• TPF Quote Cabinet
    I am completely an elitist in the cultural but emphatically not the social sense. I prefer the good to the bad, the articulate to the mumbling, the aesthetically developed to the merely primitive, and full to partial consciousness. I love the spectacle of skill, whether it's an expert gardener at work or a good carpenter chopping dovetails. I don't think stupid or ill-read people are as good to be with as wise and fully literate ones. I would rather watch a great tennis player than a mediocre one, unless the latter is a friend or a relative. — Robert Hughes, art critic
  • If there was a God what characteristics would they have?
    ↪TiredThinker
    Why ask if you've already answered for yourself contra every extant, religious-"god" tradition?
  • Pop Philosophy and Its Usefulness
    Australian art critic Robert Hughes, a man of modernist, old-school inclinations. — Tom Storm
    :clap: Brilliant quote. (I miss his work and interviews.)

    Is there not a place for articles like this, and pop philosophy in general? — Mikie
    It's the same place where e.g. Musak, juice bars and horoscopes belong.

    Are they helpful or do they do more harm than good?
    Same as sugar.

    Was my initial reaction just an instance of snobbery, a kind of intellectual elitism?
    Elitism. :up:

    Can it even be done better than the philosophers and spiritual leaders from which it derives?
    'Cheap knock-offs' are just that: cheap.
  • Reasons to call Jesus God
    ↪Fooloso4
    :up:
  • Reasons to call Jesus God
    I’m merely asking you to entertain for a few minutes the idea that Jesus was just a normal human being who had some good teachings about how to live. — Art48
    I don't think so. For instance, Rabbi Yeshua ben Yosef is reported to have taught support of "evil" by not resisting "evil-doers" (re: "turn the other cheek" Matthew 5:38–42, "love your enemies" Luke 6:27–31, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me" Matthew 16:24, etc). :brow:

    Not a "word" preached against marital rape or incest, against slavery, against executions, or in favor of thinking for oneself – nothing but teachings on how to live self-abegnating lives like "sheep" to be flocked and fleeced by "the shepherd" for his piously mysterious (i.e. "revealed") purpose.

    If the idea were true, would there be some sort of reason or motive for people to say Jesus is God anyway?
    Idolatry. Familial/sectarian indoctrination. Masochistic gullibility (re: conversion).
  • If there was a God what characteristics would they have?
    ↪Tom Storm
    :100:
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    1 down and three to go in 2023
    The timeline of MAGA Loser #1's legal reckoning for his 2016-2023 crime spree (excluding potentially ruinous civil lawsuits) is taking a definite shape:

    1. NYC felony indictment 31Mar23 :up:
    "34 counts of Business Documents Fraud Crealing and/or Covering-up Felonies", etc

    https://apnews.com/article/trump-indictment-full-document-640043319549?utm_source=homepage&utm_medium=RelatedStories&utm_campaign=position_02

    2. Fulton County, GA  (pending by 1May23)
    "Suborning Election Fraud", etc

    [link indictments here]

    3. South Florida (pending by 1Jun23) "Mishandled Documents & Obstruction of Justice", etc

    [link indictments here]

    4. Washington, DC (pending 1Sept23 > DoJ might save this one for 1Dec24 :eyes:)
    "J6 Insurrection", etc

    [link indictments here]
  • The hard problem of matter.
    I need an explanation as to how an activity is "matter". — Metaphysician Undercover
    Aren't 'things' periodic patterns of ("indivisible")^ events? Re/acquaint yourself, MU, with thermodynamics (re: plasma, steam, liquid ...) Also, read old Epicurus (and/or Lucretius) on 'swirling swerving atoms^ recombing in void'. :fire:
  • The hard problem of matter.
    ↪jgill

    What is the known ontology of matter? — Metaphysician Undercover
    Fermions & bosons.

    OTOH, the (modern) specularive ontology of matter has been designated "an idea" (Berkeley), "a phenomenon" (Kant) or "res extensa" (Descartes) ...
  • If there was a God what characteristics would they have?
    What are the prerequisites of being a god? — TiredThinker
    You tell me. Epicurus' "Riddle" (linked above) suggests some essential "prerequisites. Whatever they are, they should make the entity worthy of being worshipped (i.e. worthy of being called a "god"), no?

