• Finding a Suitable Partner
    ↪Bob Ross

    You'll find your partner unexpectedly.
  • What's this called?
    I was just thinking that knowing I was doing something I didn't want to be doing, but being unable to stop, is very interesting. — Patterner

    ↪mcdoodle


    Impulse is just that. You're not really unaware of what you're about to do -- so this is not a reflex -- but you couldn't stop the momentum.
  • How to Live a Fulfilling Life
    HOW TO LIVE A FULFILLING LIFE — Truth Seeker
    I find it surprising that nowhere here it is mentioned the security of a permanent place to live. Fix this one first, then move on to other things.
    Maslow's theory actually explains it -- satisfy the basic needs first, then aim for the self-fulfillment.
  • Do actions based upon 'good faith' still exist?
    The concept of bona fide, which is sincere intention to be fair, open, and honest in interactions, still exist in society and human interactions? — Shawn
    The Olympics?

    hat's not the point I am attempting to make. Let me clarify, with the sentiments of Thrasymachus, all the way back to Ancient Greece, which Socrates could not handle and Plato had no answer, then we are still witnessing his thoughts played out in the chain of history. People say we might find salvation in technology; but, just take a look at what the atomic bomb did to end the axis of evil, and even then it was utilized as a demonstration of strength or power against a foe that was on the verge of defeat. — Shawn
    Hah! You've done your homework!

    There was, indeed, a fair and honest interaction in carrying out the ancient wars. Believe it or not, there were messengers who would rush to the enemy's camp to deliver the itinerary of the other army. The act of war was not played out using tricks and cunning. Instead, it's brute strength and perseverance. If your army had managed to reach the agreed upon venue, it was because your soldiers were fit and determined. Maybe you used some elephants to carry the goods. Maybe you carried enough food. Maybe you studied the terrain and avoided steep mountains in favor of long distance flats. Whatever it is, both camps never used the element of surprise to trap the enemy or catch them off-guard.
  • Is pregnancy is a disease?
    At the same time, I do not want to take such intelligence for granted. — Leontiskos
    This is actually a startling point.
    Because, yes!, there comes a time when our intelligence undergoes a "mutation". Here I meander to some wider perception. We might have actually already lost the ability to perceive the curvature of the earth (without the aid of a device). Some philosopher said that the reason for this is our insistence on having flatness, wide space, and no height, depth, and tall columns.
    I know, too much to unpack here and at the moment I cannot fully explain this idea.
  • Which theory of time is the most evidence-based?
    I have granted your wish! I have edited the original post to include a poll. — Truth Seeker
    Thank you, Master. Now I have two more!
  • Is pregnancy is a disease?
    I am to argue here that despite the merits of the aforementioned arguments, pregnancy should not be classified as a disease. — Jussi Tennilä

    The problem with calling pregnancy a disease is that the word has a negative connotation. Unless we're willing to accept a societal standard that pregnancy is something to be avoided, we can't use a word that indicates it is. — Hanover

    I'm glad that there is some room to argue and try to make sense of the question.

    The act of analogizing a pregnancy with a disease -- which actually, on paper, looks persuasive -- is similar to the act of analogizing going-through-puberty with mental illness. Both phases of life present a condition that could be called suffering within the afflicted person. (Let's not forget that a woman who is growing a baby in the womb would have to sacrifice a lot of her calcium deposits in her bones and teeth because that is the source of the baby's development).

    But we would be horrified in believing that the body of a pregnant woman is undergoing an intense beating, the way we would be horrified at saying that the growing pubertal teen's mind is inhabited by a demon (unless of course they are mentally ill).

    I'm just content that the human lexicon is intelligent. And by intelligent, I mean that there is no actual confusion in what we mean. What we have, instead, in moments like this OP, is the ability to entertain a foreign object that has managed to invade our organically grown knowledge.
  • Which theory of time is the most evidence-based?
    Eternalism/Block Universe Theory: This theory suggests that all moments in time, past, present, and future, exist simultaneously. Time is viewed as a sort of block, where every event that has ever occurred or will occur already exists, similar to how all the frames of a movie exist on a film strip. — Truth Seeker
    I would say the present and future exist simultaneously or rather, the future is necessarily co-existing with the present. And this is evidenced by certain conditions in the universe that must-exist-in-order-for-the-present to exist but which also would require some time in the future to decay, thereby ensuring that some future will exist also. The law of mass conservation ensures the future, for example.

