I don't see anything wrong with the concept of an essence or final causes (telos): do you? — Bob Ross

Yes, in this context "telos" is fallaciously anthropomorphic (à la animism). Aristotle mistook – literalized / fetishized / reified – his causal mappings for the territory and called them "essences".

18July24

Trump isn’t going to win. — NOS4A2

Yeah, buddy! JD Vance is the *misogynistic gift* that will keep on giving. More of the Ultra-MAGA Hillbilly speaking in public, please. :clap:

Roevember is coming! :victory: :mask:

:eyes:

FWIW, my intepretive sketch from a 2022 thread Perspective on Karma ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/730691

So are we. :mask:

I feel like a asshole. — bert1

No doubt.

I concede. — bert1

My questions were for @Pantagruel to clarify his specific statement which he cannot because it's gibberish. And your response, bert, isn't "paradoxical", just more semantic jugglery.

I asked clear, direct, relevant questions here and yet you reply with an opaque non sequitur. Apparently, it's reasonable to assume (again), you don't even know what you're talking about. Okay, never mind.

We have billions of people that look into the sky and see that the Sun travels around the Earth. The Sun rises in the East, and sets in the West. No one is saying we don't have that unified and confirmed subjective experience. But is our interpretation of that subjective experience true? No. It turns out that the Earth actually orbits the sun. But from our limited perspectives, and can feel like its the other way around. — Philosophim

:up: :up:

Anecdotal, magical thinking dogmas abound (despite alleged philosophy graduate.studies). Geocentric flat earthers, after all, are violently allergic to counter-evidence / sound counter-arguments.

Consciousness, in its essence, is imminently trans-individual. — Pantagruel

If so, then what makes "consciousness" mine? If it's not mine, then why should "consciousness" matter to me? If, however, "consciousness" is mine, then what does "trans-individual" mean and why should it matter to me?

:ok: :rofl:

@Sam26 :eyes:

If you do not provide any evidence that these subjective interpretations of reality have been confirmed as objective realities in controlled settings, then your argument has failed as an assertion. It is a hypothesis [idle speculation], no more, and cannot stand against other the contrary hypothesis that has been confirmed as of this day: "Consciousness does not survive death". — Philosophim

:100: :up:

???

Argue with your strawmen all you like, Wayf, but you trivialize yourself by disingenuously misquoting me and spewing ad hominems. Disregarding my clarification is also a tell. :roll:

Nonsense: "existence" is not a voluntary agent (re: category error).

My Zapffean-Camusian (quasi-Ligottian) response to the OP on p.1:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/914646

:lol: That "exactly" says nothing about "sees the universe as it truly is".

I'm a big fan of Ligotti ... but what's your point in mentioning him?

That's exactly what you said. — Wayfarer

Really? Cite a quote.

naturalistic metaphysics' proposes: that we see the universe as it truly is

Wrong. It "proposes" a synoptic view of "the universe" without supernatural entities or forces (i.e. woo woo :sparkle:) that is consistent with the Mediocrity & Uniformity Principles (i.e. not anthropocentric).

... outside and beyond the human conception of it ... — Wayfarer

Silly ad hominems & strawmen. I/we have not claimed or implied anything "outside and beyond" anything, sir.

Humans are irrelevant. The Cosmos would be the same with or without us. — apokrisis

:100: A fact that terrifies 'anthropocentric antirealists' (e.g. @Gnomon @Wayfarer) to the point of despair or woo-woo denials.

In effect, imo, Aristotle's teleology is occult, or based on arbitrary post hoc definitions (i.e. final causes aka "essences") which render conclusions inferred from them (e.g. "good" is being/action consistent with final causes) invalid. Unless I've misunderstood the OP, your "problem", therefore, is pseudo, Bob.

16July24

re: MAGA Freak Show (American idiocracy)

:lol:

Doubts about Biden’s nomination only came into view this year. — Wayfarer

My doubts about Biden from spring 2023 ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/781755

Agreed. I don't advocate assassinating any current/former elected politician or candidate for office. I never have. Even though SCOTUS recently granted "immunity from criminal prosecution" to POTUS for "killing a political rival".

No "fantasizing", just talking about what the orange shit "deserves" as you said.

Point at something Trump did that makes him deserve to be assassinated. — Tzeentch

Nothing. He desires to die very slowly in excrutiating agony while fully aware of Sleepy Dark Brandon's 2nd inauguration, then mercifully expire a world-class loser on 21January25. That's what The Clown & his cult of worshipful idiots deserve.

Are actions in general (such as buying, walking, flying etc.) considered universals? — SEP lineolata

If I understand your question correctly, I suppose so sub specie aeternitatis (or from a 4-d pov) ...

Here are brief articles which summarize my understanding of 'philosophy as therapy' beginning with the Socratic method in (early) Plato's Dialogues, followed later by the Pyrrhonian epoché (re: undecidable statements (e.g. metaphysics, theology, ethics)) ... and reimagined explicitly via Wittgenstein's clarification of latent nonsense inherent in meta-discourses (early) and then more broadly as descriptions of conceptual confusions as symptoms of philosophers' misuses of everyday language (late)):

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quietism_(philosophy)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therapeutic_approach

My point is, Amity, that 'rigorous conceptual clarification' (i.e. dialectics / therapy) is only a means and not the end (which is, imo, 'eudaimonic praxis') of Stoicism; thus, the Stoic philosopher reminds us, in part, of (Plato's early) Socrates. No doubt others will take issue with this sketchy interpretation; hopefully, however, the above is informative enough to point you in a fruitful direction.

