Maybe not required, but sufficient? — Mww

Yes, I wasn't being precise, that's correct. But if the whole point is, even if it is just the "idea of freedom", even if that is just an illusion, is it a "free illusion"? i.e. there is still a freedom there.

Is there a difference between thinking one has free will because the system is so complex we cannot perceive the factors that contribute to determinism; and actually having free will? — Roy Davies

Is actual freedom a necessary condition for the thought of freedom, in other words. Descartes thinks so. However Kant believes only the "idea of freedom" is required. I think Kant's position may involve a vicious regress, however....

False or erronous learning is still a type of learning, and I mean to include that. — dussias

Is it? Can you qualify that? Because as just that general statement I would have to disagree vigorously.

Finally something positive about Trump. — Benkei

touche

being demonstrably well-informed
— Pantagruel

What about "fake news"? We're actively questioning sources whose purpose is akin to being well-informed. — dussias

What about it? Being well-informed implies being aware of the quality of your information sources. Anyone who is naive enough to believe that they are getting accurate information from a meme doesn't even know the meaning of the term well-informed.

making the other learn something.

Making someone say to itself:

This is important and will help me survive.

is the expressway into agreement and engagement.

What do you think? — dussias

A fortiori, I would say that the ultimate technique in persuasion is being demonstrably well-informed. Which (theoretically) should allow one to convey the exigency you describe.

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne
— Pantagruel

Could not finish it. :( — Olivier5

Not your cup of tea?

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne

It seems to me you are asking "Is meaning meaningful?"

To me, this sentence makes sense (is meaningful) independent of the status of the existence of God. So to me, that some things are meaningful is self-evident. So meaning exists. If meaning exists, then life is meaningful.

The nice thing about being assigned to life on the supreme court is you don't have to think politically anymore. You are free to judge as the philosopher's do.
— Philosophim

Nice thought, but built on a fiction. Read a bit about John Marshall, chief justice 1801-1835.
"McCulloch v. Maryland, “we must never forget that it is a constitution we are expounding.” — tim wood

Perhaps it isn't necessarily an idealized "philosophical freedom", but it is an extraordinary freedom to create a considerable persona for yourself, and to realize all the potential of that persona. And to me, RBG did that, she exemplified what a Supreme Court Justice ought to be. I only had a general awareness of her iconic status, but when I heard of her passing I felt a monumental sense of the great loss to society.

I'm certainly not a Habermas scholar but I just read both volumes of Communicative Action. I also have two books of his political theory next on my reading plan. Do you have any specific questions? I found the works pretty clear.

The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life by Erving Goffman

What is an example of a naturally occurring metaphysical phenomenon?
— tim wood

Any and all distinguishable features from self-awareness beyond exclusive, physically objective phenomena. Of course, one of many examples from one's own stream of consciousness would be the metaphysical Will. — 3017amen

According to Popper, metaphysics is essentially our intuition of where science is headed. This can explain things like the epistemological problem of how we can ever come up with new theories without running into an infinite evidential regress....

It seems like you are asking if empiricism is eliminable, which it obviously isn't. And that you may also be conflating two sense of the word empiricism. The general sense in which observations are empirical, and the strict epistemological usage which claims knowledge is exclusively of this type.

Lots of aspects of reality as we know it conform to empirical descriptions and respond to empirical methods. Which explains its persistence. So the ubiquity of the former, general sense possibly explains the persistence of the strict epistemological dogma.

Fake news.

Seriously, how do you argue with a comeback like that? Very succinct yet complete catalog of our impending doom. This is what comes of cultivating a culture of the individual. What is wanted is social consciousness.

:up:

My main question is for those that do not fear death or dying. What comes with the peace? Is there anything to follow? — Cobra

If you cease to identify with the little ego then you are free to explore the full extent of life. Worrying about the shortness of one lifetime just takes energy away from the appreciation of the expanse of the collective life. You are part of a process. The material bits change, but the symbolic elements continue to grow and evolve.

Of course not but it's a general principle of discourse. — TheMadFool

True, but you were making a logical declaration. Discourse doesn't have to be logical. It can be rhetorical, descriptive, expostulatory. If you want to strip it to its logical bare-bones, then you have to let go everything but what is directly contained in the statements. So the identical thing "X" remains, because it is an element of the statements. But the differing perspectives A(X is beautiful) B(X is ugly), A and B disappear because they are part of the organic context which pure logical abstraction removes.

