There is a contradiction there: someone says they have faith and you contradict them - 'that's not faith'. — unenlightened

That's not contradicting them. And I'd not be saying that they're wrong. I would just be telling them that I use the term differently than they're using it (if they're familiar with my views and they're saying that I have faith that God doesn't exist). It's just giving them info with the aim of understanding differences.

when I said 'God is love' and you said 'love is an emotion. — unenlightened

I didn't even see you say "God is love." Re love being an emotion, you had said that you don't consider it an emotion, so I was asking you questions about your usage of the term.

Of course it isn't. — unenlightened

Hmm, that's what I figured you had in mind, but I guess not then.

You seem to want to argue, or to be trying to (or just tending to) interpret everything as an argument, but that's not what I'm trying to do. I'm just trying to have a conversation with you.

By the way, I was reading "faith in a non-existent God" as saying, "Faith in the non-existence of God." Is that not what you meant by that?

It was a question regarding whether you were paying attention to what I was typing, with respect to something I had already explained, but you brought up again:

"Is there a requirement that something is necessary for survival in order for it to persist?"

So if I say something like "I have faith in a god that does not exist." then if you want to engage, you cannot just let it pass that there is a contradiction in the terms according to how you understand them, you have elucidate to me what that contradiction is and thus enable me to begin to see which words we are using differently and what hidden premises are being invoked. In other words, you have to try and make sense of it. Or you can just say 'religious nutter' quietly to yourself and move on. I do that quite a — unenlightened

I didn't say anything about contradictions.

If you were to say that you have faith in a god that doesn't exist, though, I'd be curious just what you were saying . . . so I'd ask you to explain further.

That was a joke. We have to assume we speak the same language, and try and reach an understanding of what we agree and disagree about. So no, different people do not use the same term in different ways, or if they do, the difference has to be elucidated in terms that they do use in the same way. Otherwise, we are not communicating. — unenlightened

I wasn't saying "different people use every single term different ways."

You were saying that it's "meaningless" for us to use "faith" in different ways (something that I don't even know is the case--I explained how I use "faith," you didn't explain if you use it a different way).

Obviously people often use the same terms in different ways. That doesn't make the terms meaningless.

Yes. You do not?

I have no problem with you saying this because I consider it meaningless drivel. No, actually it being meaningless is a big problem. If I say 'I have faith' and you say 'that is not faith' then you have a problem with what I say. At least in any sense of 'having a problem' that I am interested in. Or we could just go our separate ways... — unenlightened

Different people use the same term in different ways, no?

Well, people can have really intense fears of trees, and that fear is probably going to be persistent, but what needs to be worked on there is what's going on with the person psychologically. The aim is to try to alleviate if not cure what's seen as an irrational reaction.

The weird thing is that in the last couple decades, there's a faction that sees being offended as something of a "sacred" reaction--it's blasphemy to suggest that being offended is irrational, with no exceptions.

[As an aside, by the way, I was looking up unusual fears just now, and one was "Nomophobia- fear of being without mobile phone coverage." How did they miss out on the opportunity to depart from tradition a bit and name that "Nomophonia" instead?]

I rather like to make the challenge of a faith in a non-existent God, but alas it is incomprehensible to most atheists, and they cannot even make a questioning response. — unenlightened

I'm not sure what you mean by "making a questioning response," but in any event, I'd have no problem with someone saying that I have "faith in a non-existent God." I don't consider it faith, because I don't consider beliefs based on things like logical support or empirical evidence to be faith-beliefs (and that goes for religious folks, too--if their belief in God is based on logical argumentation or what they consider to be empirical evidence, I'd say that it's not a faith belief), but someone else might be using a different idea of what faith is.

Re harm being a basis for morality, I don't think that everything that any arbitrary person considers harm is something we should support in the sense of thinking that there isn't something wrong with that person that we instead need to try to fix.

It's just like not everything that any arbitrary person has a fear response to is something that we support. We try to help people overcome fears in general, but in particular there are some fears that we see as very irrational, where we think the people with those fears need serious psychological help. For example, if someone is afraid to go outside, or afraid of rain, or afraid of trees. or whatever it might be.

You are rather exemplifying the deficiencies of atheism — unenlightened

:rofl:

Atheism isn't an ideology or a school of thought or system of rationality or approach to discourse or anything like that.

And it's not at all the case that atheists are necessarily materialists. Two atheists need not have a single thing in common aside from the fact that they both lack a belief in gods.

I'll give it a shot, sure.

OP doesn't name which specific military actions he's thinking of, but it looks clear to me that he has some in mind; that he is aware of his military doing harm, and he doesn't want to participate in that, for moral reasons.

