Did you go to Oxford?

A few questions:

How is the playing field leveled to start this utopia? Do we confiscate the Koch brothers’ assets and distribute them equally so we can all start from square one? Or do the Koch brothers get to keep their assets which they gained through state-sanctioned laws when this utopia is started? Who pays for the infrastructure? Who pays the workers to build the infrastructure? Private capital? (This takes us back to the first and second questions above.) Who enforces private property rights? Private security? (This also takes us back to the first two questions.) If it’s a limited state that enforces contracts, then how is the state established?

I expect All of these questions to be taken seriously and addressed in full.

A few questions:

Do you believe that being religious and being a literalist are equivalent?

Are people who see religious myths as valuable and having wisdom religious people?

Do most people who value reason hold beliefs about matters of fact that cannot rise to the level of knowledge?

What is faith?

What is reason?

Thanks. I'm just a data analyst with an interest in philosophy. — JosephS

Oh! So you actually studied something that society values. :smile: Philosophy is something valuable to a lot of people personally, but there’s no money in it. Studying philosophy in college, for me, was like several years of therapy, something I just needed to keep on living.

Wasn't sure if there was a confounding epistemological principle that I had missed. — JosephS

Well, I don’t know about any epistemological principle that it violates. I’ve only taken one course on the theory of knowledge, but all of the rest of my philosophy courses dealt with epistemology. You should ask some more experienced philosophers. That said, to me it passes the smell test.

This seems right to me. Where are you going with this?

This is an important point, because one may have experiences which lead one to believe things which are not rationally or empirically defensible. Say you have an overwhelmingly powerful experience of the presence of God or spirit or whatever you want to name it, as the mystics of both East and West attest to. But any such experience that you have, or that the mystics write about, can never be good evidence for me to believe anything, unless the communication of that experience speaks to some experience of my own which is equally compelling. — Janus

Yes

I'm with Noah Te Stroete (I think) in that in withholding my judgment on this proposition I can neither be accused of believing nor of disbelieving it. — JosephS

Yes

I agree that people usually have beliefs and opinions that don’t reach the requirements of knowledge, and I think that a lot of philosophers don’t share these beliefs and opinions openly because they know they cannot be logically defended.

Well, okay. I like you. I think you’re funny, and I don’t think you’re dumb. I’m sorry we can’t see eye to eye on this.

Belief is not a judgement. You can withhold judgement but belief isnot an active thing. It bases itself on things thjat have no or very little empirical evidence. If empirical evidence were extant, you would not need belief, you'd have knowledge. — god must be atheist

Belief is a judgment, a decision to affirm or deny something.

To say you have to believe or disbelieve is a false dichotomy because one can neither affirm nor deny something to be true in some cases. This is called “withholding judgment.”

Belief need not be based on empirical evidence. I believe in extraterrestrial life in this galaxy, but there is no empirical evidence for that belief.

I can’t argue with people who are under the delusion that they make sense, understand logic, and are intelligent when they are none of the aforementioned.

Belief is not a judgement. You can withhold judgement but belief isnot an active thing. It bases itself on things thjat have no or very little empirical evidence. If empirical evidence were extant, you would not need belief, you'd have knowledge. — god must be atheist

This is incoherent, unjustified and may be false. I reject your premises, and your conclusion doesn’t follow.

The only medium in which logic and reason can not be ineffective is a medium of not understanding, or in a medium of pretense non-understanding.

I am not a bully. You mistake those who don't hold your opinion to be bullies. I am simply a person who strongly disagrees with you, and I stated my reasons for my disagreement. You in turn can't defend against my reasonable disagreement, and therefore you call me childish, a bully. But this is not kindergarten, this is a philosophy website. If you don't present valid counter-arguments, then you do not belong here. — god must be atheist

A belief or disbelief is an active thing. Without empirical evidence or a personal experience, one can withhold judgment, neither believing nor disbelieving. — Noah Te Stroete

You’re being a bully because you are presenting a false dichotomy. I’ve explained this. You’re either an ineffective bully, or you don’t understand the fallacy you are committing.

What do you mean? Please elaborate. — god must be atheist

A belief or disbelief is an active thing. Without empirical evidence or a personal experience, one can withhold judgment, neither believing nor disbelieving.

Can’t one withhold judgment?

You’re being childish. You’re trying to be a bully, but you haven’t the strength to be effective.

Religions all involve a god figure, who has supernatural powers. — god must be atheist

I understand Buddhism as taught by Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) to not have a god, nor to have anything to do with the supernatural. Karma and Dharma can be seen as metaphors for natural processes. Nirvana can be interpreted as oblivion, something atheists believe in. One need not believe in reincarnation to be a Buddhist.

Furthermore, one could believe that their god is wholly natural, not supernatural, but it depends how you define “supernatural.”

Scienticism does not claim that it can explain everything. — god must be atheist

Science does not claim that it can explain everything. People who have faith that it can are followers of scientism.

