I do fear divine judgement — Wayfarer

Really? Why?

Speculating: I think some theists believe they have read all the right philosophy and theology and have many of the answers and that modern secular culture is debased and decadent. They're probably angry about the state of the world, and when they encounter people with views they've identified as the cause of contemporary troubles, they lash out. — Tom Storm

I hadn't thought of that. That makes me feel sympathy.

I was thinking the same thing: will and counter will.

That would be a friendly sort of discussion though. I was responding to this:

We see this happen here all the time, as people are often accused of bad faith because dogmatic atheists and theists tend to perceive persecution, ill intent or hostility in any form of dissent. — Tom Storm

Why would a religious person enter into a discussion on a philosophy forum and become angry and insulting? I don't think it's to bounce ideas around. In Jungian terms, it's some kind of complex: a tangle of jagged emotions. There's probably a brewing crisis of faith, looking out at humanity wondering how to make sense of it. Just speculating.

isn't it a bit rich for theists to seek out a place where there will be a lot of atheists, then complain that there are too many atheists?

Just plain rude. — Banno

:lol:

Yep, I think I did.

but something seemed off about it. — Hanover

that was pornography

Plumbers, for example, I saw were over 95% male. There are instances where women just don't want the jobs. — Hanover

Who in their right mind would want to be a plumber?

For the UK and the USA, the alternative to religious freedom was having communities tear themselves apart in sectarian violence, so it was a matter of cultural survival. Not all communities have that problem. Is religious freedom really a core principle? Or just attached to the economic/political agenda?

So even the “succession” of object-object time isn’t as fixed as it seems. It raises fascinating questions about whether time is a fundamental feature of the universe or a mental construct tied to consciousness — Areeb Salim

Again, how do we sync our actions if time is a product of consciousness? Maybe we're telepathic?

I guess they overlap.

Will:

the faculty by which a person decides on and initiates action.
"she has an iron will"

control deliberately exerted to do something or to restrain one's own impulses.
"a stupendous effort of will"

a deliberate or fixed desire or intention.
"Jane had not wanted them to stay against their will"

the thing that one desires or ordains.
"the disaster was God's will" — google dictionary

We see this happen here all the time, as people are often accused of bad faith because dogmatic atheists and theists tend to perceive persecution, ill intent or hostility in any form of dissent. — Tom Storm

Maybe religious people seek out environments where they can argue with atheists to help exorcise their own faithless demons?

AI says thank you

I think willing comes from a worldview where there's God's will. It's just an animating force that causes everything. If you have your own will, that's kind of precarious because your will might be in conflict with God's will. This would show up in battles such as the ones involving Joan of Arc. It happened that the opposition started wondering if they were fighting against God's will, so they quit. The devil is an image of primal defiance to God's will, so Christianity can have this very passive, accepting, loving vibe. In Fear and Trembling, Abraham is held up as an image of a person whose will is entirely fused with God's will. It's kind of terrifying.

Anyway, this sort of thinking was challenged by Aquinas. He suggested that the universe is like a clock set in motion by God, but that God doesn't tend to every little thing that happens. This helped start Europe on the trail of deleting divine will from their thinking. The idea of God's will survived, but in a more dubious form, for instance if someone says the death of a neighbor was God's will, some might be comforted, some might think God is an asshole.

With the deletion of God's will from physics, the idea of a deterministic world emerged, but people kept all the wondrous supernatural things formerly attributed to God for themselves. We're willful and creative. In fact, these are things that some people greatly admire. This is a central theme in Nietzsche's stuff.

I guess the outcome is that human will is supernatural at the edges, it is specifically about making things happen, and it's potentially cause for alarm (although as I mentioned, being fused with God is not all rainbows either.)

The Lathe of Heaven -- Ursula Le Guin

The passage of psychological time is the same for all of them. — MoK

They sync because they're listening to the same music. They're experiencing time.

However, it's a big topic and as you say, peripheral to this thread, so we might leave it there. — Banno

:up: :up:

Most attacks on women happen where there are no witnesses. In public places there are CCTV cameras everywhere.

Now you have sources if you want to learn — Leontiskos

Thanks, but I'm ignoring both you and @Count Timothy von Icarus from now on.

Aristotelian substance is about independence. Essence is about what makes a thing that thing.

That's in conflict with the little I've read about Aristotle, but ok.

I don't know a lot about Aristotle, but I've gathered that talking to him would be more like talking to a scientist than a philosopher in the contemporary sense. He lived in what some call the "age of essence." So he would just assume that the essences of things are available to us and we talk about them. I think he was foundationless about that? Is that true?

Good. Ignore it then.
— frank
I can't — Harry Hindu

Might be worth taking a long walk and contemplating why.

No, Kripke is driven to a "skeptical solution" (his term) which learns to live with the paradox, as opposed to a "straight solution" which dissolves the paradox. — Count Timothy von Icarus

How would you describe that solution?

The rule following argument is an argument from underdetermination. — Count Timothy von Icarus

You seemed to think the conclusion of his argument is skepticism. In fact, it's just a question: if meaning doesn't come from rule following, where does it come from? He has his own answer. If you noticed in his essay, he encourages professors to offer this question to their students as a vehicle for contemplating the private language argument and how it impacts all historic rule following.

My other point was that Wittgenstein and Kripke both come from a tradition deeply shaped by Hume. — Count Timothy von Icarus

True, in large part their philosophical world developed out of a reaction against British empiricism.