:up:

I suppose the question remains, what means or method should be used to uncover or discover its truth value? — 3017amen

When mixing subjective and objective perspectives like this do you think you can even assign truth values? It seems like a metaphysical issue?

Well, in the case of a thing being both beautiful and ugly, that beauty and ugliness are not contradictory properties, in the context of the OP. This whole example kind of ran away with itself I think....

Is there such a thing as beautifully ugly? Does the logic of language limit us here? — 3017amen

I don't think there is objectively such a thing as beauty. Even instrumental properties are relevant to specific ends. So TMF is right that these are viewpoint relative, but not, for that very reason, that they are mutually exclusive. If the same thing has different properties from different perspectives, it is still the same thing. Why would the unity of the thing not be as important as the unity of the viewpoint?

How can this be? Every statement must be from a point of view — TheMadFool

I don't think this is a general principle of logic.......statements are statements.

For a contradiction to occur, the point of view must be identical. — TheMadFool

X is black. X is white. These two statements are in contradiction, there is no reference, either implicit or explicit, to a point of view. The identical element X is the basis of the contradiction.

Yes change is possible, from beauitful to ugly and vice versa but a contradiction as when you claim something is both beautiful and ugly is impossible. Are you, for instance, when you contradict me, as you are as of this moment, saying that you're both right and wrong? :chin: — TheMadFool

Hmm. But as I said, if it is beautiful for you and ugly for me, the the thing is simultaneously beautiful and ugly. What does "for a single individual" have to do with it if it is being ascribed to the thing as a property? In physics experiments things can have different properties when viewed from an internal versus an external perspective. They remain the properties of things.

Yes, but both can't be the case for a single individual. — TheMadFool

But as I pointed out in my comment about artificial dialectic, they can. You can encounter something which sets a new standard of beauty, whereupon what was formerly beautiful can become ugly.

It's an outright contradiction to say it's both beautiful and ugly. Ergo, to avoid a contradiction, it must be that it's neither beautiful nor ugly. — TheMadFool

If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then the same thing can literally be beautiful to me and ugly to you.

RG Collingwood had an interesting notion about how we think in terms of "artificial" dialectics. So the most ugly thing you have ever seen becomes one pole of the antagonistic concept, the most beautiful the other. But eventually, you will encounter something more beautiful, then your idea of what constitutes beauty will evolve. But both really are on the same spectrum.

But this tells us something. What does it mean that knowledge is really a product of cultural access and privilege? One thing it means is that humans are not consciously promoting an advanced species because they do not understand that individual quality is the result of social quality, most specifically universal access and opportunity to a comprehensive education. — JerseyFlight

Yes, these are precisely the sentiments of John Dewey. He believes that the true role and function of education is the perpetuation and gradual perfection of culture. That all genuine social life is educative. And that formal education should create a simplified, idealized and balanced environment to that end.

"As a society becomes more enlightened, it realizes that it is responsible not to transmit and conserve the whole of its existing achievements, but only such as make for a better future society."

~Dewey, Democracy and Education

The French Revolution, Thomas Carlyle

Democracy and Education by John Dewey. I'm shifting into a politics, democracy and legal theory mode for the next few books.

edit: a few tidbits from the first couple of chapters...

"Manners are but minor morals."

"The things we take for granted without inquiry or reflection are just the things which determine our conscious thinking."

"A modern society is many societies more or less loosely connected."

"As a society becomes more enlightened, it realizes that it is responsible not to transmit and conserve the whole of its existing achievements, but only such as make for a better future society."

The natural afterlife is an illusion that occurs only at death. — Bryon Ehlmann

So is this related to the process described in the Bardo Thodol (Tibetan Book of the Dead)? Which also deals primarily with experiencing and/or transcending certain illusions at the moment of death?

Unfortunately the idea that one country can be great all on its own is now archaic (isolationism).
— Pantagruel

That would depend on the definition of great that you use. — Sir2u

I don't think so. To be great, you must first be good. A thing is good if it functions well, or performs its functions well. America is a society. So when does a society function well? A society is a complex system. The question is, does the geographical domain of America truly contain that system? Or does that only describe some of the parameters of its operation?

In the past, it was possible for cultures to exist side by side and yet function almost independently. Separation in space contributed to a separateness of identity. Points of exchange between two cultures were few and limited, trade and traders, markets, possibly some inter-marriage.

Fast forward to the modern era. The corporations which rule the world span global divides of natural and cultural boundaries. Small, isolated and under-developed nations are not permitted to evolve in peace but are economically invaded for their resources, and forced to embrace a suddenly modernized version of culture, a culture now no longer uniquely their own.

