Reason =

1. Cause - I yawn because I am tired.
2. Motive - I go to bed to get some rest.
3.Justification - if I rest I will be less tired and more able to explain things.
4. Function - rest allows the body to repair itself.

You equivocate the various meanings and confusion results. This thread is about "arguments". It's the first word of the title. So it is not about causes, or motives or functions, it is about justification.

The cause of having children is usually fucking.
The motive is usually that people like fucking and like children.
The function of children is to continue the species.
The justification for having children is that life is a good.

The justification in this case does not amount to an argument, it is a mere dogma. but it's as near as I wish to get. Someone will press me, and I will admit that suffering is good, because suffering is part of life. And then if someone pursues the matter I will have to stray from the topic and discuss the relation of pain to suffering. My children will suffer, and they will die. We all do. I see it and say 'yes'.

"The principle of sufficient reason states that everything must have a reason or a cause."

Fucking is the cause of children. Job done.
— unenlightened

Yes but the question the OP's asking isn't about causes. — TheMadFool

So the principle of sufficient reason does not apply. People fuck for fucks sake. The folly of the wise is a wonder to behold. Philosophers demand a sufficient reason to smile or dance. The tragedy of the inadequacy of reason to life.

I wonder how people can care about the welfare of the children they did not have. It looks just like caring about no one to me.

We believe we see politicians do certain things, and hear them say certain things, but then we discover they did, and said, something entirely different. — Don Wade

Usually, they pretend to be leaders, but turn out to be followers. the trick is to push to the front of wherever people are already going. Populism is the name of the game.

There is no reason to require a reason for everything
— unenlightened

I like what you said but what about the Principle Of Sufficient Reason? — TheMadFool

"The principle of sufficient reason states that everything must have a reason or a cause."

Fucking is the cause of children. Job done.

https://www.llandudno.com/the-great-orme-kashmiri-goats/

What is this life if empty of care, we have no jealousy, schardenfreude, masochism, fear of punishment. We all know somewhere that the good life is empty, and the sinful life is what we want. SuperMario without Bowser? Dull, dull dull!

Now that I’ve grown old, I realise that for most of us it is not enough to have achieved personal success. One’s best friend must also have failed. — Somerset Maugham

Beliefs are not motives.

I believe that beliefs are not motives, but my reason for mentioning it is that I actually care that people {like you} think straight.

Does it matter the reasons people give for their actions? I think it does because I believe in truth and authenticity. — Andrew4Handel

I think a moment's reflection will make clear to you that it is not mere belief in truth and authenticity, but caring about truth and authenticity. One might say that the difference between belief that and belief in is the addition of motivation. It is expressed in the op fable that a man believed the moon was made of cheese, "and wanted to taste it."

I value truth, because truth helps folks get what they want, including me. The moon isn't made of cheese, and the man was disappointed, but wiser.

If you asked Kant, he would tell you that if there were a reason, and in olden times and primitive societies children were labour assets and providers for old age, it would be immoral because it would treat a person as a means.

There is no reason to require a reason for everything, and the creation of this miserable thread is as unreasonable as the procreation of children. My own children are completely useless and a pain it the butt. This makes me virtuous and stands as an awful warning to all you youngsters not to enjoy yourselves except with addictive drugs.

Are people getting more ignorant?

Yes they are. Not many people know that. Meanwhile, the wild goats have eaten all my tulips. They don't eat daffodils though.

Yeah that's a bit unnecessary.

In case anyone wants some basic information about visions and voices as currently experienced or needs a friendly chat _

https://www.hearing-voices.org/voices-visions/

Why is a mouse, when it spins?

Estimates of the current prevalence of hearing voices vary from less than 1% to over 80%.

Of course, many people who are hear voices in our time do struggle with them and some act on the voices. Also, some people hear voices which are extremely unpleasant. If the bicameral mind thesis is correct, I wonder if the problematic nature of psychosis is because voices, and other hallucinatory experiences, occur out of context of a general bicameral way of being. — Jack Cummins

Hearing voices is a matter of identification. I hear this voice in my head as I type, and identify with it - I call it "my voice". If one does not identify with it, but still has an identification with something, the body, perhaps, then the narrative voice is 'other'. A change of identification can seem world shattering, an end to identification can seem like death; but it is a very small tweak to one's point of view.

If I start to doubt that these words mean what I think they mean, what can I say about that?
— unenlightened

That you have realised that there is no fact about that kind of matter?

The hand proposition is the big fat fact. — bongo fury

Yeah but no but...

