If I had the genes, environments, nutrients, and experiences that you have, would I not have typed your post and vice versa? — Truth Seeker

That is the question.

I have those genes, environments, etc.

So is it the same question to ask myself “given all that has preceded me, would I do anything else besides type this post? Could I do anything else besides repeat your words “would I not have typed your post…?”

So since I am the same as me, does it help me to understand a moment when I choose? It doesn’t. I still don’t understand how I am free to choose, nor how these words here are determined. Neither are clear.

My current answer is that, somehow, our brains kick out an awareness of awareness - we are once removed from ourselves (which gives us the concept of “self” to look back on). We can reflect. This happens outside of the normal causal chain, and builds a space for choice. This is such a fragile happening, environments and nutrients etc are suspended with it, and so our choice comes from this new space outside of ourselves (from nowhere). So we build the free agent we are in the act of asserting a “choice” in the causal chain. We are not free to choose until we just choose.

Am I making sense? To you? Because I’m barely making sense to me.

Apparently many words only apply to humans and not anything else when doing the exact same thing. — noAxioms

No one can clearly state what they are doing when they claim to make a choice - it’s a few thousand year old debate. So how can anyone say this yet to be determined thing called “choosing” is “doing the exact same thing” as anything else?

In order for the program to make a move, it needs to have been given its programming; there need be no agent inserted into the program so that the chess pieces move. Once the program moves a piece, if you deconstructed the cause of that move, you could all the code and never see any agent influenced anything.

Maybe the same is true for people. But then there is no such thing as choosing (because there is no agency).

Calculating (pondering, whatever) is part of the process leading to the eventual choice. — noAxioms

Then you assert a dichotomy, a distinction, between calculating, which is a process before, and choice which would come after (eventually). So it’s not a false dichotomy by what you say. When a program is done calculating, it has no choice but to display the answer or make the move. Choice is something else than the calculations that might precede it.

The racists used the same tactic to imply that people not 'them' were inferior. — noAxioms

Why? Just why?

The OP doesn't mention the word 'free' at all, but does mention "could have done otherwise" which is an informal alternate definition of it. — noAxioms

I still don’t see a distinction between what a choice is, and what a free choice is. If something is determined by a prior physical state, it’s determined, so it can’t be the result of a choice.

Choice is a pickle. But if we have the ability to make a choice, we must be a free agent in some sense. Otherwise, we are playing word games to make ourselves think our choices (or programmatic choices) exist.

Time doesn't exist. Space does. — Corvus

I see space like time - they are like measurements and measuring sticks at once. They are bound up with each other, as well as mass.

You have a mass, you have its own extension in space over time.
You measure time, you move a mass through space to clock your measurement.
You measure space, you hold a mass still through time.
It’s always one thing being measured where someone says “time” or “space” or “mass”.

It's not logic's business to make converts. — Arcane Sandwich

You keep talking about something other than your own argument.

If God exists….[logic]…so Jesus is God.

And you then you say you reject the premise you asserted to make your own argument. All this is fodder for your point that people like Aquinas and Anselm (or any phislioher trying to prove God exists) should be proving God is Jesus (or Allah, etc).

I disagree. Proofs for the existence of God don’t work, either by their own terms, or by the ease with which one can reject a premise or two and leave the conclusion meaningless.

The existence of Jesus can be rejected too. So why bother to equate God, whose existence we can reject, with Jesus? Sounds like another dead end.

You haven’t shown me why equating God with some particular name for God is important for Aquinas or Avicenna or anyone who is trying to create proofs for God. You sound like you are hunting for bad arguments to shoot down.

Maybe Aquinas already meant “Jesus” when he said “God.” Kind of like you did: “if God exists, God is identical with Jesus.”

Maybe Aquinas thought it would be redundant in an argument about God to separate “God” from “Jesus” in order to assert that the two are “identical.” If such an argument could be made, if such an argument was missing from the vast stores of philosophical wisdom…

I wish someone could prove God exists and that Jesus is God. But using only logical form, based on premises that can be rejected, no one can prove a cat really is a cat, or on a mat. So, there’s that. I’m sure jumping to God instead of cats with mats to find some arguments that might actually say something will be easily rejected as well. But that’s just my take on the whole attempt to prove with logic anything about God’s existence or the identity of God.

I have never been impressed about arguments that demonstrate God’s existence is necessary.
— Fire Ologist

It's not logic's business to impress anyone, just as it's not math's business to impress anyone. — Arcane Sandwich

I meant persuaded, since you are being so precise. Is it logic’s business to persuade? Because the fact that God is all perfect and a possible God is less perfect than an actual God, therefore God must be actual, isn’t persuasive. It’s worth thinking about if asking whether there is a God or not, but I don’t see it as making any converts.

For example, a Muslim philosopher wouldn't try to refute Anselm's argument. Why would he? He believes in God just as much as Anselm does. It that sense, he would accept the argument in question. And so would a Jewish philosopher, and so would a monotheist Pagan philosopher.

If we don't specify who God is (Yahweh, Jesus, Allah, the Rainbow Serpent, etc.) then every theist can accept Anselm's argument, no matter what the details of their religion are. — Arcane Sandwich

Why is that a problem? For anyone who believes in God? Why would a Christian philosopher who believed they could prove the existence of God fall short if they didn’t show that the God they allegedly proved existed was named Jesus?

Aquinas called all of his writings straw. I would be happy to argue with Descartes and Anselm about the shortcomings of their arguments.

Although, I find the God of all the philosophers to be a hollow shell of a stick figure on a blackboard used to fill in a “x” in some attempt at a logical proposition. Maybe if they could take it far enough to give it some real flesh, as a proof that God who is Jesus exists, maybe I’d see God there at all for once.