America is not the source of this cultural model, although there are those who may boast and think this is so.

America is the sum of all its inhabitants. But the lifestyle of these people is determined by the actions of corporations, aligned with no national interests, no interests but their own growth. Gradually all cultures are being smoothed into a generic brand of modernity. At one time, national identity was the most inclusive interest-group to which anyone could hope to belong. Now, global telecommunication makes it possible for each person to communicate with virtual enclaves of individuals dispersed across the globe but aligned with us in values.


No, there is no "America" any more to make great again, any more than there is a "Canada." Instead, we are a world of a million factions. Villages of rec.crafts.quilting, alt.games.chess . And alt.right, and alt.left . I wonder how many people ever think anymore of the origins of that banner, alt.right, in the usenet culture? It is "alt" because it exists in the alternative hierarchy, which was everything that was not in the mainstream comp, misc, news, rec, soc, sci and talk hierarchies. Alt.right.makeamericagreat is just another interest group, right alongside rec.games.computer, and rec.crafts.quilting.

Alt.right is just a faction of shared interests. And if it is truly alt, then it is because it sets itself apart from the mainstream, the majority. So what right could alt.right possibly have to impose its particular version of values on the rest of us, those who do not include alt.right among our chosen set of interests?

If there is a society, then its lines should be drawn around the clusters of interests which we share with each other. Sci.bio.earth . Soc.rights-human. The big ones. The ones that include us all. Share your alt.right or your alt.left values with your alt.friends . We need to save the mainstream, and the mainstream has to include everyone. Even if you are in America, you are not just an American. You have bigger responsibilities. We all do.

Unfortunately the idea that one country can be great all on its own is now archaic (isolationism). So that wouldn't be a rational message. Then again, I wonder if the great mass of people are even moved by rationality any more? Perhaps what the world wants now is...neo-rationalism?

Even an entire society, a nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not the owners of the earth. They are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations...
~Karl Marx

As of recent I have become obsessed with the concept of communication with respect to differing categories of thought. I have a couple of profound theories of what begins to happen to a group of people who are able to communicate more expressively and efficiently. — Shawn

It stands to reason that, to accomplish anything collectively, we have to agree upon it. More precisely, the extent of our collective abilities will correspond to the extent of our collective agreement and understanding. And of course motivation is an integral part of that, especially as it relates to openness versus concealment, shared versus hidden agendas, etc. Relatively speaking, insects are far more effective at wielding their collective might than humans. Perhaps we suffer from an overabundance of ego?

Descartes specifically said in his Replies attached to the Meditations that he doubted simply to find unshakable truth — Gregory

Does that minimize or maximize the force of his discovery?

↪Pantagruel it is very unlkely that thought is your central motivation. It is more likely that it is emotions. (I am not insulting or ad homing you, this is true for all of us. Motivations and desires set us in motion. ) — Coben

Hmm. Well, that may be, it wasn't exactly what I meant though. To be precise, the idea of the being of thought is my central motivation. Trust me, I've had 55 years to think about it, this one I have pinned down.

the axiom of all philosophy, the being of thought — JerseyFlight

With you to here. I don't take issue with the phantom-deity ideas, but for me it doesn't add to (or detract from) the idea that the being of thought is my central motivation.

It's good to know there's another admirer of Dewey here. I think he was extraordinarily insightful. — Ciceronianus the White

On this we agree 100% There's a man whose convictions come across with force in his writings.

Well, he set the stage, as it were. I think he made it clear he was engaging in an exercise, a contrived one that he didn't really think anyone engages in normally, purportedly for the sake of acquiring an unshakeable foundation for thought. This supposedly required him to establish an absolute certainty; something that could never be questioned. Something needed, though I don't know why he thought it was needed, to eliminate any concern that we might be dreaming, or worry that an evil demon was fooling us.

Now I suspect he never really thought there was an evil demon; he was never really concerned that Beelzebub or some other demon was making him think he was writing about Beelzebub or some other demon making him think he was writing about him, or that he was sitting in a chair while doing so in his room while doing so. That's what I think of as faux doubt. A "doubt" which is entertained solely for the sake of making a point. — Ciceronianus the White

I don't think anyone seriously believes they are a brain in a vat either. And yet...that is the whole point, isn't it? Reality can be...deceptive. And sometimes doubt needs to be driven by intellect.

Let's call this one a draw.