If you were this genius with the answers to everything, you would be touring the world, something that much less impressive people like JBP and SH already do, instead of enlightening us poor idiots with your rhetorical questions. Rhetorical questions which through repetition often seem to be a veil for a request to have the topic's material summarised for you.

There are people here who have actual qualifications in philosophy, I personally know many in real life, none of them say the things you do. So is your attitude a result of your grand knowledge or is it a result of your own personality?

The fact you think philosophy boils down to words suggests you can't summon an apple in your head and spin it around. As to critical thinking, the statement "there are no philosophers here" doesn't show lots of it.

The stuff I study is fifty years out of date. — Banno

In philosophy, new doesn't equal better, the opposite is true. Back to Plato.

Pray tell, what is your opinion on the state of global education — Benj96

Not good. But many (not close to all) youths don't care about education and only want to skip classes to hang out and do drugs. So education isn't the issue here, otherwise everybody would be getting 10s everywhere — environmental or genetic, I think both, but emphasis on the latter.

Not one original thought in your little head huh? — Mikie

I thought it was established the tiny one here is you. I heard that if you hang from a bar everyday and drink lots of milk you may grow an inch.

Not a shred of evidence; not one reference — Mikie

Your deep mental absence forces you to ask to be spoonfed instead of looking obvious stuff up yourself.

I meant Jesus's words drawn from the canonicals and how these words are understood — BitconnectCarlos

Those texts were compiled by the Church. They were written in Kini Greek, translated to Latin. The early Church had several meetings with tens of learned men to discuss these things. I don't think there is any single individual alive who is more qualified to interpret it — which is to go against the interpretation of the Church. Which even then would be goofy, the Church made the Bible, are we going to tell the priest how to preach too?

Hypocritical coming from a State that mass murdered Armenians and Assyrians.

No. — Mikie

True. Comparing Mexico to the Disunited States of Drag Kwain is so comedic that the thought ought to be laughed off and ignored.

These people literally have no soul. You think you are talking to a human being like oneself but it is a mindless automaton whose sole purpose is to slightly annoy you.

You believe the election was actually stolen? — RogueAI

Where did you see me saying that? It is just that the statement that an election where thousands of tourists and dead people voted being the fairest and cleanest of all time is dumb. But again, his purpose on Earth is to be mildly annoying through stupidity.

After this Palestine thing dies off (like Ukraine did, that thread is very dead), watch him support the new Twitter-approved opinion. 100% guaranteed. It is basically a dumb Python script with an in-built LLM.

Overwhelmingly, the forum is populated by folk who read a book once, and so think they know how to do fil-o-so-fee... — Banno

As opposed to someone who jumped straight to the very last relevant philosopher and thinks he has the answer to all discussions posed on this website. But yet no answer is ever posted, just dumb rhetorical questions that seem to have skipped Plato.

Evolution seems to fit in there fine — Count Timothy von Icarus

My issue isn't whether evolution fits there. But how god is used as an explanation, which is essentially god of gaps. One of the options is "Evolution happened, but it was a guided process by a divine or intelligent being". To put it simply, there is no reason to think this. Where our human knowledge has accounted for some phenomenons, God is forcibly inserted even though it is not parsimonious to do so. The same can be applied, less ridiculously, to the Big Bang. But we have to separate God and prime mover; God is a prime mover with intention and personality — a mind —, a prime mover is just that.

I know that when I launch an apple into the air it comes back down. Voilà, objective knowledge.
That knowledge happens inside our heads doesn't matter, because that is included in the definition of "know" already. So whether a piece of knowledge is subjective or objective has to be about something else.

Did you guys know Israel used to hire OnlyFans porn stars to make thirst trap propaganda? They did some for Ukraine as well. Pretty funny.

If we can't voluntarily choose whether a piece of evidence is good or not — RogueAI

I said we don't voluntarily believe, not that we don't judge evidence.

You can't change a belief when new evidence is presented? — RogueAI

You can, it is just not voluntary. The proof of that is that you can't will into believing the Sun is smaller than the moon, you can lie to yourself, but you won't believe it.

Can people choose to change their beliefs — Scarecow

Most philosophers seem to agree that we can't directly control our beliefs, only indirectly, so the answer is no.