What does it matter? Just your curiosity? Science deals with the physical world, and unless you’re a physicalist, then you have to maintain that science cannot explain everything. There are a whole host of problems with physicalism, as I’m sure you’re aware.

Janus, you speak truly like one who is devoted to a faith, and facts, arguments, will never daunt you. This diatribe you wrote only proves your ignorance borne out of blind faith and borne out of a conviction to never accept an otherwise valid argument if it speaks against your religion.

Your devotion to faith on the expense of rejecting known facts and valid teories is well described in your little note there.

When you say "they can provide no good argument" you admit that the huge amount of good arguments you simply, by necessity of convenience, ignore. — god must be atheist

Scientism doesn’t provide any cogent arguments that science can explain everything. That’s the point. Scientism is the religion. Science includes fields of study and the scientific method. I don’t think Janus is religious by the way.

I didn’t know the etymology of “scientism.” I guess I assumed it was a word made up by those who were labeling others who have this unfounded faith in science to explain everything.

Scientists, in the sense of 'adherents of scientism' (I have long thought that practitioners of science should be called 'sciencers' or 'scienticians') may believe there is an incompatibility between science and religion, but they can provide no good argument for this belief. It is, quite simply, a category error. Of course, they'll never admit that, but will carry on blustering and puffing up their "arguments" with empty rhetoric instead. — Janus

I distinguish between science and scientism. Science’s domain is the physical world. Scientists do not have to adhere to scientism, the unfounded faith that science can explain everything. Many scientists don’t adhere to scientism. Dfpolis is such a person right here on this forum.

Since the existence of spiritual beings, or the spirituality of empirical beings is not a question science can either ask or answer, there would seem to be no inherent incompatibility between science and religion. — Janus

True, but not for followers of scientism.

A mathematician or scientist does not necessarily a good philosopher make. I think it’s their pride that gets in the way. @Dfpolis, however, is a philosopher worth his salt. He takes criticism constructively, but the pedants don’t see the forest amongst the trees. The basic thesis is there and has not been shown to be refuted. A pedant does not make a good philosopher.

So doesn’t mathematics have as its ultimate foundation the physical world? — Noah Te Stroete

Or more accurately, our experience of the physical world. I remain a Kantian until I hear better arguments.

Couldn’t it be the case that mathematics was first derived from empirical experience, and that newer maths were abstracted from these more fundamental maths? So doesn’t mathematics have as its ultimate foundation the physical world?

This is why it is important to recognize that in both sensation and cognition we have an existential penetration of the subject by the object, Thus, Kant's claim that "the object is outside me" is only partly true. Every physical object is surrounded by a radiance of action, which is the indispensable means of our knowing it.

Kant's basic problem is that he wants knowing to be independent of knowers when it is actually a subject-object relation. Or, perhaps, he wants us to have divine omniscience of the noumena when we only have human knowledge -- knowledge, not of how reality is in se, but of how it relates to us. Yet, knowing how reality relates to us is exactly what humans need to know to be in reality.

How reality informs me, how I interact with its radiance of action, is immediately available to awareness -- not "outside me." So, Kant has misunderstood the issue. — Dfpolis

This is very profound. Who came up with this? Was it you? Also, could you flesh this out for me so I can understand it better: “Every physical object is surrounded by a radiance of action, which is the indispensable means of our knowing it.”

It’s totally up to your uncoerced will, of course.

This is a very confused statement. If a mathematical theory applies to reality accurately, it is instantiated in reality and the adequacy of the theory to that instantiation shows the truth of the theory with respect to that instantiation. Further, since we presumably know the instantiation, we can abstract the theory from it. So, one need not "maintain that there is a mathematical reality." only that empirical reality has a mathematical intelligibility. — Dfpolis

I had a friend, Mike Zielinski, who received his PhD in mathematics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He tried describing to me his dissertation and it was completely over my head. I asked him out of curiosity if the subject of his dissertation reflected anything in the physical world. He simply said, “I don’t know.” Sounds like a game to me, but what do I know with my fake morality and all.

It may describe some as of yet unknown physical process or it may just be a mathematical unicorn. Could these mathematical discoveries still be used in, say, cryptography?

In common parlance it is considered something unserious but that merely reflects the notorious ignorance of the unwashed masses who often tend to be inspired by their fake morality. — alcontali

LOL We all can’t be John Nash or Alan Turing types. We need guidance from the intellectual elites because we don’t know what’s good for us.

The point of a political organization is to gather around some type of representation of a social body that is unique, a sort of world presence to be recognised and handled a certain way). — TheWillowOfDarkness

So, what is your recommendation? Do we recognize and learn about and from differences? I know that sounds easy and simplistic, but the reason why @James Pullman suggested this topic to me was that we all have something to learn from one another. I took on this topic because there is an existential threat to our democracies throughout the West, and I wanted to gain insight from others as to what can be done about it.

