• US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    ↪jgill
    IMO, all things being equal as of the 24th day of the year, Biden doesn't need to "start a war" to get reelected against a party that has lost every popular vote (i.e. general, midterm, off-year & special elections) since 2016 and against a (prospective) nominee whose support has shrunk since 2020 because he has done – continues to do – nothing to expand his support. The MAGA-GOP is a shrinking dead cult walking (à la Jim Jones) off of an electoral cliff. Just my $0.02. :mask:
  • Lost in transition – from our minds to an external world…
    ↪Vera Mont
    :100:

    That's how I see it: indivisible. But then, I'm a simple-minded biped, not a philosopher. — Vera Mont
    :smirk:
  • How May the Idea and Nature of 'Despair' be Understood Philosophically?
    ↪Jack Cummins
    Despair? If
    What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love. — Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
    then this must be despair.

    addendum to ...
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/874452
  • TPF Quote Cabinet
    Courage. That is the enabling virtue. All the other virtues are empty without courage. — Cornel West
  • The Blind Spot of Science and the Neglect of Lived Experience
    ↪Manuel
    :up: :up:
  • Is Philosophy still Relevant?
    ↪Pantagruel
    Reddit & X(Twitter) are calling you, dude.
  • Absential Materialism
    ... you claimed that mind is matter. — Corvus
    I did not "claim" this. :roll:

    So you can't answer my questions
    ↪180 Proof
    .

    Okay, I'll move on to someone who has some idea of what s/he is talking about.
  • Is Philosophy still Relevant?
    I'm not here to [think] challenge your beliefs. — Pantagruel
    'Challenging beliefs' is what a site dedicated to philosophy terms dialectic. "Your true colors" are quite evident: mere dogma (of an unthinking pedant). I welcome all challenges to my ideas (in order to learn) which you are obviously too insecure (or vapid) to handle. Maybe you'd feel less threatened, Pantagruel, on sites like Reddit or X (Twitter). :sparkle:
  • Absential Materialism
    ↪Corvus
    Mind is a process or activity like respiration or digestion and not a static thing. Mind-ing is what sufficiently complex brains (which are material-physical systems) do. To ask "where is mind?" is nonsensical like asking "where is breathing?" or "where is walking?"

    But you have not answered my questions, Corvus.
    Mind is immaterial substance.
    — Corvus

    How do you/we know this? How does the "immaterial" interact with materiality, as "mind" apparently does, without violating material-physical laws of conversation?     — 180 Proof
    I'll wait ... :chin:
  • Is Philosophy still Relevant?
    ↪Pantagruel
    You made a claim, I requested evidence for it, not clarification. I understand perfectly well it's empty but gave you the chance to prove me wrong. So far, however, you haven't and, no doubt, you cannot because apparenrly you've no idea what you're talking about.
  • Absential Materialism
    In saying void is both physical and meta-physical... — ucarr
    I've not said this, just pushed back on your reductive implication which is contrary to the Democritean-Epicurean concept of void (or Spinoza's concept of substance): a metaphysical concept (i.e. an ontological presupposition of an empirical/observational supposition) for which there is a physical analogue or correlate (re: vacuum); I'm not "saying" the atomists' void is a "higher-order" anything (that somehow transcends the physical).

    All of the above: energy, mass and matter are material_physical. Your job, as immaterialist, involves showing the structure of the immaterial making causal contact with the material. — ucarr
    :up: :up:

    Mind is immaterial substance. — Corvus
    How do you/we know this? How does the "immaterial" interact with materiality, as "mind" apparently does, without violating material-physical laws of conservation?
  • The Blind Spot of Science and the Neglect of Lived Experience
    ↪Joshs
    I understand philosophy to be concerned with making explicit the gaps in – limitations of – rationality as manifest in, or expressed by, use of concepts and is not concerned with, or capable of, providing any "access to truths about the world". And science, for its part, concerns only the best available approximations – fallibilistic explanations of aspects– of the world.
  • Is Philosophy still Relevant?
    ↪Joshs
    :up:

    ↪Pantagruel


    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/861285

    If we wish to study a thing, we are bound to select certain aspects of it., It is not possible for us to observe or to describe a whole piece of the world, or a whole piece of nature; in fact, not even the smallest whole piece may be so described, since all description is necessarily selective. — Karl Popper, The Poverty of Historicism
    I.e. the poverty of (e.g. Collingwood's) quasi-Hegelian caricature of both history and science.
  • The Blind Spot of Science and the Neglect of Lived Experience
    With the right woman, that kind of gorgeous language will get you laid around here. Better than any sonnet…. — Tom Storm
    Yeah .. but when I rub my scars, mate, I only remember the wrong ones. :yum:
  • The Blind Spot of Science and the Neglect of Lived Experience
    ↪Wayfarer
    The natural sciences are observational-experimental methods, force-multiplied by mathematical techniques, for the manifest purpose of publicly correcting "common sense" experiences (e.g. folk psychologies, customary intuitions (i.e. stereotypes, clichés, X-of-the-gaps stories, etc), cognitive biases, institutional (dogmatic) superstitions, etc) in order to testably explain aspects of the natural world and ourselves. The notion of a "blind spot of science" is, at best, a worn-out, old romanticist caricature or otherwise, worse, akin to a polemical categorical mistake: science no more engages in (explicit) philosophy or mysticism / subjectivism than jack-hammers are used instead of chainsaws to cut down trees; in fact, it's the best tool(kit) humanity has ever devised insofar as natural science is the attempt to (abductively, fallibilistically) solve more-than-subjective problems, which is a feature, IME, and not a bug (i.e. "blind spot"). Btw, I'm familiar with Glieser & Thompson and respect a lot of their work, respectively, but think this thesis is ludicrously antiquated (though yes, fashionably evergreen with the tie-dyed, pseudo-luddite incognecenti :sparkle: :roll:). That said, I'm sure I'll read the book ...
  • Absential Materialism
    ↪ucarr
    Yes.
  • Absential Materialism
    ↪ucarr
    :smirk: :up:
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    @BitconnectCarlos @tim wood @RogueAI

    A brief discussion about the new Jewish-American documentary "Israelism" ...


    addendum to:
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/856307

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/847621
  • Absential Materialism
    Can you understand that Energy is a metaphysical philosophical Principle, not a material object? — Gnomon
    Ah riiiight, just like "The Force" :sparkle: :rofl:
  • Absential Materialism
    Energy is [ ... ] immaterial in its thingness.
    — Gnomon
    So (rest) mass is "immaterial" too?
    — 180 Proof
    Yes. Mass is not an objective thing...     — Gnomon
    :clap: :lol: :sad: :rofl:
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    ↪Wayfarer
    :100:
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    ↪Benkei
    :up:

    ↪Wayfarer
    That dumpster fire was billowing a year ago ... my 2 bits from Feb 2023:
    I don't think DeSantis will get that far precisely because his reactionary populist – fascistic, racist, mysogynist, public health-denying – policies in Florida amply demonstrate how much scarier he'd be than Individual-1. — 180 Proof
  • How May the Idea and Nature of 'Despair' be Understood Philosophically?
    How may ideas of despair be juggled effectively, to go beyond the deadend of pessimism and thinking — Jack Cummins
    ↪Wayfarer
    :up: :up:

    So, I am asking how do you see the idea of despair, and hope, as philosophical concepts in making sense of the navigation of life possibilities? — Jack Cummins
    "You can't lose what you ain't never had" goes an old blues. In other words, without indulging yourself in hope, you won't ever have any hope to lose – no despair. "Amor fati", says Freddy Z and "Ja-sagen zum Leben" despite life's sorrows and in order to fully savor – eternalize – life's joys. IME, courage is first, above all other life-stances: the courage to live by only what we know, the courage to love despite as well as because of and the courage to thrive from whatever happens: sorrow, boredom or joy. :fire:

    Via creative expression, an epitome of courage:

    Tragicomedians, absurdists & blues people teach much about how to spite despair ... :death: :flower:

    Courage. That is the enabling virtue. All the other virtues are empty without courage. — Cornel West, at The New School, NYC 2023
  • Absolute nothingness is only impossible from the perspective of something
    I am simply saying the lack proof for the necessity of the existence of something; that is, we lack proof that reality is not a brute fact. — Ø implies everything
    :up: :up:
  • Absential Materialism
    ↪ucarr
    You misunderstand me (re: Spinoza's substance / being) by confusing "void" (that's metaphysical, not just "physical") with what I wrote about "spacetime" (i.e. a physical structure analogous to "an infinite mode of the extension attribute ...")
  • Absential Materialism
    Energy is [ ... ] immaterial in its thingness. — Gnomon
    So (rest) mass is "immaterial" too?
  • Absential Materialism
    How is your above definition of void ontically different from spacetime (and its virtual particles)? — ucarr
    As I discern the difference, "void" is a speculative supposition of fundamental reality (analogous to Spinoza's substance (or being)) whereas "spacetime", according to various formulations of quantum gravity, mathematically describes only an emergent physical structure (again, analoguous to an infinite mode of the extension attribute of Spinoza's substance (or a being)).
  • The Mind-Created World
    ↪baker
    Apparently, neither of us know what you are talking about ... I'm going to bed. :yawn:
  • The Mind-Created World
    You're ignoring the bolded part. — baker
    I ignore mere assertions (bolded or not) which lack argument or evidence to warrant them.

