Isn't it true that meaning persists over time and everything else that happens in the meantime is separate and distinct from what language itself has to convey? — Shawn

Since everything occurs in time, asking whether something occurs in time is superfluous. The question "does meaning persist over time" is the same question as "does meaning exist." Exist being to persist in the now.

That is, if meaning doesn't persist over time without identifying how long must transpire, there'd be a loss of meaning in the milliseconds after the words left your mouth. We don't need to go all the way back to Plato just to impose the element of time into the equation.

Suppose one night curled up in bed alone, at your darkest most despondent hour, you're visited by the Greek God Eros. She offers you one her greatest gifts - the ability to intuitively know of Love, what it is, where it lies and how it manifests. — Benj96

I realize we've concluded that Eros is a little boy, but in your rendition I am visited in my bedroom by some angelic goddess offering me love.

I so thought this was going to go in a different direction.

But to answer the question, I would choose to offer the world love and peace as I slipped into obscurity because I am all about helping others. My humility and compassion for others knows no bounds.

:chin:

This may well be the case. Just looking for a good account of fiction as a repository of 'truth'. Throughout this I've been mulling over that Camus' quote about fiction being the lie through which we tell the truth. — Tom Storm

I had actually considered Camus when I was considering examples of truth through fiction. He in particular presented his philosophy through fiction. I would think if you read his works and just took them as interesting (yet odd) tales of events unfolding, you'd have missed the better part of what he was trying to say.

I do not believe in any of this superstitious nonsense, but I do have a hamsa hanging in my kitchen window to keep out the evil eye. I do this because I'm not fucking crazy. I don't want no evil eye bullshit in my house.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamsa

Actually, I'm not making claims, I'm posing questions based on how I recall my experiences. You'll note I didn't say fiction does not teach us anything, I said I can't think of anything fiction has taught me. — Tom Storm

I thought you were suggesting that I extrapolate from your experience what you felt to be the limitation of fictional writings.

Not sure I was making an objection. I was asking a question. I am wondering what kinds of truth fiction holds. I am still unclear. — Tom Storm

As in my To Kill a Mockingbird example, it holds the truth of the destructiveness of racism. Does it not? We speak in hypotheticals all the time in order to make a point, none of which are actually true. Such is the substance of all thought experiments.

Take Searle's Chinese Room thought experiment, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room

Would it be necessary that there actually have been that experiment to have actually occurred for that to offer you any meaning or understanding?

Great lengths? Good heavens, I thought we were just having a conversation about one small aspect of how fiction works on the back of 'philosophy being fiction.' — Tom Storm

I didn't mean "great lengths" in some pejorative sense as if you were just droning on and on stubbornly refusing to budge. What I meant was that the claim that fiction holds no truth cannot be sustained without (it seems to me) rearranging what counts as knowledge and what provides a better understanding of the world.

It strikes me as a hyper-empiricist epistemological system where only through either direct observation or through a closely regulated non-fictional literalism (where only basic facts are shared) can knowledge be gained. The suggestion that there is this bright line between fiction and non-fiction really doesn't hold true, because the line between fiction and non-fiction grows more blurred the more interpretive or explanatory it becomes.

For example, I might describe how Rosa Parks refused the back of the bus, but to understand why it matters might require some greater contextualizing, which would open the possibility for presenting the plight in a fictional context to better understand the implications.

I'm not sure I would commit to calling such experiences truths as such. What they are, I can't say. Profound experiences? — Tom Storm

Racism being bad is either true or false. The empirical conclusions obtained by experience are either true or false. I'm not just referencing the emotional experience.

I guess where I was heading is that I can't think of anything new I have learned by reading fiction — Tom Storm

Assuming what you say is true (that fiction cannot teach new facts, but only reaffirm what is known), how does thar defeat your initial objection that fiction didn't hold truth?

You're just making claims about how learning occurs. Are you making a claim about how you specifically learn here or how everyone does?

In any event, I think you're going to great lengths to sustain a dubious claim about the information provided through fiction. To say that To Kill a Mockingbird gave you no new insight into the injustice of racism, but reading a true article about Rosa Parks (for example) did, seems a hard argument to make.

