What do you say the message is, exactly, of the parable? — tim wood

That life gives some people more happiness than others and the universe is not unjust in doing this

I dont know how this parable applies to economic study, but it's an interesting question

The wisdom of the parable lies in fairness vs justice. Everyone should suffer equal consequences for equal crimes. Thomas Aquinas thought God could show mercy on those in hell. Because of justice, God would have to do this evenly. But that is the negative side. On the positive side, there is no rule that God, or the universe, or what-have-you cannt give greater joy to some over others even though we recognize it as arbitrary. Fairness might be a concept that is childish

As for Fatima, prove to me aliens didnt cause it

Christians are persecuted because it is a religion for trolls

And perhaps this reflected in Augustine's prayer for purity, but not yet! — tim wood

Thanks for your response. But I don't understand your last sentence here. The parable for me basically says that life doesn't have to be fair. That "fairness" is a human concept that has no correlation with reality

Some people, myself included, claim that Plato himself refuted Pythagorean idealism, — Metaphysician Undercover

Please explain how. I'm much interested :)

This is because there can be nothing specific which is known as "matter", there's just a vague unknown which bears that name.. — Metaphysician Undercover

Well you define matter as "prime matter" which is a mystery. I see matter as res extensa and still regard it as a mystery

Gives one's life yes, but what about gives one soul? If you were asked to go to eternal Hell for your spouse, you would be insane to say yes and insane to say no. This shows that the whole dimension of Christian love is insane and unnatural. They even call it supernatural, which translates to unnatural in reality

Were a medieval who had never seen photos to watch a movie, it would alter his reality forever. We do this now with digital technology and there is no way to determine if there could be a limit to matter and energy (energy being a vibration)

If God the Father appeared to you and said"I am sending either you or your wife to the eternal furnace, the other will go with me to heaven", it would be impossible to choose in that situation. It shows how illogical Christian love is and how right Buddha love is. Christian love will eventually break your brain

Empathy is love, sympathy is love, pity is love, but they can be distorted. Christian "love" feels supernatural because it's an unnatural use of the brain. Christianity by and large is a mental illness

"Time can't be frozen" they said. Now we have movies lol

There is some Christian female quantum physicist who argues along the line of the Chinese room riddle that an Intelligence must be behind the working of universe. I think matter can have infinite intelligence, so scratch her off the list. A leading nanoscientist said the same at a seminar down the street from me at some church. Again I don't buy it. Who is to say what matter is? Who is to say what it can do. Photographs were once considered impossible.

Faith is the easiest vice to defeat because you can just do it with a thought

Would someone suffer infinite temporal pain for eternal infinite bliss? If one person out of two had to go to hell forever, would you choose him or yourself?

There have been attempts to refute the Forms by saying there cannot be a perfect Form of mathematics. But like Hegel, Plato seemed to have an implicit dislike for mathematics, perhaps because he wasn't great at it. Plato thought math was outside the Forms and earthly because 4 is greater than 2 but smaller than six. So 4 seems to be big and small at the same time, an imperfection in Plato's eyes

My position is closer to Samuel Alexander's. Interpreting Anaxagoras as a materialist, I see his Logos as the mind that evolved into us, the apex of earth's evolution. Tossing in Schopenhauer, I see will and reason in everything, it all evolving towards greater consciousness. But this is all in a materialist sense. The most I am willing to reduce matter to is energy. Information? No. Something spiritual? Nop. When Schopenhauer says matter is incorpereal, I take that to mean energy. Every thing else is fairy wand imagination. The world is vibration

The Forms could be the eternal potentiality of the One. Plotinus might say this. The Forms might necessarily come from God, or they might be created by God. They could also have existed independent of God and side by side with him. There are many ways of looking at it

Stephen Hawking thought that time goes back from 1 through the decimals until it is pure potentialy. Zero is not a limit. This reminds me of beer commercials for some reason. Ideas of infinite, finite, contingency, necessity, actually, and potentiality are not easy topic. Thomism is one school out of many Scholastic schools, which are all a small part of philosophy

Potentiality is a less-than-numerical unity

Switching the subject from psychology to psychiatry, I've found medication to be helpful for my bipolar symptoms. There are those out there who say psychiatry is hurtful. There is much debate about whether medication helps or hinders people who feel stuck or depressed.

https://www.amazon.com/How-Become-Schizophrenic-Biological-Psychiatry/dp/0595242995

I found these:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07Z6JTB9Z/ref=sspa_dk_detail_1?psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUEzUVRIOTA3V0xSSklFJmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwMTM5NjM0MjBTUlhLR1FNRDlQOSZlbmNyeXB0ZWRBZElkPUEwNjI3OTQ0MlVPRVkyMEtWMlVQTCZ3aWRnZXROYW1lPXNwX2RldGFpbCZhY3Rpb249Y2xpY2tSZWRpcmVjdCZkb05vdExvZ0NsaWNrPXRydWU=

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1654888036/ref=sspa_dk_detail_2?psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUEzUVRIOTA3V0xSSklFJmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwMTM5NjM0MjBTUlhLR1FNRDlQOSZlbmNyeXB0ZWRBZElkPUEwMTUwMzQ0SExDTVUyMloxM01CJndpZGdldE5hbWU9c3BfZGV0YWlsJmFjdGlvbj1jbGlja1JlZGlyZWN0JmRvTm90TG9nQ2xpY2s9dHJ1ZQ==

