then, please ignore the rest of my post.

Since the shell area increases as r^2, the energy density must decrease as r^2 — Kenosha Kid

Indeed, the surface area of a sphere is directly proportional to r^2. Ergo energy density assumed as energy/r^2 should decrease to the same extent. I thought density is a volume thing.

The Lagrangian side to this tale is more interesting then - replacing the concept of electric force with a fourth dimensional counterpart, whatever form or shape suits the situation.

Thanks.

Empiricism dose not acknowledge emotions role in experience whatsoever.
In light of the philosophical zombie argument, where emotion is essential to consciousness and experience, this seems incoherent.

Edit:
Empiricism posits that all knowledge is derived from experience, but it dose not understand experience. It fails to take into account the role of emotion in experience. — Pop

:up:

Good question @Benj96. Got me thinking...and the results...more questions than answers.

Starting off with electric charges, all I want to say is that charges (+/-) are on different particles - positrons (+) and electrons (-). Why does this matter? I don't know the latest best model for an atom but I suppose it's a tweaked version of the solar system model with negatively charged electrons orbiting around a positively charged nucleus. The electron orbit has given way to the electron cloud but the model is similar enough, at least I think it is, to allow me to ask the question, "how do we distinguish electric attractive force from gravity?"

Last I remember, the equations of the force of between opposite electric charges and the Newtonian formulatiom of the force of gravity between two objects are identical in form: F = K*(x1*x2)/(r*r) where K is the relevant constant, x1 and x2 are either the charge or the mass and r is the distance between the objects? Just a random coincidence or are we dealing with the same force, only at different scales?

Ref: Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation and Coulomb's Law

An odd coincidence worth noting in my opinion is that Charles-Augustin de Coulomb (1736 - 1806) who discovered Coulomb's Law and
Joseph-Louis Lagrange (1736 - 1813) who was the first to treat time as a fourth dimension were born in the same year.

Either Coulomb's law can explained in terms of a fourth dimension just like gravity or gravity is, well, a force to reckon with. :smile:

An elephant on your work desk would initially cause you surprise. Your initial reaction would be emotional. This needs to be taken into account. Emotion is present in every experience, and thought. Neither of you have taken this into account. This is the hard problem. :smile: — Pop

I suppose emotions add another layer to experience, over and above basic comprehension. I don't see how it's related to empiricism though? By the way, what's materially undoable about emotions? I remember someone posting a thread that had to with how mental states are reproducible with the right chemicals.

It can also be a fight, a competition between them. E.g. in the case of a hyper-skeptic, aka a denialist, whose own reason finds ways to stubbornly reject any evidence contrary to her theory as ‘not good enough’, ‘inconclusive’, ‘fake’, etc. Or vice-versa sometimes our senses are being treacherous, e.g. in optical illusions. So those two don’t always cooperate. — Olivier5

Isn't that exactly why need both, like you suggested? Each, by itself, can't be trusted. They can be trusted only when together. Sound reasonable? A compromise of sorts. Also, methinks, a good plot for a comedy/adventure/fantasy book/play/flick.

This would be ok for a description of a philosophical zombie, but real people have emotions.

Wouldn't surprise be your immediate reaction? The Bayesian Brain theory predicts that it would. — Pop

I have no idea what you're talking about. I'll look it up when I get the chance. If you have the time, I don't mind a few pointers.

No, it's about how one uses words. Notice, that "right" is only defined once in the example, yet it is also used in a way other than the defined way, just like your use of falsehood. It is the act of using the word in a way which is inconsistent with the definition which is called equivocation. — Metaphysician Undercover

How can you use a word properly without knowing its definition?

By the way, as far as I'm concerned, we've sailed past that port.

Yes I agree, and that is why consistency does not define truth. But there are two distinct reasons why logic does not necessitate truth. The first is obvious to most people, and that is that logic requires content, the premises. And if the premises are false, the conclusion is unsound.

