In other words, what we see in a mirror is an optical illusion? — Gnomon

Assuredly not! As this paper by a famous mathematician demonstrates.

The prosecution rests>



Take anything you want from me — anything!

If you want to be fulfilled, you must first empty yourself, otherwise there will be much overflowing and spillage.

Here is a quote from a link on https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/15210/the-idea-that-changed-europe/p1 from @Wayfarer

Also fascinating is Gillespie's detailed analysis of Rene Descartes and Thomas Hobbes. The latter is usually depicted as an atheist (or his religiosity dubious at best) and his philosophy as chiefly political but Gillespie believes him sincerely religious (if not exactly orthodox) and reveals the underlying metaphysical concerns behind his thought.

And so Gillespie says, even in modern times, we are bequeathed with a similar wrestling between humanity's political ambitions (the expansion of freedom) and the inability to reconcile this with science's inherent determinist worldview. Likewise, in the post-9/11/ confrontation with Islam (which makes a brief appearance at the end) we are again confronted with the fideism and absolutism of Islam which sees the West's assertion of individual autonomy as a challenge to God's omnipotence, for whom our only response ought to be obedience.

Here is fundamental point of Gillespie's thesis

"… the apparent rejection or disappearance of religion and theology in fact conceals the continuing relevance of theological issues and commitments for the modern age. Viewed from this perspective, the process of secularization or disenchantment that has come to be seen as identical with modernity was in fact something different than it seemed, not the crushing victory of reason over infamy, to use Voltaire’s famous term, not the long drawn out death of God that Nietzsche proclaimed, and not the evermore distant withdrawal of the deus absconditus Heidegger points to, but the gradual transference of divine attributes to human beings (an infinite human will), the natural world (universal mechanical causality), social forces (the general will, the hidden hand), and history (the idea of progress, dialectical development, the cunning of reason)."

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/707174301


I include it here just to exemplify an (unattributed) Hegelian influence. (unattributed in the review, that is, the book itself is surely more forthcoming?)

Anyway, connections, connections, and I'm planning on coming back to this thread properly shortly - when the planting season and decorating season is past its peak.

If you think that the effort to discern the universal nature of philosophy is not a philosophical enterprise, then you are certainly deceiving yourself. :wink: Thus it always appears simultaneously as the malady, and its own homeopathic remedy.

I will simply suggest that illusion arises as a possibility from the existence of vision, but that does not make blindness preferable. Likewise one can deceive oneself if and only if one can also possibly be honest with oneself. To be open to both possibilities is to already be a philosopher.

But I disagree that the relationship between yeast and sugar has anything to do with valuing. Same with organisms valuing breathing - that is not valuing — Fire Ologist

That's acceptable. I draw the line as low as I can. If you want to draw it higher, so be it, though I would appreciate some indication of where the line is for you and why it is there. For me it is simple, Yeast absorbs sugar and expels CO2; I do the same. Sugar was the foundation of the British Empire and was the main stimulus for the slave trade; sugar is highly valued in human society. So I conclude that yeast is not all that different from humans in terms of its valuation of sugar. I have not actually consulted a yeast cell on the matter.

But conclude the human is nothing special? — Fire Ologist

Oh no, I did not conclude that! Rather I left folk to consider what is special; I am glad you have engaged. This is a perennial question that, the more one examines nature, the harder it is to articulate an easy answer. Apes, orca, and ants show intelligence and social cohesion and communication, various species use tools, care for their young, and so on.

Personally, I rest, for the moment, with the observation that I am human, and so human values have special value to me. We are born into dependency, unable to feed ourselves or navigate the world, and because we depend for our lives on being valued by [m]others, our concern for human values is vital.

With the “self” creating its own values with words like “self” as in “I value coffee”, values need not relate to anything else but the self, which is like the rock which values nothing. — Fire Ologist

This is where things get complicated, and I skated over it with 'infinite value'. And it is where we leave nature for the landscape of thought. The self, I would say, is a structure of thought that distinguishes I from not-I. (It is always the small words that contain the deepest philosophical difficulty)

This means that the simple "I value coffee." is actually ambiguous between a factual behavioural statement of this individual's habit in relation to coffee, and a description of this individual's self-understanding of its habit in relation to coffee.

It is in the ambiguity that one can then reflect on one's own value to oneself, and conclude that oneself is necessary to any value whatsoever, and is therefore of infinite value. But notice that this is pure thought, not limited by physicality. And that is why it can also become inverted, as Vera pointed out above. The negative value of suffering is also infinite.

And any suicide doesn’t value breathing at all.
— Fire Ologist
Or values something - e.g. the cessation of pain - more highly than breathing. — Vera Mont

But neither is 'true' in the sense of representing a matter of fact.

