:100: :fire:IMO 'energy' is a property rather than a 'physical substance'. A rock is not 'made by' mass-energy but has mass-energy. Unfortunately, I think that even physicists themselves sometimes indulge in some confusion about this.
We can't say that 'fundamental physical reality' is 'energy' because 'energy' is a property. — boundless
:clap: :lol:The Universal Field Theory :
The U F T is not a physics theory in a classical sense. It is rather aphilosophicaltheory explaining Why and How physical phenomena appear.
https://theuniversalfieldtheory.com/ — Gnomon
Explain why you think "testimonial evidence of alien abductions" is not "good testimonial evidence". :smirk:To compare the testimonial evidence of abductions to the testimonial evidence of NDEs is a complete misunderstanding of good testimonial evidence. — Sam26
That belief ... merely is your ego – masking oneself (i.e. being-in-the-world) – an 'illusory separation' from the world (i.e. disembodiment fantasy). A psycho-sociological fiction.So what I believe about myself does indeed create my world. — Noble Dust
Okay, short attention span-friendly: a belief is a fiction (until corroborated by evidence) and an attitude is a strong feeling about a belief or an experience.What is a belief, and what is an attitude? — Noble Dust
For me it doesn't make sense ...To give an analogy, I believe that if the 'ocean' is 'natura naturata', a wave is a 'mode'.Regarding 'natura naturans', maybe water itself. But I'm not sure how much the analogy makes sense. — boundless
Well, imo they don't work. In each case "ocean" "house" "statue" are manifest, finite modes (natura naturata) and yet you claim that the corresponding infinite modes of "water" "wood" "marble", respectively, are not manifest which clearly doesn't fly. Analogously it's the 'laws of nature' – causing and constraining modes such as "water [ocean [waves]]" "wood [house [rooms ...]]" & "marble [statue [male-figure]]" to manifest – which themselves are not manifest and which reason attributes to (i.e. conceptualizes as) natura naturans. All analogies are limited in application, of course, much more so when used to 'illuminate' a metaphysics as subtle as Spinozism.What do you think about these analogies? — boundless
:sweat:There is what amounts to a phobia (↪180 Proof ) around admitting anything which suggests the supernatural, — Wayfarer
I don't know as an empirical matter whether or not Spinoza is an "emergentist"; metaphysically he's certainly not.Can you give some reference/arguments to argue that he was an emergentis? — boundless
– and, I think, "foreign" to Spinoza as well (re: infinite =/= "whole"). Anyway, apparently I wasn't clear enough:Also, I would say that the holistic character present in Spinoza was absent in Democritus, Ep[ic]ur[us], Lucretius et al. This doesn't mean that one can [can't?] build a 'Democrito-Epicurean Spinozism' of sorts but I believe that the ontological primacy of the 'whole' was completely foreign to the classical atomists.
I see no other way but to interpret Spinoza as both an immanentist and acosmist sub specie aeternitatis (though sub specie durationis also as a pandeist, which (for me) ontically relates him to that other great immanentist Epicurus). — 180 Proof
In other words, sub specie durationis I interpret Spinoza's natura naturans as ontologically deterministic and unbounded (i.e. unmanifest ... vacuum ("void")) and natura naturata as ontically chaotic and bounded (i.e. manifest ... fluctuation-patterns ("swirling recombing atoms")).[M]y view is that sub specie durationis (e.g. Husserl's "natural attitude") acosmism seems cogently pandeistic (or consistent with classical atomism). — 180 Proof
... which is why I describe compatibilism as conditionally deterministic. Neither strict determinism nor strict indeterminism are compatible with "free will / free action" (i.e. human agency).But if 'compatibilism' is strictly deterministic ...
Lame definition. Btw, I'm Epicurean ... about (instantiated) "ideas". See here .The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy':
'The word was first used by Liebniz, for Plato's ontology, to contrast with Epicurus's materialism.' — Jack Cummins
Afaik, it's "the difference" between pattern-strings and mathematical structures, respectively, such that the latter is an instance of the former. They are formal abstractions which are physically possible to instantiate by degrees – within tractable limits – in physical things / facts and usually according to various, specified ("pragmatic") uses. I think 'Platonizing' information and/or numbers (as 'concept realists', 'hylomorphists, and 'logical idealists' do) is, at best, fallaciously reifying.I think ultimately the difference between information and numbers is only pragmatic. — hypericin
What "debate"? You haven't even stated the proposition in contention we're supposed to either be for (thesis) or against (antithesis). Please clarify ...The thread was intended to explore the debate over idealism, but with reference to semantics. — Jack Cummins
Dreamt by whom/what – isn't the dreamer more than a "dream" – or is "life just a dream" within a dream within a dream ... all the way down? And, besides, what existential-pragmatic-ethical difference does it make, Jack, if metaphysically (according to some ancient tradition) "all is maya"?The idea of the surreal was meant to point back to the idea of life as a dream. This was an obscure reference to the view of life as a dream, captured in the Hindu concept 'maya'.
