I'd like to mention that there is something called Christian Atheism.

One can have recourse to religious texts without claiming infallibility or divine inspiration for their authors, just as one can have recourse to Aesop's fables without believing in the Boy who cried 'wolf'. or the talking fox that claimed the grapes were sour.

Most of the Western philosophical tradition is so culturally enmeshed with Christianity and other religious traditions, that a rigorous policy of excluding God apologists would lead to the banishment of Descartes, Spinoza, Aristotle, Plato, and almost everyone in between. And may Shango's thunderbolt strike me if I lie.

If Hitler thinks you're Jew, he won't care what you think; and whether you care or not about what he thinks, it's off to the gas chamber you go. Not having to care what others think about you is a privilege of power.

I don't see Kenneth Binmore as one of the bad guys, — Srap Tasmaner

Nor do I, particularly - I don't know the guy. I don't want to rewrite my old essay here, but the relevance to this thread is that game theory applies to separate utility functions of separate individuals. Communication links us, and separation is (crudely) a form of myopia which is overcome by understanding.

To illustrate this, try and construct a prisoner's dilemma between your left hand and your right hand. It is impossible because they have the same utility function, even if, as might happen, the hammering hand accidentally hits the nail-holding hand on the thumb. It's not that the mathematics of myopia is wrong, it's that it results in myopic decisions and makes, for example, the interests of the environment, impossible to implement.

In neoclassical economics, when you talk about someone’s rational interest or the maximization of their utility function, it’s their own utility function. But what counts as utility for you might be the well-being of other people. Take St. Francis of Assisi: Utility for him would be feeding the hungry or mending the broken legs of pigeons. — Binmore

... and this leads to...

But suppose the original Mother Theresa wishes to feed the children of Calcutta while Mother Juanita wishes to feed the children of Bogota. And suppose that the international aid agency will maximize its donation if the two saints nominate the same city, will give the second-highest amount if they nominate each others’ cities, and the lowest amount if they each nominate their own city. Our saints are in a PD here, though hardly selfish or unconcerned with the social good. — SEP

The incomprehension here is remarkable. As if an unselfish person is selfish about their unselfishness. It's not that it doesn't happen - its a typical attitude of the social worker more concerned about their own career that the people they are supposed to be helping. Onecan play this game but one does not have to. I would expect the mothers in such a case to resolve their merely technical conflict in short order, or if they are prevented by isolation from doing so, to nominate each others, project. There is no such dilemma possible if one is unselfish.

They take agents that pursue their interests as givens — SophistiCat

Indeed. Bracket off the axioms as conditionals, and I have no quarrel with the mathematics as an abstract theory. But folks will insist on applying the theory, at which point the conditionals are assumed to be factual.

Binmore — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, he was one the guys I took exception to, I think.

What unenlightened wants to deny is that the state of nature is a war of all against all. — Srap Tasmaner

Just so. It is a theory that suits robber barons because their survival depends on keeping society fragmented.

Being rational here simply means being smart about maximizing personal gain, — SophistiCat

That is exactly how I am reading it. Perhaps you could to put a little more effort into understanding me, and a little less into telling me where I have gone wrong. I had an essay on the philosophy of game theory on the old site, but I haven't got it now and I've forgotten the references, so you'll have to guess. But the pop culture side is fairly obviously the 'greed is good', 'why should I pay for your children/illness/whatever', selfish gene literalists, Randians, Jordan Peterson acolytes, etc.

your view is not any less fallacious than the one you are attacking. — SophistiCat

I have already made that explicit in the op and again later. I am not arguing for an objective justified morality, I am merely arguing against an objective justified motivation of any other kind. I am putting what you want to do and what you ought to do back on an equal footing, or lack of footing. Lots of people seem to feel that the former has a substantial quality the latter lacks. This is caused by 'myopia', and philosophy should be in the business of noticing that, rather than taking for granted that commonplace intuitions are true.

And ... therefore we are one? I cannot bring the argument here into focus. — Srap Tasmaner

What argument? That is called an analogy. It's an aid to understanding. I have not made an argument at all, so your inability to focus may be due to trying to examine something that is not there.

It's just math. — Srap Tasmaner

You are familiar with the term "rational self- interest"?

