Everything is on a scale for you. Very rigid, linear thinking.

Faith in God requires belief without reason-based thought.
— DifferentiatingEgg

Rubbish. — Leontiskos

Wise choice of word.

There is no mental act without “reason based thought”, without intellect, in the mix. So it is rubbish to talk of a mental act like “faith” or believing “without reason based thought”.

I think the confusion here is thinking knowledge is more powerful than belief. For example, we can believe the car is in the driveway, but once we look and see it, we don’t have to merely believe it, we can know it more certainly and don’t need faith or belief. But that’s also rubbish.

It is belief that is the more powerful of the two. It is belief that moves us to act, that empowers us to stop deliberating or reasoning among the things we know, and actually act. We consider what we know using reason and just before we act upon that reason and knowledge, we make a judgement, and that judgment is a choice, namely, that we’ve seen enough, we’ve done all the logical calculations necessary, we’ve judged between what we know and what we do not, and now we finally believe enough we can cease that whole merely mental process, and act.

Knowledge is what minds think about, what they know; believing is what minds are actually doing, judging, finished thinking, and understanding. Faith, knowledge, understanding are different moments in all of our chosen acts, and what we believe is behind everything we knowingly do.

We don’t know something strong enough to act on it; we know something well enough that we can make arguments about it and syllogisms about it, but when we believe something, when we judge the argument concluded, and just say “therefore x” we are pointing to what we believe, as now demonstrated in the syllogism we merely know. When the syllogism is sound, we still say we believe there is nothing more that needs to be said. Once we have the conclusion, once we have the belief, we’ve already judged and don’t need any more arguments.

And we can strip knowledge from our actions, or act with little knowledge, and no certainty of what is behind the action nor where it will lead; but at the moment of acting, regardless of any knowledge, always our actions follow the moment of belief. We take the plunge based on our deepest convictions. We must believe what we do, what we say we know before there could ne anything we would testify to as what “I know.”

Belief is more essential to our lives than knowing. Belief is like our testament to knowledge.

So to tell a person who believes in God they might be jeopardizing their faith-based belief by seeking logical proof, or that logical proof replaces and usurps this belief, is like telling me the fact that I trust my wife must mean I don’t really know her (or. I know her “without reason based thought” or something), and if I really knew my wife, there would be no place or need for trust anymore.

One more point here - we don’t prove existence. Anselm and Aquinas, God bless them, didn’t make the proof they hoped for. We take existing objects and we prove things about them. The substance of the proof is in the motion from premises to function/relation, to conclusions. The conclusion, like the premise, is all based on “if there exists…”. All first premises that start with “There exists…” start from belief. If starting from what we merely know, we need to start “If there exists…”. So a conclusion like “therefore x exists” has forgotten it was based on “if”.

I probably needed to spend a lot more time on this but you should see my two or three points here.

If you chop down my reasoning, I might still believe my conclusion anyway. But if you also show a better reasoning, and new object for me to understand, to adjudge “there I see it”, I might actually change what I believe.

The issue being discussed is whether or not use of reason in arguments for God undermines the credibility of faith. — T Clark

That’s right. He’s saying “positing a logical credibility to an argument for God undermines the credibility of faith for that same God.

I think arguments for the existence of God can only impress those who already believe in God, because they are not clear (and I think, ultimately fail).

Mind you, I believe in God. But I believe in reason too, and my reason tells me my reason cannot deliver existence in some other object. It’s like reverse ontological proof that my ideas are not the things they are ideas of, and anything that is reasonable in syllogism is, ontologically, my idea, not some other things, such as God.

If I know the earth revolves around the sun and can prove it, and if you previously believed the earth revolved but did not know how to prove it, now, with my great syllogism, what you believed is what you can prove. But I’ve not shown you that the earth exists, or revolving is actually happening.

People see that proof (about objects) as obviating the need for faith. But faith is faith in the existence or truth of things, whereas logic and reasoning is about how truly existing things relate to one another.

Not even Descartes, who proved at least one thing existed (himself to himself), not even he proved anything else existed.

The answer to this is not that Anselm’s proof is a logical perfection of God as syllogism - it is that we need faith no matter which object we pick up to fashion proofs about. Faith (will) is essential not only to finding God, but to following a reasonable argument, whatever objects that argument is about. We don’t prove things exist; we prove things about existing things we already chose to believe in, or as the more empirically bent put it, we already posit as an object of knowledge.

we shouldn't use "we ... have faith in" where we don't have grounds to doubt makes more sense. — 180 Proof

Like it.

“We do have faith…” becomes
“We do not have grounds to doubt…”.
Puts a bit of a negative spin on it, but if it is more precise to you it still works for me.

This highlights the difference between using the word “belief” which aligns with “faith” and using the word “grounds” (or in the negative, “no grounds to doubt”) which aligns better with “knowledge.”

Again, big picture, you already made your point. But now, if we want to draw the distinction between “believing” and “knowing” a bit further, we have to refocus on the distinctions between the object believed in, versus the object known of; we can’t draw a distinction just between believing and knowing anymore since “have faith” has been supplanted by “do not have grounds…” (to doubt or otherwise).

Now religion (pure faith objects, fairies and gods) becomes theology, the rational and exposition of objects believed in (fairies gods) as if they were objects we had no grounds to doubt. Now reason is applied to faith objects.

But again, theology never leaps to philosophy/science. We can’t prove gods or fairies exist.

Unless we someday can make a tool to measure the difference between believing in God, and knowing what God is.

And again, whether any of these objects actually exist or can be doubted, or must be doubted, whether they be named “Gods” or “streets” or “cars”, whether they exist at all, the ontology of it, will never be proven at the end of syllogism. That’s my little contribution here. Arguments for God and arguments for that car that almost hit me crossing the street, ultimately are all useless as proof of anything ontologically.

Telling you about my experience in the street, or walking on water, on an ontological level, is another conversation, than a conversation demonstrating how the logic between all the street happenings and all the god happenings is logical.

We always take something, some thing, an object, for granted. This taking for granted, is what I meant by “faith” when I said “I have to have faith in my senses.”

Something needs to hit us in the face before we might ever ask whether we believe or we know “something” or “face” or “hitting.”

point regarding topics that have no strictly objective or easily proven right or wrong? — Captain Homicide

I make this sort of argument a lot — Leontiskos

This same subject is all over so many different threads. It’s the central issue of philosophy if you ask me.

Here posed with a moral object “good health” as opposed to a “consonance” or an “essence” or the uses of “existence” without essence - the same predicament turned around and around. It’s Plato as much as Wittgenstein as much as Aristotle as much as Harris.

We can’t quite sum up in words what “summing it up in words” is without using words. We can’t eliminate essence without drawing essentially distinct parts. And we can’t see being without already “looking.” So we just keep starting over and try, trying again.

And the PNC reference is spot on. If the skeptical conclusion is objects are not objective, there is no essence in the way of existence, believe that if you must, but then, speaking serves no purpose, it moves nothing. “Meaning”, like the rest of this sentence, must then be left hollow, as if this sentence could really have a beginning somewhere and will come to some end. (Which it just did! Go figure…)

I agree with the spirit of your argument, with what you are trying to say. But I think you draw too stark a line inside the mind of the person who would believe in God, and who would also be a reasonable, reasoning, logical thinker.

If someone says they base their faith on the soundness of some logical syllogism, they aren't doing the faith thing, and they are probably working off a faulty syllogism as well. There's where I agree with you.

