So back to your question, if you take known a priori qualities, or the so-called nature of mathematics/music for example, what kind of existence is that? Here are some possible choices:

1. purely abstract
2. metaphysical abstract
3. cosmological abstract
4. universal abstract (universal languages-math/music)
5. physical abstract (through the ability to describe physics)
6. cognitive abstract (our consciousness)

and so on... — 3017amen

I've mulled this over so I can come back to it now. I think the reason this threw me a little is because I only see the use in recognising 1, 4 and 6. 1 will just be one until it becomes part of 6(except for Noumena which will always be 1), then 6 becomes part of 4 unless it stays in a mind, unused and unspoken; which is highly unlikely if we are including all forms of expression, so most of 6 will become part of 4.

If it were me, I’d just call pure abstract knowledge impossible, and anchored abstract knowledge possible. — Mww

Only in a non-linear sense. It's easy for us now to say that the concept of Pi is anchored abstract and that Pi a Priori just was, not so for all the humans that lived without the concept.

I do take your points though; So I'll ask the question of you again but only on the grounds that we are strictly speaking about relative interpretations of phenomena both observed and unobserved.

Is there pragmatic utility in these distinctions between purely abstract and Anchored abstract?

begs the question, what does it feel like to run calculations (?). — 3017amen

Blew my mind a little there.. Might as well ask; what does it feel like to think? It's the only answer I can come up with to your question. Calculating feels like thinking, but what does it feel like to think? It's a feeling to think, what is it like to feel a feeling? Can't even begin to answer that question.

I think one would have to define anchor points first(?). Similarly: — 3017amen

To put it simply, to me the anchor point is defined as the physical location that the meaning of the abstraction resides, whether that's a book, someone's mind or in a script.

To me, pure abstract includes unknowable Noumena and discoverable phenomena. Some of it can be anchored which means its phenomena and some is too far below the surface for our human minds to perceive which would be Noumena.

Also I apologise but I tend not to get into debates about a priori as I feel pragmatism focuses purely on posteriori. I should have been clearer that I'm working in the medium of pragmatic truth and knowledge. I just don't see where one would find the time to experience a priori knowledge.

And the question begging notion that in either case of apprehending reality, it is not knowable. It just is. — 3017amen

A fair point. Would It be fair to say then that the anchor points lie in cognition and the language used to describe cognition?

Were certain Qualia of Kants mind doomed to become pure abstract the moment he died or do his writings retain the anchor points to our anchored abstractions of Kants mind and thoroughly preserve the Qualia of his mind?

I would say Mark, that anchoring abstracts is a method of apprehending or perceiving such through cognition. And through that cognition, we can posit it through the logic of language or consider it an ineffable phenomena — 3017amen

I did think of cognition at first, however I worry that the mind can arguably be something that is considered anchored abstract in and of itself; so it might be risky to say the anchor point is the minds of people as opposed to the language of people.

Maybe I'm wrong though.

How about Aristotle? Would he be defining ‘science’ and ‘philosophy’, or simply dismissing both as underdeveloped mistakes? Maybe he’d be in show business? — I like sushi

I think the most realistic thing to assume here; is that any historical philosopher that were to be given life today would probably be most interested to read what people said about them specifically. I know that if I was 200 years in the future now, first thing I'd do would be to googleofthefuture myself. Would probably be traumatic though, I imagine after a certain amount of time anyone of historical import will accumulate both heavy criticism and praise and probably not in equal measures, but still vast quantities of both. That's not to say I'm assuming I will be of historical import, just hypothesising for the sake of the discussion.

I feel so sorry for the future historians who are going to have to do internet archaeology. Sounds like an overwhelmingly horrible task. The internet could really make historical inquiry so difficult for the future.

Think that's a small error. I'm assuming he means anti-Semites not historical Nazis.

I guess the state of Medicine compared to earlier times they wouldn't have problem. — ssu

To a certain extent yes; however I think gene editing and research into human immortality might be frowned upon for religious reasons. I have moral problems with the immortality issue that aren't religious in origin. I think its just a deep survival instinct in me that knows to fear the prospect of an eternal dictator/dictators. Say what you want about Hitler and Stalin, at least they had the decency to die haha

That and I see myself as someone who tries to be a good man and stave off corruption. However if you've ever seen the sci fi show or read the book Altered Carbon; you'd worry about the state of your moral fortitude after 600 years of life. Even an eternal benevolent ruler or rulers would be expected to fight temptation the entire time no matter what befalls them.

That's for another discussion though. The Altered Carbon Immortality dilemma would make a great discussion on its own I feel. May start one soon. Spoiler alerts incoming.

And it the victim truly will never be aware of any adverse consequences of the actions upon him, then he hasn’t been harmed either. — Pfhorrest

Do you think his Mother and Father would agree with that? Do they feel harmed?

The important part is that “never”. Doing something to someone that they’re not presently aware of but will produce negative consequences that they will become aware of in the future is still harm. Doing something to someone that they will never see any difference from cannot be harmful to them. — Pfhorrest

So if a man dies not knowing he raised the offspring of another man with an adulterous wife, he has not been harmed by it? What if as he dies he firmly believes his line will continue, when in reality it dies with him? Can we assume that if he could have known he would feel greatly hurt and betrayed by this knowledge? A person doesn't have to know that their perceived truth is a lie for it to be harmful to them.

It's always been my concern there, that one should always consider the source of contextual relevance in applying old theology or philosophy to the 21st Century. — 3017amen

Couldn't agree more. Marcus Aureliuses

waste no time arguing what a good man should be, be one

is only contextually useful to those in leadership roles requiring decisive action and it isn't useful to them all the time. To us not in those positions the best meaning we can take is probably just that we shouldn't waste our time arguing what good is if we arent also practicing what we think good is. Or possibly to not argue what it is with fools.

I think if Marcus Aurelius were alive today he'd be relieved he doesn't have to be emperor anymore and probably go on a retreat somewhere quiet to lead a simple life until he either dies or grows bored when he realises he made himself into a man of carefully considered action and he knows no other way.

Why would Rousseau do all that do you think?

I agree with that. It still doesn't provide an answer to the question of what he would think today. Just makes others answers here look a little misleading and ignorant. Still interested in your opinion Sushi :)

Some really great answers here! Funny and insightful.

@I like sushi these are just opinions on what dead people might say. It would maybe help us; if you share your opinion on the philosophers that you disagree with the representation of, made by others here.

Its a little hard for people to have debates about opinions without an alternative to those opinions being offered.

Albert Schweitzer after a year would probably be angry and depressed at just how right he was. He would claim the lack of balance between spirituality and science has grown evermore and that although he saw the man made climate change and WMDs coming; he would be shocked and terrified for our future to think what an AI could do in the hands of evil men.

He would like the current pope but not the last one and he'd still be critical of his Christian roots. Learning about Martin Luther King Jr and many others would make him recognise non whites as equal siblings as opposed to younger siblings and he'd get over his slightly racist paternalism for non-whites. He'd condemn the new rich and elite as far worse than any who existed in his time. He'd cry for what has become of his beloved Africa and probably focus much of his new time there opening up more hospitals and such. He'd probably get very active and try and show everyone up by being so good that it shames us all.

Nietzsche would probably just do all the new drugs..

Hahaha Great wit in your answers there. Really enjoyed that. Got anymore?

What if the man in question is your friend or family? What if the assailant is your friend or family?

What about people who suffer from PTSD because of the things they witnessed but weren't subjected to? Fear of driving for example; can be a problem for people who have only been a witness to a horrific vehicle crash.

Good points to raise. Wouldn't expect any less from you.

Here is a question that will flesh it out more; Were you harmed in being a witness to what happens to the man?

Not anything is stable, for everything leaks, I guess, or else a perfect zero-sum would have put existence out of business. — PoeticUniverse

Is there no balancing point between perfect stability and extreme instability? Low Entropy Abstract and physical structures for example?

Great post! Welcome to Daoism/Taoism. :)

I'm a philosopher from Scotland, Hume 2.0 haha just kidding.

I come here to have deep discussions about what I feel are the best questions I come up with to help humanity grow. Or at least that is my goal. Will always be debatable whether or not they are good questions for the purpose.

My dream is to just be seen as someone who tried their hardest to fight for a better future by those who will call us history.

My more immediate goal is to try and convince as many people here to work on collections of books and essays to publish together as a community in partnership with public libraries on as large a scale as is possible with who is represented here. :)

The reason for public partnership with libraries is to make sure they are properly funded and potentially open up other avenues of investment for them; such as teaching degrees and other helpful certifications for librarians and offering up little to no cost growth based personal education to the public through online courses and in house at a public library.

So seriously everyone; if you write a book or an essay and it makes money, donate some or all (depending on if you're writing for a living or for other reasons) of it to your public library and give them a few free copies!

Fascinating! I have so many questions I don't know where to begin!