1.04 — ProbablyTrue

So that's a no, is it? It must be the delicacy of your put downs that keeps us all coming back for more.

I thought the point was that an horizon looks like a boundary but isn't — Srap Tasmaner

Instead you're saying there's a sort of functional boundary — Srap Tasmaner

It's yes to both, I'm afraid - 'and also', not 'instead'. That might seem difficult, but compare with this:

I don't have your memories and you don't feel my aches, I suggest that even if we are parts of a whole, we are very separate parts, and that separation is no illusion at all — Srap Tasmaner

Now how can it be, given the separateness of our senses and experiences, that we agree about this? How can we be even be talking about the same thing? How can we both look out to sea and notice the horizon, and also both know that there is no line or edge right there where we can see an edge? These things cannot be made sense of with a universal real/unreal dichotomy.
______________________________________________________________________________________

Can I just ask everyone to think carefully about the following pair of statements:

A horizon is a real feature of vision on a round world, not a real feature of a round world.
A self is a real feature of awareness in a human body, not a real feature of a human body.

I think the first can be readily seen to be true, and it gives the right shape to what I wish to claim about the self, that is about me and about you.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

I get a feeling that you are working within a rationalist framework where you believe that you can't take even such an elementary action as feeding without first rationally justifying it from first principles. — SophistiCat

I'm sorry to hear that. No. The view that I am contradicting is the one that claims that self-interest is rational, whereas altruism is irrational. You know, the founding principle of game theory.

Since I don't have your memories and you don't feel my aches, I suggest that even if we are parts of a whole, we are very separate parts, and that separation is no illusion at all, perspectival or otherwise. — Srap Tasmaner

Indeed. The horizon is not an illusion, it's how far one can see. And the self is how far one can feel and remember. But that's all it is.

It seems to me that in light of this, it makes perfect practical sense for me to be concerned with feeding myself, and allow you to worry about feeding yourself - we each know our own needs. But it makes no sense at all for me to think that feeding myself is more important than feeding yourself.

It reminds me of a recent thread on cyncism, nihilism, and buddhism. — TheMadFool

I was just looking at that. Forgive me, but I don't think it is illuminating to go further down the road of isms and religions. I would get further entangled with folks' identifications, which are another kind of myopia, that I have explored here in other threads. There may well be a connection with certain strands of Buddhist thought, but I prefer to stand alone, as it were, and not be assumed to say any more than I have actually said.

The ten thousand things rise and fall without cease, Creating, yet not possessing, Working, yet not taking credit. Work is done, then forgotten. Therefore it lasts forever. Not exalting the gifted prevents quarrelling. — Lao Tzu

People risk their lives for one-another every day all over the world, because they understand in their bones that we are interdependent and cannot afford to be wholly selfish. It needs no more justification than a cold beer on a hot day.

1.02

Did I win?

Always a question, always an incomplete thesis ...

Are you trying to say we are defined not apart from reality, but by our limits in relation to it? I don't think anyone would have a problem with that. — Philosophim

Well yes, but then I am saying that our limits are features of perception. I cut my hair and feel undiminished because my sensitivity does not extend that far. My sensitivity does not extend to your head either, but I don't cut that off, because i understand that it is sensitive even though I am not sensitive to it. And this is rather the same kind of understanding as that the road continues round the bend and the sea continues over the horizon.

As the world surges in, we surge out into it. The consequence being that in addition to what is always already there, we add ourselves to it, it to us, and we a unity that ceases when we no longer are. Or another way: being in the world, we also find ourselves there. And we bring wants and desires, shoulds and oughts, and they are parts of our lived world. I find in this a ground; what we do with who we are and what we find, a different topic. — tim wood

I think you have the essence, but I'm trying to be as mundane and boring as possible so I won't follow your speculations at this stage.

The transcendent metaphysic and their priests have a far longer history than just Christanity. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Yes that's what I thought. Nietzsche is kind of modern, and trying to come to terms with the then prevailing mechanistic view of the world derived from science and the industrial revolution. Blaming the past is always the best plan to avoid responsibility. But this thread is nothing to do with Christianity anyway, so it's all a bit of a diversion.

In fact, all the sensitivities, understandings and memories are all the world's. But it compartmentalizes them -- because I don't have your memories, and you don't have my aches.