But that said, I don't agree the faithful person must not be using their reason when they assert they believe in God. We can't escape our reason. It's always there in every syntactically correct sentence. If I "know" God, I must employ the same epistemological processes as knowing math or empirical things.

The faithful person just has other experiences, other objects, which, like empirical objects, can't be proven to exist by logical syllogism.

I don't think anyone, in the history of philosophy, has ever proven any object must exist through any syllogism. This is the reason after 3000 years of our scientia, we still have to ask the first question about all of it - what exists?

Maybe Descartes was onto something when he realized "I am" can both be known as knowledge while it simultaneously was happening ontologically, while "I am thinking" was actually (ontologically) happening. So he did fashion a demonstration of sorts (not a syllogism) that proved the existence of an object as known. But unless you knowingly conduct his little demonstration for yourself, he hasn't proved the existence of anything besides himself to anyone besides himself.

We can't prove by logic that anything exists.

This is why I agree with the spirit of your post. I don't like Anselm's and Aquinas' and Descartes' or any arguments purporting to demonstrate the existence of God. They can be shown invalid and/or unsound.

But you said: "Faith in God requires belief without reason-based thought."

Another translation of this sentence could be "You have to be crazy to believe God exists." Because I don't really know what "belief without reason-based thought" means.

As a non-sequitur, assume some man walked on water, pulled say, a guy named Peter, from drowning, to walk with him on the water, then he was destroyed on a cross to death, and buried, and then... rose from the dead and said to Peter, "I am God, trust me," - whether you or me believe any of that actually happened, for Peter, faith in God at that point is sort of reasonable, logical conclusion for a person having those experiences. Right? So to say "faith in God requires belief without reason-based thought" may not be logically necessary, and for Peter, is ontologically false (because what they hell else is he supposed to think while he is still wet from walking on the water with Jesus?) Maybe he was hallucinating the whole thing - that's a better empirical explanation - but you can continue to use reason to come to conclusions about an object like a man walking on water, or a God, or a hallucination, and so must Peter.

So the phrase "without reason-based thought" is a nit I would pick here. I see your point overall, but I wouldn't say it how you said it.

I think it's impossible to live a life of pure reason. It's okay to have faith in things. Faith is a powerful tool. — DifferentiatingEgg

Exactly, we aren't just robots with calculator minds. And we need to have faith in our senses to navigate crossing the street, and faith in our logic to navigate a conversation.

the Alt-Right (and indeed, the intensely DEI crowd) pigeon hole people by observing behaviour, and tying it race. — AmadeusD

:100: although I’d say we need to remove the word “indeed” and pull that parenthetical out of the parentheses in line with the rest of the statement.

And if we changed “pigeon hole” (a putting down) to “set equal persons on a pedestal” (a respect for the uniqueness of individuals and peoples), we have our statement of an honorable goal for this conversation.

“The alt right and the intensely DEI crowd pigeon hole people by observing behavior and tying it to race.”

That’s bad, so let’s talk with the goal that “the right and the left only seek to set equal persons on a pedestal by observing behavior and tying it to race (or culture, or sex, or class, or intelligence, or physical beauty, etc, etc..)”

Purely in evolutionary terms diversity is more adaptive because you have a wider range of attributes that can fit changing circumstances. — ChatteringMonkey

Every stance in these discussions is precarious.

I see a tension between inclusion of diversity (yielding adaptability, other goods, etc) and exclusion (yielding the lines that frame the diverse) when it comes to race. You don’t get diverse things if you don’t keep things exclusive of each other. You don’t get the authentically Asian or Pacific Islander without exclusivity. Should we want all the races to blend into one, or all people to realize we single people are a single people of many different races?

The equity-inclusion crowds then, in practice, build an anti-diversity world; inclusion is at odds with diversity. The racist crowds are anti-human, so self-defeating, and much worse, but inclusiveness has to be grounded in a respect for exclusivity, or it may also tend away from the better world we seek.

So the first thing to settle in the discussion of race, to me, from all sides, has to be whether people, as people, are already homogeneous, with no significant diversity yet to speak of, as people. We shouldn’t start the conversation by grappling with diversity versus inclusion. We need to first address who must be included in the conversation about different races (namely, all people, which is redundant with all races of people) before we can really have that conversation.

If someone can’t accept that, they need to explain themselves before the conversation can move anywhere.

It should be as good that there are many different personalities at one table in one family, as it is good that the Asian and the African and the European, etc are so different as one people, in the one human race. It’s obvious who the people are (in all races) and only a racist could be confused about that.

The real problem isn’t people accepting all the differences, it’s people accepting they are no different than other people, and no matter what the race, we’re all at bottom only people, and as people, there really isn’t a such thing as white people or black people or green people. We need to accept all the samenesses, not the differences first.

The only real surface dividing people, is between this particular individual, and that one, and when seeing the differences between individuals, in their uniqueness, skin color tells us so little it should barely make the discussion.

Odd, that folk might think one form of education, one type of schooling, one way of learning, will work for everyone. — Banno

I agree that a good teacher will have to find different ways to teach different students, that there isn’t one form of education, one way of learning, that will work for everyone. But if there is a renewed interest in classical education and the Great Books, I see this as a reaction to the current content being taught, not the form of education.

the way yesterday's alarming impulse becomes today's enlivening insight, tomorrow's repressive doctrine, and after that subsides into a petty superstition.

That is interesting. Occurs to me it probably describes the scientific method of the modern sociology department.

The whole conversation about race, to me, should be “why are you afraid of your brother?”
— Fire Ologist

Because he stood on my neck in the middle of the street until I was dead? It's a complicated issue. — frank

My question is actually for the guy with the boot, not the guy with the boot on his neck. The guy who persecutes other people based on race is the chickenshit afraid of his own shadow, and ignorantly looking to his own brothers to blame for his insecurity. It’s a complicated question.

Yet [Russell’s History] sufficiently impress the Swedish Academy that they awarded Russell the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Something that Zarathustra, with his swollen, distended prose, did not achieve. — Banno

Without any judgment on the merits, couldn’t that lack of award simply point out that more folks besides Russell misunderstood Nietzsche? Or maybe the Academy is wisely highlighting Nietzsche’s genius by not putting his work in the human award-worthiness box? I think more likely the former, because who doesn’t like a good award.

but Nietzsche points to "them" flipping it over — DifferentiatingEgg

So he’s flipping it back. It’s the flip that’s my point. In order to show how the shallow lovers of form (Plato, Socrates, slave moralists) built a world based on facade and ignored rhe undercurrent that gives birth to these forms, he flipped 2000 years since Plato/socrates back over. He revealed the repressed underbelly.

You are nit-picking me about which version of Socrates we are taking from Nietzsche to sustain the narrative that your deeper understanding of Nietzsche can mean something to anyone else but you.

Look I see your neck-deep into Nietzsche, maybe intoxicated a bit with it.

Thanks for trying to elevate my understanding.

I do wish you would point out some limitations he had, if any in your view. Since you don’t like my criticisms, I am curious of the degree critical thinking you would apply. It’s fairly not-Nietzsche to find no flaws in anything some other human does. I’m sure you have some criticisms.

He had rejected the whole of the Jewish doctrine of repentance and atonement; — Nietzsche, The Antichrist § 33

This is as much theology as it is Nietzsche-ology, but Nietzsche was wrong here. In my free-thinking, adult, pre-schooled, considered, tested, humble opinion.

