If the other person shares the same fundamental beliefs that l have with regards to the topic. Then,any argument within that constraint will be meaningful. It will be easier to settle the debate. If two people don't share the same fundamental vision. At the very best, they will agree to disagree.

It is still interesting to see the debates as they allow us to see how two people can reach polar opposite conclusions despite both being capable of reasoning .

I think philosophy can be seen as too primitive in some cases. It is obviously sophisticated depending on the thought process that goes into answering certain questions. It is primitive because it forces us to ask some questions that will be taken as a joke in our daily interaction. I can't even begin to imagine getting a serious answer from someone in the street if l ask him whether l exist or not. The moral questions will be received slightly positively but there are certain exceptions to this category too. Asking a random person whether moral statements can be even be called true or false will raise eyebrows.

It takes a certain amount of humbleness to engage in philosophy and also a feeling for wasting time. Wasting time is a big deal for people who can't bother thinking beyond what is neccessary to live an easy life. People just like getting things done and philosophy is more of an exploration.

Your question is interesting and existence is a very touchy topic. I think in order to build conclusions, we need to take certain facts or "common sense" views as trivially true. But since philosophy demands even questioning them. The result is that we end up talking about things that do not have a lot meaning besides being word play.

Ourselves and our thoughts. The certainty of the self is also a thought.

The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty.

If you don't exit. How did you post your question on this forum ? :grin:

I think your categorization in the Kantian fashion is very clear and useful. But, one of the category is usually subject to scrutiny, the category of synthetic a priori .

If l am not wrong, euclidean geometry was a part of the synthetic a priori but it turned out that it wasn't necessarily true as mathematicians developed non euclidean geometry. Since it was argued that synthetic a priori statement are necessarily true. It turned out that this category may not exist but it is still an open topic.

I think belief in God comes from being aware of the despair we have in our life without God. Only God can cure us from that despair. Those who do not believe in God are not even aware of being in despair and hence it is still a form of despair. Logical arguments will only convince those who already believe in God. I regard using logic in theology akin to taking away the beauty. Only a religious man can get closer to God and know of him. Rhetoric leaves one behind. We need to have faith just as we live every day hopefully thinking that we won't die today. We don't need to use reasoning to be assured.

I certainly said all this due to kierkegaard being your avatar.

necessarily true' is really no different to saying it is TRUE!!

But if l say a certain proposition is sometimes true , l also say that it is sometimes false. But if l say a proposition is always true, then it is never false. The word neccessary, always adds clarity to what we are stating. It is a good distinction.
If you say something is true, we don't know if you mean for this instance or for all cases.

What do you take the word neccessary to mean ?

You example is correct but l don't see any problem with mine as it also refers to itself in a paradoxical manner.
Maybe l responded to an earlier post.

By necessary truth, do you mean proposition that are true by definition. For example "All bachelors are unmarried " is true by definition. It is necessarily true.

I don't think we should use the word is as a relation between two propositions. Unless you meant to represent numbers.
If we say p=p, we don't add anything to the discussion and if we say p=q, we are saying two things are identical, which is nonsense. Here p,q represent proposition.

If p states that " all propositions are false "
Then p is also false which implies all propositions are true. Hence, p is also true.
We started with p being false and ended with p being true. Contradiction.
I think this example is more than clear enough, classic liar paradox that tells us that all propositions can't be false if they are of the same order type.

I never regard religious topics worth debating in the context of philosophy. I just think reasoning doesn't really work there.Those who want to believe will do so and those who don't, won't believe.Besides that, all other topics can be discussed in philosophy without forcing oneself to take a definite position.

That's analogous to the classic philosophy question.
If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound ?

But l think there are artists who don't want their art to be public knowledge and they keep it to themselves. Art will never die in a way but become less accessible.

It is dead depending on where you look for it.

:up:

Most of the artist that we have in the mainstream are all about buisness and not about art.Bad art is worse than nothing. When you have nothing infront of you. You probably feel normal but when you see some terrible stuff, you feel disgusted and abhor it. That's why l have a tendency to not even regard terrible art as art and one of the biggest BS told is that art depends on taste of the perceiver but l think every art has some standard and time will always preserve great art if people develop the right perspective to see it in line of the artistic tradition. This view also answers the question of artist being neglected during their lifetime and only achieving the status of a great artist after passing away. I hold the view that most of the great art will always rise to the top as long as the artist tries to present it to the society.

I think martial art will give us an interesting insight into art. It can be kept hidden from being used yet it is still there in the person. The greatest fighters are the ones who can avoid fights.

I think the artist can also present something as it is when everyone else around is busy with changing it into something else. Realism in art comes to my mind. Great art is a manifestation of courage and it takes the greatest courage to present reality as it is.

I think art should always be defined with respect to the artist. So you won't be surprised to see many definitions of art circulating around. I think one of the feature l have found amongst all art is the bare naked presence of the artist. Great art often comes from people with great emotional sensitivity and depth.When they want to reveal whatever they hide inside of themselves to the world, they need to use art. But great artists are also intelligent people and they can judge the quality of their work quite well and they know how to keep a good balance between the universality and intimate quality of their work.That's why great art can also be seen as separating the artist and the feeling/ideas inside an artist. This causes great distress on the soul and the constant urge for creativity requires constant struggle. I wonder if that's the cause for a lot of great artists suffering from some form of mental illness as it usually depicted in a romantic sense.

Every philosophical position has it's own strength and weaknesses and even if l argue for a certain idea in philosophy. l have an overwhelming feeling of being wrong or uncertain at best.

All of them in a way but they all share a common feature.
Pretentiousness. That's what l always feel secretly when reading philosophy.

