Have you thought about doing something creative? Poetry, painting, something aesthetic....or perhaps becoming a vegetarian, and by doing so adopt a strong moral viewpoint against the miserable, meaningless suffering animals endure in our culture. Doing this in spite of what you say you don't know or can't be known, because you sense it's right.

Perhaps in the end atheism becomes a form of pantheism?
(I'm agnostic)

Where was I when everyone started thinking that was plausible? As I say in my comment, it's precisely the same thing as the placebo effect, or the power of suggestion, and its "effectiveness" can thus be expected to not exceed, but be identical with the placebo effect.

I didn't mention this part, but the "altered state" is achieved by mindful breathing... or is yet just another thing which is synonymous with something mundane. Just relaxation, or calming techniques.

Both hypnosis and the placebo effect are based on the trust we place in those who treat our afflictions. They both are forms of communication between doctor & patient. In the case of hypnosis, the patient listens to the doctor's overt suggestions, in the case of the placebo effect the doctor's overt suggestions are 'lies', which the patient assumes to be the truth. Hypnotic suggestions are not necessarily, or ordinarily lies, the suggestions the placebo effect makes are necessarily 'lies'. My guess is that hypnotic treatment is predictably more effective with a wider scope than utilization of the placebo effect in most cases.

They are both based on the trust and exalted position given to the medical profession, which is great, since we all want to be healed. I recall my great-grandmother was never satisfied with a doctor unless she was prescribed some sort of pill.

The gods offered Achilles a choice between a long, comfortable, mild life that he would live for many years or he could choose a life of fame, a short life full of grand triumphs, victories such that his name would become known, revered and remembered. Rust or burn?

There were no newspapers in ancient Greece, to become known back then meant you had actually accomplished something. To be famous meant to be known for the many spectacularly good deeds.

Achilles was almost indestructible except that he had a fatal flaw in his heel, the only vulnerable part of this body. It's symbolic of his fatal flaw of pride.

He choose how he would live and he accomplished much. He died young...
He was as complicit in his fate, as we are in ours.

I just read an article about hypnosis, here.

Psychologists at Friedrich Schiller University Jena (Germany) are trying to come up with a theory for hypnosis. Some people are very susceptible, some moderately so and others barely. The groups perception was tested with a blocking suggestion. As suspected, the more susceptible had a tougher time then those who are least susceptible. Subjects were hooked up to an electroencephalograph so psychologists could watch & measure what happened. Apparently there is an initial impression which is distinguished with deeper processing. Initial impression at 200 milliseconds and distinguished object at 400 milliseconds.

The doctors think that the deeper processes are disrupted during hypnosis, but not the initial impression.

They hope to able tie these effects to locations in the brain.

supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

Honesty, then, is to will the good with the fullest intent. This means that, for me, to love is to be honest, and to be honest is to love. However, I did say earlier that one can withhold the truth yet still be honest and loving. Perhaps this is the murkiest part of my position, but I hold that love is first among equal virtues, with other such virtues being honesty and truth. I think this because one can tell the truth without being loving, and honesty only comes about once one wills the good of another, once one loves, so honesty is merely a result of love's precedence.

If honesty is Good then how can a consequentialist be Good ... if the Good lies in the intent behind our actions then what can be said of the effects of our actions. Can a consequentialist be Good if good lies in our intent and not in the consequent of our action. If a consequentialist lies and effect of that lie is good, then was the consequentialist 'honest'.

I am not sure what love is, but I don't think it is a virtue, it's the force behind the relationship between people, the lover and the beloved, where love is the coupling agent, the glue holding them together. For Plato love is born out of Eros.

Well if it is a tactic it is scare tactics. But, if it it' s a tactic then it is a means to an end.

And that end is forced social change or accommodation, accomplished by terrorizing of the populations involved. Terrorists can create ideological space, by causing the extreme polarization of a minority population from the dominant population. The terrorists can appeal to a minority it claims as its own, in an effort to bring it over to its side by displaying the vulnerability of the dominant population to its actions and emphasizing the gross injustice or moral decrepitude it sees in the dominant population, as reason for the violence of its actions. It involves radical adherence to a faith or various ideological ideals which are opposed to dominant systems, which it aspires to dominate. It abstracts and sees its targets and its actions as symbolic.