It looks to me like boethius interpreted your post (and I find it a reasonable interpretation) as expressing general support for there being a military and for people serving in it, and that boethius is contrasting that general support for there being a military with the OP's concern about some particular (unspecified) things his particular military is doing.

You can be in support of there being a military in general, as you evidently are, but be opposed to the particular actions that your particular military are doing, and so oppose it and decline to aid it until such time as it stops doing that.

Even if you've already signed up for military service before you discover that your military is going to send you to do unjust things, you can still refuse to participate. Your military will punish you, of course, because they want obedience, but it's up to you to decide whether the moral consequences of your actions outweighs the practical consequences you will face otherwise. — Pfhorrest

He's asking if he should join the military, where he's having some doubts about it, because he doesn't necessarily agree with the way military utilizes force in every situation, where he's being very general, not specific about that, and where he realizes that such use of force is probably necessary.

So I gave my opinion that it's worthwhile, from many angles, despite his doubts about it. It's typical for people to have doubts about the military--if nothing else, people are usually afraid of going through basic training. It's worth conquering one's fears/doubts about it because it has a lot of rewards.

Before we go on, why are you quoting me saying, "Yeah, that won't fly. You need to answer the question I asked," without at all addressing the question that's referring to?

I wonder why you want to go on arguing about this word, and pretending that I am using it wrongly? — unenlightened

I don't know why you were reading my comments that way.

I'm taking time away from something I need to be doing. So if you want to have a serious, good faith discussion where you're actually paying some attention to what I'm writing, thinking about it, etc., we can try again later. I'll be back around in a few hours probably (well, at least sometime later today--it's just after noon at the moment for me).

Certainly. That's why it's humorous. I'll check my rule against it for accuracy. — creativesoul

Haha--right. So it probably ended up not being that great of an example for "assuming a standard," since in practice, that one's actually a bit of a mess (which is why that was dropped when I brought up the data re variances in rulers).

Yeah, that won't fly. You need to answer the question I asked.

Why do we need all that to survive in the jungle? — 3017amen

If I'm going to be spending time on this, I need you to pay attention to what I'm typing, otherwise I'm wasting my time while you're playing a game or whatever you might be doing.

So to check if you're paying attention, is there a requirement that something is necessary for survival in order for it to persist?

It's a term for a wide range of mental (brain) states, states that involve affection, caring, devotion, etc.

You could just look this up in a dictionary, by the way, if we're going to pretend that you're not familiar with it.

I'm more interested in conversations when we're not pretending we don't know stuff, when we're not playing dumb, etc., by the way. I think that approach to philosophy sucks.

Ok, you said you needed more 'criteria' — 3017amen

Sigh. No. I said that "Love" isn't a proposition, and "Love is true" is nonsense, because that analyzes to saying that "Love" is a proposition that we're assigning the truth value "true" to. But "Love" isn't a proposition.

You could say, "Love is subjective."

That's a proposition. And a true one in my view.

No, that's not what I said.

1. Love is an objective truth
2. Love is a subjective truth

Which statement is true?

It's real simple, no? Am I missing something? — 3017amen

I already addressed this (and more than once). What did I say?

Not true. We would look at the falling object from a distance and attempt to move away from it. — 3017amen

"Everyone blow really hard and maybe we'll change the Earth's orbit just enough"?

The next question is, what does explain natural phenomena? — 3017amen

Here's the thing. I refuse to do explanation discussions unless we first set out our criteria for explanations. That's because what always happens in explanation discussions otherwise is that someone gives an explanation for something and the other person goes, "That's not an explanation!"

So to nip that in the bud, you'd have to give your criteria for explanations.

It would depend on what we're talking about. What's falling, what the context is, etc. If we're talking about something like a large asteroid headed towards the Earth, we'd need the assistance of mathematics. If we're talking about something like Joe not getting hit in the head with a football, mathematics isn't going to help him . . . maybe spatial perception, motor skills, etc. would.

(1) and (2) are nonsensical because Love isn't a proposition.

(3) is a proposition, but semantically it's also basically nonsense because logic doesn't have anything to do with "explaining" love--or anything else really. Logic is about "what follows from what." In other words, it's about the implication of formulas or statements, a la, "If P and Q are true, what follows from that?"

Logic has nothing at all to do with explaining natural phenomena.

I'm sorry, but I'm not following that. Could you restate that in simplier terms? — 3017amen

One part at a time: why would you be asking all of a sudden about explaining love in terms of propositional logic? Where is that coming from?

It seems like being in the middle of a conversation about orange trees and asking how we'd explain the biology of orange trees in a bit of choreography. Why would someone be asking that all of a sudden?

What sort of thing you're looking for, your criteria for a satisfactory "why" response, can't be a question.