The second reason, which is not so evident to most people, is that logic consists of a system of rules for procedure or application. If these rules themselves are unsound, then even true premises could turn up false conclusions. Take mathematics for example, which has at the base of its rules, "axioms". The axioms may be derived completely from the imagination without any requirement that they correspond with any real features of the world. (Refer to discussions on infinity for example). I would say that if these axioms have no evidence of correspondence they are unsound. Unsound axioms produce what you called "fancy logic". — Metaphysician Undercover

Just as a side note, I recall reading that logic is basically a set of rules that are truth preserving. It can't tell us which propositions are true in the sense it's a definition of truth which we can employ but it does tell us which propositions must be true in the sense of providing us candidate propositions for observational verification.

Another type of thing in this category, is what I referred to, things which we cannot adequately describe. — Metaphysician Undercover

Fine but now we're getting involved with language, its limits - logic doesn't have a stake in the ineffable.

example is an inadequate hypothetical — Metaphysician Undercover

Ok, if you insist. Odd that because your post is about what people may describe as hypotheticals taken to an extreme - entertaining impossibilities (inconsistencies) to be possibld - and yet you object to the example I gave on the grounds of an inconsistency based on the ordinary, mundane.

Anyway, perhaps another example will do the job. You must know the double-slit experiment. The results of this experiment are that light is both a particle and a wave, two mutually contradictory physical states. Inconsistency as per logic but yet verifiable observationally. How do you resolve this problem? Do you think we should reexamine logical principles like inconsistency and treat our observations as real or do you think there's nothing wrong with logic and that oud observation is flawed?

So it’s the combination of reason and observation that is powerful. Reason alone is blind, and observation alone is meaningless. — Olivier5

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? — Juvenal

A model that only accepts concurrence between reason and observation should work well enough to save the day.

I'm going to juxtapose my view on empiricism with my view on rationalism and what better way to do that than with a paradox.

Zeno's Achilles and the tortoise paradox is a clear-cut case of our senses contradicting our reason. Our senses are 100% sure that not only did Achilles catch up to the tortoise but that Achilles left the tortoise in the dust. Our reason, however, says otherwise; not only will Achilles not overtake the humble tortoise but Achilles won't even catch up with it.

The resolution of this paradox has usually been in favor of empiricism with the attempts to find solutions all accepting Achilles to have won the race hands down. The problem, everyone assumed, is with reason but not in its rules but in the assumptions or theoretical context in which the paradox lives.

One common method to solve the paradox is to use the mathematical concept of the limit of infinite fractional sums. In essence, if one accepts this solution, it amounts to admitting that if ever the empirical doesn't agree with the rational, the fault lies with the latter.

This same pattern of thinking, blaming rationalism instead of empiricism, is seen again in quantum physics. The result of the famous double-slit experiment is that light is both a particle and a wave, two mutually contradictory ideas. As far as I know, scientists don't question the validity of the experimental results; instead they cast doubt on the credibility of reason, rationality and it's likely that, if given a modicum of encouragement, they will demand a complete overhaul of logic/reason itself to accommodate their findings.

On the flip side, there are some occasions during which rationalism carries the day and empiricism has to play second fiddle or even go offstage. Suppose you see an elephant sitting on your work desk through the window of your office. You know your desk won't hold the weight of your overweight secretary let alone that of an elephant. You conclude that the elephant is a hallucination i.e. rationalism has invalidated empiricism.

To make the long story short, it's complicated!

So the first premise in this discussion is that animals are innocent. They are not capable of doing true evil — Gregory

:ok:

Now, it seems obvious that animals feel pain. — Gregory

:ok:

Therefore, either

1) The world, which reflects God nature, proves that God is not all good. If it's not in God's nature to create a world and allow humans to sin all the while protecting the innocent from pain, then God's nature is imperfect or evil

2) God doesn't exist — Gregory

The problem with your argument is that first, you claim, rightly so, that animals are innocent, that "they are not capable of doing true evil" and then follow this up by declaring the world to be sinful or bad based on animal pain I presume.

You're using two different benchmarks - intentions (to do harm) to decide animals are innocent and consequence (pain), e.g. when one animal kills another, to come to the conclusion that the world is sinful. But if animals are innocent, how can the world be bad? If the world isn't bad then, god's goodness remains intact, right?