A bigger example is religious literature. It's why claims regarding their literal inaccuracies are insignificant to all except literalists.

It could in fact be true, for example, that not slaving away every day to build and create new things in our lives but to actually spend some time enjoying the fruits of our labor leads to a more fulfilled life.

Agree or disagree, but that might be true.

I can say it that way, or I can give you a tale about the world being created in 6 days, with the 7th set aside for rest, and then command you to keep it holy.

Truth through fiction.

Thanks. Is dramatising an issue what makes fiction successful in telling truths? — Tom Storm

Parables and fables are specifically designed for the purpose of providing truths. But the same can be said of more extensive works. And that holds not just for literature, but other forms of art.

And greater truths can derived from reality, as in the sort of truth and the prundity of meaning you may receive from experiencing a great success, failure, attending a funeral, a wedding, a childbirth, or seeing a sunrise.

If the world is imbued with meaning, no matter where you look, meaning well beyond the literal recitation of the facts can be found.

But this is the question of whether the meaning is in the thing or whether we're just programmed to find meaning where there is none.

It is true that we don't stare at castles and see random clouds, but we do stare at random clouds and see castles. That might be enough for some to deny the deeper meaning is real, but only projected, but I go with the opposite: that the deeper meaning is there in everything, available to be discovered if we only look hard enough.

, but for you what is the specific truth it holds — Tom Storm

Racism bad.

What kind of truth do we encounter in fiction - do you have an example? — Tom Storm

To Kill a Mockingbird, for example.

Unlike poetry, which expresses heightened feelings and ideas through rigorous play with ambiguities, philosophy strives for clarity and precision in non-fallacious expressions of aporia or ideas; and yet like poetry, philosophy is not propositional (i.e. does not make empirical or formal claims) but instead is, IME, reflectively performative – in sum, consisting of proposals (e.g. suppositions, norms, interpretations, distinctions, criteria, etc). — 180 Proof

This better describes what analytical philosophy in particular aspires to achieve, but not necessarily continental philosophy.

To the point though, philosophy strives to achieve truth, which can be revealed in all sorts of ways, not excluding through openly fictional writings.

I was actually recruited here by an international search committee to provide insight and hope for a troubled world. I've not disappointed.

I would argue that North Korea has very different reasons for banning western media. The US is not banning specific messages, it's banning a specific platform. — Echarmion

There are a number of concerns about TikTok that do make it different (like concerns that is being used to track user's locations and invade their privacy), but some are the same.

From https://www.npr.org/2022/11/17/1137155540/fbi-tiktok-national-security-concerns-china:

"They also worried about potential abuses of TikTok's algorithm, and specifically that it could "be used to subtly indoctrinate American citizens" by censoring some videos and promoting others."

This is to say they don't want the Chinese government to have the right to speak to American citizens in it own terms, which is to specifically declare that some sorts of speech cannot be spoken for the danger it imposes. And I think most would agree that we shouldn't allow our free speech rights the power to destroy us (the idea that the US Constitution is not a suicide pact) by allowing foreign governments to distribute their propaganda on US citizens. I compare this modern Tik Tok issue to the days when enemy propaganda leaflets would be dropped from airplanes.

But to say that we're blocking speech due to the message it imposes directly conflicts with the notion that we should allow everyone to speak freely because eventually truth will prevail.

There's also a new enemy of free speech, that works in an entirely different way: the targeted lie. We're now able to handcraft lies for the people most likely to believe them. The liar is no longer obligated to keep their story straight. They can sell a dozen different stories to different people. — Echarmion

I think that's right, which is the result of greater access to mass media, now that everyone has a computer and can post. When mass media was in the hands of the very few, there was more of an agreement to abide by journalistic ethics, which were emphasized to those studying to become journalists, to now that no longer being the agreement.

Twitter has shown that the DNC and Biden Campaign were given control of the message to disseminate, which is no different than when we learned that Sean Hannity of FoxNews was directly communicating with the Trump campaign and offering advice to them during the Capitol riot. The distinction between journalism and marketing is now forever blurred.

This brings this issue back up: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/15/1142828852/tiktok-senate-federal-ban-state-agency-governors

The US government getting involved in the suppression of free speech from TikTok on the grounds it is being used maliciously by the Chinese.

