• Is indirect realism self undermining?
    Indirect realism is probably the most prevalent ontological view in the world today. — frank
    I think you're mistaken, frank. "Indirect realism" is an epistemological view (i.e. representationalism).

    The question is: does indirect realism undermine itself?
     I don't see how.
  • Penrose & Hameroff Proto-consciousness
    Far be it for me to take issue with a Nobel physicist's pseudo-philosophical confusions (e.g. Roger Penrose's X-of-the-gaps) but ...

    1. What is proto-consciousness? — Eugen
    A vague placeholder for a conceptual placeholder for a feature of our folk psychology (i.e. subjective intuition).

    2. How is proto-consciousness differentiated from matter?
    The latter corresponds to bodies and the former corresponds to the (vaguest) idea of bodies.

    3. What is the difference between consciousness and proto-consciousness?
    The latter is a vague (aka "proto") placeholder for the former conceptual placeholder.
  • The difference between religion and faith
    Is parsing out the difference between faith and religion in this way a kind of special pleading? You like faith, and dislike religion, so religion is responsible for bad things but not faith. — BC
    :up: :up:

    ↪Wayfarer
    Agreed. :eyes:
  • The difference between religion and faith
    ↪Wayfarer
    And my point is that Ms Armstrong's critique is misplaced for blaming "modern culture" (i.e. Enlightenment rationality) when the culprit, in fact, is the documented tenets of Pauline Christianity itself, beginning with Paul's letters (NT), then centuries of Patristic apologia which culminated in the Nicene Creed (381 CE). In this way, as she points out, Christianity is an aberration of dogmatic orthodoxy (re: pre-modern scholasticism, Eastern Orthodox theology, Thomism ... and then Reformed Protestantism, etc) among other Abrahamic as well as Dharmic religions (and most pagan / pantheonic cults).
  • Does God exist?
    If we take the premise "god = existence", then the question "does god exist" is redundant as its like saying "does existence exist?" — Benj96
    :up:
  • Deep Songs

    "Can't Outrun The Truth" (3:12)
    single, 2023
    Pete Townsend

    :death: :flower:
  • Does God exist?
    ↪Raef Kandil
    :halo:

    "God" is so badass "God" doesn't even have to exist. (pace Anselm)
  • Do we deserve to exist and be alive?
    ↪Sir2u
    :up:
  • The difference between religion and faith
    ↪Wayfarer
    Contra Karen Armstrong's revisionary insistance that Christianity is not a fundamentally creedal soteriology, consider
    Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. — Galatians 2:16, KJV
    (Emphasis is mine.)

    Here's a further exigesis: https://caseyjaywork.wordpress.com/2012/08/10/184/

    Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. — Romans 3:28, KJV
    (Emphasis is mine.)

    ⁸For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:

    ⁹Not of works, lest any man should boast.     — Ephesians 2:8-9, KJV
    (Emphasis is mine.)

    Besides these excerpts from Paul's letters (c48, 57, 62 CE), there is the Protestant theological doctrine of Sola fide that is grounded in both Pauline scriptures as well as Patristic and Scholastic apologia. Not "an accident of history", or modernity. As much as I respect Karen Armstrong's writings on religion, I find their revisionary departures from scholarship undermine her credibility as a scholar (who pretends not to be latter day apologist). A former Catholic nun, Ms. Armstrong apparently ignores or dismisses the doctrinal substance of Protestant and pre-Catholic Christianity as if the devil in the historical details do not still matter.
  • The difference between religion and faith
    All I am saying is: religion and faith are totally different things. — Raef Kandil
    I suppose "religion" is the institutionalization of fetish-making/regulating/prohibiting (i.e. enforced dogma) whereas 'faith" is personal fetish-using (i.e. make-believe) such that the latter does not require the former – what you call "liberation", Raef – but the former very much depends on the latter.
  • What is the Challenge of Cultural Diversity and Philosophical Pluralism?
    ↪Jack Cummins
    We have different conceptions of philosophy, it seems; I don't think philosophy is "knowledge" even though it often concerns itself with how we can know and making explicit the (our) limits of knowing.