What is truly "scientific" in psychology is debatable, considering how complex the subject matter is (humanity) and that it is studying itself. But all the topics in these books sound interesting

It's just that Thomists are dogmatic about actuality and potentiality. They think they've figured it all out

Gnomon was considering whether Enformation is consistent with Aristotle. Why not let him make up his own mind? These issues can be as nuanced as distinguishing between individualization and identity. What exactly is potential, whether it be spiritual or material? Isn't the point that we can't know it's nature? Try chewing on fog. You'll get nowhere

Actually, it's still debatable whether a spiritual impersonal Form is effete. I should have included that in my last post

Like Pierre Gustave Toutant-Beauregard at Second Petersburg, I will do whatever it takes to break the spine of Satan's legions which formed as a "religion" called Christianity. I prefer to call them insane. People have the disease to various degrees. The more truly Christian you are, the more truly insane you are

ALL Christians will admit there "love" is not natural but "supernatural", which really means it comes from the part of the brain which wishes to dominate and troll their way into power

Any statement which contains the phrase "all Christians" reveals the author to be an incompetent commentator on the subject. — Hippyhead

Christian love is not true love

The Christian God is said to be necessary, not contingent. Therefore He wills the Good necessarily. But He is said to be free as well. Therefore He wills the Good necessarily and freely. I see no room
left in God for Him choosing with his nature the Good in the face of pain and suffering. Therefore
man has the ability to be greater than God! The idea of perfection which any man can imagine would be a being who chooses The Good in the face of infinite pain. The substance view of God that Aquinas makes is illogical, for how can a person be striving, working, fighting, doing, and acting in itself, if there never was an obstacle and never will be? A person can't just be those things.

As for Plotinus, he explains:

"It is impossible for the One to be Being or a self-aware Creator God." This is because the first reality (Potentiality/One) has no "ergon" (action), for him

So we have spiritual Actuality (refuted above), spiritual potentiality (defended by Plotinus), physical potentiality (defended by modern science), and materialism defended by me :)

Plotinus argues that the One is pure potentiality that doesn't act. God comes from that (for him)

Aquinas was very opposed to the Platonists who regarded matter as somehow less than real. Sorry if my writing style in wonky lately

I am familiar with Feser's book, yes. You may be interested in the old school of Ontologism (search Google for the Catholic Encyclopedia article on this). Malebranche is also interesting (see Stanford Encyclopedia for entries). These ideas have been considered fringe for hundreds of years in Catholicism, until around the time of Benedict XV, when new schools of philosophy sprout up in France and elsewhere. I am personally a materialist, but keep some Hegelian ideas in my bag for ideas to mull over (since I don't pretend to know everything)

possible/actual potential. — Gnomon

You don't use these terms in the Aristotelian sense. I can tell. I was trained as a Thomist from an early age. So we are coming from difference perspectives. Hope you have luck with your enterprise :)

The only science book I've read lately is The Toa of Physics, where it's argued everything is inter-connected energy. This energy has a weird relationship with nothingness. I really know nothing of computer language is regards to natural philosophy, but thanks for the information (wink)

Maybe there is will and intellect in everything, and there are still particular objects although they parts of the universe as a whole. What you guys are proposing (i.e. information/data as the basis of the universe) seems to me to be modern pythagorean Platonism(i.e. idealism). Information is something you garner from the world, so it is completely mental. The world is made of energy, which produces force and matter. The thesis by that one writer "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in Science" may seem to support your position, however I believe in the "law of vibration" wherein everything is energy and the psychology and wishes of the scientist actually manifest themselves in their work

I think computers have made people very confused

Last comment: matter is said to be included in the category of energy. Both are said to have information. Information seems much closer to the Intellect of Anaxagoras and Spinoza than the Will of Nietzsche or Schopenhauer. The latter two sound more poetical and mystical and less scientific in what they said

1) most fundamental is 1=1
2) next is if A is B, and B is C, than A is C

3) then there is the 1+3=4 and the Socrates is a bachelor syllogism

AI can go further than this, but can it mull, can it relfect? Can it mix poetry with philosophy and make mysticism. I think we just are the apex dinosaurs in our epoch of history

In addition, I was wondering if AI would be able to do philosophy in any way. If there are certain human sparks that alone let's it philosophize, could the artificial intelligence truly ever be greater than us?

I like what you've written. It seems to me The Axe cut the Gordian knot by separating supernatural beliefs from natural one. For him, I believe, the universe is just like one massive brain, and we individuals only comprehend a small part of what it is. It's a rather comforting idea and reminds me of dinosaurs (maybe an archetype?). I think that not only Einstein, but a sizable amount of scientists believe this idea that universe is intellect. It makes more sense than saying the world is just numbers, and presents a clear picture better than going ahead and posting Ideas\Forms like Plato did, which did not have a a mind to contain them. Again, the concept im finding interesting here is a materialist one, wherein we (assuming there are not aliens) are the highest embodiment of matter's ability to think, and the matter that thinks is a unified whole (i.e. all the universe). I hope I'm not sounding circular

I tried to help you dude with Mo. I don't "care" about people who use the full consent of their will to ignorant. One thing I hate is bias. Bye!

If you want to choose with the full consent of your free will to be ignorant, I'll leave your thread alonw

Ignorance