• Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    I wasn't expecting people to come out and say, "l love Trump because his a bigot, a racist and a misogynist, and so am I." So I'm not very surprised it didn't happen.unenlightened
    :up: :up:
  • (Ontological) Materialism and Some Alternatives
    It's interesting to me that humans make sense of he world with narratives and models which may often be useful but not be true.Tom Storm
    It seems "narratives and models" are "useful" in the broadest scope only, in fact, when they are approximately true. Maybe not but I can't think of any counter-examples which you & @Art48 might be talking about.
  • (Ontological) Materialism and Some Alternatives
    Well done. I especially appreciate the distinction between being 'materialistic' and being a 'materialist'. :up:

    As for 'the fundamental unity', Einstein famously favors Spinoza's natura naturans (i.e. substance) and later quantum field theory corresponds, imho, to Democritean-Epicurean void. I think the Cartesian-Kantian (& Planckian) mistake of prioritizing epistemology (i.e. what humans can know directly) over above ontology (i.e. what subjectivity / what knowing necessarily presupposes, and therefore, can only be inferred) – or, worse: reducing the latter ("what is") to the former ("what i know") – leads to subjectivist / idealist / phenomenalist antireality (e.g. immaterialism, supernaturalism) that is implicitly assumed by "evil demon" & "brain-in-a-vat" (à la gnostic) thought-experiments which invariably yield "transcendental illusions" as Kant points out.

    Anyway, my own position is philosophical naturalism (which, as I conceptualize it, begins with a hybrid 'Epicurean-Spinozist' immanentist ontology) and, in sum, proposes this: nature is the aspect of reality that limits (like the encompassing horizon) what we natural beings can know about reality given only natural capabilities for knowing (i.e. explaining) reality. As (pragmatic) epistemic shorthands about nature, 'material' means embodied (data), 'physical' means informational (model) and 'a truth' means a good explanation (a rigorously well-tested, fallibilistic model aka "theory") ... constitutive of A View From Everywhere (i.e. more-than-subjective) rather than "the view from nowhere" (or god's eye view).
  • TPF Quote Cabinet
    Retrospectively, not prospectively or "instinctively".
  • TPF Quote Cabinet
    Nonsense. For instance, we seek "territory and food" in order to sustain ourselves biologically (like all other non-human animals do) and not because of "imaginary stories". And I don't see the relevance here of tychism (though I've always agreed with 'the principle' ... from the perspective of classical atomsm / philosophical daoism (i.e. necessary non-necessity)).
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    BTW David Duke sides with the anti-Israel protesters.BitconnectCarlos
    DD's been an antisemite for decades long before the latest protests (by many Jews too) against Israeli apartheid and war crimes. Unlike the majority of anti-zionist (pro-Palestinian) protesters, you ignoramus, he is a KKK-racist advocate for oppressing non-white & non-christian people everywhere. :shade:
  • Last Rites for a Dying Civilization
    All our social control structures will eventually, and necessarily be given over to AI.punos
    :up: :up:
  • Some Thoughts on Human Existence
    As for what we were conscious of; these were stories. Stories end. Or they live on, already in other stories, just as they were constructed from other stories [...]

    The body lives on because it's not [the] body but the universe.

    The Mind lives on because it's not an individual spirit but universal history.

    It is only the ego, never alive to begin with, that finally becomes obsolete. Nothing feels nor experiences that loss. And, nothing was there to begin with.
    ENOAH
    :100: :fire:
  • Mexican Politics and Water Problems
    "Survival" of the many (re: clean water scarcity like accelerating climate change) isn't "as important" structurally to the few as ... "transportation". A million down to perhaps fifty thousand people provide more than enough robust, genetic diversity to withstand even acute man-made extinction pressures, so, as a species, we have a 7.999 billion surplus population as far as our elite movers & shakers (i.e. financier-fiscal planners) are likely concerned.
  • Mexican Politics and Water Problems
    Apparently, the problems aren't bad enough yet for enough of the people or the elites. And there are more seemingly immediate and pressing problems impacting large, mostly urban populations like crime, housing, unemployment, healthcare, etc than water scarcity & potability at the moment. Short-term reacting tends to be prioritized over near & long-term planning under the prevailing conditions of resource & fiscal scarcity especially, though not exclusively, in developing (non-G7) countries like Mexico. We're smug or negligent, chattering primates who amuse ourselves watching the proverbial frog slowly boil and still bet heavily (despite the data-trends) on "thoughts & prayers" to work that old magic. :sparkle:

    Just my 2 pesos, señor..
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    For the third time I'm posting this link in response to your nonsense. Read it for comprehension and stop playing stupid. :shade:

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Israel
  • Why are drugs so popular?
    Drugs, seem like a distractionShawn
    So we agree on (this 'recreational' path of least effort) after all ...
    ... perhaps addictive intoxication (i.e. escape, distraction, self-anaesthetization) is the religion¹ of the masses.180 Proof

    ¹'ritual' path of least effort :sparkle:
  • Why are drugs so popular?
    If I understand you correctly, you're suggesting that drug-taking is an attempt to fulfill a "spiritual" need? If so, what's this "spiritual need grasping for? And why isn't "spiritual" fulfillment just another form of futile ego-gratification (like e.g. overconsumption, status-seeking, addictive intoxication, etc)?
  • Why are drugs so popular?
     an impoverished spiritual lifeShawn
    Clarify what you mean by this.

    Marx could have been right about the substitution of drugs for religion...
    Wtf, dude... :lol:
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    i don't have to abide by your theory that only certain groups (ashkis, white) can be racist.BitconnectCarlos
    Strawman. :shade:

    FWIW (not that bigots & idiots like you give AF), "my theory" summarized in this 2019 post:
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/350173
  • Why are drugs so popular?
    Marx said "Religion is the opium of the masses". In late global Capitalism, perhaps addictive intoxication (i.e. escape, distraction, self-anaesthetization) is the religion of the masses.
  • TPF Quote Cabinet
    Humans don't fight over territory and food. They fight over imaginary stories in their minds. — Yuval Noah Harari
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Did you know that the lighter skinned blacks discriminate against the darker skinned ones? They oppress them and treat them as lower.BitconnectCarlos
    Yeah, and they learned that from White (or semitic re: Arab) slavers-oppressors. Plenty of colorism (especially) in the older generations of both the American Southerner & Carribean sides of my mixed-raced family. So what's your non-point, BC? After all, I'm not the one claiming "Blacks are one family" and that "there is no discrimination among dark skinned and light skinned Blacks" the way you've lied (as the wiki link I've provided makes clear) about Israeli Jews who are semitic people discriminating, in fact, against – oppressing – other semitic people. Just calling you out again on your zionist propaganda bullshit. :victory: :mask:
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Jews are one family.
    — BitconnectCarlos

    :roll: Tell that to the non-Ashkenazim of color (Mizrani Jews, Sephardic Jews, Ethopian Jews, Indian Jews) in Israel who are racially discriminated against and treated as second-class Israelis:
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Israel
    180 Proof
  • What would you order for your last meal?
    Say you're being executed, what would you order for your last meal?frank
    As long as I was to be executed within an hour of finishing, my "last meal" (today; probably a different menu tomorrow) would be:

    • a large chef salad (spinach only, no avocado)
    • garlic vinegrette
    • side dish of sauteed mushrooms & onions
    • full bottle of Barolo red
    • pitcher of water with lemon slices

    (• 15 minute break, then dessert ...)
    • a whole German chocolate cake
    • gallon of strawberry ice cream
    • finally, a double Macallans 12 (neat)
    :yum:
  • On Freedom
    Mostly I think of freedom as liberation from fear and suffering.Tom Storm
    :up:
  • "Aristotle and Other Platonists:" A Review of the work of Lloyd Gerson
    ... without chance and contingency ... The fixed intelligible world is unintelligible.Fooloso4
    :fire:
  • Some Thoughts on Human Existence
    Which thought then do you find scarier?jasonm
    Neither. Only this life in time is "scary".

    If we die and reach the afterlife, what if there is life but not eternal life?jasonm
    Same shit (again), different "life".
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    I don't hate Israel. I'm anti-zionist.Benkei
    Same here. :up:

    Do you believe in the preservation or destruction of the Jewish state?BitconnectCarlos
    I'm too cosmopolitan and leftist to do anything but militantly oppose every ethnonationalist (and/or theocratic), war criminal state.

