Even a coma wants life support...

The equation of being and time seems to be a truistic pseudo-profundity if it is accepted that time is nothing over and above change, and being is nothing over and above becoming.

This wasn’t my argument though either. — schopenhauer1

Apparently I misunderstood you then; my apologies.



Cheers Tom.

I don't think he ever is honest enough to come out and say it. Being is God. — Fooloso4

He critiques onto-theology, but perhaps that is a screen (for himself and others).

I suggest that we don’t know that other people are conscious, insofar as it is simply part of what it means to be a person. Maybe you could describe it as an animal certainty, but it seems a stretch to describe it as a knowing.

But then, how do we know people are persons? Again, what is significant here isn't knowing or judging that they are persons but relating, communicating, giving and asking for reasons, and so on.

It follows that we don’t use standards to make that judgement, because there is no judgement--unless the question comes up. And now that the question has come up, we find it difficult to judge. This I suppose is why it's also a difficult philosophical question. — Jamal

I think you're right on the ball here. Knowing other people are conscious is not a propositional knowing, like knowing it is raining, it is a sense of familiarity, and "animal" knowing as you say.

There is absolutely no reason to doubt that others experience things more or less as I do. Because it is logically possible, because it is not propositionally certain, that others are even conscious, the idea that that constitutes reason to doubt their being conscious is absurd in my view.

I agree with you that no judgement (in the propositional sense at least) is made until the question comes up, and then we find that it is, due to lack of direct observational data, impossible to judge. That said, I don't see it as a philosophical question on account of its analytic undecidability, but as one of the symptoms showing that this kind of "philosophy" has lost its way.

Since I started posting philosophy on TPF again recently it’s become disturbingly apparent to me that almost nobody reads my posts, even those who reply to them. I don’t think this is a problem with my posts, but if it is then please let me know. — Jamal

Almost nobody reads anybody's posts charitably and thoroughly as far as I have been able to tell judging by the bulk of replies. For what it's worth, I think you are one of the more charitable and thorough readers of others' posts, as well as being one of the more reasonable and thoughtful posters. I often find myself admiring and envying your patience. I'm far too prone to impatience.

Thanks, I have read that book, but maybe twenty years ago. I think it is still on the shelves somewhere, so I might revisit it. Another example is semiotics that talks about the "epistemic cut": The problem I have is that consciousness, feeling, doesn't seem to be the kind of thing that can be understood mechanically, so unlike with physical processes which can be analyzed down to a set of mechanical causal events which seem to make sense, understanding how something apparently non-physical (in the sense that what it feels like to be conscious is not quantifiable or observable from without) seems to be a lost cause.

Right, death is the other face of the manifest universe, the twin of non-being to the universal being, the dark unknowable counterpart to the sunlit knowable.

I find that question more of a special plead, than a serious question. You will not be surprised that my answer as an atheist, is obviously going to be that I am convinced 99.999% that there are no, nor has there ever been, an entity/existent, that qualifies for the god label, due to it's irrefutable DEMONSTRATION, that it possesses all of the required omni qualifications. — universeness

I'm not pleading for anything, special or otherwise. You're right your answer doesn't surprise me, and it probably won't surprise you to learn that what you are convinced of means little to me, and that in any case I don't believe in the God of theology.

Most of this quote seems to agree with my position, except for the slightly anthropomorphic references to the universe as if it had intent. I was not assigning YOU responsibility, for what I cannot be bothered with, I was merely explaining to you, why I think a non-believer, (such as you have presented yourself,) choosing a handle like Janus is rather bizarre, but I accept that is only my opinion. — universeness

I haven't implied that the universe has intent. The god of new beginnings, Janus, is not at all associated with the Abrahamic pantheons. That you might think my choice "bizarre" is none of my concern. Happy trails anyway...

I think you're right about the Greco-Roman influences on Christianity.

Correct. So I guess. I don't care if you use strictly "Euthyphro" or not. I am just interested in debating the argument I have been laying out and you keep pointing to Euthyphro being out of context. That's fine, but let's debate what I am debating then, whatever you want to call it and stop debating semantics at this point. — schopenhauer1

Aesthetics is a matter of taste. If someone finds Christianity and the idea of God beautiful, I have no argument with them believing. You seem to find life mostly ugly, I don't; I find it mostly beautiful, so we are coming at this from different ends of the stick. Finding life ugly can actually be a motivation for religious faith. The lesson here is that not everyone does, or should, see things just the way you or I do. It's not really a matter of argument at all in my view.