    I wish you've created a poll in your OP.
  • Wittgenstein and How it Elicits Asshole Tendencies.
    I would think a philosophical position would be more than simply having the acceptance of one's social circle.. — schopenhauer1
    The philosophers write for those who already have faith in philosophy. Peer reviews, , publications in books, journals and pamphlets (the old-fashioned ways). The one that could be in a position to critique another's theory or hypothesis is no other than the philosopher himself.

    Remember the BROADSHEET? It was purported that Descartes plastered one on the door of the apartment of one of his academic colleagues. (I'm not sure if I'm remembering it correctly that it was Descartes).

    So yeah, I mean, thankfully for sites like this, we can participate in this philosophy circle if we have the interest strong enough to do justice to the writings of the masters.
  • Wittgenstein and How it Elicits Asshole Tendencies.
    I think it's arguable that material (whatever that material might have been thought to fundamentally be) was generally, and largely still is, understood to be the fundamental stuff that constitutes what exists. Think of Aristotle's hylomorphism. — Janus
    And how does that fix the view of realism? Or naive realism? They could be realists who don't believe in the tangible quality of ultimate reality.
  • Wittgenstein and How it Elicits Asshole Tendencies.
    ↪Janus
    Materialism or non-physicalism has no bearing in their view of the stuff.
  • Is Intercessory Prayer Egotistical?
    And yes prayer can be a reason for things being different, because ultimately God decides the fate of a person based on the goodness of her soul. — Johnnie
    Not true. Sometimes, those who are wicked are shown the right way, too. And forgiven.
  • Wittgenstein and How it Elicits Asshole Tendencies.
    It seems that, by and large, the ancient and medieval philosophers were naive realists even if they believed in the reality of a higher realm. This is arguably because, before the modern sciences of optics and visual perception, the eyes were thought to be the 'windows' through which the soul looked out onto the world, so there would have been no notion of "distortion" which may be posited in relation to the senses as they are now understood. — Janus
    So it seems that no one in the forum is retaining anything at all. Have no one discussed the presocratics? They were the first to point out the "stuff" which makes up reality. Not the trees, not the animals, not the planets -- but "stuff".
  • Is Intercessory Prayer Egotistical?
    For instance, suppose I’m scheduled for some medical operation and someone says “I’ll pray that you get well quickly.” Nice. But prayer is asking God for something. Do they mean to say that God had decided I would recover slowly but, because THEY are asking, God will speed up my recovery? Do they think they are that important? Isn’t that egotism? — Art48
    You're not understanding it.
    A prayer is asking for a pity. Who asks for a pittance? The lowly humans. This is their way of showing humility. As in, I am no one in this world who is asking for a pity that all goes well with [insert name here]'s condition.

    No one asks a king (the highest command in the land of humans) for a pity -- humans ask a king for mercy. Know the difference.
  • Wittgenstein and How it Elicits Asshole Tendencies.
    ↪schopenhauer1
    :lol:
  • Wittgenstein and How it Elicits Asshole Tendencies.
    I say this too because I notice a tendency whereby when you question Wittgenstein's ideas, the only answer that seems to be legitimate to the majority who jump on these threads is to quote another line from Wittgenstein.. As if you cannot refute Wittgenstein, you can only have varying levels of understanding of Wittgenstein. — schopenhauer1

    It is HOW specifically Wittgenstein is often employed. — schopenhauer1
    Have you tried to make a poll on how many here actually understands the writings of Wittgenstein?
  • Wittgenstein and How it Elicits Asshole Tendencies.
    If you're not into analytics, and find it unimportant in making a view in philosophy, then Wittgenstein's is not the proper philosophy for your purpose. I have not used Wittgenstein in any of my ideas in a long time. I have increasingly sympathized with Aristotle -- back to basics. Back to our origin. It's okay to use ordinary language (here it is Wittgenstein) in explaining the world.
  • Our Idols Have Feet of Clay
    You could easily look up that the first piece of writing in Greek predates the first in Chinese by some 200 years.
    Farming villages are not enough to establish "civilisation".     — Lionino
    Your argument is still deficient. Not just farming, but look into written history.