I agree reason and faith are harmonious. A theologian is using reason. The theologian just has things like God and angels and sin and free agents as objects at his or her disposal.

But in philosophy proper, in the world based on observation, sensation, empirical evidence, the world of science, when we apply reasoning, I have never been impressed about arguments that demonstrate God’s existence is necessary.

From that definition, this doesn't follow:

If I “cannot make a different choice” then there is no choice.
— Fire Ologist
For example, a chess program has countless variables to ponder (at some length), and has (is) a deliberate agent whose action influences the outcome. If there was no chess program, the action would not be taken, so the influence is clearly there.

But...

given 20 identical programs with the exact same initial state, each will typically do the exact same thing.
They have choice, but not free choice since they can consider, but not actually make a different move. — noAxioms

I never think we can clarify a human behavior at issue, like choosing, by analogizing this behavior with some other type of entity’s behavior (like a chess program). We try to make black and white clarity by mixing gray with gray.

I don’t see any substantial distinction between a choice and a free choice.

In your example of what the computer is doing before it makes a move, why call that a “choice” at all? It is operating on inputs to determine the only move it must make. It is not choosing, but calculating. You said yourself its next move is determined just as it is for the other 19 identical programs. There is no agent, so there are no variables, so there is no choice.

A really good chess player is effectively calculating just as well, and his or her moves may not be choices either.

I see calling what the program does “choosing” as personifying the program. And we don’t yet know what choosing is or if we ever get to choose ourselves, so how are we to judge the program properly anyway?

Can you clarify the difference between a choice and a free choice, and deterministic mo choice using only human behavior as an example?

If we couldn’t ever have made a different choice in the past, we didn’t ever make any choice at all.
— Fire Ologist
This also depends on definitions, but you seem to be using one that doesn't distinguish choice from free choice, rendering the adjective meaningless. — noAxioms

If I “cannot make a different choice” then there is no choice. A choice, by definition, has to involve multiple variables and a deliberative agent whose action influences the outcome among those variables. Take away the agent, and there are no longer any variables identifiable only in a deliberating agent; Take away the variables and there is no choice. So choice involves both a deliberative (free reflecting) agent, and variables.

How else can we define the moving parts of a “choice?” Maybe I have no choice but to finish this paragraph with the word “not.” Maybe the last word of this post has been predicable for ten thousand years. But it seems to me it is more likely a consequence of me and my free choices, that could go any way I am capable of bringing to effect. Maybe not.

Cool. Honest question.

Honest answer.

I don’t like any of the arguments for the existence of God. They all hit me as if they are rigging the conclusion by rigging the premises. They all contain elements that need not be accepted and so the conclusion that God exists need not be accepted and so it’s no proof for the existence of God.

Logical proof operates on metaphysics and epistemology. It’s about proving things that exist, or ontological entities exist; nothing can prove something else exists. Ontological objects are used to demonstrate metaphysical and epistemological proofs. It’s doesn’t work the other way. Sorry folks, faith and the grace of divine revelation are the only basis for the assertion that God exists.

So a further proof about Jesus being God - that would come after one asserted that God exists (based on faith), and then be a theological conversation where the additional premises would come from the Bible and the Church and one’s own experiences with other people. None of that conversation would be philosophic or scientifically measurable. Jesus is God because he said “I and the Father are one.” What use is that to a scientist as evidence for anything?

So basically, I should never have wasted your time if you, like Anselm, think we can discuss proofs of the existence of God and by extension, the nature of Jesus from logic.

If you are trying to talk about God and Jesus it looks to me you are saying that because God exists, God is Jesus, but God doesn’t exist.
— Fire Ologist

That sounds like nonsense to me, what you just said there. Could you elaborate on that point, specifically? — Arcane Sandwich

Me too.

You made your argument, then you say you deny the second premise because you are atheist.

So, in summation, you are saying if God exists, God is Jesus, but God doesn’t exist.

Which gets everyone as far as Larry Fine did when he was suggesting a breakfast menu.

So, to me, I’m having a conversation about logic using the terms God and Jesus with someone who could care less about what those terms mean because they don't mean anything that exists anyway. And the logical stuff is neat but, like math, is what it is and is not really that interesting, certainly not as interesting as God, if God existed. Or Jesus if he was identical to God.

Can you summarize your point again to see if this conversation can really go any further? Not my point (I don’t know what an argument is) - what is your point about Jesus again?

If we couldn’t ever have made a different choice in the past, we didn’t ever make any choice at all. So because of the semantics of the question, the answer has to be “yes”.

This is a good vehicle into the underlying question, do we ever “choose” our actions? Are we agents in our own story? Is there free will? Are we capable of halting the forces of necessity to deliberately influence our self-same lives?

I have to say yes because otherwise, I am not writing this post. If the forces of nature have led me to spell the word “led” without an “a” (as in “lead, both of which follow the laws of grammar), and if I should remove “me” from the equations of this sentence, it seems to me I wouldn’t have ever noticed a difference between nature and myself in the first place and would never have seen the choice between “led” and “lead”.

If all of science was completed and reported to everyone as from God, and this report said “all moves by determined necessity and there are no choices” I would still have to choose to believe this, or not, before the motion of this thread could go about its merry way.

You still don't get it. — Arcane Sandwich

So you are saying if we had ham, we could have ham and eggs, if we had eggs.

Got it.

If you want to talk about logical form, why bring up such a distraction as “God” and “Jesus” to do it?

If you are trying to talk about God and Jesus it looks to me you are saying that because God exists, God is Jesus, but God doesn’t exist.

Your point is you have no point, like speaking with me, someone who just doesn’t get it. I’m sensing a pattern.