Jesus didn’t reject the law which creates judgment of sin and the need therefore of repentance - Jesus was sinless, so unable to be judged and so remained free to make his own laws and show us what to become of ourselves. But he walked a particular path and did not skip around in the mountaintops. Although Jesus never needed the law to guide him in his life, his life not once deviated from the law. That means something. And Jesus flat out said he was not to abolish the law. That means something too. Nietzsche didn’t bother to explain how Christ could be beyond the law AND subject to it. The overman Christ, though he did not need any law, ended up honoring his parents, not ever lying, not ever stealing, no adultery, etc etc. He commanded us to live God and seek God’s will. Jesus could use himself (more precisely, his Father) to seek what to do, and did not need the law as guide, but what he actually did was not whatever he wanted to do - he had to eat when hungry because his stomach demanded it, and bleed when broken, like anyone, subject and enslaved. Jesus still IS the law by taking form, making an appearance.

So there is analysis of the meaning of the Jesus story, and a psychology of Christ, that Nietzsche didn’t address that precisely misunderstands Christs relationship to his Father, himself and to us. The law set out before Jesus was born is in the mix of what Jesus meant.

But so what - because of Nietzsche we are digging deep into our relationship with ourselves and what we are to make of the limitations we encounter, like other’s laws.

I’m hopeless. I still hope you aren’t hopeless.

You could muster up a criticism of Nietzsche.

I hope someone else is enjoying this. I am to a degree. Are you?

Why is OK to acknowledge the non-arbitrary existence of a “consonance” but not a tree or some other self-identical spatial object? — J

This question is the nut of philosophy to me, reframed since before the time of Plato’s cave.

You just raised an analogy with water to describe the flow. Thales ears perked up.

The fact that we haven’t been able to answer it plainly after all this feeds the predicament. It may be instructive that we seem to have beat around the bush here but continually miss the target.

Because of the linear function of logical thought that we can’t escape in order to even merely form a sentence (or just say “consonance” as “not-flow”), when we speak or think of this question, we automatically separate consonance from the flow. And, we make a new consonance out of the flow itself and pit it against consonance itself. All so we can speak of whatever we are speaking of.

But it is one thing, any one moment, we first and plainly sought to speak of, so we contradict ourselves and our goals by merely positing the question and identifying a subject to examine (such as “consonance”), and by trying to say just one thing “consonance” we have to say two things “consonance in flow”.

So there will never be a satisfactory answer to this in the form of linear thinking and our concepts. This, to me is why this basic question has remained unanswered.

Although not an answer, I see what Heraclitus said as addressing this in a plain way, because he wasn’t being linear in his words (“the path of writing is both crooked and straight.”). We aren’t drawing a line between consonance and flow; we have to see them together at once to see either at all.

Heraclitus said “it rests from change”. This would be the most analytic framing of this observation, but it might also just be taken as mysticism or nonsense. So what does it say?

His best description of what to make of the appearance of consonance was this: “the barley-drink stands still, only while stirring”. ) This is a a more faithful translation of his aphorism at 125.

The barley/ drink is a mixture of barley, wine, cheese and maybe some oil. It’s a like a vinaigrette you can drink. And like a vinaigrette, if it sits in a cup or bottle it separates. In order to bring the barley-drink into existence, for a consonance to appear, you must stir the ingredients and only while the ingredients are stirring in motion can the barley drink be drunk - otherwise you still have not-barley-drink, but cheese and barley, or wine and oil.

Flow and consonance reveal each other in the instant of experience.

So the barley-drink, the consonance, stands out in existence as a “thing” for the first time, only in the motion.

Linear thinking places the motion first and the barley-drink second. But they have to be seen together in the moments the stirring is happening. There is no prior or post or cause or effect between them. The consonance points immediately to its stirring in the instant the stirring is consonant as a barley-drink.

So this doesn’t really answer the question, but I think it reframes the object we are investigating.

Another observation here is that this is paradox. We are trying to nail down nailing down - or undo doing by doing something as if it was already done. We are cracking open what neither can be cracked nor is it not already open. It rests is the same as it changes now in our speech, so how on earth can we be logical about things grounded in illogical paradox?

So I don’t have an answer, but spiral towards one anyway treating the above moving parts.

We always try to grab a subject, a motionless object, and then predicate it, fixing properties to it. But the fixing, the predicating is as much before the object predicated, as the object predicated appears first in out sentences.

In the end, I don’t think these are linguistic tricks hiding self-delusion, nor do I think Plato fee ally explained the existence of essences, nor Aristotle though he did better to account for the flow, nor Nietzsche though he did even better to account for the flow. But I do think consonance is something we minded-beings sense, from out in the flow; even though we do not see the thing in itself as it is in itself, we see that it is, that it is flowing, that there is consonance and flow.

It is a different thing to say that we do not know what any of the phenomena in experience really are by continuing to use the eyeballs and minds that make them phenomena, from saying “separate, self consonant things apart from us do not exist.”

It’s a triangulating dance we dance when we say “consonance” at all.

I dont need to know what you think, I know what you said. Saying Nietzsche was a metaphysician when he wasn't doesn't matter what you think about that. It's like trying to explain why 2+2 = 5. I don't need to know the logic behind it. — DifferentiatingEgg

“…he wasn’t…”

You said what is not. You didn’t say what is. So nothing to discuss in this whole passage besides me.

The point being you should revisit Nietzsche's works, not disclose what I know. Especially when you're going to try and write a half shitpost on Nietzsche from a base dialectical perspective. — DifferentiatingEgg

“…you should….”

No new content. Oh, “…shit post…”. Too vague.

Actually if we go back, we can clearly see you're the one who denies Nietzsche's correct evaluation of Christ's equation with the Judaism in the rest of the Bible... You won't allow Nietzsche's interpretation to be the case. This is one way you start twisting Nietzsche. You should try self abnegation before handling his works. — DifferentiatingEgg

Haven’t twisted one word. Nietzsche was a lot of things - like all other great ones, he was profound, insightful, revealed truth, and blew the punchline, got it wrong - he was all of those. He was a social critic, a critic of academia, a critic of western thought and art, a psychologist, a crappy scientist, etc. Bit most of all, he changed the game, made it new again.

Not inclined to offer specifics with someone who just asserts “ correct evaluation of Christ's equation with the Judaism in the rest of the Bible” both as if I didn’t know that and as if it was enough to support your overall assessment of what there is to know about Nietzsche.

Are you saying if I only understood Nietzsche as deeply as you, I would understand the Bible better or something?

Thus his understanding of beauty is so far beyond you comprehension it's alien to you. — DifferentiatingEgg

Or maybe I ate Nietzsche’s beauty for breakfast and used it to make my “shit post.”

What can I say to make you see something more than you are seeing?

Plato saw appearance and reality where the appearance was the world of objects and all illusion; reality is the formal, the permanent and fixed. Nietzsche turned this upside down. The appearance is the Apollonian, the flashing facade, where people like Socrates build their formalities and “truth” all of which is more akin to lies, to mask their weakness, unpossessed of the deeper source of truth, the Dionysian, not rigid and reified, but alive as instinct, this life, the raw existential beast of life, and only tamed honestly as will, not truth, and as art, made most beautiful in the tragic and in intoxication.

The dance is real. We need both Apollo and Dionysius to discern the human (therein lies the metaphysics, but forget I said anything if “metaphysics” is such a dirty word in Nietzsche’s mouth - I’m sure Nietzsche would curse me for accusing him of ever saying something metaphysical, right?.). But, the world tended too far away from the Dionysian, and Nietzsche reset it all. Every institution that hinted at truth, took blows and many lies were uncovered.

