It's more of a context for discussion. I'm trying to create a more of a space than a target. I think some people had/have doubts. Telling a person what they can not doubt is wrong in a way. So long as everything is prefaced with...this is about doubting certainty not informing public policy; then maybe people can raise their concerns without anyone being threatened by ideas. — Cheshire

But public policy is the problem.

For one, the official government outlets are offering simplified and thus misleading information about covid and about the covid vaccines. They paint a black-and-white picture of the situation which, indeed, makes things easier from an administrative/bureocratic perspective for the government, but not in terms of handling the pandemic. The fully vaccinated now get barely ever tested, and they behave as if all was well: and so they spread the disease unchecked (because being vaccinated doesn't stop one from being contagious).

For two, if one does get bad side effects from the vaccine, there is, at least in some EU countries no medical protocol for that, no protection. One is left to oneself. Because the covid vaccines are legally
still treated the same way as any other experimental medication.

For three, there are medical practices related to covid that have greatly complicated things for people. For example, people have been diagnosed with covid by their doctor, but no test done to confirm it. Now, when they try to get a covid pass (which is necessary for so many things in the EU), they can't get it, because a covid pass requires an old enough positive test. Further, those that have had bad side effects after the first dose of the vaccine, are left to themselves; even their doctors advise them not to take the second dose. But if they don't, they can't get a covid pass.


In short, the government and the medical establishment, given some very bad practices they have done in the past and are still doing them, are demanding too much trust from people.

If some bad shit happens because I got the vax, then Baker, et al, can say "I told you so!" — James Riley

See, that's just it. _I_ wouldn't tell you "I told you so".

But you don't care. You just put me into the same category with anyone who isn't all that enthusiastic about the covid vaccine.

But here's the thing: they didn't tell me anything, because they don't know anything. All they did was speculate. They aren't smart enough and don't have the training to tell me anything. All they can do is question, wonder, speculate or regurgitate what others have said to make them scared. There is nothing wrong with that, I guess. But I don't live my life that way.

But here's the thing: You don't care. You don't listen. You think in black and white terms, all or nothing. No nuance, no detail, nothing. Like a total redneck. This is what puts many people off.

You're sending the message that anyone who is rabidly in favor of the covid vaccines is entitled to spew hatred and contempt at those who aren't, and that those others are obligated to accept that hatred and contempt on their knees.

Here making a note to myself to reply to these posts. I need to think some more to make my reply concise.

You speak like a true believer.

Now, the question is how come some people are bothered by this. (For they are bothered, given the extensive critical communications on the topic).

For your own part, you already have an explanation for this: they are spiritually inferior to you.

For their part, I'm not sure. It could be many things -- envy, feeling threatened, bewilderment. It's something I've been keenly trying to figure out.

I have to say the more I think about this idea of a god the less coherent and comprehensible I find it. If you reduce the idea to an anthropomorphized cartoon - a fundamentalist style of deity - it become more coherent, if less believable to me.

Do you have a view about what the most plausible form of deity could be? — Tom Storm

The God of the Taliban.

What do you think of the Paul Tillich style 'ground of being' conception?

That it's impotent.
At the end of the day, life is a struggle for survival. If a concept of God doesn't reflect that and doesn't help one to get the upper hand in said struggle, then it's impotent.

My question was, if philosophical inquiry leads to aporia, then why would anyone engage in philosophical inquiry? — Apollodorus

Well, this is why people quit philosophy, no?

According to Socrates, knowledge of higher realities can be acquired only by looking into them with the soul alone by itself.

Through the Socratic method, under the guidance of the teacher.

The claim to the effect that "philosophical inquiry leads to aporia" is spurious and unfounded IMHO. — Apollodorus

Not at all. The above claim probably best describes many people's experience with philosophy, namely, that it "goes nowhere".

Plato does no more than to put us on the right track. The Truth-hunting has to be done by each lover of wisdom or seeker after truth, personally. — Apollodorus

Provided we take for granted that Plato knows and take him as our teacher.

