His point is that the notion of virginity was only a relevant notion when we lived in a society where women were treated as property and where "purity" was such a big thing – times when the sexual experience of men wasn't important. — Michael

LOL - I can't follow that. So what about chastity? Chastity implies virginity prior to marriage. Chastity has frequently been considered a virtue historically. Chastity was certainly not only a female virtue.

Virginity makes some sense in a society where either the woman has some sort of 'property value' or where women have been tasked with maintaining a sentimental notion of purity (which doesn't apply to their potential mates). Virginity does not make much sense where women are free of property value and where sentimental ideas of purity are pretty much history. — Bitter Crank

:-} Why do you suppose virginity applies only to women?

The oral sex lady could count herself as a virgin because her psychological investment in both the act and the guy was probably minimal. — Bitter Crank

I disagree.

So, when President William Jefferson Clinton claimed he did not have sex with that woman, he was speaking the truth as far as he was concerned. Ms. Lewinsky apparently thought they had had some sort of sex. "How else could I have a Presidential semen sample in my closet?" she cried. — Bitter Crank

>:O >:O

Don't you have some camels to feed? — Mongrel

Camels?! No, I'm busy with straw dogs... do you want one? I can send you an authentic Mongolian straw hot dog :D

Jamalrob has undertaken state control of the means of production for fuck's sake! >:O

why did you go for the separate Articles site rather than the integrated blog? — Michael

It is a blog, but he disabled features of it, such as who can post articles, etc. I think. If you go to the articles, on the left hand corner you have a menu which opens up, which is a blog menu.

Just take yo ass and google PlushForums on google :P , and then go to images - you'll see they all have the same structure. We technically have a blog as well - it's in the "Articles" section. That one is actually built like a blog.

So it is doable, there just isn't anybody who has the time to do it. Thus I said keep it in mind in case that changes and someone wants to experiment with making the forum more attractive to readers. — Mongrel

No - it actually isn't doable. They have no direct control as far as I understand on what js scripts are running on the forums, what php code, or the forum's css, and they can only affect html structure in ways which are permitted by the software. Maybe the software allows them to select a series of "themes" as well, I have no clue as I never used Plush.

Dayummmm....

Oops! Lol. That was a typo! I meant to say that she was right (as was anyone else who used the word in that way) to say that she was a virgin. — Sapientia

She was right only if by right you only mean using the word as most people use it.

I suppose that that's a sort of half-joke, so I'll take it half-seriously. They're just doing what comes naturally, which is to use words how they're commonly used in their community. There's nothing stupid about that in and of itself. — Sapientia

Indeed, but their society obscures spiritual aspects from coming under consideration in how words related to sex are used. Us individuals don't just pop into being out of nowhere - we are created and molded by our society, and hence our stupidities, more often than not, end up being the stupidities of our own society. It's just a fact - I mean you went to school right? It was popular for folks to talk about sex, probably much more popular than 1000 ago, and much more openly. Now why was it popular? Wasn't it because the surrounding culture made it "cool" - a sign of prestige? If we had been born and lived 1000 years ago, we wouldn't have encountered this, and it would a priori seem unnatural to us, just as the world 1000 years ago a priori seems unnatural to us today.

They were right to say that she wasn't a virgin. It seems redundant to criticise their semantics from the outside like you are trying to do. There's no internal inconsistency. — Sapientia

Yes I agree they were right, that's what I'm saying. She was wrong to claim she's a virgin despite doing all those things.

Without specifying, I think that hardly any of them would think that they're no longer virgins for that reason alone. — Sapientia

Yes but you're making this into a semantic discussion about how words are used, but this isn't really what is under discussion here. I really can care less what people call sex and how they use the word.

I think the attempt is to discuss fundamental things - how things really are, not merely how people speak or think about them, whether in a majority or in a minority. For example, the concept of virginity is incoherent if it is taken to be something physical - that produces some antinomies. For example, if virginity relates only to physical interactions (now including even oral sex) - then a girl who is raped is no longer a virgin afterwards. But if she's no longer a virgin afterwards, and virginity is something good - to be prized - then it follows that she's less worthy because she has been raped. Which is clearly false - she cannot be judged negatively for something that isn't under her control. So the premise that virginity relates only to physical interactions must be rejected.