Is this not logically equivalent to the North Koreas banning Western media, with the only distinction that we trust our governments to ban but not other ones?

Is the rule that US citizens have a right to hear only from those designated safe?

They are counterexamples to your comments about "religion." This means your criticisms are not of religion but of particular religions.

23% of believers in God don't subscribe to the tenants of a particular religious doctrine, meaning we have millions of unaffiliated theists that avoid your silly criticisms.
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2018/04/25/when-americans-say-they-believe-in-god-what-do-they-mean/

You just hold firm to your untenable position that theism is a monolithic, unnuanced belief system. It's just factually incorrect.

Of the extant major world religions, I don't know of one which is not. Which religion do you mean? — 180 Proof

For example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_Judaism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarianism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism

This should get us started.

Well I think finding one's own meaning in one's life is the proper use of one's life. Religion, no matter how its personalistic, is always, in essence, totalitarian – often infantilizing – with it's ready-made, handed down from on high, canonical "meanings". — 180 Proof

Alright, so you stand opposed to the totalitarian, infantalizing, ready-made religions. What about those that are not?

None of those pretend to be scientific, but are just people, like you, offering their opinions.

The Islamic theocracy in Iran continues to demonstrate its willingness to murder its own citizens to protect the theocracy they impose on their population.
I don't blame all muslims or all the tenets of Islam, for the actions of the nefarious group in power in Iran. I merely cite their actions as an example of what those who manipulate theism and theists can achieve. I know that there are counter claims from theists about the nefarious actions to be found in secular governments. We need to have sufficient checks and balances against all manipulations of human primal fears, theistic, political and social. — universeness

You stand opposed to state sponsored murder as a means of population control, you don't blame the average citizen for the acts of their brutal government, and you also stand opposed to secular governments that do evil?

What is your stance on mothers and puppies? Are you in favor of those?

Based upon the controversial statements you made about evil, I bet you stand in favor of good things. I just bet you do.

I cannot imagine that I am the first person who has introduced you to the idea that all theism is fear based. It's an ancient posit. — universeness

And yet you offer no cite to this ancient doctrine and ignore all the cites set forth in the Wiki article specifically on the point of psychology of religion. Again, you're making a generalized empirical claim regarding the cause of religiosity and going so far as to say there is no nuance among individuals, but that each and every religious person is there from fear alone.

Everyone at the services I attend seem pretty chill, but maybe they're scared shitless and I don't know it.

I must have missed the lines in my bible "In the beginning was the unknowable" or "The unknowable alone is Holy", etc. — 180 Proof

I've never come from a position of literalism, nor from a position that the Bible is the revealed word of God. Are we really again going to trot out the attacks on the fundamentalists?

If you're interested in specific biblical theologies regarding the unknowability of God, take a look at Rambam's 3rd Article of Faith as it relates to the inability to compare God to anything, therefore making him unknowable. https://web.oru.edu/current_students/class_pages/grtheo/mmankins/drbyhmpg_files/GBIB766RabbLit/Chapter9Maimonides13Princ/index.html and https://aish.com/48942416/.

This response is not to suggest any specific accuracy in the Bible, but to respond to your suggestion that the Bible has not been interpreted as you've indicated. The unknowability of God is part of the biblical tradition.

I am also aware of the first line of John which has always been cryptic to me which states that "In the beginning was the word," with "the word" being a translation of the Greek "logos" which references simply order or meaning, making it vague at best.

This is consistent with probably the best translation of the first lines of the Hebrew bible (coming from Professor Richard Friedman): "In the beginning of God's creating the skies and the earth - when the earth had been shapeless and formless, and darkness was on the face of the deep, and God's spirit was hovering on the face of the water, God said "let there be light,."

This again describes God as an organizing force of a pre-existent universe. Again, not a terribly clear notion, and I think consistent with the unknowable.

And of course the Trinity, which the Catholic Church declares an eternal mystery, some suggesting that expressing an understanding of it is heresy.