Have there been no advances in philosophy or logic in the last few hundred years? — Banno

We live in a very different world. They didn't even have the number zero.

Yes, that's the idea behind equipollence. Phyrronean skepticism relies on a sort of underdetermination and Hume is specifically riffing off this, although he takes it in the direction of hedonism instead of seeking ataraxia. They aren't just similar, they're directly historically related.

The empirical tradition begins in ancient skepticism (where it gets its name). That the modern reformulation tends towards skepticism is not surprising. — Count Timothy von Icarus

None of this has anything to do with Wittgenstein or Kripke.

True, Kripkenstein doesn't say language isn't meaningful. They're just saying meaning can't come down to rule following.

Yes, I know. My questions remain. — Leontiskos

:meh:

not? And is "truth-apt" the same as "correct"? Janus said it could be correct, not that it could be truth-apt. — Leontiskos

Truth aptness is just about whether P can be true or false.

The rain is colorblind.

The above statement is not truth apt because it doesn't make any sense.

The rain is drizzling.

The above statement is truth apt, because it can be true or false. Once we verify it, we'll know which it is. Let's say that for whatever reason, verification of this P is beyond our abilities. We would say it may be correct, but we can't verify.

There are those who deny that unverifiable P's are truth apt. This is related to their conception of truth as a social utensil.

I don't want it to be my business — Harry Hindu

Good. Ignore it then.

More candidly: If there is no way of determining whether something is correct then how could it be said to be correct? — Leontiskos

P's truth aptness isn't determined by whether we know a way to verify P.

I was just reading about Hegel and his situation with Napoleon. Hegel believed Napoleon was the World Soul, bringing in a new age. A lot of young Germans believed that. Hegel though he was watching the end of history. This is a fusion of esoteric wisdom and ancient apocalypticism. Instead of there being a second coming of Christ, it's Napoleon, advancing the principles of the French Revolution. Hegel eventually became disillusioned, but I was looking for whether he ever revised his philosophy to reflect the change. I don't think he did, and this isn't unusual for apocalypticists. If the vision isn't realized the way they thought, they often just put the date further into the future.

Hegel's experience with Napoleon wasn't an isolated thing. Across the world, from Russia to the USA, people were imagining that they were on the threshold of a new era, and if you think about it, they actually were. We could take Hegel's experience as an attempt to understand what was happening.

I think that with Marxism, the fever set in again, this time with the Proletariat animated by the World Soul to emancipate the world. It didn't happen the way they thought it would, but once again, people were thinking in terms of a massive shift in human life. In Russia, Marxists believed that even language would change as the new era emerged. There was a Russian poet who tried to write poetry in the "new" language. So I think the answer is yes: prior to disillusionment, German Marxists thought philosophy was basically done. The great metaphysical journey was finished.

Augustine is famous for taking the apocalypticism in Christianity and putting it in the category of myth: by myth, I don't mean something that's false exactly, just not to be taken entirely literally. I think with negative dialectics, Adorno was doing something similar.

If I identified as the reincarnated spirit of Elvis Presley and petitioned government to force people to refer to me as, "The King", to upgrade bathrooms toilets to thrones for the King, or that children must pray to the spirit of the King in school, would I be keeping my delusion to myself? — Harry Hindu

You mean like out on a street corner?

We already have laws in the books for discrimination and treating people equally. — Harry Hindu

Those laws protect trans people from discrimination based on their trans status. It's illegal to refuse employment or housing to trans people. Does that cause your head to explode?

Have you been consistent in informing atheists that there is room on the planet for Christians and the atheists should not squash the Christians? — Harry Hindu

Both Christians and atheists are protected by the first amendment. People can be as deluded as they want to be. It's none of your business.

The difference is that I'm consistent in my rejection of all delusions and those that want government to affirm their delusions. — Harry Hindu

For the most part, the support the LGBTQ community is getting is about capitalism. Companies want to virtue signal. And there's nothing anybody can do to stop them. Have you not received diversity education from your employer?

Ok. I think you're going a little too far, though. There's room on the planet for people who become trans. There's no reason to squash them. Just let them be. The woke bullshit will stabilize itself over time.

When you said "If a black man can get rich in America, it's not racist in the way that actually matters." I take that to mean "if a black man can get rich in America, it's not REAL racism. It's "racism", but it's not actually hurting anyone."

If you didn't mean that, what did you mean? — RogueAI

The racism that matters is stuff like red-lining. If a particular white person doesn't like blacks, but this doesn't impact my ability to own property, I don't see it as a kind of racism that makes any difference to me. People can think whatever they like.

Of course. Black women don't have it hard in this country cause Oprah! — RogueAI

I didn't comment on how hard life is for anyone. Everyone has challenges. Everyone has advantages. A lot of things come down to mindset.

"There's not a white man in this room who would change places with me, AND I'M RICH!" — RogueAI

If a black man can get rich in America, it's not racist in the way that actually matters. You're talking about the way people think. They can think whatever they like.

I'm agnostic on this question. But we can see how different answers to it will give rise to important differences in how we view the connection of mind and the world. — J

Wittgenstein pointed out that we can't know the answer, but he admitted that he couldn't resist being pulled back into questions like that. What's driving us to speculate?

It's about acquiring political power in the form of using people with mental disorders as political clubs against your political opponents. — Harry Hindu

Maybe, but there's nothing you can do about it.