    China did not unify ahead of other civilized societies -- but theirs are considered one of the oldest civilizations, if not the oldest.
  • Information and Randomness
    The random nature of the 'quantum leap' is what caused Einstein to say that he doesn't believe God plays dice. He always maintained that quantum theory must be incomplete, as a consequence of this and other aspects of it, but I think subsequent discoveries have not favoured his objections. — Wayfarer

    I think the popular idea is that the elementary particles are lurking in a kind of fuzzy cloud, awaiting measurement; when in reality, they have no definite location, and therefore no definite existence, until they’re measured. Until then there are only degrees of probability, there are not definite particles in the realistic sense generally understood. — Wayfarer
    You seem to agree with that idea because you, like others, think that each existence is self-contained or self-supporting. That each unit of reality is in itself responsible for its being. And we know that's not how the universe works. The Schrodinger's thought experiment of a cat in a box with all the other components is a way to convey this idea -- the cat is not just a cat in itself: there is an idea that we're trying to judge. Is it dead or alive? And we can't answer that question by naively saying it's breathing or not breathing. We have to take into consideration whether there is radioactivity, and if there is does it break the flask containing the poison which then kills the cat.

    The big bang was not witnessed in itself -- it was theorized.

    The expansion of the universe was observed not by actually seeing the edges expanding. But by observing the increasing distance of the other galaxies.


    You're just focusing on different aspects of the Uncertainty problem. ↪Benj96
    seems to be assuming that the world itself is fundamentally stochastic, while ↪L'éléphant
    seems to be saying that the uncertainty is an observer problem. In truth, the answer to the "troubling" emotion caused by the random appearance of quantum phenomena may be to do as the quantum pioneers did : accept the inherent limitations of both observer and object.     — Gnomon
    That's fair. To me the concept of "random" is similar to the concept of "nothing" if we really want to get to the reality. The nothing was a filler of a gap in our observation. But, as I have said before, there has always been something: when theorists talk about the beginning of the universe, they really don't mean "from nothing".
  • Thomas Hobbe's Social Contract
    Again, I am just looking for a specific country that is a good example of his theory. — Fermin
    All countries have the social contract. It's in the name "country". Look up the definition.
    Unincorporated nations no longer exist.
  • Information and Randomness
    The appearance of randomness is created by the system which analyzes, it is not a feature of the thing being analyzed. That the analyzing system does not apprehend the patterns being searched for and produces the conclusion of "random", is an indication that the system is not properly formulated for the application it is put to. — Metaphysician Undercover
    I couldn't have said it better.
    Randomness is not a feature of the thing being analyzed.
  • Our Idols Have Feet of Clay
    People are often under the impression that China is this super old civilisation like Egypt and Babylon but in fact it is barely younger than Greece. — Lionino
    Sources, please.
  • Who is morally culpable?
    In a way, everything is pointless. — Truth Seeker
    This is a very human thing to say.

    The universe does not have a "point". Existence is a given. We don't question the given, only our place in the universe. And even that question is a narcissistic notion. I say, live for the arts, the appreciation of beauty.
  • Information and Randomness
    I don't believe all information in the universe is predictable because of heisenbergs uncertainty principle. Sure 99% of things can be non random but even if the fundamental 1% is that throws a huge spanner in the works — Benj96

    I don't agree with the use of random here. Stochastic phenomena are just simply not precise (this is the word I was looking for) as an analysis. Commonly, (and I say erroneously) it is the precision upon which we judge whether something is random, or in the case of Heisenberg, uncertain. But to further judge a phenomena as undetermined is really troubling.

    If randomness is born from the very fundamentals of physics (which quantum physics seems to suggest), then even if everything from that point onwards is deterministic, explicable and predictable, the underlying origin is still random and unpredictable.

    In that case randomness would appear to trump the determined and explicable, the patterned. If we cannot know exactly where particles will appear or annihilate but only give a statistical wave function of the distribution of possible locations, that would entail a trickle up effect of integral chaos within the system.     — Benj96
    No. No one says that "random" (here I am speaking your language) occurrences are unanalyzable. The difficulty we face is with precision. All data are analyzable, but not all data can be analyzed with precision. That is the difference.
  • “That’s not an argument”
    I’m a volatile one, I admit. — Mikie

    Great! Know thyself.
  • “That’s not an argument”
    I mean, I did add that winking emoji. — Mikie

    Hah! With you, nothing is certain even with the emoji. Just so you know.
  • Information and Randomness
    ↪Benj96


    Here is a short passage:

    How does the atmosphere rotate with the Earth?