So if I tell you that three apples plus two apples equals five apples, am I talking about numbers or apples? — Arcane Sandwich

Are you talking to tell me we have enough apples to feed five people who want apples to eat, or are you demonstrating math? If math, you don’t need to use apples. You could use rocks, or Gods to form your argument, so you are not talking about apples at all. If five people want to eat, then the apples may be of interest.

I'm showing how it can be rationally concluded that Jesus is God, … — Arcane Sandwich

No, you just assert it as a premise - “Jesus is identical to God.”

You said “if God exists, Jesus is identical to God.”

You could have said “if apples exist, Jesus is identical to God.” There is no logical connection between God existing and zGod being identical to Jesus. You just define God as identical to Jesus, create a condition “if God exists” then assert this condition is met and restate your definition. Great logical form - wholly unconvincing of what God or Jesus means or whether anyone should entertain whether God or Jesus exists.

If unicorns exist, unicorns are identical with single horned horses.
Unicorns exist.
Therefore unicorns are identical with single horned horses.

I think I have the modus ponens right here. But have I said anything at all about reality, about horses, about horns, about unicorns? Why would replacing unicorns with God, and single horned horse with Jesus would I think I’ve proven anything about anything, except how modus ponens works?

1) if unicorns exist, that single-horned horse is equal to a unicorn
2) that single-horned horse exists
3) therefore, unicorns exist.

And here is its structure:

1) If p, then q
2) q
3) Therefore, p

That's not an argument, that's a formal fallacy called affirming the consequent.

So I stand by what I said earlier: you don't seem to understand what an argument is. I say that as objectively and as respectfully as possible. — Arcane Sandwich

You are right.

I wasn’t careful enough and my unicorn “argument” fails.

That’s twice you said I don’t know what an argument is. Do you really think that? I mean, if I didn’t know what an argument was, how could I recognize that you are right about affirming the consequent, and I was wrong to try to equate that to your modus ponens form of argument?

Anyway, it seems like you are talking about logic and not about God or Jesus.

Anselm was trying to show how it can be rationally concluded that God exists. He was using logic to show an ontology. I love the effort, but all analysis of his arguments are discussions of logic, not about God. Like this discussion seems to be. Anselm would admit the proof for God’s existence may be interesting to us, but is not about God.

I don’t think you can use logic to demonstrate an ontology (except to yourself about yourself, as in “I conclude I exist in that act of concluding anything, or in sloppy logical form “I think, therefore, I am.”, and who else cares, or can confirm I’m right.)

Do you think you can conclude Jesus is God because of your argument?

If I was trying to rationally prove to you that my father exists, do you think you would know anything about my father?

So does this thread really have anything to do with God? Or Jesus?

1) If p, then q.
2) p.
3) Therefore, q. — Arcane Sandwich

So do you want to talk about logic, or about whether Jesus is God?

If you want to talk about logic, you could have said many other things for “p” and “q.” But since you said God and Jesus I assumed you wanted to talk about God.

If you want to talk about logic, then sure “if unicorns exist, that single-horned horse is equal to a unicorn; that single-horned horse exists; therefore, unicorns exist.”

But if you were trying to show what it who God or Jesus actually is, you didn’t argue them, you merely asserted and equated them, like I just did with a single-horned horse and a unicorn.

I am a Catholic. I love God, as Father, Jesus and their Holy Spirit.

But I am sure I won't be able to convince anyone about Jesus or God through argument.

You don't seem to understand what an argument is. — Arcane Sandwich

Way hot out of the gate. I didn't mean to insult you. Your argument basically just gave a definition "God is identical to Jesus." You don't move anywhere from that. You asserted that God exists, and asserted that God is identical to Jesus. Nothing else was operating in the argument to move from the assertions to some other conclusion. You basically just said "God is Jesus." So I said, that's not an argument.

Again, I love how people think about these things and post here. I'm not trying to discourage anything. But if you want a good conversation, on this forum, God is very often a non-starter.

Philosophers have a problem clarifying whether a cat on a matt is really two things, or a thing at all.
— Fire Ologist

I don't have that problem. It's a bit presumptuous of you to assume that I do. — Arcane Sandwich

I assume all people have this problem because it's the same conversation Heraclitus and Parmenides and Hume and Descartes and Hegel, and Kant, and Nietzsche and Quine, and people here today have been trying to address.

You jump way to hard and fast into the personal. I do that too sometimes. Always regret it. And what do you want me to say?

The animal is serving as a kind of "substitute" for our animal side in trying to separate out what makes human language different. — Moliere

That inquiry would be instructive, because we are animals. Contrast our own impulsive responses with our own deliberated, reasoned, chosen responses.

Or, on the other hand, it's a counter-example if we believe that the dog can refer or have true beliefs. — Moliere

I am just saying I can't tell how or why I refer or have true beliefs, so finding something instructive in a dog's behavior is unlikely, other than to highlight that thinking/knowing/believing may all be tied up in language (in all its complexity), and therefore, we are able to rule out that anything other than a person will help us figure out what is going on in this conversation.

(FTI1) If God exists, then God is identical to Jesus.
(FTI2) God exists.
(FTI3) So, God is identical to Jesus. — Arcane Sandwich

If.....God is identical to Jesus....God is identical to Jesus.

That's not an argument. Nothing to digest there.

"If we had ham, we could have ham and eggs, if we had eggs." - Larry Fine.

That's a better argument, but similarly, leaves you hungry for something to actually digest.

Philosophers have a problem clarifying whether a cat on a matt is really two things, or a thing at all.

This post will go nowhere illuminating. I'm not picking on you, just sayin...

It is very difficult to discuss God in any empirical, critical, scientific manner, especially in a forum where many people have no inclination to entertain the notion of "God" seriously.

Mostly to help us make sense of the Dog — Moliere

I'm just saying that, in a conversation where we are trying to make sense of a person's behavior, trying to make some sense of using language to explain reality in a communicable, logical way, as if reality needed explanation or was amenable to it, or oppositely as if explanation was a wrong turn, observations about a dog's behavior are not going to clarify anything. And we should admit our observations about a dog's behavior may be utterly irreflective of what the dog is doing in reality (which reality is the original question).

Why does it have to be so black and white? — Apustimelogist

It doesn't. I am saying I have no idea how I have ideas, and discussing this as the inscrutability of reference. Why would the actions of a dog, or anything else, inform this discussion?

And I am asking this question of myself as much as anyone else. We all do it - personify and analogize in order to explain. But we are trying to explain the act of explanation, and so I am trying to point out that data observed from anything other than the behavior of explainers (ie, people), could be way off the mark and we wouldn't know it (because we are trying to explain "knowing" in the first place and instead talking about some other animals behavior as if it were "knowing").

My point isn't so much that dogs don't think. It's that it can't help us understanding the objects of thought or thinking that we do, by inferring something from a dog that could have other explanations.

the dog has a kind of animla-belief — Moliere

We can't tell what is actually happening in another person's head, or our own head, when we are believing or are knowing. Why would we think invoking dog-beliefs would help clarify anything?

The dog senses food. The dog may not believe or know or think anything at all. It might be carried by circumstances to sense food just as it is carried by circumstances to find it and eat it. Does the dog who steps on a hot coal, yelps and leaps away, have to think at all to yelp and leap? Maybe, or maybe not (we are not dogs, so who knows, and dogs aren't talking about their inner lives). But if you can imagine a dog does not need to think to yelp and leap from being burnt, why can't we imagine the dog is behaving according to the exact same impulses in everything the dog does? Like a plant cell photosynthesizing - wherefore belief as a component of these motions?

For my part, humans personify everything we touch. We even personify ourselves. We alone use words to refer to other words and concepts - no animals bother to do so. Because, for my part, animals don't believe, or know, or think. They are better than all of that (or less than all that, if you want to feel special about the act of personification).

We string together samplings of NOW and construct of these TIME as the string is said to refer to PAST and NOW as if however it is that NOW might exist, the string including PAST with NOW might exist.

When we recall yesterday, we don’t look into the past - we actively, now, construct a recollection - we re-collect, or collect impressions.

It’s all, always, only NOW. The construct of time helps us see NOW as bigger then it ever is.

From the discussions so far, it seems to be safe to conclude that,
1) Jesus was not God. He doesn't appear to be omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. If he was, then he could not be in the situation he was, and would not have said what the OP noted.
2) Jesus was not one with God. Therefore Trinity doctrine is unsound and invalid. — Corvus

It is a mystery to us how we are able to KNOW anything. Despite that we seek to summarize everything in a tight, simple bit of KNOWLEDGE, that we can put into pithy arguments.

Now you do so with "Trinity doctrine".

Any arguments summarizing anything we know are formed in mysterious ways. Yet it continues to be easy to allow ourselves to draw such concrete conclusion about OTHER things, such as what "Trinity" is (be it valid or sound, or conceivable, or not), while remaining utterly inconclusive about what it means to KNOW anything.

One step at a time.

Of course the Trinity is invalid to any linear, logical scrutiny - logic only sees one thing at a time.

Time doesn't exist. Only space and objects exist. — Corvus

If you are going to say time doesn't exist, but space and objects do, then you should go further and realize that if time is a construct, so is space, and therefore only objects exist.

But that denies motion, which doesn't seem right.

In my view, like Einstein realized the better conception of time and space is as one space-time, I think the better view is space-time-matter.

The existence of the object is as much a demonstration of matter, as it is a demonstration of motion, which is measured in space-time. It's all one thing.

There are objects.
We are objects that perceive objects (human beings).
When we perceive an object, we take measure of matter-space-time (or if you are a post-modernist, we construct matter-space-time).

Motion means: objects, through space, over time.

Take any object, say, an apple.

It is at once matter, taking up space, now..., and now again...and now again...over time. With matter, once perceived, comes space-time-matter. Space and time are the mental act of measuring, or perceiving. They look objective, but they are the act of objectifying.

By creating, God becomes change.

So God wasn't change until God created, and now God moves in and with what is created.

So in a linear way, I agree with the idea that God changes - there was God before creation, and THEN there is God after creation, so God, after creation, exists in a new context, and, from our perspective, looks new, and therefore, is changed and new.

This is theology - for believers who want to understand. It's not science, for empiricists who seek to explain.

God is impossible to think of. God and creation make no sense, empirically.

The explanation empirically is probably something like, God the Father draws motion, but does not move; God the Son moves to the Father and through the Son all things (like us) exist; God as Spirit unifies the Father and Son as one God, and therefore is both motion and permanence at once.

Impossible.

...extremely introverted, analytic, brutally honest (with myself), and I yearn for absolute truth. I cannot live without doing philosophy, just as much as I cannot live without eating.... — Bob Ross

It's both as much a salvation as it is a burden, this philosophy thing - hopefully more salvation. Philosophizing is one of those purely human things we do, so I agree, I can't live without it. The unexamined life is impossible to live, because being a person, means examining life. We look IN, not just around, with our eyes - and with our eyes in the light, sometimes we see wisdom and foolishness as hiding between the red and green things and everything else...

You said "yearn" for truth, and I would say it that way too. At the same time I would say, I would never fear or shrink away from any truth, meaning, all of the truth is the same to me, having itself torn everything else down (marking error and the false as illusion) and built everything that is in its image, as what alone remains all the time is always and only, the absolute.

what makes a person interested in philosophy? — Rob J Kennedy

Hey Rob - love it.