I suppose my first question; if these programs are legitimately providing effective emotional support, does that mean Effective Empathy is skill based not emotion based? Cognitive perspective taking empathy is skill and experience based. Deep emotional empathy is relative but is usually a human motivator for using cognitive empathy.

In the end, the outcome is the same: we have to obey the rules — ssu

Most of the time yes, we can't forget however that some rules are made to be broken and even the best leaders are human enough to make mistakes.

It might be good to bring in a quote of MLK Jr here.

I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

- MLK

but to get a good man to do evil it takes religion. — DingoJones

Me tilting at windmills? Says the person who seems to be attacking every imaginary being called a god right now..

Can you really not think of any examples where this isn't true? Seems like a completely ridiculous claim. Also, my first statement was clearly sarcasm and I never suggested anyone was claiming that. However the argumemt "its all religions fault" is just projection, accurate projection yes because a lot of religious practition is dogmatic. But If you take an outside perspective through alien anthropologist thought experiments, if humanity looks at all its behaviour as if it were a unified religion, all human behaviour could be perceived as dogmatic in some way depending in the human practicing the behaviour.

Many animals do horrible things to each other. All without a god telling them to do it as far as we can know. Acknowledging the animal within us all is the first step in the path to taming it. That's all I've got to say about that.

I didn't realise that everything outside of religion couldn't possibly be dogmatic in any way!

Religion is fine in my opinion. Dogmatism and intolerance are much bigger problems in the world and they are pervasavive whether secular or non-secular ideology is being dogmatically followed despite contradictory arguments and facts in the pragmatic sense of true facts.

For example; all faiths have internal critics of the current status quo of religion. All faiths have cultural and geological influences which also diversify. To say that all versions of Islam or Christianity etc is just ignorance unless it comes with a good argument for condeming all religion. If the argument is "only religious people have the potential to do great harm" then The argument is just plain wrong. I'm agnostic in the purest sense of the word so I highly encourage you to research religions more thoroughly and look for Pros and Cons. Pros and Cons lists are essential to true and honest philosophical inquiry!

Except; agnosticism is more to do with the concept of knowledge than it is a deity really.

For example; I am agnostic toward the belief in the physical phenomenon of White holes. I could say that until evidence mounts that white holes do in fact exist; I believe Dark Star Theory to be the more likely theory as this theory factors in Dark matter and Dark energy and can potentially explain the existence of some or all black holes as the Newtonian opposite force of what we call Stars. The missing equal and opposite reacrion.

However without veering too far away from the discussion; I'd say that agnosticism is just putting your beliefs in a box so no one can know, including yourself if the beliefs are dead or alive. So think of God like Schroedingers cat whenver someone says they are agnostic. Their beliefs are just in a box and we don't known if they are alive or dead. They are in a superposition.

You're right. I mean, its importance was talked about, most teachers would tell us we have to think critically but what this meant and what it was to think critically, didn't become available until much later.

Personally I’d fear the person who set the standards more - covered in Red Dwarf too — I like sushi

@I like sushi

Indeed, let’s hope we don’t build Simulants too haha Androids that hate humans don’t sound like something I want to be worrying about let alone where to lock them up! Although I think the episode kind of showed you just how powerful the Justice Zone could be. Sure a superhuman strong killing machine is dangerous outside of the zone, but once they got into the zone, the stimulant was his own worst enemy.

What about a more toned down and less futuristic version of my idea; How does just RPG Game Therapy do? Let’s take a popular game with a lot of personal choice and influence in the game in question. For example; Assassins creed Odyssey. Say we took a violent inmate already in the system and for two hours a day he was going to play this multiple choice with a therapist spectating and discussing the inmates choices as they make them.

You could examine their choices such as; Do they opt to Kill their characters father Nikolaus or not? In general, do they side with Athens or Sparta in the Polyponessian war?

Or you could just build a video game with these inmates in mind. While a full dive VR experience does sound awesome, the journeys can still be made using today’s input systems via keyboard/controller/vr headset.

Although; I do believe a prison in Canada went the route of teaching philosophy to its inmates and that had amazing results! It amazes me that philosophy isn’t part of education curriculums much earlier in life. I don’t remember ever really having the option of studying it until high school. I wonder if the RPG video game strategy would be a good way to open discussions into ethics with children..

which in turn makes it difficult to properly extend the principle of charity to other people. — Pfhorrest

I actually extend the principle of charity. How about you take it up with the people that aren’t, instead of targeting me specifically for some paternalistic scolding because you think my diagnosis makes it easy to declare that you have any authority over me.

it seems to me like you're being needlessly antagonistic in this conversation, seeming to take Terrapin to be saying things he doesn't mean. — Pfhorrest

I’m not the one being needlessly antagonistic here. TS being purposely obtuse is the antagonising factor. I answered your question here and I stand by my argument that this poll should have had an option for agnostic.