    Existence just is the case.
    — 180 Proof

    And a mind is needed to make such a
    declaration.
    That seems ass-backwards to me, baker. "A mind" presupposes existence whether or not a "declaration" is made – whether or not it's "known something exists".
  • TPF Quote Cabinet
    ↪Sir2u
    ↪Mikie
    :up:

    Stupidity, n. Habitual refusal to think (i.e. maladaptive judgment or conduct); H. Arendt's "banality" ...

    *

    The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything. — Milan Kundera
  • Absential Materialism
    ↪jgill
    :up:

    How do Democritus, Epicurus and you define void? — ucarr
    I 'm confident they would say existence (i.e. being); however, I prefer to think of "void" as the real (i.e. the ineluctable exceeding, or encompassing horizon, of both (human) effability and rationality). Another way of putting it: there are 'dynamics' in every sense, we say, only because void fundamentally affords 'changes, combinatorials, contingencies, chance' – or, in contemporary terms, universal computability (re: D. Deutsch, S. Lloyd, S. Wolfram, M. Tegmark ... Spinoza ...)
  • What would Aristotle say to Plato if Plato told him he's in the cave?
    So, the "Cave" is a nice allegory. a shadow on its own walls with no absolute meaning. — Janus
    :fire:
  • The Mind-Created World
    From a perspective outside both, treating mind as an observed phenomena, which we can't actually do, as we're not outside it. — Wayfarer
    Not true, Wayf. You forget language – each of us is always "outside" of each other's "mind" – thus the emergent, grammatical-symbolic commons that both facilitates and obscures our shared mentalities, or this cultural media. Yes, we cannot get "outside" of our own minds, but, as a baseline, each of us unavoidably "observes" the effects of others' minds and lives responding accordingly to their activities.

    We don't experience ourselves as being inside a mind, but as being inside a body which is inside the world. We don't experience our minds as being radically free or absolute but as being constrained and contingent upon our bodies ... — Janus
    :up:

    We are outside the minds of other people. — wonderer1
    :up:

    Everything we know points to mind (as an activity) being dependent on non-mind, on material existence/ existents. — Janus
    :100: :up:

    There are two understandings of nihilism: Nietzsche understood Christianity, and any notion of revelation, of received or imposed meaning, as being nihilistic in the sense that it nihilates the radical human capacity for creating meaning.
    :scream: Dionysus versus the Crucified.

    On the other hand, nihilism in the positive sense is simply the lack of received/ imposed meaning which grants to humanity a great freedom and creativity,
    :fire: Amor fati.
  • What would Aristotle say to Plato if Plato told him he's in the cave?
    Plato: "You're stuck in the cave! You're busy dealing with the shadow of the forms. True knowledge is in the world of ideas." ... — dani
    Aristotle: "And so your story of the cave is also a shadow and therefore does not reflect true knowledge either. Thus, the aporia of true knowledge remains ... and yet maybe such recurring questions are the forms, after all, and our fleeting answers (or stories) are the shadows."
  • Currently Reading
    ↪Manuel
    Thank you! :cool:
  • James Webb Telescope
    ↪Wayfarer
    :up:
  • James Webb Telescope
    I really feel for the teams that put these missions together, it must take years of work, thousands of person-hours, and exquisite engineering. So when a mission fails - which happens a lot - I can only imagine how heart-breaking it would be for those teams. — Wayfarer
    :up: And yet all those folks are committed to James T. Kirk-san's motto: "Risk is our business!"
    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4ErkeFA-QWk

    :nerd:
  • Absential Materialism
    ↪ucarr
    Classical atomism is monist – atoms are aspects (à la density differentials) of void, not separable from, or transcendent of, void – so no "dualism" (like e.g. platonism, hylomorphism, etc).
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    I still think Michelle Obama could be chosen at the convention, with Biden retiring. She would have my vote. — jgill
    Well, I hope the ticket of either Gavin Newsom & Gretchen Witmer or Gretchen Witmer & Gavin Newsom comes out of the Dem's 2024 convention. They would electrify this dead-ass electorate and blowout Loser-1 or any other MAGA-GOP stooge this fall. :victory: :smirk:
  • Absential Materialism
    @ucarr, how does this "absential materialism" metaphysically differ from Democritean-Epicurean atomism (i.e. swirling atoms in void)?
Home » 180 Proof