What is this "thing" that we call Reality? — Arcane Sandwich

What is it really? How do we know? — Philosophim

us verbal guys that get sucked into the intricacies of philosophical ideas. We prefer to be alone — T Clark

it is philosophy that makes me interested in it — unenlightened

(Love that.)

You may not talk explicitly about philosophy or philosophers, but that doesn't mean that you dont ever think philosophically...

I would turn the OP’s question on its head. What does it say about someone who calls themself an artist and yet who has no interest in philosophy? — Joshs

I like to think I'm an artist - I wrote songs, played them for years in bars, really wanted to be an artist. Had a bunch of friends. Hung around college grads and non-college grads alike.

I wouldn't say I preferred being alone as T Clark said but I get that he said that, because I never minded being alone (I'm never "lonely"). I'd say I was introverted, but I've always been in public positions (like singing my songs and at work..), so I'm really more a center-leaning introverted type with plenty of extroverted behavior.

The introversion is important though, because, to me, it is equally a source of art and philosophy - it provides the well for doing the work of the artist and the philosopher. But I digress...

It was early, in high school, that I discovered philosophy. We read Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" (just that section of The Republic); I had no clue what I was reading, and in one class, my teacher made it clear to me that nothing is as it has always seemed. All that was plain before my eyes, instantly evaporated. "Seeing" delivered only shadows, and the truth of anything and everything was on the table, all in disarray. And the whole class was arguing whether anyone could prove what "brown" really was. I got it. I got the bug immediately, reading Aristotle for Morons books (Mortimer Adler), and on to major in philosophy in college. I ate it all up. Had the band the whole time.

But on that day in high school when I got it that none of us really get anything, things were not the least bit bad. It was exhilarating, like playing a great song with friends. Eerything in the world was just as beautiful as it was before, but, because of what Plato said, somehow everything was new. Like when some people first realized the sun didn't circle around the earth, but the opposite was occurring as the earth spun on it's axis. The same world was somehow more beautiful, because I saw something new just as well.

Everything is much richer and deeper, if we want to go there. And I did want to go there.

That was what got me into philosophy.

That was what led me to ask:

What is this "thing" that we call Reality? — Arcane Sandwich

What is it really? How do we know? — Philosophim

us verbal guys that get sucked into the intricacies of philosophical ideas. We prefer to be alone — T Clark

it is philosophy that makes me interested in it — unenlightened

What they said.

On a practical level, to sort of echo (and digress from) what Joshs said about thinking philosophically, I am of the opinion that all of us do philosophy; it is part of being a person; it is using language and making generalizations and forming descriptions, to make arguments, and test conclusions, and tear away illusion, and challenge the words of others. Learning philosophy is learning how to clarify thoughts and language. It is like the art of logical relations.

Philosophy proper is as unique a science as biology is unique from quantum physics; we are not all biologists or physicists. And we are not all philosophers; but we can tell the difference between a physicist, and me, who is not a physicist, and to do that, we have to do philosophy. We all create a big picture view (universalize), place ourselves in it (particularize), and organize everything else around and between these (relate these) - we are human, constructing the meta in the physics, fixed in motion. (Already my description of what all humans do is pissing off various other philosophers, but then, who in thousands of years has summed up philosophy in a few sentences?)

And the artists, who can completely empty their mind, not thinking at all, but instead performing their art, leaving all intention to melt into the motion of the body, "following the muse" that is always, already there, the motion itself that always guides as it drives us - these artists, though they are not philosophizing, often generate the most philosophically interesting creations. So, philosophy is inevitable with the human, and I would say united with our arts. Good art will always inspire a philosopher, just as a clear bit of wisdom or just the visceral, hard truth, (like the clarity of a distinct and new perspective) informs and inspires the artist.

Last thing I want to say here, is that, although the real work of the philosopher is lonely work, dialogue is a big motivation - we read and think, and then write, for hours alone, but we write to throw something out at the rest of the world, and we want to see what bounces back. And some of us mostly dialogue - which makes TPF in a sense what philosophizing really is. We have to be interested in challenges to what we think, so we have to be interested in capturing what we think in words. And we are just as interested in confirming agreement, as we are disagreement (especially when these lead to further honest analysis), and we don't begrudge our own or others' error, nor covet the discovery a better, maybe opposite view. We live for what we think, meaning: what I think is worth my own time, and may even be what there is to think for any thinking being. Peer review completes a certain justification in what I think, keeps philosophy tied to science (though it often falls into poetry, or mysticism, or theology). Even though most people (including me) are easily wrong about what they think, philosophers care about what people can really think, and say with any lasting gravity.

This conversation is the heart of philosophy.

Or the inscrutable meaning of “philosophy.”

The object of thought here that prompts us to communicate with words such as “essence” and “thing” and “existence” and “universal” and “referent”, to balance carving up the world against the lines the world has despite any carving (if any), all in the context of language and meaning and use and logic itself, as well as phenomenological experience itself - it is my position that we are standing on a precipice in this conversation (with everyone from Heraclitus and Parmenides to Aristotle and Kant and Russell and Wittgenstein and Quine standing next to us) attempting to explain, at once: the ground we stand on, the plateau of ground we walked to get here, the abyss in front of us, we the explainers of these things, and the language we all are subject too (by subjecting ourselves to it) standing here explaining.

We need to do too much at once to make the smallest move with any validity.

All philosophers have failed to lock this down in any kind of linear argument that impresses the rest of us.

So this conversation is difficult.

And for those coming from opposite sides (perhaps focused on the metaphysical or physical ground, or instead abandoning metaphysics and focused on our language use/meanings/logic, or focused on the abyss that separates all these concepts) this difficult conversation is very difficult. It is difficult for two people who fervently agree with Aristotle to say what a substance, a thing, an essence, knowledge of these and the act of knowing is. It is likely they will face significant disagreement on what is best to say next, or say first.