If you cannot choose your beliefs, then is it rational to believe anything, even if that belief is irrational? — Scarecow

Whether a belief is rational I think is more about whether the evidence is weighted well and conflicted with other pieces of information.

Is it rational to hold an incorrect belief that helps you cope with pain and suffering? — Scarecow

Justifiable and perhaps wise. But not rational, by definition.

Q.e.d. — Benkei

Repeating the same mistake again. We can go on infinitely.

The rest is a red herring. — Benkei

Not what that means. Turn off your brain from the debate-bro fallacy-spotter OCD.

Your reasons make me ask, "Is being a theist about what I can get for myself?" — Philosophim

Another complaint, is that you seem to believe that doing anything non-egoistically is irrational. — Bob Ross

:up:

It is like the reproductors of this strawman [...] admit that only ethical egotism is possible, one justified by wanting to go to heaven (or not be reborn as a pig) and the other justified by hedonism. It says more about the accuser than the accused. — Lionino

one of the most bizarre aspects about the pascals wager family of arguments — flannel jesus

It is. Pascal's Wager is about practice. And in practice, if you are all about Pascal Wagerism, you are more likely to go to hell than most people in almost every situation, as my chart shows.

I particularly appreciate the advice it provides me on how to select and treat my slaves — Tom Storm

That is in the OT, so more up Jew's alley.

America’s most secure election in history — Mikie

Mexico's elections are far securer than whatever has been happening the past years in Cheeseburgerland. The article is already wrong on the title, or Trump's officials.

Looking into the article, no such thing as "Trump officials" confirmed anything. It was Burgerland's election officials that did so, who happened to be under Trump administration because Trump was the current president.

I am not trying to have a discussion with you by the way, because you literally have no soul/subjectivity. I am just pointing it out in public.

to discount sources is really funny. — Benkei

Vox isn't a source. Weren't you the same guy threatening terrorism in some other thread? Go drink your soy latte.

Edit: Yes, you were. Cringe.

Better sooner than later the way things are currently going. Can you give me your address for the list? — Benkei

atheism couldn't possibly gain you any divine favor — Scarecow

Yes it could.

Descriptive of most practicing psychologists out there — in my experience.

2020 was probably the most clean and fair in US history — Mikie

:fear:

This stuff has been happening for years in the States. Started a bit later in England but has been going on for a while.

New Zealand is heading there, the brain damage can already be seen in England, Canada, and starting in Australia. — Lionino

Rings a bell?

Kind of like trying to remember the last time you said anything relevant about the Gaza war on this thread. :chin: — Mikie

Exactly. But now these threads are in the lounge, so it is fair game :starstruck:

In fact, I am having lasagna with a protein shake now and some sleep supplements. After that, I will shower and finish the night with some popcorn and an IPA beer.

your shallow philosophical observations — Mikie

Actually, my philosophical observations are not shallow. They are thought out and based on referenced material. I even go as far as finishing the draft and not posting for a few hours, to let the ideas marinate.

But speaking of the Levant, we should hand it back to the British, as much as I dislike them.

The example of a ball skipping on a table to make it change colours seems to be a fusion of Zeno's walk and Thompson's lamp, because 1 – there is no limit, 2 – there no final step.

The time it takes for the ball to finish a revolution and touch the table decreases by half every time. If time is continuous and infinitely divisible, as time approaches 60s, the number of skips goes to infinity, but while the ball is skipping, it does not reach 60 seconds. 60 seconds it exactly when the ball stops skipping, and there is no specified state as to what the table will do when that happens. Thus, the speed in which the table changes colours approaches infinity the closer you get to 60s, but this says nothing about what the table will do at 60s, you might as well say it will turn transparent.

The description of the Thomson lamp only actually specifies what the lamp is doing at each finite stage before 2 minutes. It says nothing about what happens at 2 minutes, especially given the lack of a converging limit.

On the other hand, “complete” can refer to carrying out every step in the task, which certainly does occur in Zeno’s Dichotomy. From Black’s argument one can see that the Zeno Dichotomy cannot be completed in the first sense. But it can be completed in the second. The two meanings for the word “complete” happen to be equivalent for finite tasks, where most of our intuitions about tasks are developed. But they are not equivalent when it comes to supertasks.