Now if a woman has never had vaginal intercourse, but she has given oral sex to 50 men, including in groups, I doubt anyone would count her as a virgin.

So then virginity has to be reconceptualised as something spiritual - a virgin is a person who is spiritually open towards sexual intimacy since they have never devoted themselves to another sexually before. So this is more than just having sex or not having sex - it's about the will - indeed, when discussing virginity it is someone's will that is under the question. So if someone willingly has sex, then they are no longer virgins. But it's not the sex, but the will to have sex that is the matter.

How many teenagers, for example, would say that they'd lost their virginity just because they'd had oral sex? — Sapientia

That's because their brain is the size of a squirrel's ;)

It was certainly like that when I was at school. — Sapientia

Yeah same, but people weren't very smart. There was this girl who had oral sex with so many guys and she claimed to be a virgin because she never had vaginal intercourse... :-}

It's actually very difficult to be a virgin in today's world, because by the time most people get a hold of themselves - by the time their mind actually develops, and they start thinking for themselves - most of them have already done lots of retarded things which they cannot undo.

So, as far as the body is concerned, masturbation is indistinguishable from vaginal sex. — Bitter Crank

From my personal and very limited experience I have found them to be different. Vaginal sex leads to a feeling of contraction in your abdominal muscles when you ejaculate which is stronger than, and lasts longer than that which you achieve by masturbation alone, even if you were to practice special masturbation techniques to enhance your orgasms, such as delayed ejaculation, etc. Vaginal sex also leads to a greater physical exhaustion than masturbation, since you're actually moving your whole body, not just your hand, and the combined effects of sweating, orgasm, and complete tiredness and exhaustion gives off a different, much more peaceful feeling, than simple masturbation after the orgasm is over. This is of course provided you take care not to ejaculate in like 5 minutes... However - masturbation seems to be able to provide more intense orgasms, but not the after-feeling of relaxation that exists in the case of vaginal intercourse with a loved one. That after-feeling is in fact not something entirely sexual - the same feeling can sometimes be achieved by just lying in bed holding a loved one.

Someone should kick the lot of them out and let Great Britain be great and British again. — Michael

Who, Farage?! >:O

Yes, no wonder, in your Great country of Britain, my mail was always delivered to other people... >:O

I did send the dough, but it is in pounds. So do your indirect checking please, and then I expect my mod status to be delivered ASAP >:O :P

Okay I think I'll leave you to box with those shadows, while I go to playing my flute. I've answered every single one of your questions, you're just pretending I haven't. A simple example: I told you modes are THINGS!! - not activities - and yet there you go peddling something different:

If he is an "activity" that gives rise to the activity which is nature (the modes) then what exactly is that activity beyond the activity of the modes themselves, and if it exists or is real rather than being merely formal, then how would that not constitute a transcendence? — John

Then you have the audacity to claim that my thought is incoherent. When I tell you the tree is red, you say my thought is incoherent because the tree is blue - well done! When you decide to stop straw-manning and want to discuss respecting what I'm actually claiming, please let me know. Until then, there's little point discussing on this subject, if you are determined to continuously misrepresent Spinoza's and my position.

I think their issue is that they don't have control over how the forum looks or what features it has that much? It's not like it's their forum - it's hosted and designed by Plush, and they merely "rent" it. I don't think they can change it in absolutely infinite ways, like old PF which was simply Paul's website, hosted by him and programmed from the ground up by him.

While the last doesn't involve an actual partner, an imagined partner is often present, sometimes several. — Bitter Crank

Hmmm... but it's a different experience with a partner than without. I think most people would agree. Though there are some which seem not to find actual sex as pleasurable as masturbation ~ the real other brings both advantages and disadvantages so to speak - or at least perceived advantages and disadvantages. One advantage is that intimacy become possible, but a corollary disadvantage is that you're no longer in absolute control - you have to take care of the other as well, so it's no longer just your desire driving what's happening.

Sometimes those imaginary partners are present along with a quite real partner. — Bitter Crank

I would find that quite strange - why would someone have an imaginary partner if they have a real one? When I started dating my first girlfriend she made me give up porn, and it wasn't that hard to give it up because I loved her, and so I found no need for "imaginary partners". In fact ever since then I find no need for "imaginary partners".

