• Who Cares What Stephen Hawking Writes about God?
    Hannah Arendt spoke about 'God is Dead.' She did not propose it...
  • Who Cares What Stephen Hawking Writes about God?
    There is absolutely no real and eternal identity of ourselves. If so, what on earth is it? Consequently, because there would be no content of such a thing, it is absolutely peripheral and meaningless.
  • Who Cares What Stephen Hawking Writes about God?
    "The death of philosophy" was also spoken about by Hannah Arendt in her book called Thinking.

    "And something is true of the end of philosophy and metaphysics: not that the old questions which are coeval with the appearance of men on earth have become "meaningless," but that the way they were framed and answered has lost plausibility."

    "What has come to an end is the basic distinction between the sensory and the suprasensory, together with the notion, at least as old as Parminides, that whatever is not given to the senses--God or Being or the First Principles and Causes (archai) or the Ideas--is more real, more truthful, more meaningful than what appears, that it is not just beyond sense perception but 'above' the world of the senses. What is "dead" is not only the localization of such "eternal truths" but also the distinction itself."

    With regard to the death of God... God is dead in that the traditional thought of God, the legitimate psychological function, and its sociological function, has deteriorated and lost its motivating power and emphasis.
  • Who Cares What Stephen Hawking Writes about God?
    If we were to admit that the self, one's identity, personality, etc., were not dependent on the existential determinants of the world then we would readily admit that we have absolutely no real knowledge of what constitutes someone's identity or personality. If we were ready to seriously consider something of ourselves, something maintaining ourselves in its extraordinary complexity, existing after death then we would consequently be admitting that a non-material soul contains the character of a person...

    This is absurd and we cannot accept these conclusions lest we omit pschology.
  • What's wrong with this argument?
    it involves the statement as far as the statement is intentionalized. The statement is subsidiary to the meaning of the statement, which has little to do with the statement itself but is what is manifest for the the statement, for the person who's intention is absorbed with the statement.
  • What's wrong with this argument?
    if I look into another's eyes and understand that they exist, does this require language?
  • What's wrong with this argument?
    What, I think, means does not involve MERELY the statement itself, as if it has some sort of objectified meaning. It has meaning when it is read, when it is spoken, when it is deciphered.
  • Can a utilitarian calculus ever be devised?
    There are shortcomings in every philosophy, including utilitarianism. People prefer pleasure to pain. People prefer happiness than pleasure. I guess we will just have to take that as our premise. Obviously there are contradictions, and that is why it is a rule of thumb.

    Say, in the deciding of whether or not a person should steal, if a person considers the happiness they will receive or not receive, and the unhappiness of the person who will be stole from, one can calculate what would be the right thing to do. Chances are, stealing something won't make you happy. It might please you or give a sense of sateity but nothing more. Realizing the unhappiness which would be the result of such an act renders the act immoral.
    What will amount to the greatest amount of happiness?

    This is not vague. It works sometimes.
  • An External World Argument


    An illusion of a unicorn can only exist if it did actually exist?

    What is an illusion?

    Illusion involves the will to there being something
  • What's wrong with this argument?
    Understanding is not found within the bracket of language.
    Thinking about one's own though and belief requires complex language use. If knowledge requires thinking about one's own thought and belief, then it requires complex language use.

    Complex language use requires knowing what certain statements mean. If knowledge requires complex language use, and that requires knowing what certain statements mean, then we've arrived at a big problem...
    creativesoul

    What a statement means involves not the statement but the sensations that are the metabolites of the statement, and the associations. Complex language use is not 'required,' as it is already there, utilized, a part of the whole of human knowledge. Such a thing is as meaningful as saying "Air is required to live."
  • Can a utilitarian calculus ever be devised?
    In the case of rule utilitarianism, there is a fundamental calculus involved, even if the calculus does not necessarily exist to do what we wish it could do in the strict sense of utilitarianism, that is, for utilitarianism itself to be the sumum bonum, the source of the path to the greatest amount of happiness for society. The calculus already in play is the conception of right being what involves the greatest amount of happiness. That is the calculus of what is right, and the opposite would be what is wrong.

    Rule utilitarianism supposes that there is a rule system that could exist that could raise the bar, the average amount of happiness, for every individual within that jurisdiction.

    People simply are not smart enough nor willing enough for this to ever happen.

    This is why it is an ethical theory... it works sometimes, just as any other ethical idea... But breaks down specifically when the problem is more complex than the complexity of the thesis.
  • Can a utilitarian calculus ever be devised?
    the question of why pleasure or pain is good or bad is irrelevant. People prefer pleasure to pain. Pleasure is, in a sense, the escape from pain, the stopping of pain. Sadomasochism... That is not pain but pleasure. The idea of utilitarianism is to say that, given a set of circumstances, what is the sumum bonum, the greatest good, is happiness and therefore the solution to any dilemma in which the question of morality is in play (the question of what is right or wrong) will involve the realization of what solution will include the greatest amount of happiness either for the individual himself regarding his or her own acts, or for the system itself, which includes all thinking, judging people. The most moral solution to an ethical dilemma is what involves the most amount of happiness.
    This is the utilitarian rule of thumb, and though this rule of thumb is not a categorical imperative, it often works.