Typical though, moment I tell or trust anyone with the diagnosis the genetic fallacies come out and standing up for myself is taken as a meltdown and people read whatever tone they want in my writing to paint me the way they want to see me.

You can’t even begin to imagine what autism is and I’m in no mind to correct you, but if you believe any deficit in myself isn’t something I can overcome by myself and I’m going to be deflecting a genetic fallacy every day on here then I don’t know if we should continue our conversations.

Would you at all mind if I borrowed some of your verse to craft my own?

More than happy to discuss Taoism and Universalism with you. :) I’ll open up a discussion on it soon. Probably after the weekend though as I’m moving to Chicago.

don’t deflect.

Consider your argument voided by the belief in superposition argument. Really can’t be bothered debating you anymore.

don't know what Dennett argument we'd be talking about, but again, atheism just doesn't have anything to do with claims about evidence. If Dennett said otherwise, he's off base in that. — Terrapin Station

How about you actually read Dennett instead of assuming you know what the argument is or what any of the nuance, logic, premises and evidence might be given by Dennett.

https://www.learnreligions.com/atheist-vs-agnostic-whats-the-difference-248040

There Is No Agnostic Vs. Atheist
By now, the difference between being an atheist and an agnostic should be pretty clear and easy to remember. Atheism is about belief or, specifically, what you don't believe. Agnosticism is about knowledge or, specifically, about what you don't know.

An atheist doesn't believe in any gods. An agnostic doesn't know if any gods exist or not. These can be the exact same person, but need not be.

In the end, the fact of the matter is that a person is not faced with the necessity of only being either an atheist or an agnostic. Not only can a person be both, but it is, in fact, common for people to be both agnostics and atheists or agnostics and theists.

This is basically your argument correct?
While it states that it is common for people to be agnostic in knowledge but atheist or theist in regards to belief. However, I’d argue that this comes from a complicated misunderstanding of the word “Self” to only interpret a belief in a single self as opposed to a belief in the dialogical self.

I can tell you honestly that a part of me believes in a god, another part of me doesn’t and there is a part in the middle that doesn’t know what to believe.

Depending on who I am talking to I can hypothesise and theorise from either of the two views but my belief is for lack of a better term; in a quantum superposition between the two. Both and neither until the god box is opened and the life box is closed. When the life box closes, I don’t know if I’ll be able to have knowledge of the answer.

I’m autistic, I’m not very good with jokes. Sue me.

So it’s not humble to honestly tell someone your qualifications when asked? Okay. I’ll lie next time to protect your ego even though I never meant to attack it in the first place.

I’m sorry I just don’t get it.

in what way is it a joke to misquote yourself and then mock me for the response to the full quote you omitted? It just makes you seem dishonest.

Was I being pissy about it? I was answering you tagging me?

Are we going to get into another pointless debate over me agreeing with you that it is pointless? I’m sorry I answered the question honestly and that makes you feel intimidated. You happy?

Simple. You’re either an ethical pragmatist who believes there is an objective moral truth that you don’t know; or an ethical pragmatist who is living as if pragmatism is the objective moral truth whether you’re consciously identifying it as such or not.

Although, I suppose you could be someone who understands pragmatic ethics but willingly goes against it because you don’t believe in objective moral truth. That isn’t the same as behaving like a pragmatist.

As they should be really. I don’t require anyone’s belief in my claim for it to be an honest one. I’m not a moderator here so it doesn’t give me any authority and I would expect anyone else who has these qualifications would know that. Realistically the only thing the qualification gives me is the ability to evaluate logical consistency in Ought moral arguments and historical knowledge of those arguments. Correctness of conclusion isn’t something I can claim authority on unless I can point to real life examples where the conclusion can maybe be evaluated against as either correct or incorrect within that context. However it will always be in line with the pragmatic definition of truth.

However without divulging my identity and my published works no one needs to believe in that authority at all.

It is ultimately pointless to divulge though. I’ve only had the qualification for a year, so I’m chalking it up to youthful exuberance/arrogance on my part that I answered the question in the OP.

Indeed, although whether or not this is always tragic is up for debate.