It would need to be a set of statements re requirements and some justification for those requirements.

Ok, so how then is the love phenomena explained using formal propositional logic? — 3017amen

Ignoring the "explain" issue (which is similar to what I just asked you re "why" above), the reason that all of a sudden we're asking about love being explained "using formal propositional logic" is?

Sure, that's intellectual abstract knowledge. That's what I'm talking about. You haven't answered why we have it? — 3017amen

If I haven't answered that, then you're not being clear on what sort of thing you're looking for as a "why" response.

So what sort of thing are you looking for? You'd need to be clear about that. You'd need to give criteria for what you'd count as a satisfactory "why" response (and you'd probably need to explain/support the criteria).

If love is subjective, why then do all human's aspire to it (with minor exceptions)? — 3017amen

"Subjective" doesn't mean or imply anything like, "Only some" or "this varies."

It refers to the fact that it's a brain-functioning-as-mind phenomenon.

The subjective/objective distinction isn't about agreement. It's about where phenomena occur. In brains functioning as minds or elsewhere.

How does mathematical knowledge evolve out/into a species? — 3017amen

Mathematics is based on observing relations in the world, and then extrapolating more complex relations, based on the way we think about relations, into a construction we create.

Again, the only way our species (and immediate precursor species) can survive is via the fact that we can take in information from the world, via consciousness, and reason about it. Other mutations led to us not being able to survive long enough to reproduce successfully without concomitant mutations that led to increased consciousness and reasoning abilities. Part of the problem there is that we have to survive at least 11-12 years before we can reproduce. (well, although surely the increases in consciousness/reasoning ability also contributed to the fact that we could be relatively incapable when infants and that we could wait 11-12 years to reproduce, too--each thing fed into the other surely)

What is love then, an objective phenomena ( of sorts ) that most all humans aspire to do? — 3017amen

The phenomena are subjective.

It's just not "true" because only propositions are true.

Ok, so if I could restate your theory, are you saying it's an accidental feature of existence? — 3017amen

No. I don't at all buy the "accidental"/"essential" distinction.

Further, I didn't at all say that consciousness or reasoning weren't advantageous for survival for humans. I explicitly wrote the opposite: "Consciousness, reasoning have survival advantages to us."

You're conflating a general comment about evolution and advantage, where I was clearing up a misconception (with respect to a background assumption you were making in asking the question the way you asked it), with a specific comment about consciousness and reasoning.

Actually, wait, "Love is a subjective truth" isn't true in my view.

"Love" isn't a proposition. It would need to be a proposition for that sentence to make sense. I didn't think about it much when I first answered. But then I went back and read it and realized that it's a nonsense sentence because it's framing something as a proposition when it's not.

Gotcha, let me then try it in propositional terms:

1. Love is a subjective truth.

Is that statement sound? — 3017amen

'Sound" is a term that applies to arguments. That's not an argument.

At any rate, yes, that's true in my view.

Are you saying it devolved out of consciousness and/or is somehow just an unexplained extra feature of existence? — 3017amen

Say what?

You asked what the evolutionary advantage of x is. (It could be anything, hence why I'm using a variable.)

It's a misconception that only things that are evolutionary advantages can persist.

Mutations do not need to be advantageous to survival to persist. They can be neutral, or even slightly disadvantageous to survival. All that's required for a mutation to persist in a population (well, aside from being a mutation that will be passed on genetically), is for it to not negatively affect survival to a point where individuals of that species with that mutation can not make it to reproduction stage.

Let's talk about Love.

Is love a subjective or objective truth? — 3017amen

Propositions are what are true or false. "Love" isn't a proposition. (A proposition is a statement about something.)

On my view truth is subjective, but to explain why, I have to get into the standard view of what truth is in analytic philosophy. It's not a norm in analytic philosophy to consider truth to be subjective, but the standard view of what truth is in analytic philosophy has the upshot, on my view, of making truth something that only obtains subjectively.

The mystery is, why do we have this dual capacity to know the world? What evolutionary advantages are there to such intellectual, abstract knowledge like mathematics/the laws of gravity? — 3017amen

First, something doesn't have to be an evolutionary advantage to persist. It only has to not be enough of an evolutionary disadvantage that it gets "bred out" of a species.

Consciousness, reasoning have survival advantages to us, because we evolved into the sorts of creatures that can't easily survive to reproduce purely by autonomic functions. Our consciousness and reasoning enables us to live long enough to reproduce. (Mathematics, by the way, is just a way of reasoning, mostly via extrapolation, about relations that we observe.)

So if I love to walk — unenlightened

Different sense of the term. So we'd be equivocating a la "If I value freedom, then I can't charge anything for the hot dogs I'm selling??"