How childish of you! Reminds me of 'The Emperor's New Clothes.'

Our economic beliefs are making the planet ill. We are pulling the cards out from the bottom of a finely stacked pyramid. And planet earth's immune defences are coming against us slowly but surely. She is getting feverish — Benj96

Sadly your diagnosis is entirely correct, and @Varnaj42 will no doubt welcome the cleansing medicine that Nature will prescribe. But personally I'm not down on the children, I blame the parents.

But can we be aware of our soul, or must we accept its existence on faith? If we can't be aware of our soul, then why should we care about its eternal fate? — Art48

I'm not sure. I think I'm articulating a fairly commonplace conception of soul as having its home in another world, such that "now we see through a glass, darkly", etc. The soul as something that cannot be contained in Earthly form, be that Earthly awareness or Earthly body. I think we can have intimations of something beyond what we are clearly aware of, but I don't have anything solid in the discussion. 'Why should we care?' is a dangerous sort of question. We cannot be aware of the complex activities of our body cells, but we do care that they are maintained and ordered so that -for example voluntary movement can happen. Why should we care about what is beyond our awareness? Because our awareness is limited and small.

If we can be aware of our soul, then doesn't that mean that soul can be contained in awareness?

I don't see why? I am aware of you, but you are not contained in my awareness.

Yes, climate fluctuations, population crashes, and mass extinctions are normal features of Earth history.

I'm not worried at all about the next one, because I've got my stash, and everyone else is an idiot.

How would you describe the relationship between awareness and soul? — Art48

I would liken awareness to the way vision works; that one is sharply aware of whatever is the centre of attention, that might be part of oneself, a toothache perhaps, or might be (in my case just now) a question one has been asked, and vaguely aware of other things - the sun streaming through the window, the rattle of the keys as I type, a buzzing fly. And beyond that there is a world of things I might turn my attention to, a memory of a job I have to do later, a rumbling stomach because I am ready for lunch, the movement of the trees outside ...

And beyond all that a dark universe of people and things that I can imagine living their lives around me in their own houses, that I am unaware of, along with all the bodily processes that I presume must go on - circulation of blood, tissue repair, digestion, etc. And the soul is also dark to the greatest extent, because I am absorbed in this carnal life, just as within this incarnation, I can be absorbed in a book, or absorbed in the attempt to express something as best I can.

I imagine my soul as inhabiting another realm - call it a 'higher reality', or 'heaven', or the 'spiritual realm', and voluntarily immersing itself in this particular life as an educational, or character-building exercise, or just an entertainment, as one might play an interactive game, or listen to a lecture. A physicalist would explain it simply as 'the unconscious', but they have no more warrant for that than I have for my imaginings. Whereof one is unaware, thereof one can only bullshit.

It seems that either awareness and soul are identical, or awareness contains soul. — Art48

I don't feel this is right. If I am reading a good book, or watching a film, or playing a game, my awareness is absorbed in the 'action', to the extent that I lose any awareness of, and temporarily forget, my body sitting in the armchair. This is my experience, that my awareness can be focussed on, and filled with, one thing to the exclusion of others. One hears of sportsmen playing on with broken bones, so absorbed in the game that they do not notice the damage and feel the pain.

And of course the detachment from the body of a rugby player is not the realisation of the adept. On the contrary, the awareness of the holy man is very present and sensitive to the physical world in all its interactions with the body. I suggest that he does not make an identification either as 'pure consciousness' or as body, but makes no identification at all.

Attachment to the body, you have dealt with, but consider the sin of attachment to the mind; the attachment to the idea of oneself as having risen above the mundane world - that is where pride - even pride in one's imagined humility - can imprison awareness in a very small cell.

The truth of a sentence can generally not be determined by the theory. The general case is that it must be externally supplied. — alcontali

Thanks for your very clear exposition of the logic.