Flirting (all gesture, no touching) may be tantamount to sex, and just sitting next to somebody and "casually" touching feet, knees, arms, etc. might be very sexual (usually not, though). — Bitter Crank

What defines something as being sexual?

People are inherently sexual whether they engage in sexual activity or fantasy, or not. The organs and hormones are there whether employed or ignored. — Bitter Crank

Okay I think I agree with this but it's something complicated to explain. Even when you practice celibacy you feel sexual, but in a different way.

The sex drive, the pleasures of sex, can be sublimated — Bitter Crank

I think the sex drive is different from the pleasures of sex. The sex drive is like an energy source, it depends how one learns to make use of it.

The enormous productivity of well organized societies seems to involve sublimation, as people pour into their work their creative, libidinous energies. (Not that actual sex robs one of creativity; I think good sex adds to one's creative efforts.) — Bitter Crank

Enormous productivity of any kind I think entails a sublimation of the sex drive.

The absence of sexuality in the environment -- a cold, sterile corporate setting for example -- is usually felt as oppressive. Some buildings are sexual, others are sexless. Much of the built urban environment --freeways, strip malls, featureless apartment and office buildings, highway interchanges, cookie-cutter warehouses -- is damned near totally sexless. — Bitter Crank

Agreed.

I'm content with that. — Sapientia

Oh dear, have you become a conservative overnight? :-O

I don't see how this follows. If X is your starting place, X is not transcendent, only Y is. However, my thinking here concerns, as you worded it, the road that bridges the two, X and Y. I'm trying to figure out whether what is transcendent ( Y ) is of the same purity as the act of transcending, moving from itself toward Y, and whether there is no bridge and X is always transcending. If that's the case, then X's act of transcending cannot be the same as Y, otherwise there's no difference between it and Y. — Heister Eggcart

If X is the starting place, then Y can only be transcendent with reference to X - and symmetrically X will be transcendent with reference to Y. This is alike saying there is an infinite chasm between Y and X. If X and Y are in a relationship which is characterised by transcendence, then there can be no path between the two.

I sent the money from a Swiss bank account. When do I get my moderator status now?! >:)

So the issue for me is that clearly maths does say something deep about metaphysics. Yet then - something which theoretical biologists have particular reason to be alert to - maths also fails to supply the whole story (for the reasons I've outlined at some length). — apokrisis

How does it fail to provide the whole story? If "things" don't really exist, and every "thing" is a network of relationships, then mathematics would describe the world, because mathematics has no objects - it's pure relationality. Think about geometry. A line in geometry isn't constituted in-itself, but always in reference to all other possible geometrical constructs - indeed to understand what a line is, one must ultimately understand all of geometry. Geometrical objects are nothing except relations, that's why they are actually impossible in the real world - for example a line has no thickness. They are constituted by the whole system - it is their interrelationships which constitute them, and in the end give them the properties they have. So "things" are illusory - reality is fundamentally relation, not thing. Scientific knowledge is merely useful, but not true, because the truth would have to be the Whole of reality, and every part of reality would be in its totality determined by this Whole. That's why we can get better and better approximations for everything, but we can never be exact, because we - as a part of the Whole - can never know the Whole completely - there will always be a residue of uncertainty.

But you have read the book and you have not managed to articulate any coherent and consistent alternative that I have noticed. — John

What is incoherent in the view that I have outlined?

In relation to the idea that God's view must be from nowhere; I think this is wrongheaded, it must be from everywhere. — John

From everywhere is identical with from nowhere though.

This is the hermetic principle of "as above so below" — John

I disagree with your interpretation of this principle. I agree with this principle, in-so-far as it postulates that reality is fractal or holographic - the whole is found within each of the parts. But this doesn't mean that God has a personality the way you have a personality - that's just absurd. That's a very literalist, philosophical caveman like reading I think :P

This process of unification is necessarily transcendental for us because we can never know how it is done — John

What do you mean how it is done? Do you expect an explanation for this like A goes here, B goes her, and together they form the process of unification, or what are you imagining?

It is the space of unknowing that surpasses dualistic reasoning, and allows the creative and mystical imagination and intuition to work. But I don't expect anyone to be convinced of this except by their own experience; argument will never do it. — John

We have nothing to guide ourselves by except reason though. If you take some hallucinogen you may have a mystical experience, and yet you understand what caused that mystical experience, which was merely the effect of the drugs on the brain. If you start imagining that it wasn't the drugs, and it was something different, you're only deluding yourself. Reason is all we have in order to navigate the world. If you want to restrict our reliance on reason, then there is nothing beyond reason to hold us.

What counts as sex? This is a very interesting question... Psychologically it seems that it's not only intercourse that is of significance. For example oral sex probably still counts as sex. Some would say masturbation counts as sex, others would disagree. Others would say even holding hands with a significant other is a manifestation of sexual energy... Where is the boundary between sexual activity and non-sexual activity, and how are sexual activities distinguished psychologically?

You bring to the table a preconceived notion of Substance which isn't Spinoza's but rather your own, which is heavily shaped by your readings of Hegel. That's unfair to Spinoza since you aren't judging him on his terms. You are just refusing to read Substance dialectically as it is meant to be read as evidence from the whole system, even from its structure.

Furthermore - experience is always from a point of view - a point of view always implies partiality, but God - being the Whole - can't have any partiality, and hence has no point of view, and it would indeed be incoherent for God to have one, for then God would be particular and empirical...

The dreaming is nothing except the dream. The water draining, is nothing except the vortex. Etc. etc. it makes no sense what you're trying to say. You can't conceive the modes without Substance. The modes without Substance - without the constituting activity - are nothing. And Substance without the modes can't be conceived of either, because there can be no activity that doesn't have a product, a manifestation. But the activity isn't the manifestation.

You can say whatever you like is between the lines. — John

No I don't think you can. You have to look for it, you can't pull it out of your ass :P

Substance is literally nothing except its modes. — John

This is just false. The modes are things, Substance is an activity.

Why should I love nothing? — John

Strawman

How would you conceive that all those individual experience could be unified into one in God if God is not thought as a divine person? — John

Why do you think all these experiences should be unified into one? :s I don't even know what you mean by that. They are - in truth - one experience, which necessarily sees itself from an infinite number of viewpoints.

I said something must be useful, beautiful or personal to you in order to be significant. I could have added other categories like good, admirable, and probably come up with many more. But the point is that something must be something to you in order to be significant. What can an undifferentiated substance, or even a substance that is an activity you cannot understand be for you? You might say that substance is something for you because you can understand its modes; because you experience them. But you do not experience them as the activity of substance, you just think of them that way, even though you cannot really comprehend what it means. So, it is really the modes that mean something to you; substance can be left out of the picture altogether if it can be nothing for you in itself, independently of its modes. — John

But Substance is beautiful, admirable and loveable in and of itself. That is why the intellectual love of God is the highest man can aspire to, according to Spinoza. There is no case of Substance being "undifferentiated" - all difference is dialectically contained within it - aufhebung. Substance is a critical totality, critical in the Hegelian sense. Substance isn't something I cannot understand - indeed Substance is more like the light which makes both itself and the darkness intelligible. Substance is more myself than I am - it's the closest thing to me, it's the logically first idea vera, without it, I cannot know anything. So if I make use of it in all my acts of knowledge, in what sense is Substance "unknown"?

But I have read the Ethics, and Spinoza cannot explain how substance produces its attributes and modes. — John

Yes he does actually explain it. It's between the lines. You read Spinoza's propositions individually as standing and falling on their own - as things, which try to form a Whole, instead of reading it as a Whole which forms the things - that's why his meaning remains hidden from you. Substance does not produce its modes, because Substance is not prior to its modes. It's not like first there is Substance, then there are the modes - it's not a temporal succession between the two at all. Rather the modes and Substance are temporarily simultaneous - self-defining. Book I doesn't come prior to Book V for example - they are simultaneous. It seems to me that you are confused by the temporal reading of Spinoza - reading it mechanically, as if the elements introduced first, constitute the elements introduced later. This is wrong. The elements introduced later, constitute the elements introduced first in-as-much as the elements introduced first constitute the elements introduced later, and cannot be understood or indeed even conceived without each other - hence self-definition. Spinoza is the Cartesian devil dressed in Cartesian clothes - but he undoes Descartes's mechanical understanding of philosophy and mathematics from the inside. It's ironic - he shows this mechanical understanding to be precisely what is false in philosophy and mathematics - indeed it shows itself to be false, hence why the Ethics is a dialectical text. Indeed I would go as far as saying that I think it to be the highest achievement of philosophy - an achievement which has still, in fact, not been realised, and I don't know if it will ever be realised. Spinoza is still far ahead compared to our current world, despite the tremendous advances we've made since Descartes's time.