I have come to the conclusion that until we figure out a language that allows us to address the physical, metaphysical, ontological, epistemological and logical/linguistic aspects of this topic all at once, interlocutors will forever undercut any ground any philosopher attempts to cover in one of these areas. Epistemological issues will always undercut physics; metaphysics will always undercut ontology or vice versa; linguistics will always undercut metaphysics or vice versa, etc.

My solution is to rule out any conclusions that shrug off metaphysics - I know what not to say.

But what can be said?

I think the best language to speak standing on this precipice is mystical, sort of pre-logical. We both know and don’t know the object of inquiry. This object is both most immediate to us as it is utterly cut off from us. We can speak about it clearly, but never say enough to capture it.

What is so simple and easy about “there is a tiger and here is not a tiger” is also so deeply complex and puzzling.

The solution will not be one that saves the complex but ignores the simple, nor one that keeps it simple while ignoring the complex. Each, and both together, must be addressed at once. If there is a tiger.

Sellar's myth of the given argument, even if one accepts it, respects epistemology. It doesn't imply that the existence of a rabbit as a whole/organism cannot be distinct from our conventions. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes.

This conversation is at once one of physics, metaphysics, and epistemology. And if we do not address all three at once, and focus only on one of these aspects, the others unaddressed undo whatever we say.

This is physics in that we are referring to access to tigers. (Positing content).
Metaphysics in that we are referring to distinctions among multiple, distinct things (using language such as “same” and “different “ to draw tigers distinctly from the things tigers are not. And metaphysics in that we have to speak about language itself as if it is a metaphysical object.
And epistemology in that there is no certainty our physics and our metaphysics have merely been constructed to align despite possibly having nothing to do with things in themselves (a metaphysics of illusions based on a physics of appearances in motion).

Bottom line for me, each word we utter refers internally to its essential meaning, as it refers externally to all of the forces that make it impossible to define absolutely.

Snow and sleet may demonstrate the confusion of knowing essences (is sleet really just snow depending on what snow is…like rain or a wintry mix…??); but the differences between snow and fire demonstrate the confusion of not knowing essences (snow is never burning and fire never freezes still).

There either are differences, be they phenomenally constructed or mind independent objectivities, or there is no difference between snow and fire and no distinctions to speak of.

Essence, like decay causing motion, is undeniable.

Is there an "essence", common to all and only the members of a family, that makes it what it is?
— Banno — Fire Ologist

Simply put. No.

You place the essence of a thing apart from the thing in order to form your question. The thing is its essence; it is what it is to be it.

You asked is there a “X” common to all and only the “Ys” of a family that makes “it” (presumably one of the “Ys”) what it is?

(Aside, what do you mean by “what it is?” as you just said that?)

No. The essence doesn’t come first from over there and then make some member over here one who has this essence and shares it’s own essence with the other members. That’s too many ontological/ metaphysical pieces.

There is the thing.

One thing.

We can categorize the thing as a member of a family if you want but that can be a separate question (about universalizing a particular..). That’s advanced identification of a thing, its identification of many things as a family so they all can be distinguished at the same time as if they were one thing.

One thing is the question in the first place, so I don’t think adding family resemblance helps sort this out.

There is the thing.

And like any thing, while it remains a thing, it makes some form, is being some essence, that words alone can recapture in reference to what “it” is.

Forms/essences come and go, just as things are all moving. Things and the essence spoken of those things do not make two kinds of things. There are just things. Things distinguished as “this” from “that other one” reveal what come to spoken of as their essences, the distinguishing lines that form the thing like they inform our words and thoughts of the things.

But none of this conversation has even happened without all of us fixing essences and putting them in motion. It’s too late for us to avoid the punch in the face of an essential difference between even this sentence and my next.

Essence happens where happenings happen. It is not simply motion that is happening.

There can not be relations without relata, be they identified particular unique individual relatives, or familiar resembling relatives.

Motion is only found where fixed things are moving and fixed things only rest long enough to be carved out as “things” as they are moving into place.

Heraclitus said it best: “It rests from change.” There is peaceful harmony in warring tension.

Part of the tension here is knowing we are talking about actual things, experiencing phenomenal appearances hiding things in themselves, knowing the epistemological impossibilities involved, positing a thing such as “tiger” as if an objective, mind independent thing, and then speaking about speaking and language using “essence” as if we are not referring to a real tiger, sinking its teeth into your leg, because we aren’t…

It’s a precarious conversation at best. Going on for thousands of years now.

But it’s only a conversation, a communication, if there is some essentially common ground, apart from us we are sharing.

(This is why we all fall into referencing universals - because where two agree about a thing, they have created a universal common ground. So many simultaneous topics at this moment in philosophical thinking.)

Is there an "essence", common to all and only the members of a family, that makes it what it is? — Banno

I would ask “Is there (in the same form as you said above) an experience you call “makes it” without making a “what it is?” There is the motion that undoes all family resemblance on the fringes, and there is the family, the essence, that is undone.

So simply put, there is “is to be” and there is “what” is to be; never can these be separated, except in words, as I have referred to the motion of “is to be” as if it was a separate moment from “what it is to be.”

Is there an "essence", common to all and only the members of a family, that makes it what it is? — Banno

Simply put. No. The essence doesn’t come first from over there and then make some member over here one who has this essence. There is the thing. And there is the essence, the form, the distinction, that is this same thing, now spoken, or “known” for what it is.

There is.
So there is it.

It.
So it is.

What is assumed, in "assuming essence"? — Banno

Because we are asking about things as we simultaneously talk about talking about things, the words of your question are the answer to the question:
“What” is assumed in assuming essence.