So the ball keeps skipping and changing the table's colour.

For this reason, Earman and Norton conclude with Benacerraf that the Thomson lamp is not a matter of paradox but of an incomplete description.

I conclude the table and the ball have incomplete description too.

If supertasks had proven their case there would be no debate as to whether time is continuous or discrete, but it doesn't seem to be the case.

Is it metaphysically possible for such a task to have been performed? No, because there is no first number that I could have started with. — Michael

That is the reverse Zeno walk. Achilles starts running but he can't start running because there is no first lenght to be run. But yet we reverse time and Achilles can finish the task. The argument doesn't need to be reversed, it is the same as saying you can't count to infinity because there is no last numeber to be counted. But if we admit that time is infinitely divisible, counting to infinity doesn't seem to amount to a logical impossibility, and so we reverse the time of the task.

This led Grünbaum (1969) to consider the “staccato” version of the Zeno run, in which Achilles pauses for successively shorter times at each interval.

The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.

— Aldous Huxley

You've never read Venus on the Half-Shell, then? — javra

I will admit I have not read most books out there, philosophy or not.

I'm not sure I follow the analogy. — Hanover

A non-word made up in modernity by people who most likely did not understand the mechanisms of their own language, giving a label to a variety of something meanwhile they ignore all the other endless varieties. A theist is a theist no matter the flavour, one doesn't get a little special badge for one's own variety because one is lofty from one's complete ignorance of grammar — essentially redditry/Dunning-Kruger.
And I just made a super awkward sentence because I didn't want people to think I am referring to someone specific by saying "you".

Sorry if it is rude but there is no nice way to judge it, the individuals involved should have not committed the crime instead.

"What is deism in simple terms?
belief in the existence of a God on the evidence of reason and nature only, with rejection of supernatural revelation ( theism ). belief in a God who created the world but has since remained indifferent to it." — Hanover

The theological equivalent to "sognaresexual" and "herstory".

I don't know what that is. God leaving reminds me of Epikuros' stance on God more than anything. But his position was of course more sophisticated than modern religious people who think themselves clever for doing God of the Gaps at everything, and the connection between gods and the universe isn't stated anywhere in fragments.

Is it to keep one or another of us from being tricked into believing that the gods care for men[...]? — Arrian, Diatribes of Epictetus, I.20.19

A happy and eternal being has no trouble himself and brings no trouble upon any other being; hence he is exempt from movements of anger and partiality, for every such movement implies weakness — Doctrine 1

But Epikuros was also a materialist:

they [Epicureans] held the gods to be immortal and indestructible (how this might work in a materialist universe remains unclear) — SEP

But²:

Ancient critics thought the Epicurean gods were a thin smoke-screen to hide Epicurus’ atheism, and difficulties with a literal interpretation of Epicurus’ sayings on the nature of the gods (for instance, it appears inconsistent with Epicurus’ atomic theory to hold that any compound body, even a god, could be immortal) have led some scholars to conjecture that Epicurus’ ‘gods’ are thought-constructs, and exist only in human minds as idealizations, i.e., the gods exist, but only as projections of what the most blessed life would be. — IEP

Evolution happened, but it was a guided process by a divine or intelligent being — flannel jesus

I must say this is a cop-out somehow more ridiculous than the "God made the Big Bang then pissed off".

Oh of course, the victims.

indeed it seems like modernity as it played out in the Western world (and because of globalism, simply "the world at large"), seems to be a dialectic of sorts whereby the original aesthetics underpinning a theory, that is more abstract, and even in some sense "spiritual" (or at least "metaphysical"), eventually becomes discarded, and what is retained really, are the "useful" things that come about from it. — schopenhauer1

It seems to me that you are projecting the vices of your own society/country (United States?) at the rest of the world. In Poland, Rumania, and Russia, churches are still being built. In Italy, it is still very common to study art, even though everybody knows it is not profitable — in most of Italy, it is very hard to build new structures, either because your property is of archaeological risk (half the country) or because you need to submit to the prefecture an architectural plan that does not clash with the architecture of your neighbourhood.