What god is there other than the universe? It presents us with the face of the knowable and the face of the unknowable. We cannot but be its followers, but the stories it tells us are endlessly interpretable. It just depends on what our basic presuppositions or interests are. I am not responsible for what you can or cannot be bothered with.

Are you seriously saying that a reasonable burden of proof is that unless I summarise the entire field of neuroscience of consciousness you can justifiably suggest it doesn't exist. — Isaac

No, I'm saying just give me a brief rundown of a current theory.

If you want to claim there's no neuroscientific theories of consciousness unless I reveal them to you, then we might as well leave it there. I'm not interested in that game. — Isaac

I'm saying I've never heard of any cogent explanation for how matter can give rise to consciousness. I'm not claiming there are none. You say there is such a theory, but you apparently can't say what or where it is. That inspires little confidence.

Promissory notes or wrigglin' and squirmin' won't cut it. Present an account or admit you cannot.

:up: I don't see how it is possible not to be confused about it.

All that signifies for me is the seeing of both sides of the argument. I don't hold any magical views, but I also don't dismiss the possibility.

Can you cite anywhere where I've peddled any magical theory?

The difference is we have a basic idea of how things become hot; and idea which is consistent with all our understanding of combustion, chemical action and friction, but I can't see how we have even the first idea about how matter becomes conscious.

It's a deeper point than that, to do with the fact that in situations of perceiving we are always already linguistic, because of what we are. — Jamal

I agree we are always already linguistic once having been inducted into a language; I just don't think it follows that we are therefore linguistic through and through, and I also don't take you to be arguing that we are; I'm just clarifying what I tend to think about it.

How do you know that no one can suspend the linguistic/ conceptual function and just see whatever it is they are seeing without identifying what it is?

We have a pretty clear physicalist understanding of how, for example, a material object can become hot; by agitation of the molecules.Do you have an equivalently clear physicalist understanding of how matter can become conscious?

I've noticed that people on TPF sometimes say things like "perception can't be linguistic because I can see things without saying anything," or "language cannot be social because if I were stranded on a desert island I'd still be able to talk and read." In these cases I wonder if they're making a solid point that I'm just not getting, or if they simply don't understand what we mean. — Jamal

Recognition would not seem to require language since animals can do it. So perceiving a dog as a dog is ambiguous. A dog recognizes other dogs as her own kind, although obviously without language she does not form the English sentence (or any other linguistic equivalent) "that is a dog".

Yes, riddled with that and many other dualistic cliches...can we escape it discursively?

Why not indeed? — Wayfarer

It seems obvious: we witness dances, we don't witness meanings, purposes and consciousness.

Direct realists argued that we can trust that perception informs us about what the world is like because the world and its nature presents itself in experience. Indirect realists argued that we can't trust that perception informs us about what the world is like because experience is, at best, representative of the world and its nature. — Michael

So, the indirect realist asserts a reality (what the world is like in itself) beyond appearances. In any case doesn't perception inform us about about what the world is like for us? Is there really any other world that matters? I'd say there isn't; what the world is like in itself is thinkable as a possibility, but it is unknowable in principle, because anything we know will be what the world is like for us. So the idea that the world is different in itself is the dark side of the moon, the face of being which is forever turned away from us, and it's importance consists in the fact that it stands there as the mystical, the undecidable, and that very darkness allows a tremendous fecundity to the human imagination.

Looks like we are equally biased. You seem to admire/see value in, a two faced god, whereas I prefer the 'ness' part I have (and you have,) of the universe. — universeness

The universe is a two faced god and we are its two faced acolytes..

I like the idea of punk sages. Not the front men or the bands, but say a Pythagorean Punk. — Moliere

They have strict codes of conduct those Pythagorean Punk sages: don't bring up the square root of two. A looser punk sage was Diogenes.

Um, I'm not sure your quibble here, as I see no difference really to what I am saying. The basis of Euthyphro is whether something is good because the gods command it or whether it's the gods command it because it is good. — schopenhauer1

My point has just been it is only an either/ or question in the context of the Greek gods, not in the context of Abrahamic theology. Anyway I am not a believer in God, so the question doesn't matter much to me.

And in that case, indeed look at the Gnostics. — schopenhauer1

Yaldabaoth, the flawed creator of a flawed creation?

Interesting thanks.

Of course, do you?

It's possible the dominance is regional and shifting. Perhaps starling still predominate in some areas. It's an interesting subject I may researvh when time allows. A friend used to refer to mynas as "the mafiosa of the ird world" . They owned the rubbish tips until the "bin chickens" (white ibis) made it a duopoly.