That’s my own take of course. I could be wrong. Or maybe you think I’m correct, only shallow? Hard to tell how little I know about Nietzsche from what you are saying.

So there is some more actual content for you to pillory and dismiss, more content than you’ve provided in this whole exchange. And you’re the expert.

Oh that’s right, you said “Nietzsche was correct” and “I didn’t know that.” About Jesus and God. And I twist words. Maybe actually saying something about him, and maybe not for the sake of refuting something I said, but just to share something you love about him. Just a thought. I mean does everyone you know say they love Nietzsche? Maybe I’m a dime a dozen to you. That’s probably it. You must really be a teacher. Do you treat all of your students this way?

you choose not to see Nietzsche from his modality, rather through your own caricature. — DifferentiatingEgg

Is it even possible that you are choosing to read my words through your modality? Through the lofty perch beyond good and evil (even though you are making me feel like a sinner against your St. Nietzsche).

Logic dictates — DifferentiatingEgg

Careful, that could be a mask creeping in. Who is logic? Whose will be done? It’s not logic, it’s you brother. Own that driver. What would Nietzsche do?

I told you to revisit Nietzsche and do so under the forces that brought him about.. — DifferentiatingEgg

Show me how my brother, like a chorus, sing to me of his forces. Or, wait, you want me to just revisit Nietzsche. You point is just “wrong, see Nietzsche.” Not helpful as Inalready did and obviously that’s not been enough for you to deign to share something you think. Besides I’m wrong.

…your own, from the slave moralist's point of view. — DifferentiatingEgg

That’s an assumption. That’s your mask showing again. You have no idea of how I work out my will. You can’t know who is a slave and who isn’t by some posts here.

And of course this is all cursory, prompting your accusations of “shallow” on any given point. I’m not writing my thesis here, and we aren’t fashioning a Platonic dialogue. At least your make a shitty Socrates to my mere Thrasymachus.

I wish you’d answer one question: is there anything you don’t like about Nietzsche - no loose ends or nits to pick anywhere? Because I don’t think anyone in history has said enough while avoiding all missteps. Do you? (Maybe Heraclitus, the greatest of the great ones. But Nietzsche is by far my favorite one to read.

And seriously, the metaphysician thing is a small piece, who cares, ignore it. It’s the point you stuck on, not more than 10 percent of what is great about Nietzsche. Don’t I get any credit towards my final grade for spelling his name right so many times?

How about some content that isn’t about me, not posted for the sake of refuting me, just a quick piece of something important about Nietzsche that the novice can understand. That’s what the thread was for wasn’t it? I gave a bunch. You called it shit, but actually you mostly just shit on it. So it’s hard to tell whose shot is who anymore. Start us over how about it?

You wouldn't want to imagine a better world just for the people in it? — fdrake

Depends on what you mean by the world.

If you mean my family and neighbors and friends and the 50 yards of space that follows me around everywhere I go - I absolutely try to imagine how to make things the best I can think of for everyone I can.

If by world you mean the US, the Middle East, or the earth, or the future of mankind, I’ve given up on those people - all are free to join my 50 yards and see if you like it here with me, but as soon as it gets bigger, and less and less people are influenced by my magnanimous ability to make things great, and no one is in control and everyone resorts back to savagery, and nuclear deterrents, and detente, and real politic, and questions about who is better and who is worse and who is victim and who is perpetrator - there is no hope that one of us or some group of us or some set of laws will ever make that go smoothly.

I exaggerate a bit here, but you see my point.

and not having on-topic posts be constantly drowned out by nonsense? — Mikie

I picked up on that bit from your OP. Sounds like a new rule for all posts.

There’s either God, or no reason to imagine a different world.
— Fire Ologist

I find this quite sad. You wouldn't want to imagine a better world just for the people in it? — fdrake

Sad that I think this way, or sad for the state of human beings?

I hope you can find a way to improve things, or rid yourself of the task to do so.
— Fire Ologist

I already have rid myself of that responsibility, as have most of us. And we're right to. And we're falling. — fdrake

Ok, so if you’ve rid yourself, then you aren’t sad that I think this way, you do as well.

We are falling. It is sad.

There is hope. Wish people saw that.

We need a diagram. — frank

And maybe some non-culturally appropriated refreshments.

I'm not a believer and have no interest in eschatology. Well that's a lie, I like eschatology.

The biggest things, like the world, remain, as always, in God’s hands. And that’s ok.
— Fire Ologist

Good sir, I believe this is cope. — fdrake

Or just realism, meaning the fate of the world improvement certainly is not in our hands, no matter how much we think of our abilities - we are the ones who are tearing things apart.

There’s either God, or no reason to imagine a different world.

I can’t tell if you are having a sort of crisis over this question or not.

If not, I’ll leave you to it, as I see a proponent of any ideology qua ideology as a placeholder for an individual who isn’t taking responsibility for their own life.

If you are, I hope you can find a way to improve things, or rid yourself of the task to do so.

Because he stood on my neck in the middle of the street until I was dead? It's a complicated issue. — frank

So matters involving people are complicated?

Helpful tip.

Then maybe the first question should be, do we really want to take the time to have this conversation? Cause it’s a slog.

I suppose more precisely I'm saying something like:

There are things which will not improve without some acts of supererogation. If someone believes that those things must improve, then they believe some acts of supererogation are required. The model I have of this is giving up your life as an activist for a noble cause — fdrake

You seem to be at a real crossroads because of this issue.

I’m going to step way, way back for a second.

What if one’s only obligation is to please God? To attend to the fact that God loves you personally? What if the opportunity to perform a superogatory act for your fellow man’s sake was just that, an opportunity, a gift to you, allowing you to assist in God’s creation of the world?

I do not think any of us are called to make the world a better place. We have to trust God on all of that.

This is not to say we don’t have ample time on our hands to serve others, and must consent to many obligations to do so. This is not to say it doesn’t please God when we love our neighbor or lay our lives down for them. But if our service and love actually improves the world, that is God’s doing, and he has only joined my act to his act of creating this world.

St. Francis was wrong if he really thought he had to worry about the birds. The biggest things, like the world, remain, as always, in God’s hands. And that’s ok.

Without God, that’s not ok, because we are the causes of the world needing improvement (I sort my plastics wrong all the time for instance, or otherwise sin). But as far as I can tell, without God, there is no hope for any improvement, no superogatory or other act that we could devise on our own to move any actually important needles in the direction of world improvement.

There may be more people that have easier lives today than did 100 years ago, or 1000 years ago, etc, but the world hasn’t improved one bit since Cane quarreled with Abel, at least not on our own account. It’s always been easy to lie, to steal, to murder and overall, it’s possible things are worse than ever.

If one gives one’s life to save others, it is not the death that makes this act superogatory. Death is just one body moving through its changes like a seed falling from a tree. It is the person’s choice to give his or her own life - the choice, that is the ingredient that makes the act superogatory. So if we add circumstances that would diminish this free choice, like coercive ideology, we simply don’t have a superogatory act anymore.

So the notion of requiring superogatory acts as in coercing them, turns those acts into the act of the commander, not the agent who acts, unless the agent freely consents anyway, which makes it not a commanded act, but solely the agent’s act.

True faith and trust in God is a handing over of your life and this whole world with it, handing it back to God, be that a superogatory, obligatory, or better, magnanimous, act or otherwise.