    I know that you got to the point of questioning while you were still at school when you gave up 'God' for lent. But, was the decision based simply on the basis of the rationality alone, or irrationally of the idea of God?
    After years of bible study, church history, and the history of the making of the bible as well as its uses in politics for over a millennia, I could not find anymore evidence for Christianity's claims than I could for those of Greco-Roman religious myths, for example, or could not distinguish rationally between "Jesus & Thor" or "Yahweh & Zeus". Perhaps it was, as the Church teaches, I'd simply lacked "grace" and realized that during my Jesuit high school years. :pray: Losing my religion, Jack, was certainly the catalyst for my life-long interest in philosophy (i.e. reflective reasoning & conduct) and not the other way around. :fire:
  • Do we deserve to exist and be alive?
    ... inherently superior to being a rock. — TiredThinker
    "To be a rock and not to roll ..." :smirk:
  • Does God exist?
    I have never considered a higher power at any point and never had a problem with death, I have no idea with you mean by 'fate' but if you mean 'whatever happens to us' then I 've never had an issue with that either. — Tom Storm
    :fire:
  • Does God exist?
    The word "God" refers to an anxiety rather than an entity.

    ↪Tom Storm
    :up:
  • Do we deserve to exist and be alive?
    But what questions could one ask to determine if one deserves to merely exist? — TiredThinker
    Suppose either we do or we do not "deserve to merely exist", what existential difference does that distinction make?
  • Blurring the Moral Realist vs. Anti-Realist Distinction
    An architect draws up plans for a building that does not exist. The plans are general instructions (commands) for the construction of the building. To complain to the architect that the building does not exist would be foolish; what matters is, if and when the instructions are followed, will the building stand, or collapse? And if it stands, will it provide whatever requirements for shelter and comfort were envisioned? — unenlightened
    :fire: :up:
  • What is the Challenge of Cultural Diversity and Philosophical Pluralism?
    Thinking about it more, the way I see it is that truth, reason or understanding are based on experience. — Jack Cummins
    I think one's commitment to a philosophical position or way of life can be "based on experience" but "truth, reason or understanding", which constitute doing philosophy, are not themselves "based on experience".

    Of course, each person is a unique person in an ongoing process of structuring a philosophy outlook but intersectionality is likely to have some bearing on this.
    While the aporia with which one's inquiries and thinking begin might be functions of, or related to, one's bio-social psychology, the "philosophical outlook" which might follow is no more dependent on, or validated by, how aporia are selected than a mathematical theorem is dependent on how its axioms are selected or a musical composition is dependent on how its scale, notes & key-changes are selected. That seems a genetic fallacy, Jack.
  • Emergence
    ↪universeness
    I suspect we humans (e.g. bacteria) will only directly interact with AGI (e.g. guts) and never interact with ASI (e.g. CNS). Maybe ASI might take interest in our post-posthuman descendants (but why would ASI bother to 'uplift' them to such a comparatively alien (hyper-dimensional) condition?). If and when we "merge" with (i.e. be uplifted by) AGI, I think, "the human condition" will cease and posthumanity, however unevenly distributed (à la W. Gibson / Burroughs) will have abandoned – forfeited – its primate ancestry once and for all. Post-Singularity, my friend, the explosion of "options" AGI-human "merging" may bring about might be a (beneficial) two/three generations-long human extinction event. And only then will the post-evolutionary hyper-developmental fun really begin: "My God, it's full of stars!" :nerd: :fire:

    Thus Spoke 180 Proof
  • What is the Challenge of Cultural Diversity and Philosophical Pluralism?
    'is philosophy a quest for reason' — Jack Cummins
    I see. The correction still confuses me, though differently. If philisophy is a form of reason (re: reflective), how is "a quest for reason", in this sense, anything but chasing its own tail (à la trying to lift oneself off the ground by one's own hair)? To my mind philosophy is a quest for understanding ...