Is that an illusion too, or does the world really keep them separate? — Srap Tasmaner

I don't have the reference, but @Banno put up some interesting stuff about intelligent slime moulds at some point, and there is also Hofstadter's ant farm. Nature seems very vague about the what constitutes individuality. But your question provokes me to add something related to these cases, that has importance for humans.

Communication extends sensitivity, and so extends individuality. If communication would be perfect between us, we would be of one mind - the hive mind. But then I refer you to the stick insect; real insect, stick illusion. The separation is a real illusion. I am myopic -- a real condition that makes everything appear blurry.

why do you believe that perception is separate from reality? If I see the color red, is the sight itself not real? When I taste an apple and find it delicious and another tastes an apple and finds it repulsive, is that not real too? What about my perception that though I wish to fly by my mind alone, I find that I cannot? — Philosophim

My favourite example is the stick insect. Stick insects are real. They are real insects, AND unreal sticks. There is a real insect and a real semblance of stickitude, and these things are one thing - a stick insect.

Likewise, your perceptions are real, but sometimes you have a real perception 'as of stick' when there is no real stick, but instead a real insect with the semblance of a stick. One has a real perception of the horizon as a line where sea meets sky. but the line is not there where you see it, and when you go there, you see the horizon as a line passing through the place you came from. Similarly, a painting of a chair is a real painting, but not a real chair.

With regard to apples and other matters of taste, what someone finds -delicious or repulsive, is a fact about them, rather than a fact about the apple, although strictly, I would want to say it is about someone's relationship to apple.

So finally, what I experience as the boundary of my self is simply the horizon of my sensitivity, or of my understanding, or of my memory. So to condense this to a one line meme:

Your skin doesn't separate you from the world, it joins you to it. You are the world.

This distinction doesn't counter the naturalistic fallacy though: you are still attempting to derive normative from non-normative. — SophistiCat

That's ok: that's not what I'm trying to do. On the contrary, I'm trying to extend the naturalistic fallacy to include desire and self-interest.

What? This is false. It is the projection of the ideal that poisons life and suffocates the creature. Man lived on this earth for thousands of years without Nihilism. It was the creation of a false dichotomy of super-worlds and super-beings that destroyed man's mind against existence. — JerseyFlight

Oh! I thought you didn't want to discuss with me.

So you claim is that we were alright until religion came along and before that there was no moral nihilism? I would like to see some of your data on what must surely be prehistoric times, as religion has been around for a good while. I figure Plato was a moral realist and the beginnings of the undermining of moral realism coincide with the development of science with Hume. I look forward to your historical and prehistorical education.

a successful life. — fdrake

I take it that successful adaptation to being killed is to die? I'm working on it.

Have some anti-brexit propaganda, chaps.

https://twitter.com/Femi_Sorry/status/1302864160372527104

There is a kind of materialistic presupposition here (for lack of a better word) that draws a hard boundary between impersonal physical facts like skin and light and neurons on the one side, and on the other - psychological and social facts that are sort of pretend, unreal. But are they, really? — SophistiCat

Yes, I am deliberately starting from a materialist standpoint, because it is materialism that leads to moral nihilism. The language is always tricky around ontology and I want to say that horizons, like mirages, like like individuality, like desire, are not social constructs, not fantasies, and not material objects, but objective features of perception. The desert traveller uses map and compass or experience and tradition, or some such, to counter the limitation of vision that might otherwise lead him to follow a mirage. And the wise member of society uses empathy and moral tradition to counter the limitation of his necessarily self-centred perceptions.

but governments need to step up and level with the public. — xraymike79

We have had politicians level with the public, and they lost the elections. the people voted for populists liars and charlatans.

I find myself saying, "How many different ways can I say humanity is fucked?" — xraymike79

I find myself wondering why we bother saying it? There are things that could be done in partial mitigation; preparations could be made to clean up the many cities that are going to become ocean, for instance. There are people doing what they can, and other people grabbing what they can. Personally I think it is a fundamental failure of philosophy to defend itself from a mechanistic moral nihilism that has come so to dominate, that humanity has lost sight of the immense value of truth, and prefers comfortable lies. It is the Tower of Babel story re-enacted. Our leaders are unbelievable, the media are unbelievable, and even scientists can be be bought and sold, and cannot be trusted.