Applying this to ordinary language, which does not separate T1 and T2 and is therefore liable to get into a bit of a mess when talking about itself and 'truth', one finds that the language itself cannot decide whether "The cat is on the mat." is true or false. This is exactly what most of us want, because we do not want to be talking about the language, but about the cat. Generally, the cat determines where the cat is, and thereby the truth value of the sentence. This is only a problem for folks that want to live entirely in their own heads and have their inner monologue determine everything.

a fair amount of the presently adopted "to do" list is pointless gesturing. — frank

Indeed, and everyone is rowing back even on the pointless gestures. Had to laugh at the UK leading the way on carbon reduction by tanking the economy. Half the country is dependent on food hand outs and cannot afford to cook or heat their homes. Quite the achievement! Of course when Bangladesh is 90% under water, they may overtake us.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/commentisfree/2021/apr/13/sea-level-rise-climate-emergency-harold-wanless

This article is an old one, but predictions have not changed all that much for the more optimistic since.
Rather than argue back and forth about whether humans will go extinct or merely become an endangered species, let's have a bit of a think about the loss of major cities, and arable land that result from a sea level rise of 20ft (6m.)

Two to three feet of sea level rise may not sound like much, but it will transform human societies the world over. In south Florida, where I live, residents will lose access to fresh water. Sewage treatment plants will fail, large areas will persistently flood, and Miami Beach and other barrier islands will be largely abandoned. In China, India, Egypt and other countries with major river deltas, two to three feet of sea level rise will force the evacuation of tens of millions of people and the loss of vast agricultural lands.

This by 2050. If I was a mortgage company, I would be stopping lending in low lying coastal towns.

And of course it's not going to stop at 3ft, nor at 6m.

Argue if you like about whether to call it sea level change, or sea level emergency, extinction or population reduction. Call me an alarmist, though; I aim to cause alarm, rather than playing 'abide with me' while the ship sinks.

Colonization is a fiction too because tribes had no governments and thus nothing could be stolen. — NOS4A2

Of course, theft is a corollary of property, as is government.Hence the anti-government slogan, "Property is theft." Property is necessarily appropriated from the commons — what is appropriated to personal use and control, everyone else is deprived of the use and control of. That is the process of colonisation.

Property is the first superstition. Property rights are what government is built on. As the man said "Render unto the federal government that which has the federal government seal upon it" - that eye in the pyramid thingy, or whatever.

Libertarians do tend to forget that the privacy of their estates, large or small, are a fiction maintained by government.

Finish the story as you see fit. — frank

Then they had a fight and all died.

There is no impossibility that there should be an uninhabited land; it is only a contradiction that a land uninhabited by humans is inhabited by humans.

The other contradiction is that there be a community of the unsocial. The wild frontier tends to have a Davy Crockett king, and is always temporary and moving on - it is currently located on the Moon and Mars, and Elon Musk is the self-appointed King.

As someone who grew up in a severe branch of the Plymouth Brethren, that has made me value the truth. — Andrew4Handel

But did they or do they really believe it or was it an entirely faith or fear based belief, or a mixture of social control, fearmongering, hope and conformity etc?

To my mind that level of indoctrination warrants someone to put a very high value on the truth including for one's own sanity. — Andrew4Handel

I too value truth highly, and for the same reason.

But it seems to me that the Plymouth Brethren also value truth highly. They think they have found the truth in the Bible, and do their best to live by it. In fact, I venture to say that despite much that has been said here, everyone values the truth. What would be the point of making an enquiry or attempting to respond to one if one did not value the truth? A billion doubloons or a sack of rotting fish heads.

The difficulty is though that we are not terribly good at getting hold of the truth, and some folks settle on the Book, and hold to that, and some folks affect indifference and think it sophisticated, and some few of us are continually looking for truth and poking at what we find wondering if it is the real thing or not. One learns to be cautious, anxious, and somewhat provisional in one's claims, because one sees that it is easy and comfortable to suppose one is rich in truth, when one is rather poor. This is a little bit I've got hold of, and I think it's about right. Give it a poke and see what you think.

the concept "determinatio est negatio",as it is highly developed in Part Four of Sartre's "Being and Nothingness" — quintillus

It's been a long time since i read it, and it wasn't much fun as I remember it. But as I think - please correct if I am misremembering - Sartre was responding to the occupation of France by nazi Germany. It was from WW2 that certain principles evolved that set limits to the writ of law and scope of authority, such that, the concept of an 'illegal order' entered international law, along with crimes against humanity, and so on.

That is to say that one has a choice — no choice but to make a choice, even under coercion, to obey or disobey. Law-makers are necessarily free to make moral or immoral laws, and folks are necessarily free to obey or disobey, and in this way personal responsibility always obtains.

Thus @Cheshire chooses to waste time and money complying with a law, probably in order not to waste more time and money dealing with the consequences of refusal. Either way he is responsible for his own acts, and his obedience is not in itself a defence. Sartre basically invents a new sin of criminal obedience.