My point is that if you doubt the meaning of the question, you cannot answer at all. The answer to my question might just as well be "Wibble, wibble wibble, my old man's a mushroom." What you demonstrate by giving a sensible answer, is that you do not on this occasion doubt the meaning at all.

In the philosophy of language, demonstration is more powerful than proof, because...

... knowing that presupposes being able to say that... and hence is a genus of knowing how to talk. But talking is just getting stuff done with words, and its the getting stuff done that is important. — Banno

sometimes you need to be able to question the basics. — frank

When? How?

You misunderstand in trying to answer my scepticism of scepticism. Of course you need to be able to question anything. But you cannot question everything. So I might sensibly wonder if I am dreaming - but if I suggest that to you, I am betraying my own doubt. The solipsist by definition cannot argue his position with an interlocutor.

It's not that doubt of anything is impossible, it's that it becomes a performative contradiction in some language games.

If I start to doubt that these words mean what I think they mean, what can I say about that?

Or you could just lock your door. Why is violence the default mode of thinking? — Tzeentch

How many months supplies do you have stored behind that door? and how strong is it? There are going to be some frightened desperate people coming down the road.

I had covid and I didn't like it, so now I have had the suspect astra vaccine and I'm going back for more of whatever's on offer as soon as maybe.

Public health has always trumped individual rights since the days of lepers being made outcasts. And when Ebola comes to your neighbourhood, you will be imposing quarantine yourselves at gunpoint or at whatever other point you have available.

It appears completely logical to me, that a person could actually have such an attitude of uncertainty, such a lack of confidence — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, it appears quite possible to me too that a person could be uncertain. However, you do not appear to be uncertain, but quite dogmatically certain. you are playing the uncertainty card in order to dispute something that you do not in fact dispute. and that is the game I am playing back at you, that you are now disputing in turn. This is by way of a demonstration of something, rather than a proof of anything. You want to tell me "you probably already know what I mean," but you will not have it the other way about.

The deficiency in this perspective is the idea that doubt must be justified. — Metaphysician Undercover

No it isn't. What is this 'doubt' of which you speak? I know of no such thing. what is it made of? What even is 'deficiency'?

From what perspective can a perspective be said to be deficient?

One person's truth is another's lie, and so on. — baker

If this is your truth, it is a lie to me. And that is the end of the conversation, because this claim of yours denies the function of language. There is nothing more to be said.

Wittgenstein's apparent inability to hold apart genuinely grammatical and contingent propositions destabilises this thesis too, for relative indubitability will not do for certainty, as the remarks in the cited paragraphs clearly show. So this is indeed an aspect of OC in need of housekeeping. — Grayling

It seems to me that Grayling wants hinge propositions to be 'grammatical' distinguishable from distinguishable from contingent and thus dubitable propositions. And this is to miss the point completely.

"the bishop remains always on the colour it starts on." is a dubitable fact in the context of describing the game, to someone who has no knowledge of chess. None of the other pieces have this property, I might have misremembered things, or whatever.

But in the game of, say, learning to play chess, it is as indubitable as the law of gravity. If you want to play chess, you have to accept the rules as 'given'. If you are questioning the rules you are not playing the game.

It not this the 'solution' to scepticism, that a certain scepticism is appropriate and meaningful to a particular language game, but each language game has a framework that is indubitable in context. The global sceptic keeps jumping out of the conversation into another in which what is being said is doubtful. W. deals with the sceptic by turning the trick back on her. 'What are your grounds for doubt?' 'What do you mean by doubt?'

Boris Johnson is an habitual liar. Once i have satisfied myself that this is true, I have grounds to doubt everything he says. But woe betide that I find grounds that everyone is a habitual liar, because at that point the language itself has changed; belief is no longer a function at all; all that is left is a masturbatory entertainment of meaningless ideas.

Peace cannot result from strife.

I truly wish that people longing for socialism/communism or the abolishment of the free market will take an honest look at the actual track records of China, the Soviet Union, and Cuba in the 20th century. — fishfry

The best sense I can make of this is that you reject ideals completely in favour of some pragmatic measures. But I find it very odd, because i do not think that capitalism can function at least as you see it in the US for example, without a commitment to truth, justice, democracy, respect for persons, and kindness. Rather, the lack of these guiding principles results in exactly the tyrannical state capitalism of China and Russia that you condemn.

Is the argument here that Stalin, who killed 40 million and enslaved and impoverished the rest; and Mao, who killed 40 million, were the exemplars of non-capitalism you'd like to put up against 20th century capitalism? Or Castro's Cuba? — fishfry

No.

