• Does wealth create poverty?


    Survival and what we have to do to survive makes us creative. People want a say in how they live their life and they want to be treated fairly. Your bucolic idealization is just that, history has always proved it wrong or is there any doubt that social inequity was a major contributing factor to the French Revolution.
  • Does wealth create poverty?
    Everyone else profits from empires, because they create lasting order, when well-administred.

    No autocratic/blood/tribal rule can be just regardless of how well ordered, because such rule is always arbitrary.
  • Does wealth create poverty?


    The problem I think, has to do with living in an equitable society. The current accumulation of wealth seen as a generational effect and not based on labor, in my opinion over time this creates an aristocratic class of non productive, landed gentry.

    I think the more equal a society can become, the better off all members of the society are. We are caught in a economy that has created pockets of wealth that own the vast majority of assets in this country, the 1%.

    This is empire building as @Agustino quoted:

    Empires are built on blood, since loyalty is only extracted, in the last instance, through blood relations. Limiting inheritance is not a good thing.

    Do you really want to live in an empire? Under the arbitrary rule of people who have flat out misconceptions of what it is to be poor and struggling....eat the rich.

    As far as incentives go, I think such a system would be more productive, and creative. Parents would be much more inclined to care about their children's education, their practical or common sense, and not simply shuffle them off to learn.
  • Does wealth create poverty?
    This only makes sense if you think the government should be allowed to confiscate the work of someone's lifetime. Only a committed Statist would think this is a good idea. For one thing, it would not solve the problem. The offspring aren't only getting money from their parents. They're getting the best education, the best work ethic and values, and so forth. Your solution is nothing more than a government grab of the assets of productive citizens that does nothing to solve the underlying problem of growing inequality.

    I think unlimited inheritance tends to create aristocracies of wealth and builds inequities which can ultimately bring down governments or lead to autocratic rule. I think that if inheritance monies were shifted back into the economy there would be plenty of money to give all citizens an excellent education, plus much more.

    Of course this ain't going to happen, we already have a virtual/actual plutocracy, and I doubt the rich will allow politicians to limit their family money, it's their legacy.
  • Does wealth create poverty?
    Modest proposal:

    Limit the amount of inheritance outside of spouse to a maximum, say $1 million dollars for entire estate.
  • Experiencing of experience
    How is consciousness different than awareness? It's hard to imagine how we can communicate properly if we aren't aware of what's going on.


    I am not sure there is a difference, but I think we often act without really thinking about what we are doing, such as turning on a light switch, when we enter a room. If someone says "Good day" to you, do you think they thought this out?

    We act habitually all the time, so if there is a distinction it has to do with why we pay attention, become invested in some acts/events and not in others.
  • Life after death is like before you were born


    The problem is that the facts of the matter are not known, so it is can not be objectively, logically true.
  • Consequentialism vs Taoism


    I think we operate consequentially when the immediate effects of our actions are clear and determinate, which covers a lot of our actions. When effects of actions are not easy to determine we rely on our what we have learn't and what we believe to be correct...and act conscientiously.
  • Experiencing of experience
    I am sure that we can agree on the fact that we can experience experience. I have two questions here: (1) If experience is product of brain activity then how possibly we can experience experience? and (2) What is the use of experiencing of experience?

    I'd say self aware, but experience itself, I think is of the inside or of the outside, there is always a distance between us and what we are experiencing on the outside, but no such distance appears on the inside. The differential is the body, whose position is kinda like a vague limit, it works.

    The ego is not one "I", it is many. The unity of the ego is tied up in the specificity of the body to a large extent, and as it changes we change, what comprises our understanding of ourselves changes, over time.
  • I am God


    If the world itself is divine, then divine is all there is.
  • The "Real" Socratic Paradox
    I doubt an trustworthy discussion about this "Paradox" can be had outside of a full study of the Gorgias dialogue as a whole, which concerns rhetoric and the art of convincing.

    Plato says two positive things in this dialogue, which is unusual, in that most of his dialogues are aporetic. I think that both of these things have to be taken together, that one entails the other.

    1) It is better to be out of tune with the multitudes then out of tune with one's self.
    2) It is better to suffer wrong than it is to cause it.

    There are perspective issues here, the perspective of the interlocutors in the dialogue and what their perspective could possibly means to the City. Plato deals with these perspective issues in his rhetoric as well as the myth he tells as part of the dialogue.
  • I am God


    If there is a God, he does not correspond to any of our logical schemata. The closest I can think of is that God is the Being of beings. In loving us, he loves his creation, only we are aware of his love, which we can reciprocate and in doing so become one with God.

    I am agnostic, but I am drawn to pantheism and I am trying its path, but not pantheism that assumes a personal deity.
  • I am God


    God has no parts, I toss that whole conception out.
  • Socratic Paradox


    "I do not believe that I know what I do not know." Which doesn't appear paradoxical to me.