And any suicide doesn’t value breathing at all. — Fire Ologist

You or they may make the claim, but they will be contradicted as they make it by the fact - that they are breathing as they claim not to value breathing.

That’s not what valuing means. — Fire Ologist

Yes it is. In order to make it an exclusively human affair, you would have to define it as an entirely cerebral and verbal affair, whereas it is commonly experienced as visceral, even where it concerns such elevated topics as poetry or music.

We can value anything, and everything, or nothing. — Fire Ologist

I disagree with you here. One can claim to value anything or nothing, certainly, but try not valuing breathing, and not only is it very difficult to stop breathing, so that one discovers the value rather quickly, but if one should succeed to the point of losing consciousness, the organism will automatically start breathing again as soon as the bullshitter becomes unconscious.

The value of a single human life?

I believe the individual experiences and safety of every individual on the planet is equal. And I strive for the safety and security of my own life and those immediately connected to me with an unwavering urge for my appreciation for life and it's right to exist.

And I believe that is universal. — Gingethinkerrr

I agree. I think you are right. But we are not done there, let's try and ask why it is so, and look at each word and elucidate. Let's try and persuade everyone else, that we don't just believe for no reason but that this is a true moral principle that we all should live by.

I'll start with "value". 'Value' is a relational term; X values Y. Straight away, it seems we are necessarily talking about a living thing as X. So, yeast values sugar; dung beetles value dung; birds value worms; I value a morning coffee. But a rock values nothing, it is all the same to if it crumbles or melts or falls in the sea or falls into the sun.

So life is the source of values. One might suggest that an individual life has infinite value to itself, as the source of all its values. So far so good, but what makes humans so special? I'll leave it there for now.

I think this answers very clearly what is and what is not possible in this regard.

–—

And brought into the official record by the Orange Turd's own lawyer, who drew attention to the epithet and insisted on the naming being made explicit.

And then tried to use it to claim a mistrial. Whose side is she on? Trump's of course, but Trump is his own worst enemy. Trying to shame a porn-star is like trying to spice up a chilli pickle.

Does life have any potential to be anything beyond suffering, or is that too much of a pessimistic stance? I cannot see life as anything other than this, but it could also be something that we simply create out of life. — Arnie

Well to be alive is to be sensitive, and to be sensitive is to be vulnerable. That which lives must die. As I get older, I find myself subject more and more to aches and pains of knees and feet and stomach and so on.
There is certainly no shortage of suffering, if one sees the news, or spends a little time in a hospital, one can feel overwhelmed by it. But I think that suffering is pain compounded by rejection, the attempt to escape, and fear of continuation. Athletes speak of 'the pain barrier', as something to be overcome as a necessary step on the way to excellence. This attitude, that accepts pain, and moves towards and through it serves to greatly reduce suffering, by making pain a price one pays willingly for some other thing, which I will call "love".

You may have heard that love hurts, and that is true, because to love is to be sensitive and vulnerable, and to be so willingly. One is painstaking in the service of that which one loves; one takes the trouble and suffers for one's art - or one's wife, or one's sport, or in my case, my garden.

if these workers aren't forced then it maybe a good thing that teenagers and old people can work if they want to or the pay is attractive enough to them. — boethius

Maybe it is a good thing! Maybe it's a good thing if the Russian economy is collapsing.

the point of my little lecture about the unemployment statistics is that if you need to resort to the argument that low unemployment is some "great tragedy" that has befallen the Russian people then that's pretty much scraping the bottom of the barrel of available gripes. — boethius

Well the point of your little lecture looks a little weak. I have now given three sources indicating a bit of a labour shortage to a critical labour shortage. I haven't mentioned the floods, that were not very well coped with, or the refinery repairs and defences that are happening very slowly, and I haven't gone into the details of population statistics that exacerbate the dual effects of war casualties and emigration of workers.

The real difficulty that I see is that the population is not enthusiastic about the war. There's no doubt there's some 'dig to survive' around, but not much 'dig for victory'.

Unemployment statistics only count people able and looking for work. — boethius

Is that international law, or a law of Nature, or a local convention? I know how the unemployment figures are manipulated and function in the West, and I well remember being told that 3,000,000 unemployed was "a price well worth paying" to get the economy functioning: thanks for the little lecture though. But in a State Capitalist system, things might be different, and measures might be different too. My reason for thinking this might be the case is the context of the figure in the video, and also things like this:

Teenagers, elderly people and even prisoners are plugging drastic holes in the Russian workforce created by people being recruited into the army or fleeing the country.