At any rate, I'm not sure what you want to discuss, the OP as it relates to the failure of Christianity to blossom in the East, whether religious people believe only to find refuge from their fear, to discuss how you've interpreted your Bible versus how others have, or to suggest that science has empirically provable cosmological claims and that's what separates it from religion.

To the extent it matters, I've noted that the use of religious texts to determine facts about the physical world is not a useful endeavor. Finding meaning in one's life, for me, is the proper use of religion. I don't know how you use science for that, but if you do, good for you. But, to the extent you want to argue literalism, that's not interesting.

That just reads like sour grapes on your part. I know you cannot provide me with 'proof.' I only require more convincing/compelling claims than those you have attempted so far. My 'assumption,' is supported by your own words: — universeness

Sour grapes refers to the development of a negative attitude due to an inability to obtain something actually desired. You can feel free to read the parable.

My reference to the stupidity of the current line of discussion doesn't relate to my inability to obtain the delicious grapes you offer (whatever that inapt metaphor might mean here), but upon the idea that you throw out an amateurish, baseless, speculative, uninformed, and entirely unscientific theory and then you seek disproof, as if that's where the onus lies.

If you think the primary driver of religious belief is fear, then perhaps do some research on that subject and show me your studies. It would seem that if you advocate for a scientific perspective, you'd rely upon science for your claims. Here's a place you might want to get started: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology_of_religion

I would rather read your viewpoints rather than those of 'William James.' — universeness

What you'd rather do is drone on about some theory you arrived at while sitting in your recliner petting your cat and not be burdened by the extensive discussion that preceded your thinking about it. If we can't get beyond the question of whether you have randomly hit the nail on the head when you declared religiosity only arises as a byproduct of fear, it seems we're years away from advancing anywhere close to the current state of the debate to where something interesting might be revealed.

I appreciate that but I reject it, as you have not convinced me that your faith is not fear based. — universeness

Yeah, but this is where the conversation unfortunately gets stupid, with you positing a baseless theory and then awaiting disproof of it.

You're not asking for a justification for faith. You're asking for me to disprove your false assumption that I have a need to cure my anxiety that you don't, and then I'm supposed to take that seriously, and then I'm to convince you that your random speculation is false.

There are pragmatic bases for faith, and I have brought them up in prior posts. You can take a look at William James' "A Will to Believe" if you'd like. There is something there worthy of philosophical debate there, unlike here.

I think it does, under the wise suggestion of 'be prepared!'
It's your primal fear of the 'alpha male.' Your world is not under collapse only if you comply with what you perceive sustains it and part of that IS your faith that the 'alpha,' has your best interests at heart. — universeness

I don't find this psychoanalysis at all useful. It's based upon knowing close to nothing about me, your having no expertise in the matter, confirmation bias, and projection. It's just your way of saying you don't think religious views are rational, so there must be an emotional component, and that emotion must be fear. All I can tell you is that you're wrong as it applies to me.

Why do you thin god created the dinosaurs of the many many creatures that existed before homo sapiens? — universeness

To believe there is a purpose for everything but to not know the ultimate purpose is no more fatal to that position than is it to believe that everything has a cause but to not know what that first cause was.

I don't deny there was a big bang that represents the first cause, but I do deny there is true coherence to the theory that there can be a first cause when the scientific method requires that all events have causes. This is simply to say that inability to offer fully coherent theories of cosmology from either a religious or scientific view are necessarily going to be lacking.

When you are really scared, do you ask your religious beliefs to help you? — universeness

That's the whole "there are no atheists in foxholes" thing. I don't know that I fall back on religion when things go bad as much as I try to figure out a way to make things better. But sure, I might resort to reliance upon religious views to sustain me should my world begin to collapse, but that hardly explains why I would hold religious views when my world is not under collapse.

There are no religious scriptural references to events from the Proterozoic up until way past the time of the first Homenids. God is a very recent invention. — universeness

And there is no literature indicating that people loved one another during those periods, so we must assume the lack of written documentation means love is a new invention. Or maybe writing was a new invention. That's option B. Or maybe there was writing to that effect, but those writings have been lost to time. That's option C. Or maybe primitive peoples didn't use writing to preserve the historical record. That's option D. Or maybe all of the above. That's option E.

