This is an excerpt from one of my favorite poems. It's the most romantic/Romantic part of a very, very, romantic/Romantic poem.

Nor forgotten was the Love-Song,
The most subtle of all medicines,
The most potent spell of magic,
Dangerous more than war or hunting!
Thus the Love-Song was recorded,
Symbol and interpretation.

First a human figure standing,
Painted in the brightest scarlet ;
'T is the lover, the musician,
And the meaning is, " My painting
Makes me powerful over others."

Then the figure seated, singing,
Playing on a drum of magic,
,And the interpretation, " Listen !
'T is my voice you hear, my singing ! "

Then the same red figure seated
In the shelter of a wigwam,
And the meaning of the symbol,
" I will come and sit beside you
In the mystery of my passion ! "

Then two figures, man and woman,
Standing hand in hand together,
With their hands so clasped together
That they seem in one united,
And the words thus represented
Are, " I see your heart within you,
And your cheeks are red with blushes ! "

Next the maiden on an island,
In the centre of an island ;
And the song this shape suggested
Was, " Though you were at a distance,
Were upon some far-off island,
Such the spell I cast upon you,
Such the magic power of passion,
I could straightway draw you to me ! "

Then the figure of the maiden
Sleeping, and the lover near her,
Whispering to her in her slumbers,
Saying, " Though you were far from me
In the land of Sleep and Silence,
Still the voice of love would reach you ! "

And the last of all the figures
Was a heart within a circle,
Drawn within a magic circle ;
And the image had this meaning :
" Naked lies your heart before me,
To your naked heart I whisper ! "

From "Song of Hiawatha" by Longfellow.

I tried to engage with you in a meaningful way about this topic. This type of response isn't exactly going to prompt me to keep trying. — Tzeentch

I think my response was completely meaningful, if a bit snarky. "Says who?" can be translated as "I disagree" with the snark added to tweak you for self-righteousness.

Lao Tzu - The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao.

Some guy - Hey, Lao Tzu, you're talking about something that can't be talked about. What's with that?

Lao Tzu - Tao as a thing is entirely illusive and evasive. Evasive and illusive. In it there is image. Illusive and evasive. In it there is thinghood. Dark and dim.

Some guy - This is such bullshit.

Lao Tzu - Go fuck yourself.

Is this Haiku, in your opinion, easier to deconstruct?

Demiurge

Imagination
Form giver to nothingness
Godlike in essence. — charles ferraro

Serious suggestion - Why don't we deconstruct it. Here's my attempt:

The poem is a haiku with the standard 5/7/5 syllable structure. The title, "Demiurge" typically refers to that which created the world. The poem seems to refer to the imagination as the demiurge, which implies, as the poem verifies, that the imagination is God. Or God is the imagination. Actually, it says "Godlike" and "in essence" which means "sort of." "Form giver to nothingness" is a common way of referring to how God created the world.

There are factors that could justify the making of significant decisions on someone else's behalf that apply to the raising of children, and not to the having of children. — Tzeentch

Says who?

The first, acting on behalf of another person's well-being. Assuming the parents' primary concern is the happiness of their child, this applied to the raising of children. However, the act of having children does not involve this, since there is no child on behalf of whose well-being one can act. — Tzeentch

Says who?

If the raising of children is not done with 1. The well-being of the child as its primary concern, and 2. The wisdom required to achieve that well-being, then the raising of children is not a moral act either. — Tzeentch

I didn't say having a child is a moral act, only that it is not an immoral act. Also, says who?

Can you elaborate on why you think so? — Noble Dust

The Whorf hypothesis, at least in my day, was a strong statement that language controls the kinds of things we can think about. Since then, I think the concept has become more nuanced, but I think it's easy to overstate the effect. The idea that language encourages us to think in certain ways and limits our ability to think in others is very attractive. I felt that way when I first heard about it.

Here's part of the problem, for me: is time better spent organizing/mobilizing those who agree, or perhaps with those who are "on the fence"/ those who are more persuadable, who really just want to understand the issue and weight the evidence? — Xtrix

Do you spend your time organizing others?

I wouldn't call it "impending doom," — Xtrix

Yes. Hyperbole on my part.

Not to be dramatic or self-important, but this "Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis" is exactly the same idea that I've felt intuitively for years without any special knowledge of the subject; — Noble Dust

As I noted, I think this is probably an oversimplification.

Lol, there aren't sentences in poetry... — Noble Dust

Whose woods these are, I think I know. His house is in the village, though. He will not see me stopping here to watch his woods fill up with snow.

Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe. All mimsy were the borogoves, and the mome raths outgrabe.

Not all poems have sentences, but some do.

Then you're a more mature man than I am. I struggle with it because of the stakes. Climate change and COVID are good examples. — Xtrix

That means that conversations with those with whom you have disagreements become more important. That it becomes more important that you find a way to find common purpose with them. The great majority of people in the US share a core set of values. Mainstream, moderate, more or less pragmatic, sometimes idealistic.

Saying you're not mature enough to work with that is a pretty poor excuse given your apparent sense of impending doom.

Is it even worth it to engage with these people?

They're immune to facts and they will not change their minds no matter what happens, which is interesting psychologically. But should we engage for the sake of others who are rational but "on the fence"?

I struggle with this. — Xtrix

I've engaged with all these types of people. I've always tried to do it with respect for their intelligence and motivations and to treat them civilly. I think many of them are pushed into more extreme claims by the fact that there seems to be no room for moderate positions in the current political season. It's not often I convince anyone, but sometimes I feel like the discussion has opened us both up to compromise. I have even found myself convinced, or at least had my opposition softened, by other people's arguments.

Alas, poor VincePee! I knew him, forum members, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.

But another thing people seem to think is that I am trying to personalize this. I don't go around shaming pregnant people or anything. In other words, I don't think parents are trying to be malicious. I think it's wrong to procreate, but I don't think it's out of bad intent or think them horrible people. — schopenhauer1

I never thought you would shame prospective parents or that you think they are horrible people. On the other hand, you do question their intent. Your argument about using children for one's own personal gratification shows that.

The child is already born and would be a dereliction of duty as a parent to not prevent greater harm. — schopenhauer1

If you think the only motivation or justification for a parent's action is to "prevent greater harm," you are wrong.

I think that is not charitable that everything I've written boils down to the consent argument. — schopenhauer1

Perhaps I am wrong, but I don't see how that makes me uncharitable.

It's not good (wrong) to create unnecessary (not for amelioration of a greater for lesser suffering for that person), non-trivial burdens/impositions/harms on someone else's behalf — schopenhauer1

I don't see how that argument is different from my summary in any significant way.

similar to Kant's second formulation of not using people, and treating individuals as ends in themselves. — schopenhauer1

This is your judgement of prospective parents motivations. Based on my own experience, both as a parent and observer of other parents, it's not correct for most of us. If you were to make the statement that having children solely for one's own personal gratification is immoral, I'd be more open to agreement, or at least negotiations.

I don't see how that is a good characterization. Why is it "silly"? See all my recent threads. — schopenhauer1

I have read all or some of many of your threads. Discussion after discussion, post after post, paragraph after paragraph, word after word. Long posts that finally boil down to just one argument.

[1] It is immoral to make decisions for another person without their agreement.
[2] Before they are born, children are non-existent persons.
[3] It is impossible to obtain agreement from a non-existent person.
[4] Therefore, it is immoral to cause children to be born.

• Response to 1 - We make decisions for other people, especially children, all the time without their approval. We take them to the doctor; make them take medicine; make them have operations; make them go to school; punish them for bad behavior....
  
  
• Response to 2 - Non-existent persons are not persons.
  
  
• Response to 3 - Even if non-existent children were persons, the power of consent for children resides in their parents.

I consider myself a happy person, yet I find the antinatalist argument quite convincing. It doesn't mean I like the implications, but the nature of things as it is apparent to me is not affected by me liking or disliking it. — Tzeentch

First, as I acknowledged before, saying that people are anti-natalists because they project their unhappiness on others is not a legitimate philosophical argument. My comments were gratuitous and irrelevant to the argument. On the other hand, I think the anti-natalist position is profoundly anti-human. It's also poorly supported, no matter how convincing you find it. And by "poorly supported" I mean "silly."

What an ignorant and irrelevant thing to say. — Bartricks

Then there's the irrelevance. Whether antinatalism is true or not h as nothing to do with the happiness or misery of antinatalists themselves. — Bartricks

I'll be honest, you're right that my comment about how miserable anti-natalists are is irrelevant. It says something about the anti-natalists and not about the argument. I should be ashamed.