Conversations should start from "what do you want to achieve" and taken at face value. — AmadeusD

I agree wholeheartedly.

We are too quick to ignore the individual we engage with on the issue of race, and too afraid to be the individuals we are when talking about race, and instead hide ourselves in the rightness of our side of history (as if we actually know the truth of where we are and where we are headed) and force individuals back into their ugly groups - facists, haters, leftists, rightists, sub- humans unworthy of being heard.

We remain fearful cavemen, which is the irony of the racist. The racist must view all of us as animals first because it is the animal, the physical, alone, which grounds a category like race. Superior race? How is that even possible?

And the immense contradictions of setting one race apart from others only follow.

We need to venture out of the cave and realize we are as different from our own parents as we are from the farthest “race” of person who might exist in Asia, or Canada, or the Ukraine, or Qatar, or 10,000 years ago.

There are no races of human beings. Once human, we have the cake, and the deepest description of racial realities only adds color to the icing. And what would life be like without color? Such a shame.

The whole conversation about race, to me, should be “why are you afraid of your brother?”

Tim asked “what”. The question seeks a noun, a quantifiable entity one might point at. You answered with an adjective, like “weak” or “evasive”.
— Fire Ologist
I don't understand what you are talking about. Could you please be more specific? — MoK

Tim asked what changes.

You answered “physical”. That’s not a clear or precise answer.

Physical what? Changes in what way?

The change occurs at a proper time otherwise we could not observe such a fantastic relation between motion and time. — MoK

Change occurs in time. But “at a proper time” - what does that mean - why introduce “proper”?

This is the crux of the argument you are trying to make and I haven’t seen anyone here who understands the word “proper”.

In your thought experiment, I could perform the act at 1:00 accidentally. I could nail the change right on the “proper” time without knowing I did so. You aren’t explaining how change is not possible without some condition of “knowing the proper” present in the moment of change. Your thought experiment doesn’t clarify.

In retrospect I might have just submitted it to them privately — Mikie

That’s the crux of the objections to seeking a rule. There is no universal rule to devise to prevent the problem you are having that doesn’t limit speech.

The problem and the solution exists in the specifics, not in the form of the universal rules.

If someone makes a metaphysical claim or a linguistic claim under an original post focused on epistemology, couldn’t the poster claim the same exact problem has arisen as yours? Do we really need to address this with a rule, or shouldn’t we let free debate address these issues, and the wisdom of the moderators judge when things are getting out of hand?

Nietzsche wasn't a metaphysician at all — DifferentiatingEgg

I’m glad you responded with a small move towards a conversation. Although you are still in school teaching me, the student.

It is my claim that Nietzsche was a metaphysician, not Nietzsche’s (which I think you know). So if I addressed that, I would have to tell you what I think, not what Nietzsche thinks.

You don’t ask what I think, but, the quote from Deluze is a metaphysical claim. Mask upon mask is a metaphysic of masking. An epistemology that begs for subjects/objects as much as any other claim about the reality of being human in itself.

My claim of metaphysics is not meant to contradict the complexity of right interpretation, but just admit the presence of the word “right” in this sentence, like Deluze used the words “can only” and “already in possession” - these are absolute-speak words, building metaphysical claims.

Nietzsche didn’t value metaphysics, but he didn’t hide its presence. He just didn’t care. That’s fine. Allowed for other insights to flourish. Was a breath of fresh air in the long history of stuffy monasteries.

I don’t expect you to accept this or really think it’s anything new, or important, that you haven’t already digested and disposed of. “To the flames.” - Hume

And I can see why you assume this Deluze quote helps clarify the difference between us.

The difference between us is that I am not assuming anything about you. Other than you are basically just like me and everyone else - a person. I don’t know you. Other than you think you know Nietzsche and think you know me.

I agree you know Nietzsche. I disagree that refuting what I am saying is helping you bring that across.

you made him sound like a oxymoron of hypocrisy — DifferentiatingEgg

I know. You don’t understand what I am saying. I am the oxymoron - I know and love Nietzsche and Christ. You won’t allow that to be the case.

I see some contradictions in Nietzsche, but they are not my focus, just the admission that he is just another jackass philosopher, like Socrates and you and me. The wisdom and the error is not lost on me (can’t tell about you).

There’s a question - is there anywhere in Nietzsche where you think he was talking out his ass? Or is he more like Jesus to you, the way and the truth incarnate? If that question isn’t to assuming.

Nietzsche values in Beauty and Good simply don't match your own hence you don't understand Nietzsche's values of Beauty and Good...

You see him through your own mask...

You have yet to go beyond your reification of Nietzsche... — DifferentiatingEgg

Well you have yet to admit your assumptions about me. Your reification of Christians perhaps?

Do you have any masks?? Don’t you see Mietsche through your own masks? Or are you the reincarnation of Buddha?

If you say you have no masks, you’re blind or a liar; if yes, then what is the point of focusing only on mine? We both have masks - such is the shitty condition of life. Let’s tear them down together instead mocking the pimples on each other’s masks.

I certainly have masks. Do you have any reifications?

How do you know my values? Maybe you don’t know what a Christian really is. In my view, a Christian is NOT 99.99 percent of those who call themselves Christians, including myself, so how do you know what my values or sense of beauty or good is?

I’ll give you a hint - you don’t. You simply don’t. I haven’t said anything about it, and no interpretation of some ideology that you might have can summarize anyone, let alone my wonderful self.

You haven’t touched the surface of this mask, let alone seen underneath. Try something else.

Talk about Nietzsche or Deluze if you want. Ask me some questions about me if you want. But the conclusions of yours about me are seeming like some sort of mechanism or medium for you to engage here. You need a foil to defeat to make a positive contribution. So tedious.

What is monstrous is any state of affairs that requires some people to act in a supererogatory fashion at some times in order to improve the world. — fdrake

This is an interesting conversation, providing a different way into morality.

If I put the pieces on the table separately:

1. State of affairs in need of improvement
2. Same state of affairs includes the requirement of Superogatory acts to bring improvement.
3. An agent of change
4. Another agent who creates the state of requiring the superogatory act occur at all (the gun to the head).
5. You don’t need 4. to be another agent if instead it is an ideology, in which case the agency behind the superogatory act is the agent of change in 3 abandoning their own sense of justice and rightness in order to get along and be practical.

Does this track?

The way I see it all, it all collapses into 3., the agent, the only location where one can find the monstrous or the superogatory or the obligatory or the permissive.

We have to allow ourselves remain slaves. We have to give our consent to an ideology. Whether an act is obligatory or permitted, by the time one physically acts, one has finished with the deliberation or assent of the state of affairs and instead, acts, inserting oneself into the state of affairs. Removing oneself as judge and creating the thing to be judged.

In the end, all deliberate acts, even most coerced acts (though not all so effective can the coercion be), only become an act, an object in the world, through consent.

There is no one or no where else besides the actor to seek full responsibility for most acts. This is of course complicated and still belongs on a continuum with a free fully responsible act, like a creator God might act, on one side, and a reflexive autonomic act on the other side, like a leaf turning toward the sun, a gasp for breath. Coerced acts, permitted acts, obligatory acts and superogatory acts are all mixtures of free and determined forces.

If I want to put a box on the table and it is on the floor, I have to walk to the box, bend at the waist, grasp, rise and place the box, hoping or assuming the table can support it and the floor will support me. I have no choice but to take these steps.

If I want to save my family from the Nazi’s, or from their sinful tendencies, I might have to step in front of a bullet, or hang on a cross to death.