    No, not paradoxical, but I wonder if Plato/Socrates would agree. In his Meno Socrates talks about true belief, and he worries about the stability of its foundation. If you look at his geometrical proof with the slave boy, Socrates leads to boy to a correct understanding by showing the path and helping the boy to walk down it, enabling him to reason out to the correct answer. That 'reasoning out' I think is an example of anamnesis, active recollection of truths inside us, versus his myth of previous lives as passive mneme, memories.

    Descartes accomplished an amazing epistemological feat but it seems to put us in a very difficult, dualistic position, one that we can't easily escape of if we maintain his position. His position entails that we can't know other minds, or anything outside our own minds with certainly.
  • I am God
    That still could not make some god. Being part of god, god being part of one,

    Only god is god, and to be god you must fit the description, have the characteristics and properties of god. Having the characteristics on loan does not qualify you as god.

    Vat are these "characteristics and properties of god" that you speak of, who's god?

    God's being (if) in us, constitutes us as part of itself. The vigor of love (you have avoided that word assiduously in our brief conversation yet I think it is key) of his being, enables unification with him in us.

    ps. isn't this a kind of communion?
    pps. the walrus was Paul
    ppps. Ciao, time for chow.
  • I am God
    I don't think the Bible thinks of Paul as a piece of equipment, rather I think Paul's agency is God's tool.
    — Cavacava

    You are contradicting yourself, tool are equipment.

    A tool is a means to an end.
  • I am God


    I don't think the Bible thinks of Paul as a piece of equipment, rather I think Paul's agency is God's tool. Paul's becomes one with God's because he recognizes/sees God's being in himself, which is possible only because of his love of God. Paul's willingness to carry out God's purpose is because it is part of his being & God's are merged. Perhaps that is what is meant by being a tool of God.
  • I am God


    If you see a new hole in the wall, perhaps you might ask who put that hole in the wall? Did the drill do it?
  • Socratic Paradox


    The phrase "I know that I know nothing","The only thing I know, is that I know nothing" or "I know one thing; that I know nothing", sometimes called the Socratic paradox, is a well-known saying that is derived from Plato's account of the Greek philosopher Socrates. The phrase is not one that Socrates himself is ever recorded as saying.
    Wikipedia

    He comes very close to this formulation several times at the beginning of the Apology, ex: 21d.
  • I am God


    If God acts through man, that is, if man is an instrument of God, as the Bible claims Paul was, then who acts?
  • I am God


    We talk about love changing a person. The person's life (and perhaps their being) is changed, they are not what they were before they fell for the one they love. A lover tries to become one with their love, in a free act of their will. What they do, the way the live is changed, it is infused by their love.

    I think Paul is talking about divine love (in Christ) the love which knocked him off his horse, blinded him and enabled him to see, that is the way he describes becoming God's instrument. "Parasitic", no I think it sounds more like possessed...God possessed.
  • I am God


    Paul said "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" Gal 2.19

    I think this is similar to Hegel's "twaddle" about his dialectic.
  • I am God


    "God created the greatest imaginable reality for me."

    If he did something for you then you are not him.
    You cannot therefore be god.

    Perhaps it is a question of orientation allowing for a double negation, a kind of sublation, where the ego it is not done away with but retained and preserved in the higher product which supersedes it.

    Perhaps something of this reality in the Beatles:

    I am he as you are he as you are me
    And we are all together
  • Relief theory of humor
    Humor as relief, is relief from stress. I think this is possible because humor has the involuntary effect of making another person laugh. This bodily effect can disrupt the effects of stress causing relief, even if it is only momentary, when it is effective.

    Humor can also cut and be deeply mocking, a form of relief as retribution. Dialogue between two people can be bitter and yet cause different forms of relief but what two people have to say to each other. I have been through some of these barbed conversations, however, none to the fencing levels of George and Martha in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf"

    Martha: Oh-ho, you pig.
    George: Oink, oink.
    Martha: Fix me another drink… lover.
    George: My God, you can swill it down, can't you?
    Martha: Well, I'm thirsty.
    George: Oh, Jesus.
    Martha: Look, sweetheart, I can drink you under any goddamn table you want, so don't worry about me.
    George: I gave you the prize years ago, Martha. There isn't an abomination award going that you haven't won.
    Martha: I swear to God George, if you even existed I'd divorce you.

    Of course this is why make-up sex is the best.
  • Would Aliens die if they visited Earth?


    US Defence Department this week acknowledged for the first time that they ran a UFO program.


    Parts of their shadowy work — which is still continuing to this day — are classified. But the Pentagon confirmed that audio and video of two US Navy pilots chasing an unidentified flying object near San Diego was investigated as part of the program.

    The footage, released in August, showed that the UFO rotated and maintained a “glowing aura”.

  • Refutation of a creatio ex nihilo


    Yea, as I said, I'll go with the Biblical account for now, just not sure about the deity or force that made the difference.

    Even if this field has existed and will always exist, why does it exist,and what changed and why, in order for us to exist?