It's a puzzler, isn't it - does having more money and more time and fewer responsibilities make one happier or more miserable? It's a bit like "is hitting your hand with a hammer likely to make you more happy or less happy?" I just don't know! — Bartricks

Although I have acknowledged that it is not philosophically appropriate for me to point out faults, failings, and weaknesses of anti-natalists, this text calls out for response. Your statement seems to suggest that responsibilities make people miserable. So what you're advocating is that no one should have children unless we can guarantee that they will never have to face responsibilities.

if the arguments of antinatalists do no more than express their own misery - which can't possibly be true in my case, as I am not at all miserable — Bartricks

In general, you're rude, insulting, mean-spirited, close-minded, and self-aggrandizing. You treat people, at least those on the forum, like shit. That doesn't seem like something a happy person would do.

I hadn't been participating in this discussion. I generally avoid anti-natalist threads. But it was a slow day and decided to take a look. I think anti-natalists like to project their own misery onto the rest of us without any sign of self-awareness. I find it hard to take them seriously.

Your post is really clear and counters the anti-natalist argument well in a very down-to-earth way.

No marks for physics.
It turns me off... — Amity

Physics and "The Tao Te Ching" tell me everything about reality I need to know.

Did you understand it ?
What did it mean?
I didn't have a clue.
Too dense.
No marks. — Amity

I sort of understood it. Not enough to want to finish reading the whole poem.

Maxwell was OK, (7 out of ten) with good rhythm and rhyme, but some of the others stunk as poems and as also from being too technical. — PoeticUniverse

I liked the Maxwell one best because it was technical. That's what I want from a physicist - poetic physics. But all of them stunk/stank as poems.

More broadly, I've wondered in the past if there are actual aspects of fundamental reality that are only grasped by speakers of specific languages through words and expressions in their respective languages... — Noble Dust

Something I learned many moons ago in my psychology of language class. From Wikipedia:

The hypothesis of linguistic relativity, also known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, the Whorf hypothesis, or Whorfianism, is a principle suggesting that the structure of a language affects its speakers' worldview or cognition, and thus people's perceptions are relative to their spoken language.

I, and I think psychologists in general, were skeptical of this even back when I took the class, but I think there is something there. My children were all involved in a French Immersion program from the time they were in kindergarten. Watching them, it has always seemed to me that having two languages gives you two different minds.

I love German. I think being able to speak it a little opens me up to concepts and ways of thinking. On the other hand, I think that's the weak version of the Whorf hypothesis, i.e. some ideas are easier to express and come more naturally in one language vs. another, but it's possible to translate. Or, you can just steal the word.

@Cidat

Dunno. The OP seems to have been sufficient to create a viable thread. — Banno

From Site Guidelines:

Don't start a new discussion unless you are:

a) Genuinely interested in the topic you've begun and are willing to engage those who engage you.

b) Able to write a thoughtful OP of reasonable length that illustrates this interest, and to provide arguments for any position you intend to advocate.

I think these are reasonable rules. If you're not willing to put a minimal level of your own work into a discussion, you shouldn't start one. Also - it pisses me off.

Yes! You are right. We create words to make them international. Inside plane or journeys vocabulary is more common. For example: Check in when you have to register or just notice that you are already on the airport. Here in Spain we just say check in, we do not translate it to Spanish. — javi2541997

[joke]If all you feriners would just learn English like God intended, we'd have no more problems.[/joke]

I think the barrier could be vocabulary. There are some words that cannot be translated at all because probably in English speaker country the word doesn't not exist at all. — javi2541997

This is true, but when it's needed, languages evolve. New words. Modifications of old words. Words stolen from other languages. Whole new ways of looking at things.

Quarks, protons, digital, transgender, Hostess Twinkie, television, internet, Covid 19, HIV, Slim Jim, cell phone, penicillin, GPS, Watergate, infotainment....None of these existed 100 years ago. I checked, Hostess Twinkies were first made 91 years ago.

Are there things we can’t describe with the English language? — Cidat

I think we can probably talk about anything we can be aware of. There are many things we aren't aware of and maybe many more we can't be.

If you're going to start a thread, you should provide more of your own thoughts in your opening post. It's just courtesy.

Her hypothesis is however censored and erased by the admin who is Adams friend. — AndreasJ

Did the admin admit that he deleted the post because he was Adam's friend? If not, how do we know this? You indicated that the accusation was an "hypothesis." My first assumption would be that the post was removed because it was not supported with enough evidence and because of possible liability reasons.

The stone being blown by the wind is a pretty silly explanation. It would make more sense to say that the window was broken by a mysterious one-armed man.

A free drink to the first one who can identify the TV/movie reference.