    ... competing 'truths' rather than these simply being simply relative.
    Given your question, Jack, it seemed to me more relevant to associate "competing" with relative (e.g. multiple dogmas) instead of complementary suggesting plurality (e.g. multiple versions of the same X). Then again, a "maze" consists of multiple paths, which complement one another, so "pluralism" after all. :chin:
  • Heidegger’s Downfall
    ↪Fooloso4
    :fire: :100:
  • What is the Challenge of Cultural Diversity and Philosophical Pluralism?
    "Let no one ignorant of geometry enter." :smirk:

    So, I am asking how do you think about making sense in the maze of philosophical pluralism[relativism]? — Jack Cummins
    Well, for starters, I'm numerate ... sophistry & dogma don't confuse me.

    Also, to what extent is reason a quest for reason, a search for personal meaning or connected to power balances or imbalances in social structures?
    Please rephrase or reformulate this question.
  • Heidegger’s Downfall
    ↪Mikie
    :ok:
  • Currently Reading
    Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, Diarmaid MacCollouch — Count Timothy von Icarus
    IIRC, quite good. :up:
  • Heidegger’s Downfall
    ↪fdrake
    Good thing I didn't say you couldn't use Heidi's text for anything else. I suppose that would be disingenuous.
  • Heidegger’s Downfall
    ↪Manuel
    :up:
    I've been grateful to Heidegger, nonetheless, since my earliest philosophical studies in the late '70s for his monumental oeuvre as a/the paragon of how NOT to philosophize - or think-live philosophically (as Arendt points out) - as manifest by the generations of heideggerian obscurant sophists (i.e. p0m0s e.g. Derrida, Baudrillard, Lyotard, Rorty et al) who've come and gone in and out of academic & litcrit fashion since the 1950s - — 180 Proof
  • Heidegger’s Downfall
    [deleted]
  • Currently Reading
    ↪T Clark
    :up:
  • Heidegger’s Downfall
    ↪Fooloso4
    :fire:

    ↪Mikie
    Heidegger was a philosopher, not an ideologue or pampleteer. Being and Time isn't a derivative treatise of Mein Kampf; it is, however, like the Nazi bible (which Heidegger wholly endorsed and recommended in an extant letter to his own brother) as I described previously
    ... anti-modernist, pre/ir-rationalist ("blood"), agrarian ("soil"), totalizing & oracular. — 180 Proof
    He did not find his "thinking" compatible with that of most modern thinkers during inter-war years Europe but Heidegger enthusiastically embraced Hitler's "ideas" as compatible with his own, and enough so that he promptly jumped on the Nazi bandwagon after 'the Reichstag fire' and subsequent Enabling Act decree when most other notable, modern, (non-Jewish) German philisophers (e.g. Jaspers, Gadamer, Carnap) had not.

    ↪fdrake
    Of course, taken out of context, you have a point about a statement like my saying "Dasein is Hitler-compatible". Consider (scroll down):
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/658391 "der Fūhrerprinzip"-compatible? :chin:

    I agree that it should be read in that context, do you believe the ideas he had should only be read in that context? — fdrake
    No. The historical-cultural-political context is, however, the most relevant context to the question of the degree to which Heidegger's political affilitation and activity are reflected in his major philosophical work which he had so recently published. Other contextual readings, in this case, may provide nuances which supplement our understanding of the text but they are too ancillary to exculpate SuZ of its ideological affordances.
  • Heidegger’s Downfall
    This is a fallacy called reductio ad Hitlerum. — frank
    Non sequitur.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Cue the gaslighting MAGA assholes & FOX Noise suckers ... e.g.
    I don’t know nor care about the details. — NOS4A2
    :clap: :lol:
  • Heidegger’s Downfall
    Being and Time was published in 1927, well before Nazis came to power. There’s nothing in there about Nazism. — Mikie
    Only if you read the text out of context. Otherwise, SuZ is anti-modernist, pre/ir-rationalist ("blood"), agrarian ("soil"), totalizing & oracular. Fascism was in ascendancy in post-WWI Europe and fascist parties like the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterparte (NSDAP) were very active in Weimar Germany several years before Heidegger published in 1927. Historical context matters, Mikie. As an academic ambitious to make his mark, Heidi addressed his contemporaries – intellectual, and ideological, Mitläufer – according to the Zeitgeist of that era. As a matter of hermeneutic scruple, SuZ should be read in that cultural-ideological context; I don't think my characterization above is hyperbolic or uncharitable considering the Völkische Bewegung milieu.
    Again, the Dasein was Hitler-compatible ... — 180 Proof
    :brow:
  • Heidegger’s Downfall
    In 1969 Stanley Rosen published "Nihilism: A Philosophical Essay". It can be described as Plato against Heidegger. Rosen said:

    "Nihilism is the concept of reason separated from the concept of the good."     — Fooloso4
    :clap: :fire:
  • Currently Reading
    ↪T Clark
    Are you familiar with Dao De Jing: A Philosophical Translation by Roger Ames & David Hall? If so, what do you think of it? I've found it a much more insightful reading (between the lines) than any other version of Laozi's text. I've been meaning to reread it for quite some time ...
  • Is progress an illusion?
    "Scarcity" seems the fundamental driver of dominance hierarchies and imperialism that no amount of "progress" has put an end to or significantly diminished — 180 Proof

    Fundamentally, as a species we keep repeating the same mistakes in many areas of life such as ecology, politics, markets, social justice, religions, historiography, fashion, philosophies, etc which – except to those Panglossians missing the forest for the trees – render advances in the sciences and technology trivial by comparison with respect to the human condition. In the last several millennia, 'we' have not progressed beyond a scarcity-based, anxiety-driven 'global civilization', so what does it mean to say "Look at all the progress we've made" especially today in light of the world's slums and ghettos, indigenous reservations and refugee camps, failed states and environmental disaster zones, and global arms trade shows? :chin:
  • Currently Reading
    ↪Pantagruel
    :up:

    ↪Pantagruel
    :up:
  • Deep Songs
    I watched with glee
    while your Kings and Queens
    fought for ten decades
    for the Gods they made!

    Happy St. Paddy's! :party: :halo:
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    FOX Noise just got hit with a second defamation suit for $2.7 billion by Smartmatic (adding to Dominion Voting Machine's $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit) and "Individual-1" was notified that he's imminently becoming "Defendent-1" :clap: . Belated Happy St. Paddy's! :party:

    ↪Fooloso4
    :up:

    ↪Baden
    :lol:

    ↪NOS4A2
    :rofl:
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    "Individual-1" apparently has been notified he is about to become "Defendent-1" within a few days. Imminently. :smirk:

    ↪Count Timothy von Icarus
    :smile:

    ↪BC
    :up:
  • Where do thoughts come from? Are they eternal? Does the Mindscape really exist?
    Does the mindscape really exist? — Art48
    "Really exist'? :chin:

    As far as I can discern it (i'm a fan of Rudy Rucker, btw),"the mindscape" is only an idea – like Max Tegmark's 'mathematical universe hypothesis' or George Ellis' 'possibility spaces' – a provocative (platonic) supposition.

    Can metaphysical questions, in particular, the mindscape hypothesis, give us useful guidance into how to study and make sense of the world? — Art48
    I think (post-Kantian) "metaphysical questions" (mostly) make explicit the limits of reason for "making sense of the world".
  • "Don't wish for an easy life. Wish for the strength to handle a hard life."
    ↪TiredThinker
    I'm not a fan of "hope". Courage – making an ally of fear – is what matters most. Play the cards life has dealt you the best you can, TiredT, or fold 'em.
    ... you're on earth, there's no cure for that! — Samuel Beckett, Endgame
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