I restricted

Take a look into this

What if ?

I can't argue against what you have just written since it is right.

4>3.

Interesting

I think Iran is only trying to save face. There will probably be no American casualties while Iran will claim to have successfully avenged the killing of Sulaimani.

US administration will obviously say that they don't want to head into an another war but simultaneously create a situation which makes their intervention neccessary.

Classic strategy . America wants the oil supplying countries to be involved in the conflict so the economic progress of China and Russia can halt and become more unstable. That's another reason too.

There won't be a war in the traditional sense. Iran will target American interests which are spread around the middle east. In short, you can expect anything. Even a terrorist attack by the militia in US. Thanks to the genius plan of Donald Trump in using iran card for 2020.

Thanks for being honest.

The United States has always carried out extrajudicial killings and the assassination of the Iranian General was nothing short of a violation of international law. Not to mention that it was carried out in Iraqi territory. Imagine the second most powerful US official getting assassinated by a rival country. There would be a full scale invasion and all international support would goto US.

I think US killed him for weakening the final threat to Israel and Saudi Arabia. Both these countries are certainly quite happy with the result.It was a message to all those who oppose Israel/Saudi Arabia. It is same old power play. US wants to have power in an undiluted form.

. I agree with Greta 100%, but I don't especially like listening to her talk.

She is getting used by the big fishes.

I hope l don't get this messed up but l think these two examples will clarify a priori from a posteriori.
A priori
If John is taller than Mary and Mary is taller than Sam, then John is taller than Sam. Since this statement reduces itself to a logical property , If X>Y and Y>Z then X>Z.

A posteriori
John is taller than Mary. In order to make this statement, we need to have some empirical data.

On the point of science, foundational principles of science are a priori but l would put them into the category of metaphysics. Eg the statement, effect comes after the cause is an a priori statement.

An apple is a fruit.
Dogs are animals.

These statements are also a priori but in my opinion these statements should not be classified as scientific as they merely come from the category we assign to them. It is almost a matter of convention. Even if we give them a certain scientific veneer, they will be foundational.

My friend didn't only regard foundational topics as such but statements like " Gravity causes objects to fall towards earth" to also fall under a priori statement.

I don't think it will be wrong to say that he was influenced by Brouwer and they did meet and discussed intuitionist logic. In the beginning of of his lectures on the philosophy of mathematics, he mentions that philosophers cannot believe that their activities will prove or discover something new that isn't available to the mathematicians. Infact, he thinks that is a wrong approach. Based on his concept of math being a human invention (later) and a repeated substitution of symbols (early view) , he develops a sort of hybrid philosophy of mathematics. It has elements of being based on logical grounds while allowing greater flexibility in adopting different rule following in maths. He doesn't show what will we get if we take that path but that there isn't a problem if we do.

He was a constructionist and he didn't believe that statements that are undecided fall in mathematics. Consider his controversial remarks around fermet's last theorem. He didn't regard it as a mathematical statement. He probably thought it could never be proved or disproved and sadly, he was wrong on this point. This is a crucial aspect of his mathematical philosophy as he diverges from what Brouwer advocated, to quote Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,

Algorithmic Decidability vs. Undecidability: If mathematical extensions of all kinds are necessarily finite, then, in principle, all mathematical propositions are algorithmically decidable, from which it follows that an “undecidable mathematical proposition” is a contradiction-in-terms. Moreover, since mathematics is essentially what we have and what we know, Wittgenstein restricts algorithmic decidability to knowing how to decide a proposition with a known decision procedure.

Consider all the propositions for which l think we do not have any algorithm decidability, like goldbach conjecture.( possibly ) I think it is wrong to characterize them according to our present knowledge. The absence of a convergent algorithm at the present moment does not indicate that it will always be that way. A lot of the time mathematicians can feel the breakthrough coming. In that case, if a statement that is not decidable gets proved. It will become a mathematical statement. This conversation from being non mathematical to mathematical is really awkward.

Given your assumptions that we let the universe be infinite and the your conclusion. I do not see how they follow. We can have no boundaries between us and the world with the universe being finite too.

So this is saying there is no fundamental, permanent boundary between you and the air around you, and the ground, and the earth, and on and on. This limitless universe can be visualized as being one, due to the absence of true, permanent boundaries.

Further more, l like this principle of looking at the bigger picture but even if the universe was finite, we can still have the psychological satisfaction of being a part or being one will everything. How does what what you say below allow us any more freedom than a finite universe.

What are the implications of this perspective? It means you are one with All, by being part of an infinite universe. There is no boundary or limit between you and everything around you. It also means with the lack of true innate boundaries in the universe, everything in it is constantly mixing, creating the balance we see in the universe. It also means you can free yourself from a finite perspective where you focus on finite things like job, house, family, etc. You can adopt an infinite perspective and weave these important things like job, house, family, into a free-flowing infinite web that is part of the infinite web of the universe.

I think religion in the USA, particularly Christianity, has lost it's real essence. They have stuck to a few principles that complement their culture and left the rest of them. Religion is just used for getting people together these days, it isn't an individual thing anymore. That's why the political right finds religion to be the most effective tool to gather support, since they do not have much to offer. This is also why we have both extreme ends in politics these days, it is either all conservative or all liberal. It has become difficult for people to identify themselves in the political spectrum if they do not lean far right or far left.

This can certainly be included into the topic of discourse analysis as Wittgenstein thinks meaning is use and particularly for mathematics, he considers it to be simply rule following and what he wants to address is that we can change our conventions in mathematics like we do in any other human activities. But this dialogue is actually from a larger context in which Wittgenstein advocates a finitist viewpoint of mathematics.