Our disagreement arises from the moment you assert that even in existence, which is a minor and more limiting field than that of metaphysics, concepts can still exist without the perception of "absoluteness", which is what makes up reality. — Gus Lamarch

The concept itself, without "idealization", cannot become "real"; you needed to capture it - idealization - so that you could project it to the "real" world. — Gus Lamarch

You think about art and the philosophy of art really differently that I do. I don't think that means either of us is wrong. My understanding of aesthetics goes along with the rest of my understanding of how the world works. I sometimes call that pragmatic. Yours seems more idealistic. But those are just labels. We are what we are; we see what we see, we feel what we feel.

I've enjoyed this discussion. You started a good thread.

If God now gave you the opportunity to never have been born in the first place, what would you choose? — I love Chom-choms

Regret is cheating. It's a way of not taking responsibility for your life and the things you've done and not done. That being said, I've sometimes thought that things would have been better if I died when I was 12. Problem with that - my children would never have been born. The universe is better with them in it.

We differ on the point where you take any and all "art" to be merely the "experiential moment" of such art - be it Poetry, Music, Images, etc... - which I - and many other philosophers and artists - disagree, because an existential process needs a metaphysical starting point - in terms of something artistic, "any real process, initially needs to be ideal" - which, if it does not exist, cannot be projected by nature. — Gus Lamarch

You're right. We do disagree. I'm thinking now about whether the disagreement you and I are having is a metaphysical one. My understanding of metaphysical statements is that they are neither true nor false. If that's right, we don't have to resolve our differences, we just pick the meaning that works the best for each of us. I'll just say, to the extent I am an artist, my way of seeing things is consistent with my artistic process and experience

Isma'il lived, and died, and his features lived and died with him; what we have as a record - in the case of his portrait above - is an "idealization" of something that was once real, and which, through the reception to the painter's consciousness - Tiziano's -, goes through the process of being projected again to existence as something real, but totally different from its previous conception - what was once something real - a human being - became an idea, that then became real again - as a portrait - -. — Gus Lamarch

I guess I don't see the need to put an extra step, idealization. In my experience with writing poems, which is limited, they usually start out with a feeling, an unspoken experience. Often the poem comes to me as a visual image. It's a neat feeling. Once, after a period of anxiety, a sense of peace came over me and the image of a horse came into my mind. Then this poem wrote itself out onto the page:

Peace, like a yoke on my neck
I feel the weight pulling me down,
The harness pulling me back
I feel my feet straining against the earth
Like a plow horse
Waiting to feel his master snap the reins.

I have no idea where that came from. From the sky I guess. I don't hang around horses or have any strong feelings about them. There was no in between step. Right from the unspoken feeling, to the image, to the page. Whether or not that's a good poem, I love it. It was magical.

Come on. You know the answer to your question already. Do you belong here? Come in and see. I don't know about your education, but you write well. I have almost no education in philosophy. I'm an engineer. Just look at how wonderful my posts are. Not to be down on anybody, but although there's a lot of good stuff here, there's also a lot of crap. As for lots of quotes, I have about 10 that I use over and over. Here's one that's relevant. Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance."

To believe our own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, -- that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost,--and our first thought, is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment.

And if you just want to jump around and shout and act like an ass, the Shoutbox, at the top of the first page, is the place for you.

As I’ve said in several recent posts, I think that poetry doesn’t mean anything beyond the experience of reading it or listening to it. As an illustration, I’ll provide a description of my experience of a poem I really like. “Dust of Snow,” as always, Robert Frost.

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

I really like this poem. First off - it’s really short. It was easy to memorize and when I quote it, people think I’m erudite. I tried to memorize “Two Tramps in Mud Time” once - nine stanzas, 72 lines. That didn’t turn out well. Also, it’s funny and Frost uses one of my favorite animals, no surprise, a crow. Not everyone sees the humor in the poem and I get that. I don’t know how idiosyncratic my reading is.

First stanza. Light, amusing. Very visual. I can see the man walking through the woods after a snow. That’s something that happens regularly in Frost poems. The snow is deep. He’s wearing boots. I can see the tree with the crow sitting at the top. Hemlocks are dark green with short needles ranked on many short branchlets. If that's a word. I’ve seen crows in the tops of trees plenty of times. Sometimes one, sometimes five, sometimes more. They’re usually noisy. Rambunctious. Very social. They’re really smart. It was clear to me the first time I read this poem that the crow shook the snow down on the man on purpose. That image always makes me smile. Having snow fall down on me from a tree branch has happened to me plenty of times. I can feel it going down my neck. Annoying.