    My own personal problem with utilitarianism involves the use of drugs. A morphine high is by no means a low pleasure. Firstly, it involves complex chemistry and pharmacological knowledge in order to exist. Secondly, the feeling of morphine is probably one of the best feelings a person can have. So, the question of morality for a heroin addict involves, "Is it moral for me to rob this person to get money to experience the best feeling of pleasure?"

    But, the experienced utilitarian can break this down. A morphine high does not include true happiness. Pleasure is not the utilitarian calculus, happiness is. Happiness and pleasure are often used interchangeably in utilitarianism. Perhaps this is the root of some problems; the snares of language. In any case though, the immediate consequence of a heroin addict making the decision to rob someone does not in any way relate to his eventual feeling of heroin, even though he is robbing for the money for the heroin, and so his judgment would not even constitute a utilitarian calculus.

    Act utilitarianism does not work for the species, only a rule utilitarianism does...
  • Can a utilitarian calculus ever be devised?
    On the other hand pleasure can be attached to dubious things like overeating and causing obesity and heart disease and even Nazis and slave owners experienced pleasure.Andrew4Handel

    John Mill has arguments against this, namely that the pleasure of mozart is a higher pleasure for someone who can appreciate music thoroughly than for someone who does not know anything about music, mozart, music theory or art at all. There are thus 'higher' pleasures; that is, rolling around in the mud for a pig is a lower pleasure than, say, listening to mozart, bach or beethoven. Obviously there are problems often with utilitarianism, but John Mill makes countless points and, if I remember correctly, addressed everything you just said.
  • Can a utilitarian calculus ever be devised?
    the question seems to need clarification. Is this an act-utilitarian calculus, or a rule-utilitarian calculus?
  • Can a utilitarian calculus ever be devised?
    Pain and pleasure cannot be quantified accurately.
  • Can a utilitarian calculus ever be devised?
    There is no end all morality. Constantly it is a game of ethics to contain what could be accepted as morality. There will always be the inability of ethics to be morality. Ethics is a reference for morality.
  • Why am I me?
    thats an Oscar Wilde quote
  • Why am I me?
    but what we are is neither what we we think we are nor what anyone thinks we are.
  • Why am I me?
    Because I am what I am not, and am not what I am. I do not know myself but I know Others, which are Other because of their radical alterity of being, inaccessible as an object of conscious absorption, knowledge or identification. I know that I am because I understand that I am nobody else. I realize nobody else is me, and thus I am, but am always escaping this tendency or inclination to define, and encircling experience itself to be me. I am the principle of the series of manifestations and expressions, the alterity of that which it is capable of having an effect upon.
  • My Kind Of Atheism
    I suppose I agree with everything you have said except
    An abstract object, pretty much by the definition of "abstract" (which means, "extracted from"), does not exist. It was abstracted from something which did exist, but it did not exist before some mind abstracted it (or it would not have been necessary to abstract it in the first place).Mariner

    The problem I have with this is the idea that the existence of anything , abstract or not, the perhaps 'presence' of the noema in hyle, does not exist in the strict sense but has a borrowed existence. I don't agree, because I think there are instincts of fesr and anxiety within us that relate to imaginary objects, and beings of which do not in a sense 'exist' but have the notation of existence. I think, on the contrary, that existence itself is a demarcation regarding what we can have control over by means of the intellect; all other being is in the mode of unapprehendable, de facto, a priori, etc.
  • Why am I me?
    Why am I me?
    Because nobody else is.
  • My Kind Of Atheism
    How is the hallucination something nonexistent, especially when 'its' noema is existent?
    An eidetic reduction in place to determine the whether or not veridical nature of a noema seems to be inconsequential. This is the case for a few reasons, namely that questioning the veridicality of a noema is to establish a disconnect between reality and the immediacy of consciousness, and secondly it is to presuppose what reality is and consequently how a veridical noema is anything more than a superfluous demonstration. If there is a noema, manifest in hyle, there is a veridicality: this is obvious, no? And so what makes the experience of something not real? What makes, perhaps, a phenomenal object different than a perceptual, tangible object, that is, in terms of its existence? And, I guess the bigger question is, is a thought existent? Does an abstract or phenomenal object exist? Is there a being of such an object?
  • Death: the beginning of philosophy
    When your spouse or your sibling dies, there is a hole in your life that is always next to you. When your child dies, there is a hole in your life that you are always walking into.

    But to be a philosopher is to be already dead. The image of death is already dead; thought is not life. The dispassionate view is the view of the dead, who famously complain "life is wasted on the living."
    unenlightened

    This reminds me of some things said by Freud in Totem and Taboo. He spoke of the taboo of the dead in this book. There are lots of taboos about the dead, and many different psychological mechanisms are in play in this, especially depending on the specifics of the person that died.