Spinoza in fact used this false reading as a way to let people dismiss his philosophy as incoherent very easily - to avoid the charge of heresy, which he still didn't avoid ultimately - and because he understood that the masses of people are too entangled by biases and preconceived notions to reach up to it. But beneath it lies the Spinozist irony. The naivety that some read into him, is their own reflection. Spinoza's Ethics is one of the few texts which acts as a mirror - the DaoDeJing is similar in these regards - in that if one approaches it with a bias, they will find their bias confirmed in it. The more a biased person looks in the mirror of the Ethics, the more they see themselves reflected back unto themselves. But the more one removes bias from oneself, the more one becomes like a mirror staring into another mirror, and thus having a glimpse of the infinite in themselves - in-so-far as they do that, they reach true freedom, and see know themselves as eternal - as Spinoza aptly puts it in the last book of his Ethics.

self-definition — John

Self-definition is the only way to escape foundationalism. Only if you presuppose foundationalism does self-definition become incoherent, for the mere reason that the two are mutually contradictory. However, this very fact illustrates the superiority of self-definition dialectically - from the system of thought which adopts foundationalism, its self-definition demands that it negates self-definition as incoherent - this is in fact part of its self-definition.

If there is a foundation, then everything has to be reduced to that foundation which is a brute fact (of course, then it becomes incoherent when you try to explain the foundation - it necessarily remains unexplainable, just like Kant's "presupposed noumenon" - it remains a dream). However, if there is no foundation - and all that exists are relationships - networks - then truth is rightly seen as self-defined by the network (and its sub-networks) themselves. Truth ceases to be correlationist in other words - and becomes a matter of coherence in the network, not a matter of correspondence, since there is nothing outside of the network for it to correspond with (no noumenon/phenomenon distinction). Truth becomes a function of the Whole, not of the part - indeed the part is seen as illusory, because it is actually constituted by the Whole - it's nothing but a relationship within the Whole (even Kant arrives at this - the phenomenon must be generated by the noumenon - that's why it presupposes it). The Whole is self-defined - defined by itself and its inner relationships (hence we do know the noumenon). There is nothing outside of it to define it - there is no foundation. All definition is immanent - hence self-definition. This heals the divide between thought and reality - thought is always already real. Again, all this starts making sense, when you become properly dialectical :P - that's why Spinoza's criticism of Hegel would be that Hegel simply wasn't dialectical enough. When you stop seeing the Whole as being formed of parts (Objective Logic for Hegel) and start seeing the Whole as being formed of relationships (Subjective Logic for Hegel - although this needs to be emptied from its reference to personality - Subjective Logic is merely a certain kind of Logic, where things are constituted by relationships - dialectically), then you have performed the gestalt shift.

To shed more light on this: truth empirically is in the necessary correspondence of the attribute of thought with the attribute of extension (extension always has meaning). Truth metaphysically is in the internal coherence of Substance itself. Thus Spinoza dialectically does justice to both correspondence theory of truth, and coherence theory of truth, and welds them into his system - the two theories end up mutually supporting and defining each other, and thus defining Substance. Hegel's triangular dialectical Subjective logic is here.

In a sense, the correlationist metaphysical tradition is the hardest form of atheism there has ever been. For them, God must always be given in something else, in us, in some finite state, rather than just being its own thing. For the correlationist metaphysician, we actually have to bring God into being, to bring the presence of God by imagining it, else that infinite isn't there or is incoherent. — TheWillowOfDarkness

This scholar is like John, he sides with Kant. But even he, somehow underhandedly, understands that for Kant, God / or the noumenon is a DREAM, and has no reality. Thus he actually does read Kant as an atheist. This is inevitable because if the noumenon's existence is known phenomenally, then the noumenon must be phenomenal. Spinoza undermines this - the phenomenon is the dream, and the noumenon is real.