’m currently in Kazakhstan and they’re native here, filling the same niche as their relative, the European starling, does in Europe. They hang about outside where I’m working, demonstrating their impressive mimicry. — Jamal

When I was a kid living in Epping, a Sydney suburb, it was Starlings, no Mynas. The Starlings were supplanted by Mynas, and I never saw Starlings again.

I want to meet a sage sage. — Tom Storm

Adjective and noun: a wise sage.

Raises an interesting question. Assuming we can identify who is deserving of the appellation 'sage' what kind of taste (aesthetic preferences) do sages have? What if the Dalai Lama (say) prefers the films of Michael Bay to those of Stanley Kubrick? What if good taste is an exclusive purview of the profane... — Tom Storm

I don't think we can identify sages reliably...maybe other sages can. Even then maybe there are not 'universal' sages but rather musical sages, mathematical sages, philosophical sages. painterly sages and so on.

Take musical sages: maybe there are jazz sages, classical sages, heavy metal sages, punk sages...maybe sagehood is a specialized business...who knows? :nerd:

:clap: :100:

And yet, as a pessimist, what I see as most probable is just that.
Here on the precipice, on the eve of lemmingfall, I don't see any sign of reconciliation or a coherent plan for survival, and there's no time to change course.
Because of regressive conservatism... more accurately: because of the regressive steps taken by those forces which hijacked conservatism... there may be no way back to the negotiating table, and no acceptable options. I don't know about revolutions, but more civil wars are probable. So is economic collapse.
Somebody, sometime, may very well need to rebuild.
Thanks to the ant-people who stored up and preserved seeds and knowledge, their task won't impossible. — Vera Mont

I actually agree with you. There is no captain at the helm of the ship of state, and to rerun the old metaphor, what is presently being done in the name of "preventing disaster" is like rearranging the deck-chairs on the Titanic. Human civilization has become a fossil-fuel driven juggernaut, and it does seem that collapse is inevitable..it's just a question of how soon.

I was speaking more against those who think we need total revolution, and that we could have that and still preserve civilization and a growing population. That is what I think is not a viable option. After collapse I imagine there will be rebuilding, but with a vastly diminished population, and who knows how much of the culture will be preserved?

Apex species who overuse their resources suffer radical decline when the resources are greatly enough diminished, and I believe it is only human ingenuity that has enabled us to stave off that inevitability for as long as we have.

Whenever people say a question is meaningless I suspect it is redolent... gravid with meaning. :razz: — Tom Storm

NIce retort and a fair point. Perhaps I should have said "undecidable" instead of "meaningless".

How then do we determine which are the best things? :wink: — Tom Storm

We just see which ones are the best. :razz: Seriously though, no one's seeing is perfect...or maybe only the sage's. But again even if the sage's seeing is perfect, that 'fact' cannot be discursively established.

I agree with you; I was really just pointing out that any analysis is necessarily dualistic. In the East awakening is understood to be a return to a unitary being, which we are understood to have "fallen out of" due to nature of dualistic mind. We really are this unitary or nondual being, but we have becomes distracted.

For Heidegger subjects and objects don’t inhere in themselves, have no internality or subsistence. To ‘be’ is to be a crossing or intersection between past and present. Being is one part memory and one part present. It is between these two as a becoming , a transit , a difference. Dasein, as Being-in-the-World, is a worlding’, not the appearing of things before a subject but an enacting of world in which to be is to be displaced into what discloses itself. — Joshs

That's the way I understand Heidegger too, but again as discourse here there is still no hope of evading dualistic thinking even if the specific framing of 'subject/ object' is eschewed. I think Heidegger came to realize the futility of analysis, and that explains his turn to the later work.

And in my conversations with people this is often how they consider their judgements. As somehow objective and true. — Tom Storm

I think it is pretty much universal: when people see or feel a quality, they tend to think others should see or feel it too.

I dislike and avoid both. But I know what you are saying.

You are essentially talking about sophistication and layering. But not all great art is complex or nuanced. — Tom Storm

You dislike both but can you perceive the quality in Shakespeare? I can, and I don't particularly like his works either, in the sense that I have no desire to read them.

I think a lot of people believe this. I am uncertain. I don't know how we would justify this but maybe we can. — Tom Storm

I don't think we can justify this, but I think it can be recognized. It's a conundrum to be sure. I think it has something in common with the Eastern conception of enlightenment or awakening.

I don't see it as being subject to purposes, because I think great works have no particular purpose. You know: "art for art's sake".