“Am I dead? Or is this one of those dreams? Those horrible dreams that seem like they last forever? If I am alive, why?”

She could have shown more tit.

Would your worldview, philosophy, etc. implode if progress is an erroneous idea?

Progress is a teleological filter that can be used to understand how we got to where we are currently. The Enlightenment concept of Progress supplanted (but did not eliminate) the prior Theological view of history. Any such pattern filter suggests a teleology based on Human Nature as its end. I think the larger question is whether or not History is striving towards an end, or if it is a series of small events seeking their own realization which create the illusion of a large scale pattern. Could the Civil Rights movement of the last century have occurred without a series of smaller events, and isn't this process ongoing.

History does not have to be linear, it can be cyclic or stepped. Chinese history seems to follow a social cycle theory

According to this theory, each dynasty rises to a political, cultural, and economic peak and then, because of moral corruption, declines, loses the Mandate of Heaven, and falls, only to be replaced by a new dynasty.

. Some suggest that all historical civilizations can be interpreted in the analogy of birth, childhood, maturity, old age, and death.

I think the Ideals of the Enlightenment failed if history if viewed as progress. That failure culminated in the World Wars that occurred in the first half of the last century. The trends since the the last century have accelerated and progress is now as measured by technology, but I think technology is just one step in our history.

What makes a system computational independent of human denotation?

I think animals display limited computational ability, but no animal I am aware of, display recursive abilities and perhaps it is this lack of recursion that makes the difference.

It would be good for a brute-fact to be something undeniable, or at least something whose denial has the burden of proof. Maybe it wouldn't be called a "brute fact" then, because maybe only arbitrary brute-facts are brute-facts.

What would be a brute fact that is undeniable, or whose denial has the burden of proof?

Suppose 'brute fact' had to do with how we value experience, about our ability to discriminate one thing from another. This discriminatory ability points to a temporal claim. A claim that all facts implicitly require, the claim of giveness that precedes every distinguishable fact. A claim which we are rarely conscious of making, yet for which I have read some neurological evidence.

Over the eons before me nothing mattered, over the eons when I am gone nothing will matter.
Means:
I'll try to make the best of the time I've got.

I think there are two caves.

One with people chained to the wall watching shadows, and the other with people chained to the wall who know their watching shadows.

He knows his muse his daemon, his inspiration, is on automatic, suggesting it's not really under his control.

Hi, So like Star Trek Next Generation== Data? Did you ever wonder why Buddha is chubby... the middle way must be OK.

He did not identify ignorance with madness, but not to know oneself and to presume one knows what one doesn't know, he put next to madness. (Xenophon, Memories of Socrates iii, 9, 6, tr. Marchant)

As I mentioned earlier, I think art exists within 3 stages: the artist, the middle-man and the audience. All of those elements have to come together for art to exist in the way that we know it on a common basis.

Thinking about it this way, The context in which the work is made. The cultural narratives that are available to the artist become merged in the content of the work of art, even if they are rejected in the work itself. The cultural imperatives drive the artist to work, merge in its content, I think they are part of the basis for artistic inspiration. (the other part being the 'soul' of the work itself, which I mentioned but was not discussed and which I think to some extent exists in medium/the matter of the work and which determines the work). Perhaps what you call "artist" already includes this aspect.

I think the main "seed" of art exists within the artist's experience of what they create, and nowhere else. The husk of art, then, is the rest: the middle-man and the audience. But the artist knows the art best. However, what prevents the artist from being allowed to be an asshole about this, is that the artist is only the vessel through which art comes into the world. I personally think this process is a divine process. The irony, though, is that because it's a divine process is exactly why there's no room for the artist's ego. The art is divine: that means the artist can't take full credit. The artist has to defer to the divine in the exact same way that the art dealer has to defer to the artist (not that they actually do), or, more realistically, in the way that the producer or the band members have to defer to the solo musical artist.

