• Luck
    ↪Agent Smith
    Never mind.
  • Deep Songs

    w/lyrics
    "What a Fool Believes" (3:41)
    Minute by Minute, 1979
    writers M. MacDonald & K. Loggins
    The Doobie Brothers

    *


    "Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me)" (3:54)
    Sky's the Limit, 1971
    writers N. Whifield & B. Strong
    The Temptations
  • What are you listening to right now?

    "She's Nineteen Years Old" (3:14)
    A-side single, 1958
    Muddy Waters

    *

    "These Arms of Mine" (2:35)
    A-side single, 1962
    Otis Redding
  • Luck
    ↪Agent Smith
    I've been waiting for over four decades for someone to point to or cite an description of 'the sufficient reason for the PSR'. Since +99% of nature is vacuum consisting of random (i.e. a-causal) quantum fluctuations, to the extent the PSR obtains, it is an ex post facto mirage of epistemology (like 'intentionality') and not a feature (or bug) of fundamental ontology (pace Leibniz et al). Of course, I could be mistaken ... but then the question of "What is the PSR of random processes (e.g. vacuum fluctations, quantum uncertainty, spontaneous symmetry-breaking, etc)?" seems begged at least. :chin:

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/693943

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/720487
  • The Futility of the idea of “True Christian Doctrine”
    ↪Agent Smith
    :fire: :100:
  • A definition of "evil"
    But if you had to describe the most heinous evil one could commit what would it be? — Benj96
    'To deliberately inflict and prolong, willfully ignore or derive pleasure from suffering' is my quick & dirty idea of evil.
  • Luck
    ↪Yohan
    :up:
    ↪Agent Smith
    No.
  • Near death experiences. Is similar or dissimilar better?
    ... in relation to the nature of a potential other reality. The Quantum Mind is surely an interesting proposition ... — Mojo
    :sparkle: :ok: :meh:

    I recommend more research on this phenomenon ... — Agent Smith
    What "phenomenon"? :roll:
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/586454
  • Does Camus make sense?
    ↪introbert
    Not "aggro'd", just calling you out on your conspicuously uninformed misinterpretations of Camus and the other philosophers you've mentioned, misinterpretations on which you seem incorrigibly fixated, introbert. I've posted a quite good youtube on Camus for the sake of other lazy neophytes who might be mislead by your superficial OP, etc.
  • Does Camus make sense?
    :roll: For those too "busy" to read Camus ...

  • A merit-based immigration policy vs. a voluntary eugenics policy in regards to reproduction?
    ↪Agent Smith
    :up:
  • Aliens don’t exist.
    ↪Mojo
    :up: :up:

    My own take on the implausibility that "we are alone" :nerd:
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/380306
  • Right brained thinking in science...
    ↪jgill
    :up:
  • The Futility of the idea of “True Christian Doctrine”
    "Eppur si muove." ~Galileo Galilei
    Rome did not much care what you believed so long as you observed obsequence to the Emperor. They worried about what you did, not what you thought. Christianity seems to have been the source of right-think. — Banno
    Thought crime. :eyes:

    IIRC, Camus drew totalitarian parallels between Communism and Christianity on this basis in The Rebel, which butt hurt Parisian communists back in the day and ended his friendship with Sartre and others. Or maybe it was Arendt ...
  • Antinatalism Arguments
    ↪schopenhauer1

    No complaining, please.     — Ciceronianus
    He can't stop himself; "complaining", you see, expresses schop1's will to live. :death:
  • The Futility of the idea of “True Christian Doctrine”
    IFF a truth is "divine" (i.e. "revealed"), then it should not be open to interpretation; thus, Christian scriptures do not express "the divine, revealed truth".
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Today, a prominent MAGA mouth-breather, insurrectionist & conspiracy propagandist bankrupted himself & his great-grandchildren :clap:
    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-63237092 Fuck 'em! :lol:
  • Aliens don’t exist.
    ↪an-salad
    What if we – DNA, RNA, etc – are "aliens"?
  • Does Camus make sense?
    ↪Tom Storm
    :fire:
  • Nature of the Philosophical Project
    Pragmatism tends to avoid ethics, or attempt to subsume it into other areas - metaphysics and so on. — Banno
    Really? :chin:
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatic_ethics