If all we can say about Substance is that it is self-defining; that it's definition is simply that it is self-defining; then that is really no definition at all, because we don't know what it could mean for something to define itself. — John

Absent its relationships with all other elements from the system yes. But if you truncate the system, and take it apart in separate parts, that is a mistake. You must look at the Ethics as one WHOLE - the truth is in the whole, didn't Hegel use to say something like that? :P

Yes, I have thought this myself. But the way it is stated in the Ethics certainly makes it seem that Spinoza has a quantitative sense in mind. And I don't understand what you mean by saying that the attributes are "necessarily parallel". Unless you can describe exactly how they are parrallel that just seems like playing with words to me. — John

They are parallel by describing the same thing and being correlated in the same way - if I know serotonin is released in someone's brain, then I know they are feeling happy - there needs to be no corroboration, since the one just is the same thing seen one time from the attribute of thought, and another time from the attribute of extension.

But then if there is no thought without animals and humans — John

This is wrong, because Substance always has a thought attribute even if no one perceives it. It's not perception that causes things to be as they are. For example, a series of sound waves can be described by a musical score, even if there is no one to think this or write it. Indeed, humans could not be aware of thoughts, if thoughts weren't already inherent in Reality.

Think about entities in the world. An entities can have significance for you only insofar as it is either useful, beautiful, or you can have a personal relationship with it. In the last case it is a person or at least an animal with some personality. — John

Ok, but why must I be engaged with it in a personal relationship in order for it to have significance to me?

But since we cannot say what that activity is it is not really an activity at all for us. — John

We can say what that activity is - it is the constitutive activity of everything around.

If you understand something that isn't stated by an author then you have no way of knowing whether that understanding is truly a reading of or a reading in. — John

It is stated, between the lines. That's what makes Spinoza's Ethics rich - that's how he designed the system. His geometrical method was chosen precisely because the objects of geometry are not things, but spatial relationships - likewise existence consists in relationships and movement - not in static things. Each element is built by its relationships with every other element - that's in fact what it consists in. Spinoza is teaching you a dialectical logic beneath the simplistic and naive mask on the surface. The geometric method is actually meant to illustrate relationships - it's the relationships between the propositions which matter most, not only their content. They all cling together.

Also, until you have read, and can summarize the main points of both the Phenomenology and the Logic I would not believe that you have understood Hegel. This is a monumental task; I don't claim to have achieved it myself. — John

What use would summarising be? Didn't Hegel himself say precisely that philosophy cannot just give its conclusions without working them out, because if they are so given, then they are false? In this he distinguished philosophy from mathematics - mathematics can say just the conclusion. If philosophy states just the conclusion, and neglects the process of getting there, then it has stated a falsehood, because it is the active process of getting there which is significant, and which actually confers truth on it. This is again something that cannot be stated in words - its an insight, just like Spinoza's Ethics.

God can be understood to have both an immanent and a transcendent aspect. The same applies to being; it has both a phenomenal and a noumenal aspect; it is both knowable and unknowable. — John

The ghost of Kant has entered into this thread to tell us we have overstepped the boundaries of Pure Reason X-)

So let's see John... is knowledge of the noumenon phenomenal or noumenal? If it is phenomenal, then there is actually no noumenon - it is mere phenomenon - a dream, an illusion. If it is noumenal, then we have access to the noumenon.

I have begun reading the Macherey book and I have found early on that Hegel's criticism of Spinoza's notion of the absolute is exactly the point I raised earlier; — John

Yes, that's why I recommended you the book. Let me know what you think when you finish it. Even if you disagree you'll at least understand the interpretation.

If not an absolute personality, God is a nothing, and thus can be of no consequence to us. — John

Why do you think God needs to be an absolute personality (in the same sense that you are a personality) for God to have significance to us?

If God is a merely formal logical entity, then it can have no experience of its own. — John

But the interpretation isn't of God as merely a formal logical entity - but rather as the noumenon itself which gives rise to the modes... It is an activity - certainly not a non-entity or a formal logical entity. It is dialectical - Spinoza is more dialectical than Hegel himself, which is one of the points that will be made. However, in my opinion Spinoza's dialectic is hidden. It's not overt, like Hegel's...