Human

Do you care to expand on your assumption? — freewhirl

There are differences between humans and animals, that's obvious but there are also similarities. One unifying motif that brings together almost all moral systems is hedonism (pleasure/pain, happiness/suffering).

Hedonism is universal in prevalence - all animals, even plants, exhibit pleasure seeking and pain avoidance in one form or another. This is not surprising given the fact that morality, as of necessity, must be based on what's common between us instead of what's unique to each one of us. After all, ethics is about how to live a life in a community. The bottom line is good/bad, right/wrong are concepts that can exist only in a community.

That being the case the lowest common denominator in a community will be the ideal ecological niche for morality - it must appeal to the majority if it's to do its job well. What's the lowest common denominator? We're still in the grips of morality with a hedonistic theme - as of now, only life capable of experiencing pain/joy matter for existing moral systems.

Nonetheless, there's a trend that needs mentioning. Ecological sciences are, in my humble opinion, tentacular extensions of existing moral systems that are just that tiny bit not self-serving to merit the pronouncement that morality has begun to look beyond mere hedonism and now is in the preliminary stages of reaching the lowest of the lowest common denomniators - life itself. A time will come, far in the future, when all life - microscopic viruses to gigantic blue whales and everything in between - will be equal in terms of moral worth but this only applies to us. In god's eyes we're all already of equal moral value.




:up:

Good point although I would add that while it's completely plausible that small evils, like small fires that prevent major conflagrations, prevent severe moral failings, it's also possible that they serve as convenient doorways to hell.

That said, your comment makes me wonder if we shouldn't rejoice in our good fortune that the evil we see around us is of the tolerable type - much like the mild symptoms we experience when we get vaccinated for some deadly disease. Possibly, the evil prevalent in the world today are part of god's vaccination plan for humanity - we suffer mildly but it'll stand us in good stead when real and pure evil descends upon the world.

Is it this type of god, the "omni-benevolent" kind, that is fair and equal in its treatment of its creations? And why then would life be the focus? Just because it's living and breathing makes it more important that stars, rocks, water, chemicals, forces, (etc. etc.)?

And parents pick favorites. Parents can prefer the child that is friendly and happy over the other child that is murderous, conniving, and mean. Inequity, inequality, and injustice could arise from the partiality of the creator. — dimension72

Indeed, I wouldn't rule out the possibility that inanimate matter could, one day, be considered as having moral value. Of course, the million dollar question is, is there anything that isn't alive?

What I'm trying to say here is that omnipotence is logically possible only if with this definition in the parentheses, which is (x is an ability/capability & is logically possible) -> s has x, Sorry for the confusion. — xinye

This is the heart of the matter - the notion of logical possibility. If logical possibility is part of the concept of omnipotence then and only then can the paradox of the stone work as an argument against omnipotence.

However, give it some thought and you'll realize that the paradox of the stone relies on the truth of one premise, this premise is unstated and that's why everyone forgets to examine it closely. This premise is that god can't do logically impossible things. Notice something? The word "can't" in this unstated premise. What is the significance of the word "can't" in all of this?

Let's look at the definition of omnipotence and this unstated premise together

Omnipotence means Nothing is impossible for god
The unstated premise "god can't do logically impossible things" means Something is impossible for god

Nothing is impossible for god contradicts Something is impossible for god

Why did I bring up the issue of contradictions? I did so because the refutation of one solution to the omnipotence stone paradox that involves god creating such a stone and then lifting it is that god can't do logically impossible things, contradictions being one of them. After all, this solution entails that God can lift the stone AND God can't lift the stone, a contradiction (logically impossible).

The problem here is that to say that an omnipotent being can't do logically impossible things is to undermine the very definition of omnipotence - it modifies omnipotence to the power to do everything except logical impossibilities. That, in other words, is the same thing as saying there's something an omnipotent being can't do but this is a contradiction: God is omnipotent (nothing is impossible for god) god can't do logically impossible things (something is impossible for god).

Since to change the definition of omnipotence is like removing the character Frodo from The Lord Of The Rings - the notion of god collapses just as Tolkein's fabulous tale does - the only option for us is to discard the idea that god can't do logically impossible things. What this means is that god can create a stone god can't lift and god can lift that stone.

The ‘bad’ I’m referring to is an interoception of negative affect in the body, and is not necessarily conscious. This negative valence would be sufficient to unconsciously establish a basic, non-linguistic conceptual structure against a repeat of this internal event. It’s a determination by action from feeling, without actual thought or self-reflection. Most social animals are capable of this. It is Adam and Eve’s apperception of this feeling as a goal-directed emotion concept (“We were afraid, so we hid”) that demonstrated what ‘knowledge’ they’ve gained, and what they’re still missing. They don’t know nakedness as bad or immoral - at most they know that they felt afraid, which caused them to hide (or that they intended/willed to hide, which they attributed to a feeling of fear). — Possibility

My take on this is very simple. Adam and Eve underwent a change - that change has to do with the tree of knowledge of good and evil. In essence, there's a before and an after as the far as the forbidden fruit is concerned. Before, Adam and Eve didn't care about their nakedness, After (consuming the forbidden fruit), they did. What caused this transition from not caring to caring about their nakedness? The tree of knowledge of good and evil. Ergo, this change in attitude in Adam and Eve toward their nakedness must be caused by knowledge of good and evil (morality). In other words, Adam and Eve discovered that nakedness is bad.

Sure - it’s a case of subsuming any appearance of ‘nakedness’ under a moral judgement - but there’s more to an experience of nakedness than ‘frolicking wherever one fancies’. Check out 3017amen’s lengthy personal account above. The possibility of pure, non-conceptual delight enables some experiences of nakedness to transcend this moral judgement, rendering the statement ‘nakedness is bad’ as problematical. — Possibility

After all, being naked in front of someone else is the most vulnerable a person could ever be. No barriers, no shield, no interface, no pretence. And no weapons, either. Nakedness exposes us to every potential danger that we know: from cold and pain to assault, criticism and rejection. When we are naked, we have nothing to help us deflect or absorb the injury - we must bear it all, physically and emotionally. — Possibility

Surely, then, by your own admission,nakedness is bad. Why else would you say "we must bear it all". Last I heard, we don't bear enjoyable experiences, they're not burdens to bear.

My argument is not that we’re afraid of nakedness, but that we’re afraid of our vulnerability — Possibility

Why are we vulnerable? Because we're naked, right?

So I disagree that our purpose is to allay this fear, but rather I believe [/u]this vulnerability is necessary[/u], and that our fear is essential to human experience. — Possibility

Why is do you think "...this vulnerability is necessary.."?

I'm inclined to ignore, but since you don't seem to understand equivocation, maybe I can help. Here's an exaggerated example so it will be easy for you to follow. Say we come to a fork in the road, one road goes right and one goes left. I ask you which is the correct road to take. You say the right road is the correct road, because "right" means correct, therefore it's an obvious choice, the logical conclusion is to go right. That's an exaggerated example. Your equivocation with "falsehood" is much more subtle. — Metaphysician Undercover

:rofl: :up: So, equivocation is about definitions, "right"?

This is not such a simple issue. To judge whether a statement corresponds requires determining the meaning of the statement. And we cannot determine what the statement means without some sort of application of logic. Otherwise, the meaning of the statement is determined by its use, and if this statement is being used to refer to this thing, then it necessarily corresponds. — Metaphysician Undercover

Well, indeed it's true that "some sort of application of logic" is necessary; that's true of everything. What I mean is that logic alone doesn't help us determine that a given empirical statement is true/not.

No, I don't think we're on the same page. I can't quite figure out what you're trying to say with this example. You're saying there's an inconsistent state of affairs described by "Schodinger's cat". And, you think that some fancy logic produced this description. You contrast this with a failure to make a corresponding observation, and you imply that you believe one of these, and I believe the other.