Science offers an unbias search for truth imo. Religion offers comfort to help to sate primal human fear. — universeness

It depends upon the person and the religion. My religious views aren't in place as an anxiety medication that you happen not to need.

I personally don't use my religion to answer questions about how the world physically works. I've candidly not ever turned to my religious leaders to figure out how to start repair my car, build a house, to cure me of an illness, or of any other scientific inquiry.

If not for the fundamentalists that provide an easy target for atheists to ridicule for their insistence that world was created in 6 days only for it to be flooded and annihilated of all life but for those animals protected on the Ark, we'd not have to continuously have these conversations about how religion is in battle with science.

Quite right! Religion has always just assumed – canonized – "objective reality", which is its most profound failing. — 180 Proof

It's not a failing. It's an admission that the foundational elements of reality are unknowable, and you either start with Cartesian doubt that ultimately leads to solipsism, or you accept something as being an objective reality that is knowable, as opposed to noumenal.

It has failed to find objective reality, as the OP makes clear. — Art48

Religion doesn't empirically "find," to be sure, but it does assert objectives truths. This is unlike science which does not assert objective truth. The concept of a non-relativistic reality is incoherent in a scientific model.

a Christian forum I frequent, the question was raised as to why Christianity has failed to spread across India and further Eastward. Here is my answer.

Gordon,

What you describe as “The abject failure of Christianity to break into India, expand, and continue Eastward” can be explained by comparison with the spectacular expansion of Western science throughout the world. Science offers objective truth; religion offers comforting fictions. — Art48

Your response is inadequate. The question was not why religion never found its way to India, but why Christianity didn't. If religion had not found its way to India (which is a false hypothetical), I suppose you could speculate that it was because science offered adequate explanation.

The problem is that there is religion in India, so the reason they've not accepted Christianity but they have accepted Hindu has nothing to do with science.

It's like asking why the Saudis reject Christianity. It's certainly not because they have found science and secular humanism satisfactory.

I came upon this in a very different context, but it struck me as applicable:

The real struggle is not between East and West, or capitalism and communism, but between education and propaganda.
Martin Buber

His using education as the antonym to propoganda is clarifying. The absolutist free speech we demand appears in academic settings where there is a bona fide effort at extending our education, but maybe less so elsewhere.

I agree with @Shawn. It seems the OP is equating schizophrenia with doubt and then saying Descartes and those that followed him were anti-schizophrenic because they tried to resolve that doubt.

Schizophrenia isn't describable as a disorder that causes great doubt. It's a complex psychiatric disorder, where there may be varying degrees of hallucinations and paranoia, some of which the person may know aren't real.

Descartes' demon wasn't the creation of paranoid schizophrenic. He didn't run helplessly in fear of pursuit. He didn't wear a tin foil hat or look beneath his bed for demons. It was a thought experiment.

If it is the case that 'people' are prone to being convinced to do bad things by speech acts, even when those speech acts are well countered by contrary voices, then I'm struggling to see how these same people can be convinced to use censorship in a socially responsible way.

...Oh, hang on... I get it. The people doing the censorship are just better people because they're probably middle class and have a university degree... Yep, all makes sense now. As you were... — Isaac

The comments I'm making aren't controversial. The reason marketing and advertising work is because it's possible to convince people to do things they otherwise wouldn't. A course in advertising would not entail just telling the students to tell the truth because it is truth that convinces.

The US prohibits governmental censorship, so the role of the censor falls upon the free market, and it censors extensively. Right now the right is up in arms because it is learning Twitter did as the DNC asked it. Previously the left was up in arms when it learned that Hannity had a direct line to Trump's campaign staff. The news we get is the news they decide to tell us for whatever ulterior motive might exist.

The question is who you trust with the responsibility of correctly informing the citizens. Is it the government, the middle class with degrees, or whoever has the most power to control the private press, whether that be the gizzilionaire who can purchase the outlet outright, the former president, the current president's campaign leaders, or whoever else might be able to win the political battle to control it?