But I do resent baseless accusations. — Vera Mont

So you don't value truth, but you resent falsehood?

That seems a bit negative...

Proveit! — Vera Mont

Why? Do you value truth or something?

Three pages of lies. And nobody cares.

If you chose The Siren, you would feel like The World's Idiot for the rest of your life. — hypericin

Not if I was right. The odds that I uniquely am the sailors lovely frog daughter are surely very small indeed if it is a unique occurrence. It is as unlikely as that a frog should be mistaken for a horse. And that is my gamble, not the one my father made.

The odds favour the siren of fertility, and my own beauty confirms it.

Or...

Philosophy is like a swamp. Swamps are for staying out of, in the first place, and for getting out of if you can in the second.

While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society's pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he's in.

[Chorus]
But I mean no harm, nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it's alright, Ma, if I can't please him. — a mother's son

The Sailor's Child problem, introduced by Radford M. Neal, is somewhat similar. It involves a sailor who regularly sails between ports. In one port there is a woman who wants to have a child with him, across the sea there is another woman who also wants to have a child with him. The sailor cannot decide if he will have one or two children, so he will leave it up to a coin toss. If Heads, he will have one child, and if Tails, two children. But if the coin lands on Heads, which woman would have his child? He would decide this by looking at The Sailor's Guide to Ports and the woman in the port that appears first would be the woman that he has a child with. You are his child. You do not have a copy of The Sailor's Guide to Ports. What is the probability that you are his only child, thus the coin landed on Heads (assume a fair coin)? — wiki

This version looks a lot clearer to me, and the question at the end looks like a deception. 2 possible worlds, contain 3 possible identities. So other things (ie coins) being equal, I am more likely to be one of two than one of one. So P. (only child) is 1/3 notwithstanding P. (heads) is 1/2, because tails is twice as fruitful as heads.

We need to look to matriarchal cultures to know a better way. — Athena

Certainly! And matrilineal, more importantly. The need for patrilineal patriarchy to control female sexuality is fairly obvious, but it certainly predates Christianity, and is extant in the classical world of Greece and Rome. I commend to you The White Goddess, by Robert Graves, a man, as I am a man, but a poet, and servant of the muses. It is a long book with lots of words, but looking back to a time hidden from us before the takeover of Zeus, and JHWH, and all the wretched gods. It may seem a bit peripheral, but to find the negated history of Western matriarchy seems like an important step towards understanding those few cultures in which it still survives to an extent. But perhaps it is only men who need such searchings...

All saints revile her, and all sober men
Ruled by the God Apollo's golden mean—

In scorn ofwhich I sailed to find her
In distant regions likeliest to hold her
Whom I desired above all things to know,

Sister ofthe mirage and echo.

It was a virtue not to stay,

To go my headstrong and heroic way
Seeking her out at the volcano's head.

Among pack ice, or where the track had faded
Beyond the cavern of the seven sleepers:

Whose broad high brow was white as any leper'
Whose eyes were blue, with rowan-berry lips.
With hair curled honey-coloured to white hips.

Green sap of Spring in the young wood a-stir
Will celebrate the Mountain Mother,

And every song-bird shout awhile for her;

But I am gifted, even in November
Rawest ofseasons, with so huge a sense
Of her nakedly worn magnificence
I forget cruelty and past betrayal.

Careless of where the next bright bolt may fall. — Graves

An analogy: supposing understanding to be finite and measurable, and to be held by a being as a box holds its contents; as no box can be big enough to hold itself, so no being can have a complete understanding of itself.

Consciousness according to some mysterians is, or at least results from, that necessary incompleteness. Even if the superior alien had a complete understanding of human consciousness, from their own point of view, they could not understand themselves with the same completeness, and would have to 'project' their own incompleteness of self-understanding onto us to fully understand us in our incomplete understanding of ourselves.

Shimples!

That’s because I know you cannot name one reason. You don’t have any reason. — NOS4A2

Of course I don't, you have already convicted me of joining the conspiracy against Trump. :rofl:

Give me one reason why I should believe any of it. — NOS4A2

No. you give me one reason to believe that the jury and the justice system and now the whole city is so corrupt as to be completely unbelievable and totally ignored. Everyone in the whole world can be convicted in your mind except Trump. Bizarre.