    If you're an anti-zionist then you ultimately aim at it's destruction.
    The patently false assumption here is that (post-1967 ethnonationalist) "zionism" is the only, or best, governing principle (i.e. ideology) for preserving and securing the State of Israel. Thus, your vapid and false dilemma, BC: support the elimination of either "all non-Jews" (Us) or "all Jews" (Them) from the river to the sea. No doubt I am all for the "destruction" of the right wing, AshkeNAZI-racist, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, colonizer-settler establishment in Israel beginning with the immediate and permanent cessation of ALL US-Nato military support for & economic aid to (including total economic boycott of) Bibi's mass murdering regime.
  • The best analysis is synthesis
    Bunge has some other remarkable observations, that energy is the only "universal physical property," for example. But what I like most is his conclusion that "the general concept of energy is so general that it belongs in metaphysics." Because it is so big that it overflows our scientific conceptions of it.Pantagruel
    I'm not familiar with Bunge's work. Say something more about his conception of "energy" that 'belongs in metaphysics" (like e.g. Schopenhauer's Will). Thanks.
  • "Aristotle and Other Platonists:" A Review of the work of Lloyd Gerson
    To reify is to make a thing',Wayfarer
    No, it is to treat an abstraction (e.g. "Form of Goodness") as if it is "a thing" in causal relation with other things which is why, misplaced concreteness (i.e. reifying an abstraction) is fallacious. It is Platonists who misuse/abuse language and thereby fetishize the definite article.

    ... ideas [Forms?] don't exist - not because they're unreal, but because they are beyond existence (which is precisely what 'transcendent' means).Wayfarer
    ... ideas [Forms?] are transcendental.
    Confusion of "transcendent" with "transcendental" – which is it, Wayfarer? :roll: – "by those who cannot grasp" this Platonic fallacy.

    I had the idea it is impossible to admire both Nietszche and Plato.
    You're wrong again, sir. Like many, I admire both thinkers[ yet for different reasons. (not the least of which for poetically dramatizing the characters of 'Socrstes' & 'Zarathustra', respectively). And don't forget that admirable duo Wittgenstein & Spinoza who I also mentioned in support of my criticisms.
  • What are you listening to right now?
    Baby, don't you let your
    dog bite me

    "I'm in Love Again" (2:00)
    A-side single, 1956
    writers F. Domino & D. Bartholomew
    performer Fats Domino
  • "Aristotle and Other Platonists:" A Review of the work of Lloyd Gerson
    With regard to Plato and Aristotle their shared common ground is that they are both Socratic skeptics, inquirers who know that they do not know.Fooloso4
    It should be understood that Socratic skepticism differs from other types of skepticism. It is the desire to know based on the knowledge of our ignorance. It is, as the root of the word indicates, the practice of doubt and inquiry.

    With regard to evidence, we must follow the argument and action of the dialogues in Plato that lead to aporia and the dialectic of Aristotle.
    Fooloso4
    :100: :fire: This sums up my own freethinker-naturalist interpretation of 'Platonism' (which non-exhaustively includes 'Aristotleanism').

    The heuristic I prefer is that forms or ideas don't exist - not because they're unreal, but because they are beyond existence (which is precisely what 'transcendent' means). We are blessed with the intellectual facility, nous, which is capable of grasping these forms (or perceiving rational principles)Wayfarer
    I.e. fallacy of reification / misplaced concereteness (which Nietzsche astutely points out is an inversion, or confusion, of effects & causes). As you anti-naturalists et al construe, Wayf, 'Platonic-Aristotlean' essences (universals) aka "Forms" are only abstractions from concrete entities generalized over them as classes (sets kinds types etc) by 'the need' (i.e. cognitive bias? will to power? the absurd?) of the human intellect to (aesthetically) impose (moral) order on (epistemic) chaos by justifying this slight-of-mind (nous) retroactively – at worst a sophistical subterfuge of implicit rationalization. To wit:
    I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar — F.N.
    Likewise I interpret what Wittgenstein means by 'patent nonsense from (traditional) philosophy misusing ordinary language (i.e. grammar) in order to try to say (meta-grammatically) what can only be shown' – or later, philosophers confusedly, or carelessly, 'playing some language game by the rules of another (à la making category mistakes)' – "transcendent illusions" of meta-nonsense. :eyes:

    Anyway, if as you say, sir, that "Forms transcend existence", then it is a contradiction in terms to assume or assert that entities which "transcend existence" (e.g. super-naturalia like "Platonic Forms") have any explanatory – causal – relation to existence (e.g. nature).