Art that changes us, changes our narratives, that thrust itself at us, opening new ideas and ways of viewing life, that's the art I am concerned about. But I don't think the artist "knows the art best". It takes takes all elements to comprise a work of art: the artist, the middle men/art world, the audience and the context or social values in existence when the work is made.

The inspiration of the artist mitigates against her full understanding of her work, you think inspiration it is a "divine process", where the artist is an instrument of her inspiration. I agree that the artist is an instrument of her inspiration but I believe this is a human process, where her source & drive of inspiration is derived from herself, the art world, the matter (the medium itself), and the audience.

The big problem with subjective idealism as opposed to absolute idealism is that there is no explanation for how all the unconnected subject minds can constitute objects-in-common. This would seem to require a unifying (infinite) intelligence that constitutes the realm of experience for all the finite minds.

How about language as the glue, since thought seems to be constituted by it. Is this why Wittgenstein made language the limit of our world

The purpose of increasing minimum wage remains lost on me, as there seems to be no relation to reducing poverty by an increase of wage at the lowest level of the hierarchy in a business.

I think the concept is to provide a fair wage to hourly workers, a wage that can keep hourly workers above the poverty level. The federal minimum wage in USA is $7.25 cents per hour, and working 40 hours per week for 52 weeks yields an annual income of only $15,080 which is below the federal poverty line for families of two or more (Economic Policy Institute).

Part of the problem here is looking at the nominal value of money versus its purchasing power. On the basis of purchasing power the minimum wage in US peaked in 1968 at approximately $10.00 per hour in today's dollars.

Notp does not equal nothing. Negation is not the same as nothing, negation is a valuation.

They certainly are ideals, but this draws back to the epistemic conditions of why we have them in the first place. "Cattiness" is real insofar as we presuppose its existence outside of our ideals. We cannot know that God exists, but the ideal enables us the noumenal experience of God and thus valid as a mind-independent reality, though inevitably doomed to the limitations of the contents of representations. Striving towards this ideal is a real experience.

It sounds like reverse fetishism to me, where Ideals forcefully compel a manner of living and knowing.

You sure about "Cattiness"? :)

I agree to the extent that universals are required by us to know anything, but that does not make them any more than heuristic devices which enable explanations.

Just as we cannot understand the concept of God and yet his omnipotence is clearly understood, we as humans become one - albeit imperfectly - with the nature of God, but never completely. As cats need certain requisites to become one with cattiness, these ideals enable us to ascertain the temperament, disposition and other duties familiar to the concept of God - the highest Form of Good - that we seek to attain, striving to perfect virtue that can reach beyond the learnings of social history and materialism. The process is indeed real and that would mean that God and cattiness is also real.

The problem I have with your statement is that it assumes that our heuristics devices are real, and not tools of thought that we make use of in the project we call life. I think the contraries you posit are ideal and not real.

Me

What is this "sense of the infinite" ... a desire for immanence, intimacy with what is in-it- itself, intimacy that thought necessarily lacks, leading to alienation.

John:

I'm not sure if these are questions or statements Cavacava. Are you saying that thought leads to alienation?

They were rhetorical, but I think you answered the question about alienation as follows:

John:

The main point I wanted to make was that without an infinite knower the in itself cannot be like anything other than or beyond what it is like for us, or for other finite knowers.

I don't accept any "infinite knower". So based on your thought, what I experience phenomenally forecloses on any reality behind the phenomenal as being the basis of my experience. I am in this sense alienated from any reality beyond the phenomenal, which I can only experience reality as mediated through thought.

Phenomenology becomes a kind of dogmatic idealism?

Hi, thanks for your comment, I am sure John will get around to saying what he means. Meanwhile, I think that the universe is finite, and that everything in it is finite, except for our imagination, the fact that we can imagine possibilities far beyond any possibility of actuality, and that this why math, aesthetics, and perhaps ethics are so useful. Even out imagination has its limits we cannot imagine self contradictory thoughts like a square circles in Euclidean geometry.