These are all just acts, and like every act, the requirements are built into the nature of the things.

The person who decides to put the box on the table and the person who decides to step in front of the bullet may have both equally simply made a fully free, deliberated and responsible choice. Or they may be coerced.

If there is a gun to one’s head forcing the box be put on the table, or a gun to one’s head and family forcing you to face the Nazi gun to the chest and family, we are simply complicating the deliberation that might result in a free responsible act. We haven’t recharacterized what a superagotory act is.

This is hard for me to say.

I of course agree that any coercive means used to cause another to act, when the coercive means itself is unlawful (like a gun to the head) and/or the act to be coerced is unlawful (execute that innocent person or I’ll kill your family), is monstrous.

But I disagree that an ideology can take the place of the person holding the gun to anyone’s head. That is the whole point of morality - our acts are ours. And moral acts only arise between personal agents. We get to hold the gun to our own heads, and in the moment we actually stand up to move the box, or step out in front of the bullet, all other agents are supplanted, we seize all the power and focus it on our efforts at enacting.

This is why I think it was Buber, who talked about how the Nazi’s and their concentration camps couldn’t take away the only freedoms that matter. This is why Socrates willingly drank the hemlock.

I'm sure you can see the Christian theological undertones — fdrake

So if we apply this to a religion that threatens with hell, or that threatens non-religious people, I would agree that God holding the gun of hell to my head would never bring me to love him or know much more than he’s like a Nazi, or that people who judge and condemn others using their religion as lawgiver, ideology setter, are no better.

I don’t believe God is looking forward to judging us - we shoot ourselves in the foot and demand he pass judgment. So all of the talk of hell and punishment and eternal fire - these are of our own making, our own free will, and more like the physics of being a personal agent in this creation. The only coercion any and every religion and religious person should use is “trust God.”

Maybe we agree, and there is just a less significant difference regarding the definition of and role of ideology in moral action.

There is harmony in the physical change. This means that the change must occur at a proper time. — MoK

I would agree that there is conservation of energy/matter, but that empirical observation is not proven beyond doubt (see QM).

But there is no reason to say “the change must occur at a proper time.” This is the crux of your argument, and you have not demonstrated some proper time need exist at all. You just keep saying it as if it’s obvious, and quite the opposite, it seems false.

What, exactly, do you imagine is subject to change?
— tim wood
Physical. — MoK

Tim asked “what”. The question seeks a noun, a quantifiable entity one might point at. You answered with an adjective, like “weak” or “evasive”.

If you want me to get into the nitty gritty of it all — DifferentiatingEgg

Why would I want that from you? Why would I think you had anything to say about Nietzsche that I didn’t already know?

So hard no.

It’s freedom and God’s power, like God’s will through us, like a Will to God’s power and glory…but again, enough with the fables.
— Fire Ologist

There you go again, refusing to interpret his complexity — DifferentiatingEgg

I wasn’t “interpreting his complexity” in that statement.

You are definitely subject to your own mask, and it is obstructing your view of what I said.

You sound like a religious zealot for Nietzsche now. Really kind of weird to me when people who basically agree on something won’t admit that.

I would think it would be interesting to you to wonder, how could someone who knows and loves Nietzsche also claim to know and love Jesus as God? But instead, you’ve got me all figured out and your answer is “he doesn’t understand Nietzsche. Or Jesus.” No curiosity, or self-awareness of the fact that you have no idea who I am or how far this could go.

Are you a musician? I mean a real musician? I am.

Have you truly lived the Dionysian? Experienced the ecstatic intoxication, the undertow, that drives as much as it inspires the willing to drive?

Notice, my only characterization of your words has been “insightful”.

To be honest, you are the caricature of person who truly understands Nietzsche - and there are a lot of you.

I have no idea how deeply you understand Nietzsche, nor do I really care anymore.

I just point that out because you are missing out. I’m trying to find something new here in these exchanges. Sort of the point of communication, if exchanging information. You aren’t. You already know all about me and are just hinting at how much I am missing, as if there was something wrong, or dare I say, immoral, about thinking not-Nietzsche was Nietzsche. Who gives a shit what you think you know?? I don’t anymore.

I gave you an opportunity (many opportunities) to show some respect. You blew it, for sake of your own aggrandized self-importance. You don’t need my respect. Happy for you, but it’s a shitty way to engage with others - why do you bother???

If I was you, from what I can tell about you, I wouldn’t respond. (I would actually apologize, but that’s just because I actually respect others as I respect myself.). But then, I wouldn’t have posted your very first response either.

And you suck at Christianity. Just don’t get it at all.

Can it count as a doer of evil if it isn’t a human? — fdrake

No, and that is an important fulcrum for all ethics. An evil ideology is only as evil as the acts and the actors that support that ideology.

I believe this is a false question, while an ideology isn’t an agent, neither are political rules or laws, and we judge their moral value by the acts which they engender. A law which enables hiring discrimination will be considered unjust to the extent it allows people to act in accordance with its principles. — fdrake

I think it’s a good question because “we judge their moral value by the acts.”

A system of belief functioning as a gun to everyone’s head, compelling them to give all of their worldly possessions away, is monstrous in the same manner as any particular threat that functions the same way. — fdrake

I give us actors more credit. An ideology to the head is a powerful thing, but then, a gun would still overpower most people to betray that same ideology, most people, that is, who would succumb to an ideology in the first place.

And the fact that other people might profess their ideology despite some threatening to shoot them in their head shows both the greater power of ideology, and/ or the greater power of the free agent. It is the free agent that is compelling oneself that is the greatest power and really the first instance of something to judge morally.

And on the other hand, an ideology can be seen all the way through without compelling any action besides criticism.

if one sacrifices one’s moral imagination against systemic injustice on the altar of practicality, one exculpates all evils. But if one believes that we are required not to forsake it, one believes in an ideology that requires the supererogatory of humans, and is thus monstrous. — fdrake

Damned if we do for sacrificial practicality, and damned if we do for non-sacrificial ideology.

We face the choice between allowing devilry or requiring the angelic, and humanity falls off this tightrope of right action either way. — fdrake

Right, but you don’t see there are other ways? Can’t there be ideologies that promote freedom, without any coercion? Maybe that’s not an ideology anymore, if it leaves space for free choice? So then, is it possible to live ideology-free?

let me know and I'll take you to school — DifferentiatingEgg

what did I win? — DifferentiatingEgg

Teacher’s Pet award?

Look, you say lots of insightful things. I don’t really want to go for awards either.

If you don’t think I sound like I know Nietzsche, I don’t know why, but we both know it doesn’t matter.

Nothing positive you’ve said about him or quoted contradicts what I think. Maybe you don’t understand me when I tell you what I think he means, and maybe that’s my fault. But I don’t see the point of battling wits in internet Nietzsche camp.

You said a lot of things I would say when talking about Nietzsche, raising the war of opposing forces, and amor fati. We haven’t mentioned slave morality which is a key criticism of Christianity and driver of any morality and democracy and bourgeois values; there’s the fulcrum of resentment that sprouts our decadence; we haven’t talked about the will to truth as the building of a facade (the Apollonian) while at the same time Nietzsche was a seeker of truth, always. Much tension to hold in hand when attempting to look for Nietzsche’s meaning. We haven’t touched on instinct and the Dionysian, which is another conversation again.

And there’s so much more. And every line, quotable and enjoyable to read.

I might just suck as a writer - how do you know from these few posts what I know of anything to be so bold out of the gate jump and offer to school me?