There are two issues here as I see it. The need to be challenged by opposing views to seek out the truth as well as the need to share the world with others who aren’t like us.

Oh, especially in speaking do we often not realize some of our insights until we hear ourselves speak them. — PoeticUniverse

Yeah, that actually seems correct from my personal experience.

The choice is still already accomplished and so it precedes the awareness of it. — PoeticUniverse

This seems to be true in cases of choices that involve small movements, but I don’t think it has been established through experiments that this is true in complex tasks such as holding a conversation or writing a paragraph. I could be wrong as I don’t read scientific journals.

Hampered - yes. Constrained - not unless you allow it to be. The thing about human awareness is that most of it operates at a subconscious level. We can drive a car while only occasionally paying conscious attention to most of our actions. We can eat a sandwich while totally absorbed in a TV show. We’ve consciously predetermined these actions based on past experience. When you first learned to drive a car, you had to be consciously aware of how far down you pressed the pedal each time. Now you determine that pressure automatically based on bodily awareness that doesn’t need to be consciously attended to. The same with learning how to eat.

But you choose to be aware of your current emotional state or not, for instance, and then you can choose to revoke its capacity to influence decision-making processes when it looks like it could be getting out of hand. Fear is one emotion that tends to shut down awareness, connection and collaboration - but the more you choose to become aware of where this fear comes from and at what point it shuts down useful interactions (and why), the more you are able to consciously revoke its capacity to do this, and choose a different strategy.

So your decision-making processes can be coerced in certain directions when you’re not paying attention, but you only have to pay attention and become more aware of your options to free it up again. — Possibility

I suppose. That is helpful. I do become less aware not just from fear, though (fear is always lurking under the surface, I think). I obsess over things and perseverate a lot, too. These might be symptoms of fear, too, though. It’s something to consider!

Well from the context I assume that it means something like “instead of.”

I looked up “orthogonal” and it says “at right angles.” What do you mean here?

your decision to simply be aware of presented information or not is fundamentally unconstrained. — Possibility

I don’t know. My ability to decide to be aware of anything is extremely hampered a lot of the time. I think what I’m aware of at any given moment is due in large part to what is going on in my environment, my current emotional state (which doesn’t seem to me to be something I decide), and what I’m thinking about (which isn’t ALWAYS a choice and is usually due in large part to the current environment and current emotional state). Hence, I still think the will, which I think is the intention to decide or act, is only free when it is not coerced.

That gets into moral responsibility. Would a person who is not totally insane or otherwise hampered (and this can change in the course of a lifetime) intentionally kill in cold blood, for example? If they do, then they are morally responsible, and should be dealt with.

Besides intentional acts of violence, there are negligent and reckless acts to consider. Should people be expected to stop at red lights? Yes. If one is not paying attention, one may run a red light and strike and kill a pedestrian. Should they be culpable? The law says yes and not for an arbitrary reason. They have been negligent because it is expected of people who are not totally insane or otherwise impaired that they should pay attention while driving. Suppose one takes acid and does the same thing. Suppose this person was otherwise not mentally impaired before taking acid, but while under the influence one gets in a car, runs a red light, and kills a pedestrian all the time having an episode of induced insanity. They are guilty of reckless homicide. One should know not to take acid or should have taken steps in order to prevent access to driving (never mind the illicit fact of taking acid). They are culpable.

Now all of these acts could be fully determined by necessary and sufficient causes. So what? Should we let people who do these things off the hook (assuming we could prove determinism)? No. There are matters of deterrence and the safety of the community to consider.

Since humans cannot perceive infinity? — gater

Humans can conceive of infinity. No one can perceive infinity.

Yeah, the abortion issue causes extreme emotions in some. Usually I stay away from it.

Parents feel grief whether it is an unborn child or a child that has been born. You cannot grieve for something you pay no moral consideration to, without moral consideration we cannot fit the minimum criteria for personhood. If parents give moral consideration to the unborn then the unborn is meeting the minimum criteria for personhood. — Mark Dennis

I agree with this. Your grief is real. I don’t think any of us are denying that or that we don’t sympathize. That said, I personally wouldn’t engage in a philosophical discussion on personhood here when the feelings are still so raw. Hearing opposing views on the matter only serves to pour salt in the wound. Whatever people may say about the personhood of your lost child doesn’t change the fact that something really shitty happened. It’s understandable to take what some here have said personally... but grieving is necessary to heal. I hope the pain doesn’t sting as bad as it does now for too long, and it will get better. You will always think about what could have been, and when these thoughts come up it will hurt. But as time passes it won’t hurt as much.

But I’m sure you know all of this. Nothing anyone says here or there is going to make the shittiness go away. Grief is necessary, and it takes time.

My question to you is, how do the details I have smoothed over serve to undermine my thesis? If they do not, then your criticisms are pedantic. — Dfpolis

Boom! :up: