If I were a brain in a skull, the image of a house can only form in my eyes if there really is a house. Looking away (terminating the eye stimuli) has no effect on the house - it still is even when my eyes aren't looking at it. — TheMadFool

You can dream of a house; you can imagine a house; you can see a picture of a house; so there are ways in which the image of a house can form within a brain in a skull without an actual, real house being there, outside of same skull.

Vice versa, in a well-conceived and coherent virtual reality, houses would not vanish just because you don't look at them. Otherwise, you could tell that something's not quite right. E.g. when you play a video game, villains don't disappear just because you look elsewhere. They are still able to game you over, even if you pay no attention to them.

Because you wrote:

So abstract objects e.g. numbers do not exist but rather, as Meinong designated, they only subsist...

— 180 Proof

We can only apprehend matter via our perceptions and thoughts. If the latter do not exist, then we have no evidence that matter itself exists.

Materialism is just an idea, and not a very logical one.

I am not confusing them, actually. Just asking: If thoughts do not exist, what's the evidence that matter exists?

If I'm a brain in a vat, everything I perceive is an illusion generated by simply stimulating the right combination/sequence of neurons. I cannot trust my perceptions. — TheMadFool

You can trust your perceptions to tell you something about this supposedly virtual reality in which you find yourself. Just like if you are a brain in a skull, you can trust your perceptions to tell you something about the supposedly non-virtual reality in which you find yourself. There is no real difference. A skull is essentially the same thing as a vat: a brain container.

How would one define or identify the non-physical?
— Tom Storm

I've been trying to get an answer to this for years. — Kenosha Kid

If "physical" was a well defined concept, "non-physical" would be easy to define. So let's try and define "physical".

Definitions by Oxford Languages:

1. relating to the body as opposed to the mind, e.g. "a range of physical and mental challenges".
2. relating to things perceived through the senses as opposed to the mind; tangible or concrete.

Thus "physical" means by and large: "perceivable by the senses, not just imagined by the mind." And "non-physical" must mean something like: "not perceivable by the senses, but imagined or created by the mind."

Makes sense?

Are you saying that clouds could exist but not the sky, or that the sky could exist but not clouds?

I repeat: If thoughts do not exist, what's the evidence that matter exists?

So abstract objects e.g. numbers do not exist but rather, as Meinong designated, they only subsist... — 180 Proof

The problem I see with that is that us human minds live in a mental world, in ideas. Each and everyone of our thoughts is abstract. So by this Meaning ontology, our mind only subsists, it does not fully exist. But then, any evidence we have of the existence of matter is based on thoughts and observations by some mind or another, something that does not exist but only subsists...

Therefore matter cannot be said to exist either.

I say: we can be absolutely certain that thoughts exist, but anything beyond that is mere hypothesis. Matter may only subsist, for all we know. :-)

You don't need advice from me, but I think you are losing your time with Apo. The guy is not smart enough nor intellectually honest enough, period. I for one keep my responses to him to the bare minimum, in hope that he might understand such simple statements.

For Sama is a documentary film produced and narrated by Waad Al-Kateab, and directed by Waad Al-Kateab and Edward Watts.

When Waad was forced to leave Aleppo, Syria, she took with her hundreds of hours of footage she had filmed in the city under siege. She showed them to the BBC and they contacted a documentarist called Edward Watts to turn this material into a documentary. He worked with Waad over several years to arrive at this film.

I saw it yesterday night and now cannot get it out of my head. It's different from anything you ever saw.

In the Republic he banishes the gods from the just city and replaces them with Forms and, as the ultimate cause, the Good. — Fooloso4

As we discussed before, there is very little room for religion in the Republic: no priesthood, no oracles, no temples.

In the Republic he banishes the gods from the just city and replaces them with Forms and, as the ultimate cause, the Good. And yet many even today do not see this for what it is. — Fooloso4

As Olivier suggests, he may have been set up for political reasons — Apollodorus

We don't have the act of accusation and don't know precisely what the charges were. My point was that politics and religion were intertwined in many complex ways, including in this case.

Socrates' teaching was subversive. He had a certain contempt for democracy, tied with contempt for the average folk and for unexamined opinions. Some of the most prominent Thirty Tyrants who tried to topple democracy in 404 BCE were his former students. Plato belonged right in the middle of this aristocratic milieu. They didn't think the people had a clue.

When Socrates is accused of perverting the youth, I surmise that's what it's about. They don't want him to train yet another generation of kids who would start to doubt the wisdom of their fathers and make not-so-funny revolutions.

France didn’t deregulate, shrink the state and reduce taxation, like in the U.K.
So France still has its nationalised services and social support in place. — Punshhh

Indeed, and the railways are an apt example. I actually think the rail network in France is an asset for the future. But the price to pay for such a nationalized service is the power of the unions to stop the service.

Plato’s Academy functioned from 387 BC to 529 CE and its members were naturally in touch with philosophers from other Platonic schools in Alexandria and elsewhere. So, there is no reason to assume any major modification or distortion in the Platonic tradition, just as there were few changes in the religious sphere. — Apollodorus

There were a humongous amount of changes in the religious sphere during this near millenary, and chances are that any platonic oral tradition got heavily built upon and modified during the same very long period.

Yes.

Let me try and do some theory here. Going on a limb perhaps?

I see several levels of interpenetration between religions and politics here:

1. Traditional piety = The hypothesis according to which the gods favour our city only inasmuch as we love them. If we stop loving and praying to our traditional gods, or if we start doubting them, the city will perish or suffer as them gods will punish it. This is the background assumption, the conventional wisdom.

2. There are hidden variations in people's faith in 1 = Not every one believes in 1, but they pretend to, because of the risks entailed in contradicting it. Since as per 1 above traditional piety is seen as vital to the city's survival, impious behaviors are severely punished, by death or banishment.

3. Religion is instrumentalised by politics = A religious accusation will be very effective to get rid of a political opponent. If you can prove that your opponent is taking liberty with traditional piety, then you can get him sentenced to death, ostensibly to save the city from the wrath of the gods (even if you don't happen to believe in them, as long as you can pretend to).

4. Historically, religion provided the internally-shared value framework of these various city-states = This means that as politics evolved towards the age of empires, old-time religion became an impediment, or was seen as an impediment by some in society. It worked well for one city, but was too local, parochial, not universal enough for a league of city states or for an empire. In these sorts of situations, new religions (or philosophies / metaphysics) typically appear which can be seen as attempts to solve the hiatus, or to take into consideration the passing of time and update old-time religion.

5. In such contexts as 5th century BCE Athens, religion (or lack thereof) can become a socio-political marker = Because of 3 and 4, the 'religious innovations' evoqued in 4 originally tend (on average) to be repressed or fought by whoever is in favor of the status quo, and promoted by whoever wants political change.


I think a bit of all that happened in the case at hand. Socrates was not politically neutral. His thought, just like Anaxagoras' or others', was an irruption of a more universal world view into the little parochial cultural life of Athens, an irruption made possible by contacts with the Persian empire. In the historical context, his thought was disruptive and innovative. Almost foreign.

Matter is anything that has mass and volume. — TheMadFool

So what is the weight of the number 5, then? Or the letter A?

Reality certainly appears to have a spiritual and material aspect. — RogueAI

And now here is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one sees rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.
-- the fox in The Little Prince

Physicalism: Everything is matter & energy

Nonphysicalism: Physicalism is false (some things are not just matter and energy) — TheMadFool

So it all hinges on the definition of 'matter and energy'. And no one knows what matter is, exactly... so we haven't made much progress.

Like, is Beethoven's 5th symphony composed of matter and energy? And how many grams does the number 5 weight?

Socrates does not say he believes the sun and moon are gods, he asks whether Meletus is accusing him of not believing that they are gods as other men do. He then says that Meletus is confusing him with Anaxagoras. (26d) Anaxagoras had also been indicted on charges of impiety, but fled. His books, Socrates points out, were still for sale for a small sum.

This is an important point. If such ideas were corruptive of the youth, why could one freely buy Anaxagoras' books "in the orchestra for a drachma" at the most?

This is about Burundi, its beauty, but also the many hate crimes that were committed there over the years. It is hard to translate the lyrics without crying so I'm not gona try.

Gaël Faye also wrote a wonderful but harrowing book, also entitled Petit Pays, about his childhood in Burundi against the backdrop of the Tutsis genocide in neighboring Rwanda and the massacre of Hutus by Tutsis in Burundi at the very same time. They made a movie out of it. Highly recommended although you might not be the same person after you read this book, or saw this film.




Gahugu gatoyi
Gahugu kaniniya
Warapfunywe ntiwapfuye
Waragowe ntiwagoka
Gahugu gatoyi
Gahugu kaniniya

Une feuille et un stylo apaisent mes délires d'insomniaque
Loin dans mon exil, petit pays d'Afrique des Grands Lacs
Remémorer ma vie naguère avant la guerre
Trimant pour me rappeler mes sensations sans rapatriement

Petit pays je t'envoie cette carte postale
Ma rose, mon pétale, mon cristal, ma terre natale
Ça fait longtemps les jardins de bougainvilliers
Souvenirs renfermés dans la poussière d'un bouquin plié

Sous le soleil, les toits de tôles scintillent
Les paysans défrichent la terre en mettant l'feu sur des brindilles
Voyez mon existence avait bien commencé
J'aimerais recommencer depuis l'début, mais tu sais comment c'est

Et nous voilà perdus dans les rues de Saint-Denis
Avant qu'on soit séniles on ira vivre à Gisenyi
On fera trembler le sol comme les grondements de nos volcans
Alors petit pays, loin de la guerre on s'envole quand?

Petit bout d'Afrique perché en altitude
Je doute de mes amours, tu resteras ma certitude
Réputation recouverte d'un linceul
Petit pays, pendant trois mois, tout l'monde t'a laissé seul

J'avoue j'ai plaidé coupable de vous haïr
Quand tous les projecteurs étaient tournés vers le Zaïre
Il fallait reconstruire mon p'tit pays sur des ossements
Des fosses communes et puis nos cauchemars incessants

Petit pays: te faire sourire sera ma rédemption
Je t'offrirai ma vie, à commencer par cette chanson
L'écriture m'a soigné quand je partais en vrille
Seulement laisse-moi pleurer quand arrivera ce maudit mois d'avril

Tu m'as appris le pardon pour que je fasse peau neuve
Petit pays dans l'ombre le diable continue ses manœuvres
Tu veux vivre malgré les cauchemars qui te hantent
Je suis semence d'exil d'un résidu d'étoile filante

Un soir d'amertume, entre le suicide et le meurtre
J'ai gribouillé ces quelques phrases de la pointe neutre de mon feutre
J'ai passé l'âge des pamphlets quand on s'encanaille
J'connais qu'l'amour et la crainte que celui-ci s'en aille

J'ai rêvé trop longtemps de silence et d'aurore boréale
À force d'être trop sage je me suis pendu avec mon auréole
J'ai gribouillé des textes pour expliquer mes peines
Bujumbura, tu es ma luciole dans mon errance européenne

Je suis né il y'a longtemps un mois d'août
Et depuis dans ma tête c'est tous les jours la saison des doutes
Je me navre et je cherche un havre de paix
Quand l'Afrique se transforme en cadavre

Les époques ça meurt comme les amours
Man, j'ai plus sommeil et je veille comme un zamu
Laissez-moi vivre, parole de misanthrope
Citez m'en un seul, de rêve qui soit allé jusqu'au bout du sien propre

Petit pays
Quand tu pleures, je pleure
Quand tu ris, je ris
Quand tu meurs, je meurs
Quand tu vis, je vis

Petit pays, je saigne de tes blessures
Petit pays, je t'aime, ça j'en suis sûr

I'm employing the standard definitions as they appear in the relevqnt wikipedia pages — TheMadFool

Mind posting them?

I'm here to please.

I agree that the nations that move forward are generally those that do NOT implement a laissez faire policy, but more frequently those who can develop a clear view of where they want to go. This said, France always had an industrial policy and it nevertheless went through pretty much the same de-industrialization as the UK. Though I guess we kept the car makers...

Please feel free to invent whatever you want to about me.

You see, we dance
Our body, we balance
We touch each other
We kiss each other on the mouth
Even, hear
We say we love each other
But it's only some kind of cream
Some pink-colored ointment
To hide things
Little pleasures
Not to sleep alone

Can't you see we don't love each other?
We don't love each other

So there, you are all alone
Your eyes sting
You want
To speak, to tickle
But simp
You aren't here for anyone
And it's the same for everyone
Go back to your pad
Even when you meow
The world doesn’t care

Can't you see we don't love each other?
We don't love each other

Wires, wires and walls
Didn’t you seen the hard wire
Marked “private”?
Here it is our home
It’s not for you
Just for us
If it's everyone's home
Then it's a dirty mix
And that bothers us
Watch out for the others

Can't you see we don't love each other?
We don't love each other

Pan! Pan! Pan!
There is war all the time
We pretend to be civil
Then we send each other missiles
We try to smoke the peace pipe
But it's just some shoe polish
Some hair cream
To hide the dirt
And the TV zooms, zooms
On these beautiful blood-stained pictures

Can't you see we don't love each other?
We don't love each other

Fair enough. Even no industrial policy is a sort of industrial policy, in effect.

it was about breaking the power of the unions - which is far from lassiez faire — counterpunch

Sure, you could always see it differently, but this is at least what she was saying at the time.

something physical (the mind) is trying to connect as it were with that which it is not, the nonphysical. — TheMadFool

What exactly do you mean by "physical" and "non-physical"?

As already pointed out by others, these terms mean very little...

I could never understand why Thatcher didn’t produce a sustainable industrial strategy. — Punshhh

Thatcher hated the very idea of an industrial strategy, sustainable or not. Hers was a laissez-faire policy; she believed that state interventions in the economy were almost always counter-productive.

Exactly. Racism is just a form of jealousy.

I you don't feel like having sex with people that are racially different than yourself, don't. But others might find it exiting or fun. What do you care?

More from Jonathan Batiste. This is a cover of "Blackbird".

Always loved the Pretenders so much... :-)


When it comes to loving me
Don't stop
I know there ain't no guarantee
But don't stop
Let's keep it shaking while we can
You don't need another man
We'll be rolling with the plan
Don't stop

When it's near to closing time
Don't stop
Put your hand in mine
Don't stop
We'll dance the night away
Won't care what people say
No pause, press play
Don't stop

Don't stop dreaming
Don't stop believing
'Cause you know that our time is coming up
So with all you've got
Don't stop

There's a reason that you're here
Don't stop
You ain't got nothing to fear
So don't stop
This train has left the station
Who knows what destination
This love is for the taking
Don't stop

Don't stop dreaming
Don't stop believing
'Cause you know that our time is coming up
Let's soak up the day
And dance the night away
So with all you've got
Don't stop

If I tell you
If I tell you now
Will you keep on loving me?

If I tell you
If I tell you how I feel
Will you keep bringing out the best in me?

You give me, you give me the sweetest taboo
Too good for me
There's a quiet storm
And it never felt like this before
There's a quiet storm
That is you
There's a quiet storm
And it never felt this hot before

Giving me something that's taboo
Sometimes I think you're just too good for me
You give me the sweetest taboo
That's why I'm in love with you
You give me the sweetest taboo
Too good for me
Sometimes I think you're just too good for me

I'd do anything for you, I'd stand out in the rain
Anything you want me to do, don't let it slip away

There's a quiet storm
And it never felt like this before
There's a quiet storm
I think it's you

There's a quiet storm
And I never felt this hot before
Giving me something that's taboo
You give me the sweetest taboo
That's why I'm in love with you

You give me, keep giving me the sweetest taboo
Too good for me
You've got the biggest heart
Sometimes I think you're just too good for me
Every day is Christmas and every night is New Year's Eve
Will you keep on loving me? (Ha, ha)
Will you keep on
Bringing out the best in me?

practicing Platonists — Apollodorus

It's a religion now?

desecration of the herms in 415 — Olivier5

Herms

Herms were marble or bronze four-cornered pillars surmounted by a bust. Male herms were given genitals. Herms originated in piles of stones (ἕρματα) used as road- and boundary-markers, but early on developed into the god *Hermes (but see that entry). As representations of Hermes they were viewed also as protectors of houses and cities. The Athenians claimed credit for the developed sculptural form (Paus. 1. 24. 3), and herms were particularly common in Athens, at crossroads, in the countryside, in the Agora, at the entrance of the Acropolis, in sanctuaries, and at private doorways. The sacrilegious mutilation of the herms in 415 BCE led to the exile of *Alcibiades (Thuc. 6. 27 ff.). Other deities, e.g. *Aphrodite (Paus. 1. 19. 2), were also occasionally represented as herms, and the Romans in copying Greek portrait statues converted some into herm form.

https://oxfordre.com/classics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.001.0001/acrefore-9780199381135-e-3054

I don't know if the oral tradition or traditions were ever written down — Fooloso4

Aristotle alludes to them. But you are right that these unwritten doctrines are impossible to reconstruct. Plotinus claims to record these oral platonic traditions but wrote 500 years after Plato. The school founded by Plato, the Academia, had several twists and turns in terms of doctrine over the centuries, as one would expect; it's all muddled.