That said, I played along and begged for more, so don’t think I’m judging you. DifferentiationEgg jumps in - Battle of wits it is!

I can tell you love Nietzsche too.

Like I said, he always makes my top five on any list of who you need to know if you are bent on the whole history of philosophy, regardless of what Nietzsche thinks about bending over other people’s words…

And the quote I mentioned before wasn’t from Twilight, it was from Beyond Good and Evil. It was 164: “Jesus said to his Jews, ‘The law was for servants; love God as I love him, as his son. What are morals to us sons of God?’” I can’t find it in the Bible right now but I believe it’s there similarly to how Nietzsche quoted. It’s a good quote for the gist you are getting at (acceptance of all deeds/all of us in the kingdom of heaven according to Jesus). But I’d argue none of that happens until one has overcome tendencies towards bad faith and inauthenticity, etc..), that I agree with, about Nietzsche, and personally, about what Jesus wanted us to know as well. Which is why I don’t agree with Christianity dying on the cross - Christ is at least as alive as Nietzsche remains, as we keep looking to his books for quotes.

And Nietzsche was wrong about a lot of what he thought being Christ-like means for the Christian. It’s freedom and God’s power, like God’s will through us, like a Will to God’s power and glory…but again, enough with the fables.

He was too harsh on Kant, on Socrates, and so many others too.

I’m telling you, Nietzsche was high priest of a new religion with Zarathustra as prophet, and the all-too-human as his devil. All for effect - so we’d keep reading his truth, his tragic, awe-full, sense of things.

And I’m sure Jesus loves Nietzsche to save him from “nothing happened” and “God is dead” anyway. That’s my heaven - Nietzsche saved as well as the rest.

This came close to a conversation we might both enjoy, neither of us doing much to help the other one enjoy it. Maybe it’s just the way philosophers are - at odds with everyone else, like we are at odds with our own experience.

Should we go back to respecting each other yet, or am I still competing for some more equal participation than a student would have in some teacher’s class?

First of all, you are an excellent writer.

To clarify this distinction, consider the act of looking out a window. Naturalism concerns itself with what you can see outside: the objects, events, and phenomena unfolding in the world. It aims to describe these with precision and detachment, focusing solely on their objective characteristics. Phenomenology, by contrast, is like studying the act of looking itself: the awareness of the scene, the structures of perception, and the way the world is disclosed to you as a subject. — Wayfarer

I have a tiny idea you might find useful. You look out the window and Naturalism focuses on the “out there”. Phenomenology can focus on the glass itself, which represents the subject, and is simultaneously colored by the “out there” as it vaguely reflects your own face on the inside of the window pane - the subjective imposed on the objective, in one simultaneous view.

I don’t know. It’s where I thought you were going when you said consider the act of looking out a window. Tiny idea thought you might make use of.

I thought you were going to go to the part of the Bible that Nietzsche quotes in Twilight, something like: “what need is there of laws to sons of God.”

I still love Nietzsche, even though you don’t think I know him.

Notice that even those who set aside these laws are still going to be in the Kingdom of Heaven? — DifferentiatingEgg

I think the point is that setting aside the laws, for we who subjected ourselves to the laws, is bad. Maybe we all have a get out of jail free card because of Jesus, but, for me personally, there is still work for me to do (like the acts, not just faith, that Nietzsche spoke of in your prior quote from the Antichrist). No one can say what “least in the kingdom of heaven” really means, so I personally do not take this quote to mean the laws don’t matter, nor would I “teach others accordingly.”

The laws won’t matter once they are fulfilled - that’s when there is nothing left to “repress” or “exercise” as you put it.

“Jesus loved even those who would kill him. He did not divorce himself from even his greatest negations...”

But he said on the cross to “forgive them father.” Yes, you are right about God’s love and acceptance of us as children, but he rejects so many of the things we do, for which we need to be forgiven to become his friends. “I tell you these things not as slaves, but as friends.”

He wants us to take responsibility, and offer our lives we are now responsible for back to him, so he can return them in heaven.

We’ve morphed into theology. You can win there too if it has to be a competition.

You skipped all the good parts. Like I am doing with Nietzsche.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are the meek. Turn the other cheek. Not my will, but thine be done.”

Nietzsche admired that man?

only the Christian way of life, the life lived by him who died on the cross, is Christian — Nietzsche, The Antichrist § 39

Spot on wisdom.

But it is a life we each can live.

The “Gospels” died on the cross. What, from that moment onward, was called the “Gospels” was the very reverse of  what he had lived: “bad tidings,” — Nietzsche, The Antichrist § 39

Unless Christ actually rose from the dead and remains present on earth in the Church. Nietzsche didn’t think so.

And according to the God stories... Jesus was sent to Earth by God to save humanity from the laws of God presented by Moses. — DifferentiatingEgg

Not the case, according to the stories. “I am here to fulfill the law, not to abolish it. Every jot and tittle.”

But enough with the fables.

Overcoming isn't about denial of weakness... its about accepting its there — DifferentiatingEgg

Spot on wisdom.

accepting it as a part of you that you cannot simply call "Evil" and exercise it from human existence... — DifferentiatingEgg

Call weakness whatever euphemism you want - the point is there is an exercising that is essential to becoming a great man. Nietzsche and Christ said that, and you just did.

See, the thing is, Nietzsche was right that the vast majority of so-called “Christians” are not at all like Christ. But, because he wouldn’t rely on other men (perfectly reasonable), he threw out the God Jesus with the bath water, and minimized how a free man would respond to seeing the risen Jesus, as if only delusion and projection and wish fulfillment could explain it, despite his own admiration for the man Jesus, the liar who claimed to be God before he was killed for nothing but a fable.

1.Physical however is not aware of the passage of time.
2.Therefore, the physical in the state of S1 cannot know the correct instant to cause the physical in the state of S2.
3.Therefore, the physical in the state of S1 cannot cause the physical in the state of S2.
4.Therefore, the change is not possible in physical.
5.Therefore, physical cannot be the cause of its own change. — MoK

1. I have to interpret what you mean by “physical is not aware” because that’s not normal English. I assume you are trying to note that rocks are not conscious. I can accept that.

2. Therefore, [physical things] in…S1 cannot know the correct instant to cause…S2.
I can accept that, even though some physical things (like human beings) could know.

3. Therefore, the physical in S1 cannot cause S2.

There is no necessity that anything about effects, like S2, be previously known by S1 in order to come to be.

That is what you need to argue before you get to 3.

I have no suggestions for you on how to do this. You are grappling with the appearance of cause and effect in nature, and the appearance that cause and effect is only a form of thought (a knowing agent). Hume showed there is no necessity in nature between cause and effect, and Kant showed we have to think in terms of cause and effect in order to think about change. Maybe they were both misinformed. But your argument doesn’t even show any recognition of these observations which have been noteworthy in history before your argument. Aristotle used potential and actual to help describe the coming to be of changes from S1 to S2. Your argument doesn’t address such things either.

Bottom line, I have no idea what you are talking about. Unless you want to reword things and explain them more precisely, I can’t move past number 3. The word “therefore” in number 3 refers back to nothing that would necessitate a “therefore” statement. So I need not address anything further.

But by 5, you introduce “its own change”. Where did “its own” come from? Does “its own” belong with S2 (the now changed state), or with S1? Or both? And if the physical cannot know, can the physical have an “its own”?