The movement from an absolutely indeterminate substance to determinate attributes and their modes is unfathomable, and thus the noumenon remains unknowable, which is to say it retains its noumenal status. — John

Not if you conceive of Substance dialectically, which is implied in Spinoza's notion. I also suggested this a little to you by saying that Substance needs the modes and the modes need Substance... :P When I said I found Spinoza harder to read than Hegel this is what I meant. Spinoza you can't take for granted - you actually have to understand the relationships within his system. It's not enough to know the elements which make it up. That's merely formal and abstract knowledge. You need to understand the relationships between the elements, because it is those relationships which make the elements what they are ultimately - truth is its own standard. Hegel may be hard to read, but he guides you through the dialectic himself, doesn't leave it to you. So if you take the time to follow him, you can understand by just reading. At least I found it to be so in my readings of him.

God is held to have infinite attributes, which are held to be unknowable to us, and hence (most of, since we can know only two attributes) the noumenon remains unknowable. — John

First there is disagreement over what infinite means with regards to the attributes. Is it infinite in a quantitative sense or a qualitative sense? In addition to this, granting it is quantitative (I'm not sure about this myself, we spoke of it before, and I just argued based on the idea that it is quantitative, but this is questionable), since the attributes are necessarily parallel, as I've argued before, there is no new knowledge that can be gained by having access to a different attribute - it would be only seeing the same thing from a different perspective - nothing would be gained in terms of knowledge.

There is a lot of misreading of Spinoza, and there aren't many Spinozists around either. Even at old PF it was just dunamis, and 180 who had good knowledge, and out of them two, only dunamis identified as a Spinozist.

Yes but is it true or knowable beyond the human domain? — John

How can the standard of truth (Logic) be itself true? That would be a category error. Rather, the standard of truth inheres (is immanent) within truth itself.

Spinoza states "even as light displays both itself and darkness, so is truth a standard both of itself and of falsity"

Thus falsity is either a half-truth (in that it is an incomplete truth - which is only revealed by the Truth) or it doesn't even exist. This is very important - falsity doesn't even exist metaphysically speaking.

Yes but is it true or knowable beyond the human domain? — John

No. The human domain (phenomenon) is part of the world (noumenon), and therefore being knowable in the human domain (phenomenon) is being knowable in the world's domain (noumenon). In fact, there ultimately is no gap between the noumenon and phenomenon.

The "materialist" supposition sees to the truth of this. The working of the brain cannot fail to be real - because our brain is embedded within reality itself - its working cannot be distinct from reality. Part of reality (us) is knowing a different part of reality (the tree in front of us). There is no schism between humans and the world as Kant postulated - no thing-in-itself looming beyond our knowledge - because both ourselves and the world are constituted by this very thing-in-itself - constituting us and the world is exactly what the thing-in-itself does

This may be a slightly bizarre or uninformed topic (on my part), but it's been on my mind nonetheless. In my readings, it would appear that transcendence is generally thought of as a singular state - a noun that denotes a kind of inaction and permanence. Yet, especially as I sift through medieval Christian mysticism, there's a great emphasis on movement and action — Heister Eggcart

I think transcendence is an incoherent notion in metaphysics. If X is transcendent to Y, then there can be no relationship between X and Y (certainly no road from X to Y), because any sort of relationship (act of relating) would imply breaching the gap that we have just postulated through transcendence. If X and Y are transcendent, then in what kind of relationship can they be with the road that connects them? Clearly they can't be in any relationship - the road can't even exist - because if the road exists, then they aren't transcendent. With regards to existence - Being - nothing can be transcendent - that which is transcendent doesn't exist.

Thus immanentism is more fundamental than transcendence. The mystics emphasise movement and action because movement and action are fundamental. Being is Becoming - in fact the two are so inter-linked that they cannot even be thought except together. A thing is a product of an activity - things are constituted by activities. Indeed it is activity - movement - which generates or constitutes things, and thus ultimately things have no Being - are ephemeral - only the activity which generates them has Being and thus exists. That is why God cannot be thought of except by also thinking the Creation. The Creator and the Creation are interrelated intimately - one cannot exist without the other. It makes sense that there is no creation without Creator. But it also makes sense that there is no Creator without creation. Thus God needs the world as much as the world needs God, and therefore only God is necessary and has Being - but this God entails Creation as His shadow.