It is dubious whether Socrates himself had any positive doctrine whatsoever, hence 'he doesn't know'. His singularity was in his approach to questions. A method, but not a doctrine; which is I think what you are saying.

Still, he was accused on doctrinal matters too: his so-called religious innovations. Doesn't mean the accusers were correct of course, but in my mind there must have been some context here, some irksome ideas at play, some kind of metaphysical ideas circulating around Socrates that tended to piss off the average Athenian.

Hypothesis 1: it was his radical doctrinal doubt itself that was irksome; i.e. his absence of doctrine may have been seen as a rejection of all doctrines, and hence as a doctrine itself (like the empty set is a set).

Hypothesis 2: he may have indeed expressed doubt or joked about certain naïve beliefs of his time. He might even have seen some of them as pretty ridiculous.

The two are not mutually exclusive and in my mind, H1 is almost certainly true.

H2 rests on scant evidence but I think Euthyphro does contain a critique of naïve transactional piety, and points to holiness as something higher than the gods.

There are also contextual historical elements, e g. the story of the desecration of the herms In 415, or the natural philosophy of Anaxagoras, which I think can bring some light on this issue.

One morning in the spring of 415 B.C., a short time before the Sicilian expedition was to set sail, it was discovered that all the herms -- busts of Hermes graced with an erect phallus -- dotting the city of Athens had been vandalized. Apparently the phalluses were broken as well as the faces. This created a furor and a period of religious McCartyism, so to speak, to identify the hermokopidai (“herm-choppers”). Bribes were offered for information. Other acts came to be denounced such as an alledged profanation of the Eleusian mysteries during some symposium (perhaps little more than a prank, or a themed orgy) in which Alcibiades—a student and friend of Socrates and one of the three Athenian generals appointed to command the Sicilian expedition—was implicated.

One theory is that the new generation, trained by Socrates and other philosophers, had little respect for these symbols of old time religion, seen as crude, and was prone to poke fun at them.

The other historical fact that I would like to bring up for context, relates to the nature of the sun and moon, whether they are deities or natural objects. You quoted one apology (don't remember which of Plato or Xenophon, where Socrates says in essences: "don't we all agree that the sun and the moon are gods?"

And yet Anaxagoras, a Ionian who brought philosophy and the spirit of scientific inquiry to Athens, had written about the heavenly bodies, which he asserted were masses of stone torn from the Earth. He said the moon had mountains and believed that it was inhabited, that the sun was a very large and very hot stone ("larger than the Peloponnese")... He predicted that sooner or later a piece of the sun would break off and fall to earth.

According to Pliny the Elder and Aristotle, in 467 BC a large meteorite landed near Aegospotami, an Athenian colony in the Hellespont. When the fiery fragment cooled, it was found to be some large brown stone. This gave credence to Anaxagoras' theories.

Diogenes Laertius reports that Anaxagoras was charge with impiety circa 450 BC and forced to flee the city.

Anaxagoras is said to have remained in Athens for thirty years. He was a well-known intellectual. And in the Phaedo, Plato portrays Socrates saying that as a young man: 'I eagerly acquired his [Anaxagoras'] books and read them as quickly as I could'. Therefore Socrates could not have ignored Anaxagoras' cosmology. He was about 20 when Anaxagoras was trialed.

So what is he really saying when he pretends 50 years later, at his own trial, to agree that the moon and the sun are deities? Isn't he saying, under the guise of irony, that it's highly debatable that they are deities?

Pfff! It's a truism, true by virtue of what a dialogue is: a debate between two people.

It was often the case in classical times that a school would have exoteric and esoteric doctrines. The latter were not to be widely shared, and thus were often not published, but transmitted by oral tradition within the school.

Oral tradition is something often neglected in western cultures. But there is an oral tradition on Plato (neoplatonism) that attributes to him a form of monotheism where the One is the ultimate general principle, transcending all the eons. Correct me if I am wrong but I don't suppose he ever wrote this black on white.

It could be that Plato never went that far. Or it could be that he did, but that he thought against publishing this rather revolutionary metaphysical view during his life time because it would have been too risky.

It is about the activity of thinking, of working things out, of making connections, of trying to reconcile seeming contradictions. — Fooloso4

Also therefore it's about dialoguing. The centrality of oral debate in Socrates in particular is pretty obvious. He could have written books but didn't.

And isn't posting comments on an online forum the same as writing philosophical dialogues? — Apollodorus

There is no essential difference, what we are doing here IS a philosophical dialogue.