    I don't know enough about this stuff, and from the little I understand, it seems to me that we are not even close to understanding it. Under some interpretations, as Wayfarer indicated, the physicists are proving the theologians were right all along. Physicists try to escape to the multiverse, but this is just a ruse in my opinion.
  • Refutation of a creatio ex nihilo
    Better off with the biblical account.
  • Refutation of a creatio ex nihilo
    I didn't realize that Krauss and Albert had a feud over Albert's review:

    Krauss reacted vehemently and responded in an interview published in The Atlantic[6] calling Albert “moronic” and dismissing the philosophy of science as worthless. In March 2013, The New York Times reported[7] that Albert, who had previously been invited to speak at the Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate at the American Museum of Natural History, was later disinvited. Albert claimed "It sparked a suspicion that Krauss must have demanded that I not be invited. But of course I’ve got no proof."
  • Refutation of a creatio ex nihilo
    Krauss is one of the few living physicists described by Scientific American as a "public intellectual"[21] and he is the only physicist to have received awards from all three major American physics societies: the American Physical Society, the American Association of Physics Teachers, and the American Institute of Physics. In 2012, he was awarded the National Science Board's Public Service Medal for his contributions to public education in science and engineering in the United States.[34]

    Of course that does not mean he can't be all wet here (and Albert is a philosopher), but it seems like there are a lot of contrasting theories here.
  • Would Aliens die if they visited Earth?


    Sounds like an updated version of "War of the Worlds".

    If we had the tech to make it to another live-able planet, I think we would have the tech to confirm it was live-able.

    This never stopped Kirk.
  • Refutation of a creatio ex nihilo


    From article:

    Quantum mechanics tells us that "nothing" is inherently unstable, so the initial leap from nothing to something may have been inevitable. Then the resulting tiny bubble of space-time could have burgeoned into a massive, busy universe, thanks to inflation. As Krauss puts it, "The laws of physics as we understand them make it eminently plausible that our universe arose from nothing - no space, no time, no particles, nothing that we now know of."
  • Refutation of a creatio ex nihilo


    I think Genisis agrees:

    In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

    3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

    Of course something co-existing with God at creation does present some other questions but, (it sounds like the Big Bang doesn't it)...

    it is quantum theory that posits the possibility of creatio ex nihilo.
  • Intrinsic Value
    The pleasure you get from wine or other things has intrinsic value. It's your experience regardless of where it come from.

    Experiences are complex. The pleasure we take in a glass of wine, comes from its color, its vibrancy, its taste and its aftertaste, its terroir; all together the rhapsody of the sensations and memories, in which we may find pleasure. We don't experience raw, pure pleasures on their own and therefore we can't value them as such. We value experience as a whole, not its parts. Pleasure itself is never experienced on its own, it is always experienced in relation to something else, as a means to an end, but never as the end, therefore pleasure cannot be the good, since what is good always an end, which is always intrinsically valuable.
  • Do you believe in a deity? Either way, what is your reasoning?
    Panpsychism is one philosophical route to a kind of theism. I consider myself a theist but I don't follow any particular religion in a recognisable way. I think substance is personal, aware, wilful,intentional and demonstrably so, not that many agree with me. That's close enough to a god to merit calling it theism, perhaps.

    I find my self drawn to a type of plurality pantheism, I am highly skeptical of any humanoid deity. Part of my conviction is that life and man arose from matter, which logically entails that matter in itself must have the potentiality to become spirit. So kind of a panpsychism.
  • Nothing is intrinsically morally wrong
    Nothing is intrinsically morally wrong

    Perhaps man had no choice in the matter, if he wanted to survive nature and not have to constantly fear harm from some less civilized neighbors he was forced to become social and form communities and in doing so to create laws, and culture, institutions, a civilization. Wouldn't this entail that any actions, or laws that don't foster a safe, equitable, orderly society are intrinsically wrong, because they jeopardize man's survival, which is the purpose of living in a community.
  • If God exists, does God have a purpose for existing?
    If God exists, does God have a purpose for existing?

    Of course if you believe in God you won't agree with this, so I suppose this is a somewhat pointless post.

    Yes, perhaps the pointless point is the big bang. And, when science saw the misogynistic god implied by the postulation of the bang, and by the theologians who had suddenly became very scientific and very supportive of their efforts, these scared cosmologists ran for the hills of the unseen multiverses to try to hide.

    X-)
  • Intrinsic Value


    Pleasure is only pleasurable in regards to something else...you take pleasure in a glass of wine...so it can't be intrinsically valuable. Also pleasure is always a becoming it is never an end in itself.
  • Socratic Paradox
    SOCRATES: Now tell me, can we discern another kind of discourse, a legitimate brother of this one? Can we say how it comes about, and how it is by nature better and more capable?

    PHAEDRUS: Which one is that? How do you think it comes about?

    SOCRATES: It is a discourse that is written down, with knowledge, in the soul of the listener; it can defend itself, and it knows for whom it should speak and for whom it should remain silent.