    So maybe the problem here is that you believe in frequentist ensembles and other products of modal realism? This is the reductionist image fixed in your mind? — apokrisis
    Maybe the problem is I'm not a possibilist (i.e. actualism as well as an probabilist (ergo fallibilism)) and do not "believe" "possibilities" (abstraction entities) are "caused".
  • Nature of the Philosophical Project
    A context limits what is possible. — apokrisis
    I think, rather, a context limits what is probable.

    So it is an apophatic cause.
    What?

    It causes by suppressing what might otherwise be the case.
    This makes about as much sense as saying the living room floor I'm standing on "causes" me not to be standing on the living floor in the apartment below.
  • Nature of the Philosophical Project
    ↪Pantagruel
    Montaigne :up:
  • Nature of the Philosophical Project
    ↪Banno
    No. IIRC, 'First Philosophy' concerns archai, or first principles, of theoria (ontology theology & cosmology) and, by implication, phronesis.
  • How Much Is Certain or Uncertain in Life and Philosophy?
    ↪Jack Cummins
    Referring back to the OP: "uncertainty in philosophy" is doubt; "uncertainty in life" is emotional confusion and/or unquantifiable risk. The latter is more urgent yet less profound than the former though. Life seems a game in which we never have enough time to learn enough of its rules in order to make the best moves. So, Jack, angst or amor fati? (i.e. neurosis or psychosis? – or, instead, skepsis?) The Absurd says 'God does not play with loaded dice.' :smirk:

    Doubting is purely subjective, whereas the indubitable is objective. — Pantagruel
    I disagree. When there are publicly accessible grounds to doubt, doubting is not subjective and not to doubt is subjective.
  • How Much Is Certain or Uncertain in Life and Philosophy?
    ↪Pantagruel
    However doubt presupposes the indubitable, don't you think?
  • Does Camus make sense?
    Are we engaged in recursive grunt work, or a form of ritual? Is this grind and toil an act of self-creation or of self-sabotage? — Tom Storm
    Ritual grunt work. Creative self-sabotage. The reflex of respiration is absurd, no? Camus says, in effect, human dignity only manifests in clear-eyed living – without evasions or nostalgias or indifference – in spite of the world's indifference to human life. Makes sense to me.
  • Nature of the Philosophical Project
    ↪Banno
    So Aristotle et al are wrong about 'First Philosophy' being first (i.e. fundamental)?
  • How Much Is Certain or Uncertain in Life and Philosophy?
    ↪Jack Cummins
    From your previous thread on "uncertainty" ...
    Psychological uncertainty and epistemological uncertainty are very different in my mind. — 180 Proof
  • Does Camus make sense?
    It's only by reading a multitude of interpretations and judging their relative merits that you'd be able to select the right one at all. So, at a bare minimum, even presuming there is a correct reading, the point would be to make sure the explanation or interpretation you have on hand is the right one or not. — Moliere
    :up:

    ↪introbert
    :roll:
  • How Much Is Certain or Uncertain in Life and Philosophy?
    ↪Agent Smith
    :clap:
    "Certum est, quia impossibile" ~Tertullian — 180 Proof
  • Is it possible to be morally wrong even if one is convinced to do the right thing?
    ↪hypericin
    :up:

    ↪Agent Smith
    :death: :flower:
    Read Laozi & Zhuangzi.
    Read Epicurus-Lucretius & Seneca-Epictetus.
    Read Spinoza & Nietzsche.
    Read P. Foot & M. Nussbaum.
    Like waves in the ocean, humans belong to nature – for better and worse. Yeah, we "stand out" but not so much that we are separate from or rise above nature anymore than ocean waves are separate from or rise above the ocean.
  • Nature of the Philosophical Project
    The ideal as a goal is in a sense not-real though, isn't it? — Pantagruel
    :up:
  • Does quantum physics say nothing is real?
    ↪Agent Smith
    :sparkle: :victory:

    Hey! A dead cat from QM sings"nothing is real" ...
    Living is easy with eyes closed
    Misunderstanding
    all you see
    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5lUZvNljHU8
  • Foundational Questions of Physics & Metaphysics
    ↪GLEN willows
    Fyi – On the contrary, scientists build models from which they derive predictions in order to test (falsify) their models. When a model has survived a gauntlet of the most rigorous experimental tests which other scientists can throw at it, usually by abduction at least a plurality, if not majority, of the community of scientists will eventually consider the model provisionally useful enough – a working theory – which they can rely on to guide further research and build different (or better) models. The point is: scientists do not "prove" anything because science is a critical, experimental, explanatory activity and not a "belief system". Modern natural science is the only social institution I'm aware of that manifestly is based on, however imperfectly, criticizing and correcting its own productive work.
  • Luck
    ↪Nils Loc
    :clap: :sweat: That's life!
  • Does Camus make sense?
    I should have thought that philosophy was about finding the truth, which is necessarily singular ... — god must be atheist
    You have confused philosophy with mathematics. Proposing criteria for judging and methods for "finding the truth" is not itself "finding the truth". Philosophical statements are useful – suppositional – at best; they're not truthful – propositional – themselves (e.g. the problem of the criterion, the hermeneutic circle, reflective equilibrium, language-games, dialectics, etc). In philosophy, perhaps more than any other rational discipline, answers are merely how questions generate more questions ... Thus, Sisyphus' boulder is also known as "the philosopher's stone." :fire: :eyes:
  • Nature of the Philosophical Project
    ↪Manuel
    :cool:

    ↪apokrisis
    I do not conceive of "global constraints" as "causal", perhaps because I'm not convinced that a systems science paradigm provides an adequate framework, or model, of the universe (i.e. whole of nature). Your thoughts on this topic are very insightful and deeply provocative – I'm still processing the briefs on biosemiotics, etc you've shared, apo – but "my ontology", simplistic though it may be, consists of this mereological constraint: local dynamics (e.g. biosemiotics) cannot, without performative self-contradiction, encompass the global structure (e.g. the cosmos) that also encompasses those local dynamics.
  • Is it possible to be morally wrong even if one is convinced to do the right thing?
    ↪god must be atheist
    Your prior statement below I called into question as incoherent because your statement implies that a practice we humans use to regulate expressions of human nature, which is sapient constituent of more-than-just-human-nature aka "Nature", does not belong to (or in) "Nature".
    Trying to apply human morality to nature is unnatural. — god must be atheist
    Since humans are natural beings and therefore inseparable from nature, applying human morality to ourselves is indistinguishable from applying human morality to nature, and therefore not "unnatural". Maybe, in most instances, to do so is impractical, missplaced, anthropomorphizing, etc; not, however, "unnatural".

    Besides, we cannot help but "apply human morality to nature" insofar as we judge our environments and ecosystems as not worthy of our moral concern, thereby denying any moral culpability for us destroying them and their natural inhabitants with our thermal & chemical pollution, overdevelopment, non-renewable resource extraction, etc.
  • Nature of the Philosophical Project
    teleological minimalism — apokrisis
    :roll:

    ↪Agent Smith
    "BothAnd", no? :smirk:
  • Pantheism
    I can't give up my belief in God either because it's a concept that gives meaning to life and death. — Michael McMahon
    Well, since "God" is infinite, the meaning of "life and death" must be infinitesmal, or zero, by comparison. It stands to reason that whether or not one "believes" amounts to the same objective "meaninglessness".
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