Somewhat interesting, frustratingly annoying thread.

I’m still stuck on how one can speak to another about anything, and uses more than one word to form a sentence, without reference to, without invocation of, without admitting, without assuming, essence.

Arguing that essences aren’t knowable is like using words to argue that there are no such things as letters.

Essential distinctions are present in every move we make, be it a movement of speech, or a lump of magma distinguishing itself from the earth’s core and the volcano that tossed it.

Movement and essence - or simply distinction - undeniable. Unless one stops speaking. And breathing.

Whether we ever know the essence of anything correctly, that is another matter; but we know something of the essence of knowledge when we admit motion (being, becoming) and quiddity (distinctions measured) are what can be known.

Things have essences. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think saying “have” creates the issue for people who try to deny essence. I agree things have essences, but at this rarefied level of universality, it may be better to try to see the unity, the identity, that is the essence of the same unified things thereby identified. The “what it is to be” is a “what” whether it has anything else or not, so to speak; we don’t need to distinguish “it” from what it “has” to understand essence; we just need to break it all apart to speak about it, so “has” becomes efficient for speaking, but not to those who don’t admit of identity.

An essence of some item is the set of properties that are necessary and sufficient for it to be that item.

A necessary property of some item is one that is correctly attributed to that item in all possible worlds.

It is a trivial exercise to posit a possible world in which any particular property associated with an item is absent from that item.

Therefore the notion of essence is problematic. — Banno

Your quote above points to the fact that it is really hard to drill down to the essence of anything. We divide unified things into many parts in order to simply speak about one, distinct thing as it essentially is. What a mess. I agree with that. But so be it. We need unity (essence of identity) to speak at all. Your quote doesn’t mean there is no, or can be no, essence. In fact, because it refers to “item” and “properties” (to which I can ask if there is a difference between this property and that property, requiring reference again to essence as much as “this” from “that”), it relies on essences as much as it relies on words or other things.

There is no possible world that can be distinguished from any other possible world without each such world referring to itself as distinct and referring to all other worlds as not itself.

Distinction reveals something of the essence of two things (or more) distinguished; without distinctions, without difference, there is no way to speak about anything. Without essence, without distinction, there is nothing to say nor means of thinking of a reply (or means to reply or ply, at all).

There is nothing to disagree with nor two items to bring into agreement, where there is no essence to speak of.

Could there be a possible world, much like ours, but the only difference is that in that world, there are no other possible worlds possible? Seems like this has to be possible if we allow for possible worlds to be spoken of. Or maybe such a world is not possible..?

was I wrong in expecting something in return when loving someone — Dmytro

Hey - hang in there. You seem to know what love is and it’s worth all the heartache it brings.

You aren’t wrong. You wanted a girlfriend, to share with, which is normal and involves real life, practical give and take. You wanted mutual love with someone who wanted mutual love with you together. Nothing wrong about wanting that or letting the relationship end if it wasn’t going to happen.

But on a more analytical level, you are right about love in itself - it has no expectations. When you love a baby or a child, you just love them - they can do and be and say anything and the parent’s love remains.

Love is beholding, not an actual holding in hand.
Love seeks to consume the loved one to unify with them, without ever touching or changing them in any way. Love wants one thing, and receives maybe not what it wants, but much more instead.

These things are irrational, unspeakable, and so cannot be formulated into an expectation.

Love is a blessing. A pure gift. Something to thank one’s lucky stars for. Not something we can plan or construct all by ourselves and set out to accomplish.

Do you think it's possible to record the individual human experience? — Ayush Jain

My individual experience IS my body - this is the “cord” that there is to “re-cord” so to speak.

Talking about it is recording it. Thinking about thinking is an attempt to record thinking.

So yes, it’s not only possible, it’s what we do when we speak. Problem is, the recording quality sucks.

If there is no room in the universe for freedom to reason, judge and choose our actions, then each word of this post is not from “me.”

Seems absurd to say that this post is not coming from choices I am making right now, and now again.

But if there is no room in this universe for freedom, no position from which to halt the constant drive of determined necessity and take responsibility for these words here, and here again, and stake a claim as being the sole source of “these words precisely here in this post” as I alone cause them to be, then we are all stenographers. And we have no idea why. Or how. Or why I just said “how”.

If one were to know the truth of a significant matter, would transparency and honesty be owed to the community — Benj96

Who is this “one” who “knows the truth” of a “significant matter?” I want to be that guy.

The “integrity of free will” - doesn’t that rely on truth? How are you freely choosing between A or B if A is a lie or B is something I’m actually ignorant of? There’s no freedom there, just a stone falling down a hill by what forces it knows not.

Are you just saying “what they don’t know won’t hurt them?” In which case what do you mean by “significant matter” because it seems running around the world with no knowledge of a significant matter could lead to harm.

Without an example of how one could protect ignorant bliss in other people, I don’t see why one would keep truth hidden for the sake of the “integrity of free will.”

Seems Orwellian to me, and a recipe for slavery.

Buddha retreated from Nirvana to tell us all the truth. Jesus said he is the truth. US Constitution protects free speech so that all can express their thoughts and reveal what they believe is true.

Truth is like guns. Once you let truth loose in the world, if you don’t make it available to all, those without it will be oppressed. Seems to me hiding truth will hurt any chance at free will.

• The Earth evolves — Seeker25

I have trouble right out of the gate. I don't see that evolution occurs outside of life. The earth doesn't evolve.

We can use the word "evolve" metaphorically to describe a change, but it is just metaphor. You need mutation, so you need reproduction, to evolve. You need survival impulses and the death of weak individuals and reproduction of the strong individuals, to evolve. You need the interaction of living things and their environment for evolutionary forces to bring about new adaptations. Without living things, there is no adaptation. The misshapen form of a planet doesn't adapt to gravity and evolve to be spherical.