As we have discussed in the past, I have a problem posting any ontological objective point of view, because I think any such point of view is only available though thought. Russell's cat is only eternal in thought, but I don't think anyone can imagine what it means to have the view point of a thing in-itself. Kant said we can't know the in-itself but he also thought the concept could be used in thought. Others take a much stronger stance and insist that if it can't be known in principle then trying to use this concept in thinking is meaningless.

"You can care about a life only if you can have an emotional connection with it."

So then you can care about your family, your friends, people you are emotionally invested in but not in the nameless, faceless suffering masses that abound in our world?

What is this "sense of the infinite" ... a desire for immanence, intimacy with what is in-it- itself, intimacy that thought necessarily lacks, leading to alienation. Does this "sense of the infinite" express our need for the absolute, the universal, the "infinite knower" [whom we create in our own image and likeness] as a form of explanation.

Meno asked Socrates

Meno. And how will you inquire, Socrates, into that which you do not know? What will you put forth as the subject of inquiry? And if you find what you want, how will you ever know that this is the thing which you did not know?

Very bitchy, designed to incite

Italians are into vegetable slurs, must be part of their agrarian heritage. I wonder if they have enough to make a Sampler...eggplants, cucumbers, fennel...these are the ones my grandmother taught me.

That does not get you past the circularity, because it is only in thought that your distinction between thought and sense is be possible and there is no guarantee that what we sense is what there is in itself are the same. We simply cannot not have an pure objective point of view.

There is some question as to whether or not what is in itself can even be thought, let alone known.

Nothing

Does the world-for-us (i.e., things that human beings can experience) include those things detected and measured through the use of sense-enhancing instruments (such as particle accelerators), or are those things part of the world-in-itself?

We detect and we measure, what ever is known is only known though thought. Does the structure of thought equal... is it the same as the structure of the world and if so then how could we ever make that determination without circularity.

"Cu*ks and puss**s"... We're all grown up here, you can spell the words out. Maybe you were looking for "cringing weaklings"? btw, what is a 'cu*ks'?

I think that is pedantic and absurd. A person ought to be able to express themselves as they see fit, not according to any strictures or lack thereof. The deciding factors ought to include meaning, what is generally understood, and their feeling comfortable with what is expressed.

Do you use the "N" word much? Is it because you are not comfortable using it, or maybe you are black and you are comfortable using it.

However, your question about 'cu'ks' seems on point.

Maybe you need to come to terms with what is meant when we say that something is Evil. I think you point at it a couple of times in what you wrote.

Sometimes I think evil is attractive. It's necessary in this world or else we won't be able to appreciate good.

I don't think Evil is attractive (except maybe to Utilitarians), but I do think that Evil is a necessary part of what it means to be human, that we would not be able to appreciate what is Good without what is Evil.

But I felt like good and evil are two sides of the same coin and there could be a possibility that the outrage we experience is a result of deep social conditioning.

I like the coin analogy, since one side of the coin is not possible without the other, yet they never meet.

The problem with what is Good and what is Evil, lies in how we culturally, normativley, think about these terms. What one culture categorizes as Evil another categorizes as Good, this is not conducive to making and absolute determinations that this is Evil and that is Good.

would differentiate these with the terms the-world-for-us and the-world-in-itself.

It is not that we don't experience the world as it is in itself, we do, the problem is that we can't know or comprehend what it means for something to be as it is in itself because what we know is always and only presented by our self to our self, the world is always "the-world-for-us".

By making pleasure an end in itself, hedonism was sure to have its ethical opponents.

I don't think that pleasure can be an end in itself. We always take pleasure in something, it is not experienced except in relationship to something else,

This from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

"If the law of gravity existed,' I say, 'I honestly don't know what a thing has to do to be nonexistant. It seems to me that the law of gravity has passed every test of nonexistence there is. You cannot think of a single attribute of nonexistence that the law of gravity didn't have. Or a single scientific attribute of existence it did have. And yet it still 'common sense' to believe that it existed...The law of gravity and gravity itself did not exist before Issac Newton. No other conclusion makes sense...and what that means is that the law of gravity exists nowhere except in people's heads!..." Pirsig's italics