    Read Spinoza. :victory: :wink:
  • On Freedom
    Better to be a sad Socrates than a smug swine
    — 180 Proof

    John Stuart Mill said in an essay titled A PIG, A FOOL, AND SOCRATES: It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question.

    That's not quite as pithy as your version
    BC
    :smirk: :up:
  • Radical Establishmentism: a State of Democracy {Revised}
    focusing on parts at the expense of the whole can lead to conspiracy theories and paranoiatim wood
    :up:

    [C]ivilisations tend to suffer from entropy over time and slide into decadence.ChatteringMonkey
    :up: :up:
  • Fate v. Determinism
    The point of determinism is that there are no options, but that there is only one course of action possible.Hanover
    You're mistaken, sir. That's predeterminism, not determinism (i.e. every effect necessarily has at least one cause). For instance, stochastic / nonlinear dynamic systems are deterministic (re: initial conditions) with a probabilistic spread of outcomes (e.g. hurricanes, tornadoes, stock markets, traffic flows).

    The only true free will would be an uncaused cause ...
    Well, I use the terms voluntary action or uncoerced behavior rather than (idealist / essentialist) "free will".
  • Fate v. Determinism
    (i.e. conditionally voluntary actions)
    — 180 Proof

    Conditionally voluntary is a self contradictory phrase to the extent "conditionally" means deterministically. If you mean something other than that, explain what it is.
    Hanover
    I'll put it this way: by 'conditionally voluntary' I mean embodied, or being mindbodies the behaviors of which are both enabled and constrained by deterministic physical laws (i.e. regularities constituting nature).

    Why am morally responsible for X if I couldn't have done otherwise?
    You are not; I haven't suggested this.

    How is determinism of any sort, hard or soft (i.e. compati[bil]ism), compatible with moral responsibility.
    Firstly, 'indeterminism' (i.e. randomness) negates minds (mine-ness), bodies, actions, consequences ... responsibility (moral, legal, political, or otherwise) which are enabled and constrained by physical laws; in other words, "libertarian free will" within the physical world (i.e. nature) is conceptually incoherent – here even Kant agrees with ... as well as Spinoza & Epicurus .

    Secondly, within constraints, our mindbodies are uncoerced iff they have two or more actionable options in any given (historical-social-existential) situation; therefore, each deterministic (i.e. physical laws-bound) mindbody is responsible for the (foreseeable(?)) consequences her uncoerced actions (volo) or inactions (veto).
  • Concept of no-self in Buddhism
    I appreciate the correction. Thanks.
  • Concept of no-self in Buddhism
    The most that can be said about thought then, is that we are unaware where thoughts come from and where they go - so why the leap to no-self?Heracloitus
    IIRC, by "no-self" Buddhists (or Advaita Vedantists) mean there is no permanent, unchanging, non-transient, unconditional or transcendent self. I think Hume's "bundle theory" is analogous. That we are subjectively unaware of 'the comings and goings of our thoughts' implies only that this is (a) limitation of first-person awareness. I believe "the leap" (insight) originally was from 'the coming and going of thoughts' – not from lack of awareness of why they come and go – to the coming and going (anicca) of all things, which includes "self" (i.e. anatta). :fire: :eyes:

    NB: I don't know how "Buddhists" (which school? eastern or western?) account for (explain away) apparent inconsistencies in their teachings or worldview with non-Buddhist perspectives (e.g. daoism, classical atomism or modern naturalism/physicalism). My guesses above are merely 'non-Buddhist interpretations' which to me seem (pragmatically) reasonable. No doubt, most Buddhists (like Wayfarer) will probably disagree ...