But how do we determine whether Mozart is a better composer than Beethoven? When works are nuanced and complex it's a more complex conundrum. — Tom Storm

For me Beethoven is the greater composer, both in terms of harmonic inventiveness and "depth", but I can't give you any argument for that beyond mere assertion.

It may not. But I suspect if we are going to say there is a standard of beauty then where is this located? How is this standard to be understood, except as an 'immutable form' or something culturally located? — Tom Storm

I don't think it has to be located anywhere; I think it's just a matter of seeing. As an analogy, where is our ability to recognize pattern located? Every leaf of a particular species of tree is different and yet the same; where is that difference and sameness located? The question seems meaningless.

I think this kind of recognition is pre-cultural; even animals can do it. And I can't see anything immutable about it, so...where does that leave us? With a mystery...something inexplicable and yet wonderful.

Perhaps the best things in life just cannot be explained...to be explicable is to be pedestrian.

It was Kant who pointed out that when we deem something to possess aesthetic value, we take ourselves to be talking about something universal. and not to be merely talking about personal liking.

It seems obvious that there is universal aesthetic value: Shakespeare just is better than Mills and Boon, right? I think aesthetic value is real, and that you can be, given the aptitude for it, trained to get better and better at recognizing it. Some just see better than others, which sounds elitist, and probably is. But the aesthetic rating of particular things cannot be argued for and established propositionally.

What is beauty? Who can say? Must all things of an aesthetic character be beautiful? It seems not. I don't think it has anything to do with platonic forms. The way I see it the essence of aesthetic value is some kind of potent livingness or other.

But I witness very important differences in the behaviour and claims of both camps. Scientific endeavour is much more humble and rational than religious endeavour. — universeness

And the way you see it is completely free from bias, right?

If the same entity wanted Bad things to happen to creatures as part of his divine game, it begs the question as to what morality this entity holds. — schopenhauer1

Right, but the thrust of the Euthyphro dilemma is the undecidability between whether something is good because the gods love it or whether the gods love it because it is good. The problem comes with the possibility of disagreement between the gods as to what is good, just as it is with humans.

God, however is a single entity, so there is no possibility of disagreement, and thus no inconsistency or contradiction in saying that something is good because God loves it and God loves it because it is good.

Whether there is a God, or whether what God loves is good are separate questions, and nothing to do with the Euthyphro.

:up: Some good subtle analysis from both of you there!

So I do think the concerns of traditional conservatism have to be faced up to rather than swept aside. — Jamal

And yet, society cannot remain static. — Vera Mont

So we're down to negotiating terms; plotting strategy; finding ways and means.
A hostile standoff just won't work. — Vera Mont

These points in particular I strongly agree with. Complete, or even substantial revolution: destruction of the existing order, and starting over again, rebuilding from within the ruins, is not a viable option.

The point is that the theist can say that, in her view, the creation is good, and that God loves it because it is good and it is good because God loves it without contradiction.

From the theistic perspective, that you, a mere mortal, may think the creation is not good is just your (false) opinion and is irrelevant to what is not a logical dilemma or contradiction for the theist. Far greater minds that ours (Leibniz) have thought this is the best of all possible worlds, which is not to say he is right, but just to point out that there is no obvious fact of the matter.

I think Heidegger's "being-in-the-world" as a unitary mode of being is revolutionary. — Arne

I don't see how the thought of being in something is not dualistic. The thought of simply being is not dualistic, but when it 'in-the-world' is posited it becomes so.

Edit: reading back over the thread, I see I'm repeating myself; but I'll let it stand.

Also, as a matter of definition, where else would we be but in the world? It could be said that to be is necessarily to be in an environment or surroundings, or to be "here" or "there", but that is still a reflective and necessarily dualistic conceptualization. Do we constantly have the sense of being in something or do we, pre-reflectively, simply have a sense of being?

Heidegger's way of purportedly getting beyond the subject/object distinction and positing Dasein as 'being-in-the-world'; or simply 'being there' ultimately fails to transcend dualism I think. The Eastern religious traditions had posited simply being and subject/ object as an illusion for millenia. Heidegger reportedly said upon reading D T Suzuki's exegesis of zen philosophy (paraphrasing because I can't be bothered searching for the exact quote): "if I am reading this right, this is exactly what I have been trying to say".

I think zen and Buddhism would be more likely to say "being the world" than "being in the world" but the conceptual thrust may, to be sure, be interpreted to be the same.

Right, you could interpret "neither true nor false" as not not merely not demonstrably true or false but as not capable of being true or false.