I hardly need to respond. — fishfry

You hardly have. Respond to Jesus, the communists aren't posting.

Nature, as in their natural habitat? Keep in mind that pigs are domesticated animals.

So, no better place for them. — Shawn

Used to keep pigs, and they liked to roam in the forest. They came home for sleep and supper, and we had to keep them in when the hunters were out looking for wild boar. The forest is a better place than the pen.

Being useless is the most useful skill. It enables one to avoid exploitation.

So your stance is something like:
Truth, justice, kindness, democracy, and respect for person (which can mean anything to anyone) are higher ideals than the profit motive. — baker

Yes, but I don't accept your proposal that they mean whatever you want to make them mean. They are well understood by very ordinary folks.


The use of ideals is for purposes of manipulation.[/quote]

Yes. But it is a silly question and thus a misleading answer. If you are so depraved as to think that ideals are something to use, then I cannot imagine any other use for them than to manipulate other people. Hence my question to you as to what else you think an ideal could be used for? which you didn't answer. All clear now?

Those "higher ideals" can mean anything anyone wants them to mean. This makes them useless, other than for purposes of manipulation.
— baker

Of course, what else would ideals be used for?
— unenlightened
So manipulation is a higher purpose than profit? — baker

No. Manipulation is something one does, not an ideal or a purpose. This dialogue is not interesting me.

As some warn victory, some downfall
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don't hate nothing at all
Except hatred. — Bob Dylan

To hate hatred is to hate oneself. I am full of hate, for cruelty, for lies, for ignorance, for unnecessary suffering, and so on. Sometimes it is so powerful, it even gets me out of my comfy chair to do something about something, or at least to remonstrate with someone. If everything is lovely, nothing need be done; let us therefore praise hatred as the motive to improve things.

Hasn't capitalism brought more humans out of poverty than any other system? — fishfry

For the purposes of argument, let's say it has. Let's also admit that, other things being equal, wealth is preferable to poverty. Still one might prefer poverty in a healthy environment to wealth in a toxic environment, or poverty in freedom to wealth under coercion, and so on. This is not a notion invented by postmodern far left politically correct weirdos, it dates back 2000 years or so.

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, but lose his soul? — Mark 8:36

Those "higher ideals" can mean anything anyone wants them to mean. This makes them useless, other than for purposes of manipulation. — baker

Of course, what else would ideals be used for?

Sure, why not?

If only the meaning of those wouldn't be so easy to define in accordance with the motive for profit ... — baker

Just don't though.

What would be a higher ideal than the profit motive?
Do list at least three such ideals. — baker

Truth.
Justice.
Kindness.
Democracy.
Respect for person.

I have this sneaking suspicion that masochism is a myth. — TheMadFool

I have seen people play rugby of their own free will.

Philosophers of a nervous or gay disposition, look away now.

https://www.healthcareglobal.com/technology-and-ai-3/porn-fuels-increasing-demand-designer-vaginas

https://www.marieclaire.co.uk/life/health-fitness/pornography-linked-to-rise-in-surgery-for-women-163614

Cosmetic surgery can be empowering for individual women while reinforcing the hegemonic ideals that oppress women as a group.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3081936?seq=1

I noticed a while back that the needs of the camera for a clear view had bled into the general aesthetic for shaving pubic hair, - an unhygienic and infantilising fashion, but A little chat with google indicates that things have moved on, alas.

So what would you leave behind if anything and why?
— FlaccidDoor

E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G! — TheMadFool

As if one has a choice! But at the moment, in particular, I am hoping to leave behind a small plot transformed from a grass and concrete desert to a beautiful and productive cottage garden in good heart.

Work is done, and then forgotten; therefore it lasts forever. — Lao Tzu

We'll get to the philosopher in next year's course. For now put your minds to the slightly more simple question of what is a real armchair.

Is there a meaningful difference between whining and whinging? — Benkei

I would say that whinging is self-righteous whining - give or take. Dogs whine, but they don't whinge.

Let me say a word about the poverty of a lack of expertise. I do my own water plumbing, because if there's a leak it's easy to spot. I don't do gas plumbing because it isn't, and the consequences of a gas leak can be more serious - also it's illegal. Hurrah for experts who can make dangerous stuff safe, fix computers, and sometimes mend bodies. I fix my own sprained ankles, but i go to the man to fix broken bones. Second opinions and second estimates are the ignoramus's friend. But with due caution, trust is the only way to navigate the complexities of life. There are the rare Dr shipman cases, but but given a basic goodwill, I would back a qualified practitioner over an enthusiastic ignoramus like myself most days of the week. It's a matter of playing the odds.