NB: I do not consider myself a 'philosophical quietist / therapist' (even though I agree with Witty that philosophy is not theoretical (i.e. doesn't explain matters of fact) – that, for me, it's only reflectively hermeneutic-pragmatic (Epicurus ... Spinoza ... Hume ... Peirce-Dewey ...)).

Even Fox Noise ... :sweat:

I ain't worried about the MAGA Circus (or "Project 2025") ... just the next assassination attempt. :zip:

:mask: :up:

:up: :up:

What criteria do you use when judging someone's justification for a policy or a course of action? — Vera Mont

A two-step criterion: (1) performative self- consistency, if an action/policy is not, then the relevant, problematic inconsistency should be exposed and possibly reformed; (2) efficacious harm-prevention/reduction, if an action/policy is not, then It should be opposed and/or replaced with an evidently more efficacious alternative.

Is it different from the criteria you apply to justifications for an isolated act?

I don't know what you mean in this context by "isolated act".

When justifying your own actions or statements, according to what factors do you formulate your argument?

I rely heavily on (to the best of my ability) non-fallacious, defeasible, sound reasoning.

On what grounds do you decide whether a justification is appropriate and valid?

Whenever a moral agent acts/doesn't act (re: harm) or a public/private institution enacts policies which affect the public (re: injustice) I think are grounds for requiring justification.

15July24

(Day 15 of the American Monarchy)

Roevember 2024:

POTUS Biden & VP Harris
(plutocratic neoliberals) :zip:

versus

The Criminal Clown DJT & MAGA-bitch J.D. Vance
(autocratic neofascists) :down:

You exist. This is self-evident to you. — Treatid

How do you know this if it is only "subjective"?

However, you cannot prove your existence to me beyond all possible doubt ...

Firstly, "proof" only pertains to logic and mathematics, not matters of fact.

Secondly, "beyond all possible doubt" is neither a necessary condition nor sufficient condition for any claim to have a(n objective) truth-value.

Thirdly, whether or not you/we believe "beyond all possible doubt" any X exists is neither a necessary condition nor sufficient condition that that X exists.

Lastly, given that you/we/I lack compelling, reasonable grounds to doubt any X exists, believing that that X exists is reasonable until such grounds for doubt are evident. Thus, Descartes' "Cogito" fails due to the unwarranted premise of "doubting everything that can be doubted" since, though merely "possible", there are no grounds ever to do so. (Read Wittgenstein's On Certainty.)

So - "your existence is self evident" is subjectively true. Your existence is evident to you.

Again, how do you know my so-called "self-evident ... subjective truth"?

[ ... ] isn't an objective truth. This applies to every concept you can imagine. It is impossible to objectively prove anything. 

e.g. Such as this merely "subjective" statement. :roll:

Like the logician Lewis Caroll's "Alice", Treatid, you've fallen down the ancient sophist Gorgias' self-refuting rabbit hole to "Jabberwocky"-land.

I love eating meat (in smaller portions and less frequently than I used to decades ago). Neither periods of being a vegetarian nor a vegan had been nutritious enough or made me anything but miserable. I'm still waiting for vat-grown meat to become a sustainable, economically feasible and appetizing alternative to industrial livestock meat production. Until then, I remain an 'immoral' (guilt-free) carnivore.

(2021)
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/582423

I oppose Bush-ism and support most of Trumpism. — fishfry

So what small part of "Trumpism" don't you support?

They are determined, ergo involuntarily choose to do so.

:up: :up:

If determinism is true ... — NotAristotle

... then involuntarily determined sometimes I deliberate and sometimes I do not deliberate; thus, it is an illusion (i.e. cognitive bias) that "retrospectively I feel" I could have "voluntarily" done A instead of B or "prospectively feel" I will "voluntarily" do X and not Y ... as if my volition is not embodied-conditioned-constrained (i.e. determined) by causes known and unknown to me moment to moment.

The primary distinction between my worldview and that of most physicists & chemists is Holism vs Reductionism. — Gnomon

False dichotomy – modern science (physics, chemistry, etc) is both reductive and holistic.

On a good day, your "worldview", sir, is merely a flavor of New Age pseudo-metaphysics (i.e. fact-free poor reasoning). :sparkle: To wit:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/916851

[In] a science-constrained metaphysical discussion, you have to take more account of what the science actually says. — apokrisis

:100: :up:

Of course, that's not going to happen because Gnomon gets science conspicuously, incorrigibly wrong. :eyes:

I despair of the American situation. — Amity

Apparently, so did a registered Republican nutjob (allowed to be?) on a rooftop with an AR-15. :mask:

:up:

Pardon my intrusion but

The notion of objective (fixed) truth should be dead and buried millennia ago. — Treatid

i.e. a truth claim such as ...

The universe is an iterated network of relationships ... This is the linchpin observation. — Treatid

therefore "should be dead and buried" as well, which is self-refuting and so there's no need for

If you can find an exception - my position collapse(s). — Treatid

:confused:

Karma.