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/12/04/everything-for-the-front-how-war-is-changing-russias-labor-market-a83311

Again, I have not fact-checked, but there is also this:

TV host Dmitry Kiselyov, a bullish ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, on Sunday boasted about the health of Russia's economy 15 months after the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

In an edition of his show on Russian state broadcaster Rossiya 1, Kiselyov said that it's "always important to visualise the overall proportions" and specifically "the proportions of the Ukrainian economy and how they've changed over the past year," reported BBC Monitoring 's Francis Scarr.

"This is especially important in comparison with Russian figures," he said. The spin doctor, known as "Putin's mouthpiece", went on to point to a number of factors he claimed showed that Russia was economically performing better than Ukraine.

He omitted how Russia's invasion has decimated the Ukrainian economy, and boasted that in Russia "unemployment is at an historic low."

https://www.businessinsider.com/kremlin-ally-boasts-of-low-unemployment-which-is-really-fueled-by-ukraine-losses-2023-5

It doesn't flip things vertically or horizontally but in the third dimension - front to back. The confusion arises because humans have bilateral symmetry. If you imagine your nose passing through your head, and your toes through your heels to produce the reflection, and everything else doing likewise, then you will produce in the imagination the reflection exactly. But what one tends to imagine is that one slides around into the mirror and turning to produce the reflection, which seems to work horizontally because of the body symmetry, but if you imagine the same movement vertically one is upside down, because the lack of symmetry does not allow one to imagine that head has become feet, whereas the symmetry of the body does allow one to imagine that left has become right.

It's mostly hyperbole such as describing low unemployment of 3.5% as catastrophic. It's not some neo-classical "optimum" level of unemployment (to make the rich class richer) but it's far from a "catastrophe". — boethius

Well I'm not sure, but I understood that to be a translation snarl. If one put it in the negative - as 96.5% employment, it would be catastrophic, because the old, the infirm, the sick, the insane, and children would be working in huge numbers. And that would be the result of the "disappearance" of men of working age either abroad or into the army/casualty lists.

A purpose is somewhat like a row.

Sometimes, it is possible to get your ducks in a row. But when your ducks are in a row, you do not have your ducks and a row.

there exists an X such that 1) X provides purpose in the world, and 2) if there be no X, then there is no purpose, — tim wood

There is no X such that X provides the rowness to the ducks, rather it is the relations between the ducks that sometimes has the form of a row; it is not an extra something in addition to the ducks.

This modern stuff all sounds the same to me. Here's something a bit different.

What if we stopped trying to "bring up" children to our high level, and instead tried to bring ourselves up to their high level?
What if we treated children like high ambassadors and dignitaries from a foreign land, who were ignorant of our barbaric and primitive customs and language, but had their own, that we might learn something of if we were not so condescending to their apparent smallness and frailty? What if we had all, from an early age, been treated with generosity and respect?

This is rather long. But I think it is worth plodding through, and thinking about. For instance, the simple notion that the largest waste product of modern human society currently by tonnage is... CO2.

In general, it is a great introduction to ecological theory and the comparison with economic theory is particularly cogent and revealing. But you might need to keep your happy pills handy.

I didn't say there are two types of people — flannel jesus

No, I said it, but i was only joking. Sorry if I offended. But in general, I think it is an always a mistake to psychologise philosophies and philosophers, and particularly so in the case of terms of mental health diagnostics. Nihilism can be a joyous liberation just as well as an oppressive vacuous prison.

There are two types of people; those who think people are always one type or another, and the rest of us. :wink:

In contradiction to the thesis of the op, I present the witness, Kurt Vonnegut.

And I’ve had a hell of a good time. I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you any different.

https://richardswsmith.wordpress.com/2017/11/18/we-are-here-on-earth-to-fart-around-and-dont-let-anybody-tell-you-any-different/

But on reflection, he's not a moral nihilist at all, but an anti-authoritarian.

Now since I've defined what I'm talking about this much do you finally get it? — Echogem222

No, the more you define things the less understandable you become.

Take a coffee cup. there is a hole that I can fill with coffee, and then there is a hole on the side I can put my fingers through to pick it up which is formed by the handle. These are topologically distinct, because the handle-hole one can pass something through, whereas where the coffee goes in, it has to come out the same way. But both holes are distinguished by and from their surroundings, or to put it another way 'a hole has to be a hole in something', and this seems to make the distinction between PV and NV impossible to sustain, beyond the way you arbitrarily decide to regard a particular hole.

A word has meaning to the extent that it makes a distinction between that which it indicates, and that which it does not indicate.

To exist is to stand out, to be distinguishable from - let's say as vaguely as possible - "the background". Thus a hole in the road, for example, stands out as a feature from the background levelness of the rest of the road. This is the opposite standing out, geometrically, to the way a mountain stands out from the plain or an island from the sea.