Yes, of course, you can't even bother to rationally speculate or honstly admit you have no effing idea what you/we are talking about. wtf :sweat:All I can do is guess — Gnomon
My mind is made up about what? You've no idea what my mind is or is not made up about so stuff the ad hominems & strawmen and stick to the questions raised by your muddled dogma.Your mind is made up, why bother? — Sam26
An unknown – unknowable – mystery (re: "intelligence behind the universe") doesn't explain anything because answering with a mystery only begs the question of the how/why of anything. And so my straight forward question remains, Sam, and it appears you can't answer non-fallaciously or supported by sound reasoning:What is explained?
:chin:What exactly is explained by "a mind behind the universe"? — 180 Proof
Since it's your posit, Sam, again I ask you:It depends on what you're looking for and what your questions are. — Sam26
:chin:What exactly is explained by "a mind behind the universe"? — 180 Proof
Apparently, this "we" excludes p-naturalists (i.e. immanentists, pandeists), strong atheists, freethinkers, absurdists et al. For us, evidently and parsimoniously, "the source" is the universe ‐ natura naturans – itself; we don't bark at shadows (pace Plato). :fire:the source of what we are experiencing — Sam26
Maybe you can clarify this phrase ...mere partial perspectives — Jack Cummins
So 'you are aware' is only "a human construct"? Or 'mortality' is not nonmind-dependent (which I prefer to 'mind-independent'), or real? :chin:I am aware that 'real' is a human construct. — Jack Cummins
Yes, the forest itself (e.g. "Fangorn"). :wink:... there is always someone in a forest. — Amity
Of course this is so ... sub specie aeternitatis.Well, Spinoza's Natura Naturata would be cover both the 'vacuum' and the 'atoms', the union of them (also, according to him, the attributes are independent from each other, so emergentism is not compatible with Spinoza). — boundless
If not conditionally "deterministic" (i.e. constrained by your (my) nonlinear dynamic, ecology-nested, embodied cognition), then what makes any "choices" yours (mine)?For instance, if a compatibilist argues that my choices are 'free' because they do not have 'external' causes but they are still deterministic, I fail to see how this can be true 'freedom ...
What exactly is explained by "a mind behind the universe"?I'm trying to point out that a mind behind the universe is the best explanation ... — Sam26
Secular mysticism redux.Despite materialism and postmodern deconstruction, NeoPlatonism is making a resurgence. What is the significance of this? — Jack Cummins
The latter are messages – signal-to-noise ratios – and the former is a medium.What is language and its connections to symbolic forms of interpretation?
Yes.Are ideas mind-dependent, subjective, objective or intersubjective
constructs in human semantics?
16August24 – $23.06 per share :down:NASDAQ (DJT) :rofl:
26March24 – $57.99 per share
(NASDAQ 16,315.70)
15April24 – $26.61 per share :down:
(NASDAQ 15,885.02) — 180 Proof
Stop with the strawman, schop. My counter argument emphasizes the followingThe Nietzschean emphasis ... — schopenhauer1
as I've pointed out in my previous post which your (& T. Ligotti's) special pleading evades. To wit:As daoists, epicureans, pyrrhonists, spinozists, absurdists et al know first-hand: humor & creativity, friendship & compassion also provide "relief" during the often tedious intervals between "sleep and death". — 180 Proof
there are philosophies of defiance ("unselfing") such as those mentioned above contrary to sophistries of denial ("suicide") like fideism, anti-natalism or nihilism. :mask: — 180 Proof
Yeah, like e.g. "anti-natalism" (i.e. destroying the village (h. sapiens) in order to save the village (h. sapiens)) – I agree, schop. After all, "suffering" isn't a "problem to solve" but rather an exigent signal to adapt one's (our) way of life to reality by preventing foreseeable and reducing imminent disvalue/s. :fire:Creating a false narrative cannot solve the problem of suffering. — schopenhauer1
I.e. if we are more like droplets of spray from a wave of the ocean (or rays of sunlight from the sun) than e.g. passengers riding on a moving train...Still my question is: how can we have some degree of autonomy if we are not separate from the Whole? — boundless
For Spinoza, no doubt an "inadequate idea" (i.e. imaginary, illusory) sub specie aeternitatis.Even the 'co-determination' of some actualities ... something like Tolkien's concept of subcreation, in a sense.
Yes, because sub species aeternitatis Spinoza's immanent-monist (unbounded, self-organizing vacuum field-like) metaphysics is acosmist and your "pan-en-deistic" whatever, Gnomon, implies an unparsimonious, transcendent-dualist (Pythagorean / Neoplatonist / Leibnizean / panpsychist monadic-like) metaphysics.it is Deistic ... specifically PanEnDeistic.
Would Spinoza disagree? — Gnomon