    Besides, of all the "gods" we can imagine, TT, the only (creator) ones consistent with the world as is it in all of its pitiless, raw & brutal indifference, as I've already stated, is either a "sadist god" (i.e. demon) or "fictional god" (i.e. hollow idol).
  • Fear of Death
    ↪green flag
    :fire:
  • The Being of Meaning
    I call myself an 'atheist' as a shorthand for not 'that' kind of theist. My God is a devouring fire. He eats atheists himself for breakfast. — green flag
    :clap: :halo:
  • What is needed to think philosophically?
    At what point can thinking be classified as having the attribute, philosophically? — Alexander Hine
    I suppose when first-order calculation (object) becomes higher-order reflection (meta), one begins thinking "philosophically".
  • Collective intelligence and collective moral
    ↪Vera Mont
    :up:
  • Fear of Death
    The fear of God Time is the beginning of wisdom philosophy. — green flag
    Wonder in spite of "fear" – the shock of 'appearing and disappearing' – may spark deliberative reflections; absent wonder, however, I think "fear" itself just reinforces superstitions.

    if life is evanescent and everything is eventually forgotten, then the moment matters more. — Tom Storm
    :fire:
  • Bannings
    @green flag Welcome back!

    @fdrake @Baden :cool:
  • Neuroscience is of no relevance to the problem of consciousness
    Neuroscience has nothing to say about phenomenal consciousness. — bert1
    :roll: I can think of several significant cognitive neuroscientists who have plenty to say which is informed by observational data on this topic, unlike philosophers who only speculate about their anecdotal, folk ideas of "phenomenal consciousness". Maybe you should read some of the relevant scientific literature, bert.
  • If there was a God what characteristics would they have?
    Can we assume they aren't omnipotent? — TiredThinker
    As Epicurus concludes "then why call him God?"
  • Thoughts on the Meaning of Life
    ↪0 thru 9
    Thanks.
  • The hard problem of matter.
    Hmmm so do legs exist in anyway without walking? — TheMadMan
    :roll:

    Walking is what legs do just as minding (i.e. "consciousness") is what a sufficiently intact & self-reflexive CNS interacting with its dynamic environment does. No legs, no walking. No embodied cognition, no minding (i.e. "consciousness").
  • The hard problem of matter.
    ↪TheMadMan
    Walking (or running) gets bodies from place to place, maIntains / improves cardovascular fitness and strengthens legs, so the activity is not epiphenomenal.
  • Thoughts on the Meaning of Life
    So we are slaves to the rules of physics. — Benj96
    No we're not. We as a species made those "rules". What do you think our scientific progress (i.e. paradigm shifts) consists in? We govern ourselves – exercise freedom – to the degree we live adaptively by the rules which we make. That's not "slavery"; it's principled and/or lawful responsibility. C'mon, man, you're just rationalizing nonsense. If you need some Meaning / Purpose From On High, then just say you're espousing a religious worldview and defend that explicitly. What you seem to be saying, however, is unwarranted and nonsensical outside of a religious context. :roll:
  • Thoughts on the Meaning of Life
    That indeed may all be true 180Proof.
    And finally, in conclusion. How does that make you feel?     — Benj96
    If existence (e.g. "energy") has a Meaning / Purpose that we haven't created, then we are nothing but prostrate slaves before that alien Meaning/Purpose. I think our freedom as individual and collective agencies consist in us having to create, or make, our lives as meaningful / purposeful for ourselves and each other as we are able to day to day. Existence is a blank page or canvas; how will we fill it – with poetry, theorems, blueprints, musical scores, epic hero journeys, doodles, painted scenes, family histories & photos, philosophical treatises, pastoral sermons, political speeches, love letters, pornography, fashion designs, ambitious plans for explorations of distant planets & moons, or make intricate orgami figures ... or leave it blank? Or just splatter our brains all over it ... Non serviam, my friend. Amor fati.

    :death: :flower:
  • Thoughts on the Meaning of Life
    ↪Benj96
    Whatever "meaning" or "purpose" you find in X is the result of whatever you bring to X (e.g. just like logic or programming GIGO). Energy is used by us to make "meaning/purpose" but we are neither necessary nor inevitable with respect to energy; it exists whether or not we exist, and no matter what we make or do not make of it. "Meaning/purpose" are artifacts of adaptive embodied interests + discursive cognitions which are prior artifacts of local entropy gradients – energy long preceeds and absolutely encompasses ephemeral "meaning/purpose"-making blips in the void like us, Ben. :victory:
  • Meta-Philosophy: Types and Orientations
    ↪Janus
    Alrighty. :up:
    Well according to my parsimonious 'two types', I cop to philosophical naturalism (i.e. prioritizing ontological immanence over ontological non-immanence) in my praxes.
  • Thoughts on the Meaning of Life
    All of it is energy doing what it does best. Change. Creation. — Benj96
    Yeah, in the largest scope and longest run, "energy" (as you describe it, Ben) seems quite meaningless and purposeless since it cannot not do what it's doing.
  • Meta-Philosophy: Types and Orientations
    I would say the salient polemic is materiality vs ideality. If idealism were true it would be the reality. — Janus
    Maybe I should put the two types this way: naturalist (re: immanence) and non-naturalist (re: non-immanence).