In 4, you seem to be saying, like Parmenides, that physical change is not possible. Are you arguing that change doesn’t happen, or that change in physical things only happens because of influences of non-physical things? I think the latter - so you need to reframe 4, or else your conclusion ends up being that change in physical things is not possible, but change in physical things is possible.

But you need to work on 3 and see if there is a way to get beyond it to 4 or later.

I’m trying to show you that I’m taking this seriously and offering specifics that I think need further work. But generally, I don’t think this will be workable.

Dude, you're still a novice — DifferentiatingEgg

Admittedly so. I approach Nietzsche as I approach all philosophy, with gaiety. Screw any deeper understanding of a mankind who has no progress to speak of since Cane and Abel first debated out their solutions.

In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented the deeper understanding of Nietzsche… One might invent such a fable and still not have illustrated sufficiently how wretched, how shadowy and flighty, how aimless and arbitrary…and when it is done…nothing happened.

Look dude, if you come out of the gate from such a lofty perch of wisdom about Nietzsche, you win. I don’t mean to blaspheme his image. Thanks for offering to take me to school but my blissful love of the Nietzsche I know, as just another dude who contradicted himself, and had weaknesses, as much as all the rest, serves me fine. His works are full of insight and wisdom, and his bullshit detector about academia, the middle class, culture, some psychology, and truth, was spot-on.

he flat out tells you how he admires Christ. — DifferentiatingEgg

And I would call Christ the best example of the overman. And he was right that we should each find our own Gods - that’s exactly the kind of unique relationship Christ called people to seek - except I don’t see where Nietzsche showed he ever found a God.

But does Nietzsche admire the Christ who was authentically God, so the story goes, but who became a slave instead? Does he admire how Christ repeatedly lived not according to his own will but instead the will of his Father? Unto the self-sacrifice, self-denial, of death? All for the sake of love, and a new life? Does he admire pity, and charity, and humility, and think it courageous to ask for forgiveness of sins, or to forgive others?

to accept all men — DifferentiatingEgg

God doesn’t accept all men, he loves each one so much he would hang on a cross to death for each one. For Nietzsche.

Christianity (which is synonymous with Christ in the true Christian, the saint) doesn’t call us to be nihilistic rejectors of this life (Nietzsche was wrong), but to participate in the fulfillment of its promises. There’s work to be embraced and things about ourselves to overcome (Nietzsche was right), things of our own making, requiring our own un-making, or better, our own re-making. We aren’t here to repress our base instincts, but to build our own new instincts. We don’t refrain from murder despite wanting to murder; we teach ourselves how we don’t want to murder, and to refrain from nothing.

But this is a digression, one that a smart man like Nietzsche should have figured out, but was too proud of his freedom and his discoveries about human nature to ponder.

Napoleon exemplified a great man? He was just another asshole, mostly like the rest of us. When Napoleon was done, nothing happened (Nietzsche should have stopped the analysis there), other than further lost ground maybe.

The interchangeability of Energy and Matter are not magic, — Gnomon

I have no issue seeing that.

You said energy is a concept. So then matter is energy and therefore matter is a concept.

So is Whitehead interchangeable with Berkeley?

MoK,

You have a captive audience.

We disagree that your arguments work.

You can either judge we are all too simple-minded to comprehend you (which by the quality of the responses would be foolish of you - we're clearly not simple minded), or you should reframe and/or revise your arguments.

My argument clearly shows that physicalism is false therefore one has to endorse substance dualism which explains reality well. — MoK

You haven't clearly shown anything yet to us. That should give you pause, and send you back to the drawing board.

fdrake gave you a lot of content to assist with a revision.

Seems you are trying to say that change can't occur if only physical things exist.

The point you are trying to make can't be so simple as your one paragraph OP, but aside from that, your one paragraph OP is not a valid argument. Work on it.

Physicalism is false like it or not because I have several arguments against it. — MoK

Make those arguments again. Revise them. Define terms more carefully and clearly for us.

Also energy is very much real and physical, not just a concept. I wouldn’t take anything they say on QM seriously since they don’t know how any of it works. — Darkneos

Though they are wrong that Whitehead was an idealist, even the wiki page says as much. It’s more like panpsychism because he emphasizes experience. — Darkneos

Thanks for the time savers. That's what seems the case here - confusion mounting on confusion.

The bottom line for me, just like Descartes, Whitehead, (maybe Aristotle, maybe Plato), Leibniz and Spinoza and so many others have to rig in God to stop the inquiry or finish the third act of their story, QM is being used as a similar tool in attempt to ground out the confusion.

If the conclusion being sought is "All is process; nothing is substance/identifiable thing" then there is no need to understand QM or God in order to stop the inquiry. If all is process, becoming, change, then everything else we say is bullshit (which is why anti-scientism is entertained).

People (possibly Whitehead) are taking one confused and incomplete picture, process philosophy, and using another confusing theory from physics, QM, to say some third confusing thing about substance, about what is and what we can know about it. But God and QM are merely more objects in themselves which have remained unaccounted for to any satisfaction in all of history - why should we think the picture of QM, like some picture of God, would clarify the picture of knowing the world (or not knowing the world, which we already didn't know).

I agree that Process alone, with no Substantial change, would be meaningless. But that's not what Whitehead, or Quantum Physics, was saying. — Gnomon

I am going back and looking at some more Whitehead so I might be better able to talk the whitehead talk here.

But I will admit, my general approach to all of my posts is to put things into my own words. The way I see it, the same elephant is always in the room - me - and what I believe I know, and what I can say about it. So if I say “this is what Whitehead said” and do anything besides quote him, I am only and always saying “this is what I think.” So I just skip over the middle part and say what I think. (It annoys a lot of folks who want to talk about what someone else thinks/meant/said. When I’m talking with someone, I’m really only interested in what they think, and what I think, and what we can agree on, and what we don’t understand about each other’s thoughts. Basically, since Whitehead isn’t here, between us, getting to the bottom of what he was saying is not going to happen. We will only get to the bottom of what we think and say about it. Whitehead has become the prop upon which we base a discussion of what we think.

That said, we can quote people, and take their words at face value, so I’m looking at Whitehead again to see if it helps me say what I mean here.

1. Yet both matter and energy are variations of the same thing. — Gnomon

3. Energy is a Concept, not a Thing :
Yes, "energy" is considered a concept, meaning it's an abstract idea that describes the capacity to do work, and is not a physical object itself, but rather a property of matter that can be transferred and transformed into different forms like heat, light, or motion; it's a fundamental principle in physics used to explain — Gnomon

These two points, both of which are interesting and worthy of more exploration, are either contradictory, or point to something magical/supernatural in the universe. If matter converts to energy and energy converts to matter (1), and energy is a concept (3), then matter converts to concept and concepts convert to matter. This needs more investigation before I could accept both. Let’s see where it goes:

reality is made up of processes, not material objects. Whitehead's philosophy views the world as a web of interrelated processes, rather than a collection of independent material objects. — Gnomon

Processes involve matter interacting through energy, or energy moving through matter, so how can we ignore material objects if we are referencing processes? This doesn’t help me yet.

I need to read more Whitehead here if I am to keep up with you guys.

the physical does not experience the change in time therefore it cannot know the proper time, t2, to which the causation is due to. — MoK

So you are assuming “the experience the change in time” is both not physical, and is necessary to cause changes in the physical.

What causes changes in time in the first place?

And why does a physical thing need to “know the proper time” to facilitate change?

Lots of holes noted by others here.

Substance dualism is not proven yet.