Runaway together, get married, have children, argue constantly, get divorced, go to court over who gets to keep the children, die bitter and regretful.

That's my advice. — Sapientia

That is very rational advise kind Sir :P

then hire it for yourself. — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Oh dear >:O

Well the thing is with prostitution, which is what I suppose you're advocating, is that it's a way to "cheat" so to speak. One of the basic things that most people need to learn is to want or desire only that which is close at hand and available - if they desire that which isn't available, then they're learning a very bad habit. For some people - for whatever reason - certain kinds of sexual experiences may be currently unavailable ~ without succumbing to prostitution or other evils which affect their dignity. In addition to breeding and encouraging an unhelpful habit, resorting to prostitution is affirming and encouraging the activity of women selling their bodies (and hence themselves) in exchange for money - the objectification of women. On top of all this, prostitution can never achieve the intimacy that is possible in a monogamous relationship, and hence falls far short of the potential of sex. The question of course becomes if it's even worth having such low expressions of sex.

I do get this about philosophy though "Isn't it just a waste of time, it doesn't seem to answer anything" from some of my very smart, yet predominantly practically and hedonically oriented, friends, though. — John

LOL I get this from just about everyone, including most friends and relatives (I only have probably 2 friends I can discuss philosophy with properly). They all think philosophy is useless because they say you can't "do" anything with it - as in what does your knowledge help you with? So when I tell them that there are some things which we do in order to obtain other things, and then there are things which we do for themselves, they don't understand. Even if I explain that we can't always do X in order to get Y, because if everything we did had to be done in order to get something else, then we'd have an infinite regress of do X to get Y, get Y to get Z, etc. So we must stop at something, which we do for its own sake. Even after this "proof" people still protest about it, without of course relating with anything of what I've said, or recognising that their ends-in-themselves are different from mine, and at least a priori, no better.

So yeah, I think philosophy is end in itself. But on top of this, I think philosophy actually helps with most things in life, ironically. Like it helps with handling most things in life. Philosophy even helped me in fucking chess playing... even in martial arts practicing philosophy made me much better. Philosophy also helped me cure my OCD and anxiety. I mean without philosophy my life would really be much much worse. I can probably list no thing that philosophy didn't help me with. Even washing the dishes... I used to hate doing it, now I don't mind - I can accept whatever has to be done. Even in learning new things (because of my self-employment in IT I probably learn new things daily still), philosophy is of tremendous help. The one thing which maybe philosophy hasn't helped me with, is motivation. I always find my sources of motivation in places other than philosophy. If anything, philosophy doesn't motivate me to do anything that is not close at hand. In any case, I found that nothing motivates one to do something better than loving a woman :P O:)

In addition - I think philosophy is needed for politics. I mean I can't imagine how someone can do politics without being a philosopher, or at least without having philosophers as advisors... Why do you think Chinese Emperors used to employ all the hermit and recluse philosophers in running their empires? :s I mean were they stupid?! >:O If I was a politician, or a big businessman, I would employ philosophers in taking all decisions - there's no better brain than the philosopher's brain in deciding what is best to do.

I have always found my work, "creative and interesting" — John

For me I find it currently creative and interesting for the simple reason that I'm still learning a lot everyday. I'm relatively new still in this kind of business. But I imagine that after practicing it for 3-5 years, I'll pretty much know everything inside and out. I'm lucky I got the chance to switch fields. I hated working for someone else, and as an engineer I found I pretty much can only work for someone else... >:O at least in Sapientia's great country, Britain.

I have been self-employed for pretty much my entire working life — John

You are lucky in that. I prefer self-employed compared to work under a boss. But I was unlucky because my degree didn't really allow me to work as self-employed straight off. As a civil engineer you're pretty much fucked if you want to work on your own immediately after university :P

uncertainty about where the next job — John

But certainly there's always repeat business? I mean for me, I got in by first having done work for a family friend who had a small business, then he recommended me to others, etc. and by today I have a good set of a few clients. Even if no one new comes, there's always repeat work - or maintenance work - from these people. And then if all that disappeared, I'd advertise more aggressively, or I'd do some freelance work, etc. There's a lot of possibilities as self-employed if you're willing to think about them and try them. But if you're stuck in a job, there's pretty much no possibility for movement and change there...