The State policy of putting the economy above all — which is how the word 'economicism' is used sometimes — seems to be what you describe, as we would rather build ugly steel-and-glass buildings that won't last a century instead of traditional architecture that will last 1000.
The building of La Sagrada Família or Monumento a Vittorio Emanuele II for sure did not aim at utility mostly, but at glorification.

Those who live in the clouds and do not problem-solve are doomed to die, as they need to have one foot in the concrete reality of the economy and survival within an economy. — schopenhauer1

Which makes us wonder why ancient Athens, a society where the elite did not always have to work (slaves!), gave us so many thinkers; while publish-or-perish academic culture has given us crap like analysis of knowledge. Surely economic fundamentalism does not help with the elevation of the spirit — but perhaps paves the way to a society like ancient Athens (in different ages people believed in cyclical history).

I haven't read Adams (likely never will), but it is possible his description (more like definition) of democracy takes from Plato's Republic, where democracy comes after timocracy and oligarchy, meaning pretty much mob rule.

In such a democratic state, everyone is more or less equally free of any responsibility to anyone else, including service to the state. No one is obliged to give orders; no one is obliged to take orders; no justice can be respected or meted out. Rulers will serve at the behest of what Socrates has called the "great beast"; political platforms will become popularity contests. A kind of mob-rule becomes the order of the day. — https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/r/republic/summary-and-analysis/book-viii

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/holes/

I went through the article and it is a whole lot of nothing, just juggling with language to solve a problem that doesn't exist. No wonder all the references are from the last 100 years.

I had this same question years ago: "Is having bad thoughts immoral?". I think that for every ethical theory out there, the answer is no, especially when many thoughts are involuntary. Except for ethical theories that define moral as that which attends to a certain desirable goal or principle in general, and so having bad thoughts is immoral because they are harmful in a way; but then they remove will from the picture — which I dislike —, making it such that inanimate things can be deemed moral or not.

C2. P1 or P2 is false.

C3. P2 is necessarily true.

C4. Therefore, P1 is necessarily false. — Michael

Is it? You take supertasks to mean that time is discrete instead of continuous, meaning there is a smallest amount of time. If that is so, P2 is necessarily true according to mathematical theorems, but it is not representative of reality and especially not of time.

Relevant:

On the one hand “complete” can refer to the execution of a final action. This sense of completion does not occur in Zeno’s Dichotomy, since for every step in the task there is another step that happens later. On the other hand, “complete” can refer to carrying out every step in the task, which certainly does occur in Zeno’s Dichotomy. From Black’s argument one can see that the Zeno Dichotomy cannot be completed in the first sense. But it can be completed in the second. The two meanings for the word “complete” happen to be equivalent for finite tasks, where most of our intuitions about tasks are developed. But they are not equivalent when it comes to supertasks.

Hermann Weyl (1949, §2.7) suggested that if one admits that the Zeno race is possible, then one should equally admit that it is possible for a machine to carry out an infinite number of tasks in finite time. However, one difference between the Zeno run and a machine is that the Zeno run is continuous, while the tasks carried out by a machine are typically discrete. This led Grünbaum (1969) to consider the “staccato” version of the Zeno run, in which Achilles pauses for successively shorter times at each interval.

Another episode of Yankees misunderstanding and abusing the French loanwords in their language to mean something it does not because they don't have their own language-system. Their fight is with words and "democracy" being associated with a certain party, not, as the article suggests, that they are defending autarchy. Clickbait as I said.

The fact checkers™ said it so I guess republicans are fascists. Thanks.

you do not know what I am referring to? The DEI movement, social justice, wokitude, and the like? — fishfry

They do, they are just playing dumb. If you go back to 2017 these would be the people openly talking about microaggressions and reparations. Now that the whole planet is swinging right and people are tired of woke, they are just dissimulating their views while still defending them. See:

Is someone demanding that children should all have decent food and shelter and a safe environment, so that they can do well in school?

They try (and obviously fail to) to blur the lines between human rights and what you are talking about, to pretend they are the same thing, using cheap sophistry such as the above.

Soon enough they will be recanting their views. I wonder what they will do if (when?) we go totalitarian. Will they be staunch supporters, like everybody (especially women!) was in Nazi Germany? Relevant snippet by JBP before he went crazy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVCAhGL0ohw

Clickbait article :yawn:

Now run along little incel girl. — Mikie