There is no need to resort to quantum mechanics to understand basic English. Anyone who thinks that holes don't exist should be dropped down a mineshaft until they realise and admit their mistake.

I have not fact-checked this, but offer it as is:– sneer, dismiss, disprove, approve, or something else; personally, I cried, but I am a milk and water liberal pantywaist.

A fundamental law of Trumpism is projection.

This isn't about taking sides. — Tzeentch

Oh yes it is. We are on the side of truth, and they are the enemy.

Fortunately, its always the other side one has to fact check, one's own group being open and honest about everything.

living by that principle is inconvenient. — Vera Mont

Indeed, that's why only the virtuous do it. Even Trump/Putin/the boogieman will tell the truth when it's convenient.

Further suppose those agents start breaking the guy's fingers and he spills his guts about how to disarm the bomb and they disarm it.
— RogueAI
His fingers and toes are all broken, and he still doesn't know how to disarm the bomb, because he didn't make it or arm it. He doesn't know who they are or where they are. The terrorists are smart enough to send an ignorant mule to plant it. — Vera Mont

Yes, but suppose they catch one of the smart guys one day...

One ought to assume that sometimes torture is efficacious, otherwise no one would ever be tempted. One thing it is efficacious for, is to instil terror, for example; it functions as a deterrent.

It is not immoral to torture people because it is ineffectual; that is an argument of despair one resorts to with the totally amoral, to whom moral arguments have no meaning. Hurt and harm imposed on another are the basis for calling it immoral. And if hurt and harm should not to be imposed on us, then it should not to be imposed on them either. This simple principle is why the first step in any crime against humanity is "dehumanising". This produces "edge-cases".

Criminal trial: day 1.

I think there is a persistent confusion between self and consciousness which messes up a lot of the discourse.
— bert1
So then "consciousness" is impersonal? For instance, my awareness of being self-aware isn't actually mine? :chin: — 180 Proof

It seems to be localised. If consciousness is transparent, to the extent that one cannot see the rose tint, or whatever the opposite is (blue?), then this body's consciousness is this body's, and that explains the persistent illusion that the body image is the consciousness, because otherwise it is mere breath (aka 'spirit'). In which case "what it is like to be a bat" is intelligible as being just like being a little furry flying me that is shortsighted and can echo-locate.

And that understanding would seem to lead very naturally to a common-sense ethic - if all consciousness is 'the same', then 'do not do to yourself over there what you would not like if you were over there, because you are over there as well as here.

What's the difference between a loaf of bread and a slice of bread?

Good grief!

I don't really know what the OP hopes to achieve with his tautology — Leontiskos

It's a preamble to casting the first stone, obviously.

https://global-tipping-points.org

Here is a large report that explains some of the tipping points and what we might expect and what we ought to be doing about it politically. It's fairly up to date, and well researched. Seems mightily optimistic to me about the ability/possibility for human society to find its own transformative positive tipping points in terms of world governance and mitigating technologies and lifestyle adaptation. But hope springs 'til the last minute.

Another rat departs the hopefully sinking ship, armed with enough insider testimony to plea bargain his own case.



Meanwhile, the twenty year long conspiracy to pervert the course of British justice that is the Post Office False Prosecutions Scandal remains without a single arrest of an official or the payment of any compensation. (This in case the US government and its fans feel lonely in their corruption.)

the user who deliberately put himself on his own ignore list remains unnoticed by this fact. — javi2541997

I particularly like the idea of the facts not noticing me. Please share that strange liquid with me!

Unfortunately, it turns out not to be possible to put oneself on one's ignore list. So one has no other recourse but to be an intelligent and interesting interlocutor, or be irritated.

My question is how does one know when that is the case - ie they're chatting sh*t. And to the contrary, when they really do know what they're talking about. — Benj96

What one knows is what has been. What another knows one might learn if one pays attention quietly to what they are saying without rehearsing what one knows over, to compare. Your question arises when there is a conflict. One thinks one knows and then discovers that one was wrong, and there is no conflict if one is ready to learn. Only if one tries to hold on to one's knowing does the conflict arise. So one learns that a conflicted mind is the infallible sign.

One piece of evidence is that I don't seem to be struggling against "reality" as much as I used to. — BC

This!

Do you think you can take over the universe and improve it?
I do not believe it can be done.

The universe is sacred.
You cannot improve it.
If you try to change it, you will ruin it.
If you try to hold it, you will lose it.

So sometimes things are ahead and sometimes they are behind;
Sometimes breathing is hard, sometimes it comes easily;
Sometimes there is strength and sometimes weakness;
Sometimes one is up and sometimes down.

Therefore the sage avoids extremes, excesses, and complacency. — Tao Te Ching