I think what I would actually argue, is that we make observations which we cannot understand. They are not necessarily inconsistent observations, but unintelligible, for some reasons or others. So we create the fancy logic, which hides the fact that we are not understanding, and therefore do not have an adequate or meaningful description of what is being observed. (Consider what I said about corresponding statements above. Making a statement which corresponds with what is observed is not always a straight forward and simple task.) The inconsistency results from a failure to understand, and properly describe what is being observed. Then the fancy logic is applied to try and make the unintelligible appear to be intelligible. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't want to say this but I get the impression that you're failing to make the connection between things "we cannot understand", things "unintelligible" and inconsistencies. Inconsistencies, when they occur, are precisely things "we cannot understand", things "unintelligible" because they amount to affirmation of something followed by the negation of the thing that was affirmed: Proposition P, formally expressed as (p & ~p).

The problem with this example, is that the cat scenario is just a fictional scenario. It is produced by the fancy logic. You cannot expect to look and see the cat, because the scenario is not based in any true observations, it's a fiction. So your example is really nonsensical. You are taking a scenario which is completely fictional, and asking, what would we see, if looked at this part of the fictional story. I might just as well ask you, if I throw a box out the window with something in it, and it was falling, and you could peak inside it, what is in it? It's just a nonsensical question. — Metaphysician Undercover

You're barking up the wrong tree. The fictional nature of my example - Schrodinger's cat - is irrelevant to the point I'm making. The Schrodinger's cat hypothetical, in the way I presented it, is a simulation of a situation in which a person might make on observation that is inconsistent as per logic. It is intended as a simulation so I don't understand you making an issue about how it isn't real. Coming back to the issue, the choice then becomes one between accepting your observation as true and fault logic or stick with logic and question the validity of the observation. What would you do?

It's this definition that is the issue. Omnipotent can just be defined as "Can do everything that is possible" and now there are no problems — khaled

There lies the rub. I think the paradox is rigged to quash the notion of omnipotence. There is no necessity that god should find it impossible to handle paradoxes. God, if he exists, created the entire universe - from the nanoscale quantum world to galactic superclusters. We can ignore the very large for the moment and turn our attention to the quantum realm - Schrodinger's cat paradox, double-slit experiment paradox. Surely then, God, capable of these paradoxes, can manage another one.

Here's what Wikipedia says:
"In logic, equivocation ('calling two different things by the same name') is an informal fallacy resulting from the use of a particular word/expression in multiple senses within an argument."
There is no requirement for definitions. All that is required is to use the word in "multiple senses", which you already admitted that you did. Now you ought to admit that what you did was a fallacy called equivocation. — Metaphysician Undercover

Well, give us an instance of equivocation then. A tangible and concrete example would go a long way in clearing up matters.

P.S. Please don't use anything I said because that would be begging the question.

Note, this is a minor issue; you may choose to ignore it.

No, I just went through, this. We do not need to judge propositions for truth value in order to determine that one is inconsistent with another, we can look for contradiction. — Metaphysician Undercover

:ok:

I know, that's what I've been talking about, it's the point of the thread. Some people believe that the nature of the physical world is such that contradiction, and other inconsistencies are required to accurately describe it. The question though, is if it is the right thing to do, to reject natural reason for this artificial form of reason, which has been manipulated to allow contradiction and incoherency, for the sake of corresponding with observations. — Metaphysician Undercover

My two cents:

First, there are empirical statements, statements about our world. These, for sure, need to correspond with observations i.e. their truths are not determined by the application of logic; to the contrary, the need to be tested against observation.

Second, beginning with a set of empirical statements and some theoretical framework, other empirical statements are implied. Nonetheless, entailed empirical statements too need to correspond with observation.

The above is basically a sketch of the scientific method.

Where does inconsitency enter into all of this?

The most well-documented scientific culprit involved in violation of logical principles, specifically the law of noncontradiction - the most glaring inconsistency of all - is quantum mechanics. One common instance of a quantum contradiction is Schrodinger's cat - it's said that before the box containing the cat and a probabilistic quantum system, the cat is both dead and alive.