Communication is dead, because there is no trust and therefore no truth. Words no longer communicate a meaning; we carry on talking in so many different ways, but no one is listening.

one can still say that the self is a psycho-social construct. It is as real as such constructs are - which I think are plenty real. — SophistiCat

Morality is also as real as a psychosocial construct, which I also think is plenty real. What I am targeting, if you will allow a slightly more loose characterisation is that selfishness is somehow justified in a way that selflessness is not. Somewhere there is an old essay of mine that argues that self-interest is in no way rational. Here I am suggesting that both sides of the distinction self/non-self are on a par in terms of ontology. The boundary is purely perceptual, a horizon-like edge.

So I'm having a hard time following the conclusion that we can't get a "you" out of that. — Philosophim

I am obliged to use the language we have. Clearly we can and we do get a self and a sense of self from our sensual experiences and in describing how it happens, my intention was to convey that the distinction and identification we get is a feature of perception, not of reality as such. I think the idea of a horizon conveys this quite well. One sees a horizon 'over there', but the line one sees from here is not there when one reaches it, but on the contrary, back where one came from, where one remembers there having been no line. In the same way, one distinguishes between cutting one's fingernails and cutting one's fingers, because one's fingernails are beyond the horizon of pain.

Because religion is based on the denial of reality. Let me repeat: religion is based on the denial of reality. One cannot rightly discuss the potential end of the world with people who believe there is a magical world they will be carried to after. One cannot discuss the death of a planet whose vitality they believe lies in the hands of God. These are not adult conversations, these are confusions. — JerseyFlight

Oh, Well if you won't discuss, then you won't discuss. I'll leave the thread and saving the world to you. I have enough environmental threads already.

And it should be noted that the religious cannot even enter into this conversation, they do not live in the real world). — JerseyFlight

Do you think so? Perhaps your experience is with exploiters of religion, or perhaps you are fundamentalist yourself. In any case, the conversations I have been having for many years with anyone who cared to engage have been singularly unfruitful, or so it seems to me. If not religion, do you imagine that science can solve the problems it has created?. I laugh that impossible idea to scorn! What else do you have then?

In trust you preserved your right to good single-malt Scotch. — tim wood

If one does not uphold fundamental human rights, mere survival has no merit. :roll:

... even the worst is something which can be thought and, because it falls within reflection, does not confront me as something absolutely alien and different. I imagine that such a thought is probably more comforting than any solace, whereas solace itself is desolate, since it is always attended by its own untruth. — Adorno

This is the real disaster, I fear, that untrue solace has swept the field. "Let's get armageddon done." "Make America uninhabited again." Etc, etc.

It seems not. I heard a DUP MP interviewed last night and his view was effectively that anything that strengthens the links between NI and the UK is a good thing. — Tim3003

Yes, that would be a a real problem for the secret agenda to rid ourselves of that pesky province. But we have ways of getting the IRA to persuade the Unionists. Have a vote for hard border and troubles, or unification of the Island of Ireland with EU guarantees, and see who gets elected...

There's not much to say really. Marx could say 'Ha, told yer!' if he was around, the rest of us "So long, it was fun while it lasted." Except for a lot of people it was not much fun at all.

I've been here before, personally. Back in the cold war, people were dreaming of being one of the few survivors, I decided then to be for preference an early casualty of WW3. Now I'm unexpectedly old, and humanity is if anything more fuck-witted than back in the 60's. Sorry kids, I tried to live green, I didn't go flying, or buy cars, I stopped eating meat. I preached and practiced as best I could. Nobody was listening and not many are still.

If Boris learned one thing — Tim3003

It would be a great novelty.

Apart from the economic meltdown, the loss of trust, status and integrity, the end of the United Kingdom is assured; I think even most of the Unionists will see that a united Ireland in the EU is preferable to an isolated UK in chaos and the inevitable hard border and associated civil unrest. And Scotland will follow, with Wales wishing it had suggested a United Republic of Fuck the English.