    Anyway, as an aside, I think concepts like e.g. realism, materialism & idealism are suppositions and not propositional statements, so that being "true", as you suggest, Janus, isn't determinative; rather the self-consistency, contextual coherence with adjacent-concepts, descriptive clarity & communicative usefulness, for example, are more adequate criteria – rules-of-thumb – for de/selecting (or creating) philosophical concepts. What do you think? :chin:
  • The hard problem of matter.
    ↪Tom Storm
    :clap: :lol:
  • What is a good life?
    In sum: reflective & moral courage (i.e. lucid Sisyphusian/Promethean defiance) constitutes the good life.

    :death: :flower:
  • Meta-Philosophy: Types and Orientations
    I'm happy to be a fool. — Tom Storm
    A fool who know s/he's a fool or a fool who doesn't know? – that is the question. :smirk:

    [P]arsimony is good, but how parsimonious can we be while still being comprehensive? — Janus
    Two faces of every drachma: naturalist (i.e. reality) or non-naturalist (i.e. ideality). :fire:
  • If there was a God what characteristics would they have?
    An excerpt from old post:

    The only deity consistent with a world (it purportedly created and sustains) ravaged by natural afflictions (e.g. living creatures inexorably devour living creatures; congenital birth defects; etc), man-made catastrophes and self-inflicted interpersonal miseries is either a Sadist or a fiction – — 180 Proof
  • Spinoza’s Philosophy
    Interview with Rebecca Goldstein, philosopher & Antonio Damasio, neuroscientist (2014)



    Betraying Spinoza, Rebecca Goldstein

    Looking for Spinoza, Antonio Damasio
  • Fear of Death
    ↪L'éléphant
    My condolences. :death: :flower:
  • Ontological arguments for idealism
    You can't have overhead mental Ideality without its substrate of material Reality. — Gnomon
    Quite right, but the OP asks for arguments for ontological, not epistemological, idealism. Are you objecting to "ideality" as prior to – independent of – "non-ideality" and thereby also rejecting the premise of the OP?
  • The hard problem of matter.
    The physicalists have the hard problem of consciousness where consciousness is emergent from matter. — TheMadMan
    Well perhaps, except that "consciousness" is no more mysteriously "emergent from matter" than walking is emergent from legs or respiration is emergent from lungs or a symphony is emergent from an orchestra. "Consciousness" is a (higher mammalian) CNS activity, or process, and not a discrete entity. I think the "mind from matter" formulation, therefore, is a pseudo-problem (resulting from assumed fallacies of misplaced concreteness & category error) that's "hard" only for cartesian dualists, ontological idealists & mysterians; for physicalists and/or (most) cognitive neuroscientists, modeling "consciousness" is only a highly complex research project that's still very much a work-in-progress – which demonstrates that "consciousness" is not some simple, quantifiable 'brute fact' like gravity, electromagnetism or vacuum fluctuations.

    How does matter arise from consciousness?
    Good question. :up:

    Berkeley says "matter is an idea", no? Of course it is, and it is also more than just an idea – matter is the idea of more-than-/non-ideas (i.e. more-than-/non-consciousness).

    edit:

    NB: By "matter" – materiality – I understand embodied (i e. res extensia) as well as observational / experimental data. Physical then indicates any data-set (i.e. materials) which can be structured into a dynamic model. Rule of thumb concepts.
  • Emergence
    ↪universeness
    I don't grok your objections but I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on how non-anthropocentric 'the post-Singulaity era' will be. Anyway, back to philosopherizing! :wink:
  • Thoughts on the Meaning of Life
    Doing philosophy is not making up just-so stories. — Banno
    @Benj96 @Gnomon @Wayfarer et al
  • Ontological arguments for idealism
    ↪Ø implies everything
    Ontological naturalism, which I referred to, is the speculative generalization of "naturalism".
  • A challenge to rational theism. Only a defunct God is possible, not a presently existing one.
    ↪spirit-salamander
    The "defunct god" concept began with ...
    The Dao that can be told is not the eternal Dao. The names that can be named are not eternal names. — Laozi
    and culminates for me with https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/791947
  • Ontological arguments for idealism
    Cogito, ergo sum? No: Cogitatio est, ergo cogitatio est. — Ø implies everything
    :up:

    It seems to me that 'ontological idealism' entails absolute (i.e. "divine") solipsism, which – though conceptually unparsimonious – is, in practice, indistinguishable from ontological naturalism (e.g. epicurean atomism or spinozist realism). I think the arguments for the latter are cogent and existential in ways the former are not.
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