Schrodinger's cat being both dead and alive is a logical impossibility in first-order logic for, in the world at our scale, if a cat's alive then it can't be dead and vice versa. No empirical evidence at our scale supports Schrodinger's cat's state of being both dead and alive. According to you then, we have to accept that the claim about Schrodinger's cat amounts to an inconsistency and this was possible not because we did something fancy with logic but because we failed to make an observation corresponding to that statement.

Are we on the same page?

Now suppose that it were possible to peek at Schrodinger's cat inside the box without breaking the experiment. You look inside, essentially making an observation, and find the poor cat is both dead and alive. As far as first-order logic is concerned this is frank inconsistency but the situation in this case is entirely different to the one we considered previously - we have, in this case, an observation that corresponds to Schrodinger's cat being both dead and alive. The question that then arises is this: are you going to put your faith in first-order logic and treat your observation (cat both dead and alive) as null and void or are you going to believe what you saw and make plans to modify first-order logic to accommodate your observations?

Remember we're dealing with empirical statements.

I remember starting a thread titled Homo suicidus, my attempt at an unambiguous as possible reference to the fact that only humans commit suicide. Germane to the OP is that non-humans haven't been observed to override the basic drive to survive - the primordial desire to live and keep on living. In other words, the phenomenon of suicide is exclusively human. Since most suicides, in fact I wouldn't be too far off the mark if I said all suicides, are caused by major depression, it appears humans, however they may differ from other animals, have the ability, or should I call it susceptibility, to experience pain at such an intensity that the self-preservation instinct everyone's familiar with from personal experience is overruled in favor of an appointment with Grim Reaper at the earliest.

It makes me wonder then, given this our capacity to suffer more than non-humans, whether being human, despite the obvious perks of being one, is a curse rather than a boon? Perhaps the question, particularly the word "perks" in it, is a big clue in this mystery? Why do humans suffer or feel pain differently, more severely, relative to animals?

My theory is that the severity of pain in humans is modulated by psychological factors. For instance, if a person beats you up in public, the pain of the punches, kicks, weapon, is mangified by the sense of humiliation that comes with it. Non-humans don't "suffer" from such psychological pain and even if they do, it's not at the same level as humans.

Coming to the word "perks", humans, obvious even to the distracted, careless observer, have a clear advantage over non-humans. It's an old trope in biology that humans are smarter than non-humans - endowed with a brain capable of complex language, fine hand-eye coordination, logic, and creative imagination. These are the "perks" I refer to.

Enough said about the benefits of possessing such a powerful organ as the brain. A close examination of human brain power reveals its dark side. The psychological factors I mentioned before, those that amplify the pain humans feel, can all be traced back to human brain power. Depression isn't like the flu or cancer, illnesses have no direct links to the brain; depression is a reasoned position, arrived at after logical analysis of one's circumstances. Put simply, human brain power is a double-edged sword, a knife that cuts both ways - it gives us an edge over non-humans but the downside is we suffer more.

In an evolutionary context, brain power is our secret weapon against competition from non-humans even though we suffer greatly for it. I guess it's some kind of a trade-off: our highly evolved brains help us beat the competition but we must accept some losses in our ranks to "friendly fire".

How about looking at it like this: The argument begins by offering us a tautological choice - either God can create a stone that he can't lift or God can't create a stone that he can't lift - and being tautological, we can't slip through the horns of the dilemma. We must take the bull by the horns.

One horn of the dilemma is immediately ruled out - the option that he can't create such a stone contradicts god's omnipotence.

So, it must be that god can create a stone god can't lift. Say god creates this stone. Now, since the stone's definition is that god can't lift it, god can't lift it. Imagine now, god does lift this stone. What is it about this situation that gets in the way of us accepting its truth? A contradiction: the stone can't be lifted by god AND the stone is lifted by god. What's a silly contradiction to an omnipotent being? The very definition of omnipotence means nothing is impossible for god, and nothing is impossible for god means everything is possible insofar as god is concerned. God must be able to defy a contradiction just as easily as he winks a mote of dust into existence.