    Anyway, I disagree with the idea that the be a philosopher is to be dead. This is very Socrates-Apology like. I don't agree. The death of my significant other has enflamed my desire to explore and love of trying to know, in order to have some glimpse at if there will ever be a reconciliation with this terrible loss.
    Furthermore, the passions of life are the best forces of philosophy.
  • My Kind Of Atheism
    I don't know if there is such a fine distinction as such. A hallucination, which is by no means limited to being visual or auditory, can be very meaningful. I think of native american use of peyote.
  • My Kind Of Atheism
    We have a non-sensorial property that allows us to distinguish between dream and non-dream, between hallucination and non-hallucination.Mariner

    Husserl would disagree with you.
    The intentional content of a hallucination or dream is absolutely indistinguishable in its being from the intentional content of any experience, which would be the content of the 'object' of an intentionality--which is what Husserl explains with terms like noema, noesis and hyle (originally Aristotelian).
    Consciousness is always consciousness of something, and this something it is conscious of always has a mode of being which is absolutely indistinguishable, in the proximal sense, relating to consciousness and the phenomenological paradigm of human experience.
  • Philosophy and Psychology
    It is a priori because, regardless of if the interpretation of the particular neurosis is determined by experience, the actual judgment of an existing neurosis, one capable of categorizing patients, is not one the truth of which is determined by experience, but as a truth grounded in something prior to experience, which sets the tone for experience...

    My question was simple.

    Is psychological knowledge possible in actually ever understanding the psyche?
  • Philosophy and Psychology
    Put honestly, I feel insulted.
  • Philosophy and Psychology
    I could use any example of a psychological trait.
  • Philosophy and Psychology
    So, according to Nietzsche’s philosophical tradition, it could be more appropriate to discuss not the hidden intentions of psychology, but its diagrammatic functions and mechanisms.Number2018

    Which is precisely the problem Nietzsche spoke about.
    The judgments psychology makes determines the individual and precedes all experience.
    How could a knowledge attain that status?
    Unless these judgments are extraordinarily vague and relatively meaningless?
    They become meaningful when they are utilized and integrated by that person only.
  • Philosophy and Psychology
    symptom + symptom = neurosis

    Symptom (divorced from its personal character)
    Neurosis (objective , impersonal representation)

    The individual is labeled objectively neurotic

    This is not based on the individual, but a very vague representation, and gives very little description or knowledge of anything, precisely because it does not contain that individual's uniqueness.

    The neurotic is labeled a neurotic, but his symptoms are his own, and in the concept of the neurotic there will only be abstractions that could relate to that specific neurotic. The truth of his neurosis is never to be seen. Never to be truly known. Only by him.
    Therefore it is synthetic.
    And a priori because the individual is no longer an individual but an impoverished representation in a model. Models work by virtue of their function and input/output.
    "Something a priori isn't a contingent truth that may or may not be the case dependent upon experience, but a necessary truth that can be safely said to condition all experience."

    Psychology is full of this.
  • My Kind Of Atheism
    how do you distinguish the being of numbers and napolean as nonexistent from the being of existing beings? What makes a being exist?
    There are types of beings?
    What makes something exist?
    Are there types of existences?
    Is the not a whole, universal here?
  • Philosophy and Psychology
    Kierkegaard just felt utterly religious when I read one of his books. I havent gone deep into Kierkegaard.

    Can you explain Kierkegaard's conception of Xhristianity?
  • Philosophy and Psychology
    it seems to me that scientific knowledge is based on certain postulates and premises of which are supposed to be capable of giving one insight into the nature of the human, but these premises are saturated by the same very human intentions they lay claim to. It seems that psychology has no foundation, but rather that the foundation is set apart in its own, according to its own set of rules, namely the understanding of human intention, drive, volition, etc, which are fundamentally centered around univeral human experiences and desires. These aspects of the human are premised, and the unintelligibility of their metaphysical constitution is rendered obsolete. This is precisely what Nietzsche speaks of. A seeing through the abyss and overcoming Man.
  • Philosophy and Psychology
    The narcissist is who assumes himself too much significance.
  • Philosophy and Psychology
    I thought a psychological knowledge would be the sort of knowledge of 'we free spirits.'
  • Philosophy and Psychology
    This quote is from ? "The return of the last man."

    Nietzsche, in terms of psychology, wanted its contents to be revolutionary, against the common, censored ways of knowledge.
    Thus you have Freud: he took this idea and ran with it.
  • Why shouldn't a cause happen after the event?
    so thus you are arbitrarily speaking about nothing with any meaning, because you refuse to answer the question about the purpose of life, which is essentially about the meaning of life.
    Meaning and purpose coincide.
    If I find it a purpose of mine to protect certain people, there must necessarily be meaning there specifically that constitutes such a purpose, and furthermore the will to carrying out any relevant action.
    If you find it hard to answer the question about the purpose of existence you must inevitably be resorting to the conclusion that there is absolutely nothing of this sort to be found, and consequently defaulting to the idea that we are strangely alienated in a strange universe with absolutely no meaning more than what we ourselves, arbitrarily, give it?
    And so what is the impetus of science? Of philosophy?