In fact, evolutionary forces allow trees to defy gravity. So if the unifying forces of gravity were the ethical law of the land, life and evolution, in trees and birds, would be unethical!

Equating all change with evolution, is like equating all destruction with death; and all emergence with birth. It makes for nice poetry and metaphor to speak of the birth of sun, and to see the destruction of a comet that falls into the sun as the death of a shooting star, but we are not talking science anymore, but poetry. You crash a care into a wall and total it. You don't actually kill the car. The car isn't evolving into some other use for the steal it is made of.

And just like we can't use mere physics and gravity and speed to explain how dolphins evolved to be seafaring creatures from land-based creatures, we can't use evolutionary forces too explain how personal interactions have an ethical component to them.

• The Earth evolves according to tendencies that, thanks to science, we know.
• When we act in the same direction as these tendencies, we foster humanity’s positive evolution. — Seeker25

If ethics is to be discovered in the tendencies of natural world, even absent any persons, in evolution, then all of our human ethical norms become so forced and contrived. Why is it wrong to murder? Because life seeks to beget life and evolution tells us so? No! Life also kills and eats dinner, or males hurt and shun rivals and kill their offspring to prompt new reproduction. Life leads to more miscarriages than births. Sometimes the stronger ones are killed and the weak ones reproduce. From what I can tell, nature and evolution give us no clue as to what is good versus bad, and how one ought to act versus how one has evolved to act.

Ethics is confined to the world that exists between persons. The rest of the universe and all of history before persons is devoid of ethics, innocent of its possible judgment. Since persons evolved to walk the earth, since that time, only persons have discovered a disconnect between how something is and how something ought to be. And we didn't just discover this gap between what is and what ought to be; we made it, when we did what we ought not do. We created the first gap between "is" and "ought". We created the first injustice in nature. We probably started hiding things, leading others to believe something to be the case that actually they ought not believe, because they were hiding the truth that they alone knew. Lies and hiding - words representing nothingness as if it were somethingness - this is the initiation of "ethics." Maybe?

Your question about where ethics resided before life is well-posed, but I don’t know the answer—just as I don’t know where intelligence, life, or consciousness were, and yet no one doubts that all three exist. — Seeker25

My question was actually where ethics resided before persons.

You seem to be saying ethics is imbedded in evolution, or more generally, in life.

Looking at earth’s history, we can say chemical reactions were followed by biological reactions, so from physics, we get something new called life.

And we can say that with life came the evolutionary forces, arising when the first RNA behavior moved into DNA behavior (billions of years ago on earth). So life and its evolution were once new, sui generis. Before that time, there was no life and so no evolutionary forces. There was no “eating” to “grow” or “reproduce” in any strict sense of these words before there were a living things, not just chemical things.

Then we can say the evolutionary forces led to a species that contained the human person, and from this species the universe had something new again, called the person. There were new forces again such as “meaningful words” and “ethics” and “immoral actions” and “ought” “self-awareness of logic” and “math science”. These new forces (words) did not exist prior to persons, like eating did not exist prior to life and evolution.

If we want to talk about “eating” or “reproduction” or “sensation” or “growing to adulthood” we have to look at living things, and if we look only to chemical/physical things, we will never see these things at all. (Not in a non-metaphorical, non-post-hoc, strict sense.). Similarly, if we want to talk about “ethics” we have to look at persons; and if we look only at evolutionary activity and/or chemical activity, we will never see “evil” or “morality” or “something that ought not to exist.”

The entire universe is innocent of ethics. Except for wherever a person is. Just like the entire universe contains no evolution, except where life exists.

How life sparked from chemicals - I have no idea.
How persons sparked from life - I have no idea.
How ethics sparked from persons - I have no idea.

But I don’t see how ethics could skip over the personal and spark from life itself.

Poisoning the blood? — RogueAI

Like I said, conservatives have to confess their evil, lying hearts before anyone who is reasonable would believe an “honest” dialogue on the issues. Racist, facist pigs.

If I was using “blood” as an analogy about the border, instead of the shameful shit Trump says, I’d say America is wounded, bleeding at the border, and hurting Mexico, the Mexican people, and the rest of the world in the process. And America can fix its own bleeding if it really wanted to, but instead it just continues bleeding. America’s border policy is weakening itself, and poisoning the rest of the world.

But that’s all more political headline grabbing bullshit metaphor, poisoning the blood of actual discussions Dems should be having and positions they should be articulating.

A large segment of Republicans is incredibly racist. — RogueAI

Right. Foregone conclusion. No use talking with a racist. All smart people agree on that, right?

But then, how can the Dems talk with Republicans and win them over, and win elections, if all those Repubs are not worthy of any human interaction?

Maybe jumping right into “you’re a racist” in conversations isn’t the best approach? I mean, we all know already, racism has become a feature of the Republican. The media is doing a great job with that. So is that it? Conversation on the merits of any issue is over? Trump only dog-whistles? Full stop?

I wonder if there are a few Repubs who aren’t racist, who find racism immoral. Unfortunately, I’m just as sure there’s “a large segment of” Democrats who are “incredibly racist” as well. So maybe racism grinding every issue into a food fight isn’t productive of expanding a Dem base?

Dems should learn how to express what they want on the border and debate it with Repubs. That’s my point. So do we need an organized border, or not? Dems say “yes” and Dems say “no” (sometimes, it’s the same Dem). Which is it?

Any clear answer to that question will help the Dems. But Dems have trouble talking about the border for some reason. I don’t see why they can’t draw a clear line at the border like they can draw a clear line around a “large segment of” Republicans as racists..