↪unenlightened I’m not so sure they can be so neatly separated. — Jamal

The tool-maker makes the tools he uses to make tools, but he is never using the tool he is making while he is making it. — unenlightened

Ever the Marxist, eh? The point is to change the world. That's fine by me; I'm just pointing out that using philosophy is not making philosophy.

Everyone loves the tool-maker, and everyone uses the tools he makes for the purposes they have. The carpenter says that the purpose of tool making is to enable wood-work. The stonemason says the purpose of tool-making is to enable the shaping of stone. The beautician says...

The purpose of the tool maker himself is to make tools. He is important to every function because he has none of his own.

Any time one has a use for philosophy, one is not doing philosophy, but rhetoric. The tool-maker makes the tools he uses to make tools, but he is never using the tool he is making while he is making it.

There is no evidence. Her claims of sexual assault can be discarded along with her accusations of rape. Believing such accusations without evidence says a lot about character. — NOS4A2

A jury has convicted. Now miscarriages of justice can happen, but at this stage, your claim that there is no evidence itself requires evidence in the form of a detailed rebuttal of the prosecution case.

There is no evidence that there is no evidence; on the contrary, the conviction is positive evidence that there is convincing evidence, because a jury has been convinced. You have to provide evidence that they have been corrupted or misled, that will convince us otherwise, if you want to be taken seriously.

Women, blacks, the seas, the forests, the soil, fossil fuel, fossil fertiliser. Looks like we have run out of things to exploit. There is one thing left, disaster.

https://tsd.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine.html

You are not alone; but you are relatively alone here because philosophy is still male dominated. What you need is "feminism". A deal of folk think that to take women seriously means to treat them just like men. That has led, not to the valuing of child-care and caring in general, but to its industrialisation, so as to free women to become wage slaves. That this "liberation" has proven unsatisfactory is unsurprising.

I, nor I fear any here, can direct you competently to the wealth of material available, but assuredly, the analysis and deconstruction of Dick and Jane has already been done for you, Women's Studies is a thing, and Feminist Philosophy, though it lacks any representation here is quite well developed. You need to go talk to your peeresses first, and then come back and educate us neanderthals.

To the modern, self-centred mind, the logic of rationality measures everything in relation to self interest, as expressed mathematically in game theory. It follows immediately from the definition of love as being other-interest, that it is considered irrational.

And yet it functions perfectly well in the world, where parents sacrifice their own interest for their children's, because the world does not believe in the absolute separation that characterises linguistic thought.

It looks to me, my lords, as if the motte is the ideal place from which to attack the bailey. If that is your target, join your enemy up there, and together attack the wretched bailey full of peasants and swine, that is causing all the strife.

Or is it the motte itself that is your real target, and you are attacking that, by way of first taking the bailey? In that case the dissimulation is on your own side.

Language is a social construct. As such it attains to significance at all only in virtue of the restrictions that are placed upon it. Thus while it is permissible to call a spade a hand held personal earth-moving device, it is not permissible to call it a butterfly sandwich.

Of course if you want to talk to yourself in your own private language, in your own private echo-chamber, you can do what the fuck you like, but as soon as you are talking to other people, there are rules, because there is interaction. Generally, fraud, deception, threats and bullying, and various sorts of wind up and manipulation are frowned upon.

One might liken free-speech to the free market. The market is only free if it is regulated to exclude shysters, robbers, fraudsters, and so on. In the village market, one can rely on the honesty of neighbours who will have to come back again and again to the same customers, but in the global economy, and the tech-economy that no one is ever able to be competent in all fields, regulation is essential.

We can argue about the rules, that's one of the rules, but to suggest that there be no rules is to run around naked in public screaming "look what I've got!" — Thanks, but no thanks.

Free discussion amongst equals is how truth can prevail, but only amongst honest equals committed to the project that truth should prevail. There is no education to be found in the talk of the dishonest, the foolish or the insane.

Freedom comes from order, not chaos. We have the freedom of the skies because the skies are heavily regulated, to the extent that even flocks of birds have to be dissuaded from flightpaths of aircraft.

capitalism itself — jorndoe

Is capitalism itself though, or is it something else?

Do the wretched Ruskies not have access to a stopcock somewhere, if they want to cut off the flow?

I'm starting to wonder if capitalism is entirely fair?

Are well informed rational people better than ill-informed irrational people?

When science has replaced philosophy, such questions will no longer be asked.