Second stanza - More serious. Darker. It also makes me look back at the first stanza and think more about it. It seems like something has happened that the man regrets. So, he feels unhappy, sad, maybe guilty. It’s later in the day. Maybe he’s walking home afterwards or maybe he’s walking in the woods to think things over, brood, head down, not paying attention to where he’s going. And then the crow. He looks up. He sees the crow. He can see the crow looking down at him. He smiles. Maybe he laughs a little.

Why does this change his mood. I can think of a couple of reasons. First, it makes him break out of his introspection and look around at the day, the woods. That’s happened to me plenty of times. You just shake your head and get on with things. There’s another way to think about it that I really like. I like to think that at the moment the crow and the man are looking at each other, there’s a recognition. The crow made a joke. They both know it’s funny. Maybe the crow would cackle a little. I guess not. Frost would have mentioned that. The crow should have cackled. It’s hard to brood when your dignity has been tweaked. When someone has seen you for what you are.

As I said, this is not what the poem means. It is how it makes me feel. What it makes me see, think, feel. I don't expect anyone else to get the same things as I did or see it the same way.

The producer and distributor of that content is the primary party responsible for the abuse and the audience of the porn only contributes in a minuscule way unless you add them all up as a collective. — TheHedoMinimalist

If someone doesn’t play a causal role in the creation of the video and the video would have existed even if that person was never interested in child porn then I don’t understand how it would make sense to say that this person is responsible for abusing a child that would have been abused regardlessly. — TheHedoMinimalist

I'm sorry to be harsh. I think your position is morally repugnant. Hurting children is the worst thing anyone can do. To participate in any way is loathsome. I'm not going to comment any more.

Well, one could scam or hack someone that has child porn. But, most porn is free on the Internet right now because it is funded by scam advertising. I don’t know if that’s a thing for child porn as well but if it is then I don’t think that a person who downloads child porn and doesn’t fall for scam advertisement would be doing anything to help the creators of child porn profit. — TheHedoMinimalist

I'm embarrassed to even have to make this argument. Web pages usually get paid by advertisers based on how many people click on their web pages. If you go to a porn website, you are contributing financially to the site's owner. You are helping to make it financially worthwhile for people to sexually abuse children.

Another non-financial way that someone might get child porn is if it is free distributed by a pedophile that wants to help other pedophiles out. — TheHedoMinimalist

So, someone sexually abuses a child and makes a film of it. Then he says "Hey, THM, would you like a copy of the video?" You say "sure" and download and watch it. Is it your position that you do not share any responsibility for the abuse of that child?

People that possess or watch child porn of any kind do not necessarily play a causal role in the creation of that content though. It is only if they produce it or distribute it or pay for it then I think one can argue that they have actually seriously contributed to the abuse of children. Otherwise, I think that content would exist even if one particular person who watches child porn didn’t watch child porn. — TheHedoMinimalist

If no one had child pornography on their computers, child pornography would come to an end for practical purposes. Any transaction with a financial component contributes to the production of the pornography and, therefore, the abuse of children. How would someone get the pornography if there were not a financial transaction of some sort?

having child porn on your computer is usually still illegal in most countries. — TheHedoMinimalist

Visual child pornography - videos or photographs - requires that children engage in sex acts. It is not likely that any child would do that unless coerced. In most places, children do not have the ability to give consent. Even if there is no legal restriction, it's just plain wrong. Children are among the most vulnerable of us. They deserve to be protected. Child pornography cannot be made without abusing and exploiting children.

It is my understanding that written or drawn child pornography is not illegal in most places. That would make sense given the rationale described above.

The vacuum is prior to spacetime – an expanding fluctuation – and not merely coterminous with it. — 180 Proof

I won't get into an argument about this with you. I'm already walking at the edge of my understanding. On the other hand, when I looked it up, the web says that vacuum energy is semi-sort of the same thing as the cosmological constant, which is associated with spacetime.

But will a "quantum vacuum" hold that state perpetually for all time? Or is it a transient state? Can an infinite quantum vacuum exist on the outskirts of the universe for all time and if so, what does that say about nonexistence existing? — Derrick Huesits

I brought it up because @180 Proof and I discussed it earlier as the answer that always derailed the subject of whether or not there can ever be nothing. To oversimplify - space is permeated by a field of vacuum energy. If you've got space, you've got something, i.e. you don't have nothing.

e.g. A donut hole, space within and between every atom of baryonic matter in the observable universe, subsistent objects (Meinong), etc ... — 180 Proof

As I noted before, the answer to all of those is "quantum vacuum." Whether or not that is a good answer is open for discussion.