If you suggest average Joe has any ability to be meaningfully heard without concern of some sort of censorship from some authority regardless of what he says, that's never been the case. There are things I cannot say here, on Twitter, on Facebook, or pretty much anywhere that will not result in a rebuke from the market. And when I say "rebuke," I don't mean they'll just embarrass me with the truth of what they said and leave my position in shambles, but they will cancel me. My job, my reputation, and whatever else they can damage, they will. It is not just about winning the war of ideas. It is about winning a political battle and who controls what.

It's not as Mill suggests, nor which you seem to want to adopt, which is that society sits at an academic table and debates ideas, with all concurring when the truth is said, and through this point/counter-point, the truth emerges and from that truth another truth then emerges. If it were, I'd agree that only those fearful of the truth of their position would try to gag other members at this hypothetical table.

The force of one's position and what causes its acceptance is not truth. If it were, we'd not be having this debate.

I say criticism, and you immediately think of racism? — Tzeentch

I offered a counter-example to your specious claim that it is only those fearful of the validity of their claims who wish to suppress their opponents. As if the reason I don't want racist speech on Twitter is because I'm secretly fearful that the racists are correct.

The ability to persuade someone does not hinge upon the veracity of the statements, as if we live in world where justice always prevails. History is replete with examples of bad people convincing people to do bad things.

To the extent we can reduce the impact of those who wish to spread their hate to avoid future acts of hate, I see as a good thing. It's not as if one suddenly commits a racist act without preceding that with racist speech and thoughts.

If we are to learn that Twitter openly assisted the Biden campaign, and this outrages us, what do we about this: https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/29/politics/hannity-text-messages-meadows-trump-white-house/index.html?

Aversions to criticism are only held by people who know their ideas are flawed. — Tzeentch

That's just false speculative psychoanalysis. Aversion to racist rhetoric is fear of eventual oppression. That people speak of the evil they intend to impose is a reality, and stopping it makes sense. It's for that reason Musk censored Kanye.

I'd colonize it and use it as my new found toy.

What if language is less like a mail system, more like a construction site. What if instead of passing thoughts from one private mind to another, we use language to build thoughts, together, in a shared space. — Banno

If think the analogy correct, but I'm not sure it solves our ineffablity problem. Your statements are created by you and experienced by me, just as I experience your gesture, your clothes, the tree outside.

We both look at the same tree. I see X and you Y. I trust X and Y are very similar, but experiences are complex and filled with perspective, opinion, emotion, variations in our perceptability, and even the lingering taste of the morning's breakfast. There aren't raw data to be received all the same.

So you tell me about the tree, I liken those comments to my prior perceptions, and we share in the exercise of communication, which certainly does create within me a perception, perhaps a partially accurate sketch of your perception.

If that's sufficient for you to avoid a charge of ineffability, then we have a resolution. I'd contend though that it invokes an indirectness of the object to the perception, and doesn't work under a direct realism stance. In fact, it extend indirect realism to communicative events.

That takes us back to noumena and phenomena, which necessarily demands ineffablity. The object can't be known for what it is. The tree is an object as much as a proposition about an object is an object, both subject to interpretation, and neither coherently standing alone as a desipherable noumenal thing.

That is, I can't know what the tree objectively is and I can't know what you're talking about in an objective way.

haven't said anything about prohibiting speech. — Tzeentch

So then government sponsored propoganda is acceptable free speech, even though it is a characteristic of totalitarian regimes?

AKA - atheism leads to nihilism? — Tom Storm

Just that at some basic level, theistic or not, you're not going to get any where starting with Cartesian doubt. So posit what you need to and build from there, but don't get bogged down with criticisms of eventual solipsism. Just proclaim you take as a given that you're not the only mind in the universe deceived into thinking there are other ones.

Call it faith, pragmatism, foundationalism or whatever, but at a basic level you've got to just accept certain things as givens.

Did it have a good cover — Tom Storm

Meh.

What do you make of the criticism that if words are metaphors we risk slipping into solipsism? — Tom Storm

That I can't know the specific contents of other minds doesn't mean I only know of my own mind.

I would agree with the observation that ultimately, with enough questioning of fundamental beliefs and given assumptions, that soliipsism, meaninglessness, and moral relativism eventually follow. Poetically speaking, all roads out of Athens lead to solipsism. All roads out of Jerusalem, to meaning.