The want of good understanding between the (different classes of) men in Phi, and its indication as unfavourable to the firm and correct course of the superior man; with the intimation that the great are gone and the little come:'—all this springs from the fact that in it heaven and earth are not in communication with each other, and all things in consequence do not have free course; and that the high and the low (superiors and inferiors) are not in communication with one another, and there are no (well-regulated) states under the sky. The inner (trigram) is made up of the weak and divided lines, and the outer of the strong and undivided: the inner is (the symbol of) weakness, and the outer of strength; the inner (represents) the small man, and the outer the superior man. Thus the way of the small man appears increasing, and that of the superior man decreasing. — 12 distress, obstruction

Legge translation.

That's life (that's life), that's what all the people say
You're ridin' high in April, shot down in May
But I know I'm gonna change that tune
When I'm back on top, back on top in June — Frank Sinatra

You've been very defensive on this thread. — Gregory

When I have studied something a little, and have a certain respect for it, I like to defend it, quite unnecessarily, from people like you who think they know better without having even looked at the text. I have no ambition to be the one who figures anything out. I accuse "modern people", including you and other contributors here, of of a complacent arrogance that presumes to pronounce on things they know nothing about on the basis that anything old is bound to be superstitious nonsense. I'm not defensive at all, I'm attacking ignorance.

Mang (hexagram4) (indicates that in the case which it presupposes) there will be progress and success. I do not (go and) seek the youthful and inexperienced, but he comes and seeks me. When he shows (the sincerity that marks) the first recourse to divination, I instruct him. If he apply a second and third time, that is troublesome; and I do not instruct the troublesome. There will be advantage in being firm and correct. — I Ching

(Legge translation)

if I am part of the material world and dreams (and the mental world) are a part of me then dreams (and the mental world) are part of the material world. — Daniel

Impeccable logic. And so we arrive at the solution, that the real contains the illusory, and we gain the idea of the unreal from reality. A stick insect gives the illusion of being a stick, while actually being an insect; it is both real in one sense, and unreal in another. And in the same way, a painting of a wooden chair has the semblance of a wooden chair, but is really made of paint and cannot be sat on. A mirage fails to quench thirst, the end of the rainbow fails to be there when you arrive at the place you saw it.

Real light, real insect, real paint, real dreams, all in the guise of something else. The 'something else' is the unreal, because it is only a guise.

Gregory. I asked what the I Ching says that is religious, not what wikipedia says that is religious. It's not a hard question, because it is quite short and well out of copyright and numerous translations are available. If you are interested in the topic, at least have the decency to clarify what you mean by 'religious' by quoting the text we are discussing. If you are not interested in ancient texts or Chinese traditions, by all means don't discuss them. Other topics are available.

I've already put the theory out there that the I Ching is inherently a religious book — Gregory

Justify it. I've put the theory out there that you are a religious person, justified by your obsession with religion as evidenced on this thread. What does the I Ching say that is religious?

The thing about religious people — Gregory

Why do you think it appropriate to air your prejudices about religious people here? Why not have a look at the book we are talking about and see if you can find any mention of God or religion in it? You suffer from the hubris of modernity, which is a relic of the Colonial hubris. Take your god theorising to a thread where it is vaguely on topic.

Galaxies and weather systems tend to come in spirals because {mathematical explanation you might half understand about chaotic systems.}

Six thousand years ago people noticed these kinds of repetitive structural features of the universe without the benefit of computers to model them because they were just as intelligent as you and I.

Unbelievable nonsense!

it has become clear that things themselves are unknowable. — David Mo

I cannot comment on your comment itself of course, but the comment-as-I-read-it is clearly nonsense. This unfortunate unknowability of threads themselves makes discussion of philosophy quite impossible. And yet discussion-as-I-see-it definitely happens.

It would seem to apply equally to proofs of non-existence.

On the other hand, I do not require the existence of a blind woman carrying a pair of scales in order to believe in justice. God is love, and I believe in love.

No, that is not true, if I Ching can HELP a party to a victory. — god must be atheist

It is true; the Japanese obviously do not understand the I Ching. It's an aid to understanding the times, not a magic lucky charm.

Whichever one the I Ching predicts will win of course. And that without a fight.

Too many questions, my brain exploded.
Here's the evolutionary version of the axiom:-
"Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny." 'Why?' you will ask, and I will not know except that informational systems are mechanical systems and self-referential programs build complexity from simplicity.

The physicists version of synchronicity, by the way, is "spooky action at a distance".