    Robert Matthews

    Asked by: Rod Lennox, Colchester

    Bound to the Earth by gravity, most of the atmosphere spins along with it as a result of friction with the ground and the viscosity or ‘stickiness’ of the different layers of air above it.

    Above 200km, however, the incredibly thin atmosphere actually spins faster than the Earth. The cause of this bizarre ‘super-rotation’ effect remains unclear, but has also been detected on Venus.
  • “That’s not an argument”
    Just fucking with you. — Mikie
    Fair enough.

    Sorry. I missed it. I was busy in another thread trying to appease the random followers.
  • Information and Randomness
    The sun rising is not an atmospheric stability nor climate stability phenomenon. Let's not conflate the cosmological with local planetary climate trends. — Benj96
    Again you missed.

    I said, "examples such as". My next statement is a generalization of the way that videos like this develops. I'll explain to you the misuse of randomness: We argue in favor of randomness whenever there is a phenomena that goes out of order, unexpected, or out of place. Randomness has become the crutch for anything that falls outside of intelligibility. Instead of just saying unintelligible, we say random. You know why we say it? Because we don't like to think that everything has an explanation, that everything has an origin. Ultimately we don't like to think that there's always something, rather than nothing. There was never a point in the universe, that the nothing existed. This is what is hard to comprehend.
  • “That’s not an argument”
    Sorry, but simply saying there is nothing wrong with it is not an argument. — Mikie
    Lol. I was making an opinion, not an argument. Taste is always an opinion, and everyone is entitled to one. :wink:
  • To what jazz, classical, or folk music are you listening?
    You may enjoy Rob Amster. — AmadeusD

    Thanks. This is what I could find that's co-written by Rob Amster. Yes, I like listening to that bass. I couldn't find just the instrumental.

  • To what jazz, classical, or folk music are you listening?
    Here's the video of that upright bass with Adam Ben Ezra. Awesome!!

  • “That’s not an argument”
    I see a pattern among members who aren’t that bright but who want to sound bright: claim everything is a “fallacy,” and use the phrase “That isn’t an argument” — like a magic wand, just wave it over anything you don’t like, can’t understand, or can’t engage with. — Mikie
    There is nothing wrong with pointing out a fallacy or saying "that's not an argument" so long as they at least offer an explanation for their comments.

    But I sometimes would call out a post and drop something like that (and not provide the reason for my comment) -- but this is only because I know that poster is smart enough to get my point.
  • Information and Randomness
    Interesting. What is characteristic of my topics? I'll admit perhaps I jumped the gun on this one but I was captivated by veritasiums video on the notion and wished to share it here.

    Please see reference link     — Benj96
    Sorry, I tried watching it. But the minute I heard the word "random" I lost interest. They were talking about examples such as the sun rising. Randomness is not the opposite of atmospheric stability or climate stability.

    I think as a community of philosophy, we've become lazy and throw here and there clichés like "randomness" and "predetermined".

    As to the characteristic of your OP -- normally they were thoughtful. Not this one.
  • Are there things that aren’t immoral but you shouldn’t want to be the kind of person that does them?
    The moral good and bad is supposed to transcend all differences of social context. — Metaphysician Undercover
    :100:
  • To what jazz, classical, or folk music are you listening?
    Listening to an upright bass.

    maxresdefault.jpg
  • Member Picture Thread
    :grin:
  • Are there things that aren’t immoral but you shouldn’t want to be the kind of person that does them?
    Ah, well. There are millions. Millions of things make me uncomfortable, and I'd rather not be the kind of person who did them because that would be, on my account, shameful or embarrassing. These extend to no one else, even in cases that would effect someone else, attitudinally speaking. I don't want to be that person, regardless of who is effected. — AmadeusD
    I second this.

    There are actions that aren't considered immoral, but I wouldn't be that person. Rudeness is not illegal or immoral, but I wouldn't do that face to face with people.

    There are other more grievous actions that I know of. I say, no thanks.
  • Is the Pope to rule America?
    I am out of time but want to say all this is very complex and it is my hope when have a good understanding of the complexity, we will gain power and avoid disaster. A lot is going on here beginning with evolution gave us some thinking power but enough to manage without a strong way to work together. — Athena

    Sis, it is not an emergency. There are always enough competing selfish interests to balance things out.
  • Economics: Transformation Risk
    deleted post.
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