At any rate, I think we are more likely to arrive at truth by actively hunting for it than by perpetually questioning things and living a life of self-imposed ignorance, uncertainty, and doubt.

"And what is the result of stress?
There are some cases in which a person overcome with pain, his mind exhausted, grieves, mourns, laments, beats his breast, & becomes bewildered.
Or one overcome with pain, his mind exhausted, comes to search outside, 'Who knows a way or two to stop this pain?'
I tell you, monks, that stress results either in bewilderment or in search. This is called the result of stress.
AN 6.63

How are we to hunt for the truth, if we do it in some kind of vacuum, with no teacher or guide?
And how do we know whom to turn to to help us in our search?


Note how our notion of truth probably entails some kind of relating to others, however "thinking for ourselves" we might otherwise believe ourselves to be.

We should trust the experts, simply because we have nothing else to go on when it comes to making judgements in fields where we have little or no expertise.

What's the alternative? Trust no one? — Janus

No. But desist from making many judgments to begin with.
Obviously, this wil make one unpopular in certain circles where having a lot of definitive opinions is required. But realistically, there are rather few things that one actually needs to have a definitive opinion about.

On the other hand if someone wants to question everything and think for themselves, they will be obviously happier if they do that, no?

Because philosophers are known for being such a happy bunch!

Outside/inside certainly is a meaningful distinction — Constance

Why?

And, having read one dialogue that allegedly leaves the reader in a state of "aporia", why read another dialogue that leaves the reader in the same "aporetic" condition?

What I fail to see is how additional aporia can resolve the initial aporia.

Or is the intention to maximize the aporetic state until all reasoning ability has been suspended? — Apollodorus

Perhaps not deliberately. This is also how the practice of koans works. Namely, contemplating a koan is supposed to bring one's mind to a halt, from whence on one can "see things as they really are".

But nor should they claim that other people's personal experience is just imagination. — Apollodorus

But there is still an issue of power. Defining what is real for another person is an act of power.
It's not possible to do away with issues of power in interpersonal interactions of any kind, not even in philosophy.

There is also such a thing as lack of imagination. — Wayfarer

But then again, it's possible to be so open-minded that one's brain falls out.

Some think that dialectic is a method that leads to knowledge of the Forms. But how can someone know this unless they have completed the journey? That it does is something we are told not something we have experienced. It is a matter of opinion. Dialectic leads to knowledge of our ignorance. It leads us to see that philosophical inquiry leads to aporia. — Fooloso4

Not under the Socratic method.

Inherent in the Socratic method is the inequality of the teacher and the student, and the student's submission to the teacher.

Also while searching for info on him, I found an article on philosophical counselling. — Wayfarer

Are you familiar with Alain de Botton?
His Consolations of Philosophy was quite famous.

I personally don't know God's mind. But threatening others on the account that that one knows God's mind can be a very powerful tool in social interactions, in order to subject the other person, or get some leverage over them, or at least to gain psychological distance from them. (For this, it is actually irrelevant whether the threatener knows God's mind or not.)

What do you think has driven monotheistic conquerors to kill, rape, and pillage, if not the conviction that they have God on their side?

I'm trying to make sense of the God idea.
— baker

And in doing so you renege on your responsibility to decide right from wrong. — Banno

If there is objective morality, my decision about morality is moot.
If there is no objective morality, my decision about morality is irrelevant.

You're simply taking your brand of morality for granted, as if it was objective, absolute.

A benevolent parent does not spoil their child, does not wrap them in cotton-wool but pushes them towards independence and responsibility. — unenlightened

Exactly, which is the justification for a Social Darwinist monotheism.

I agree but since we don't (can't?) know God's mind, how could anyone assume to know if God's standards based on the information available? — Tom Storm

Maybe you in particular don't know God's mind, but who's to say nobody else does either?

The power of God belief, as far as it concerns interpersonal interactions, is precisely in one party having more uncertainty about God than the other person.

By the way, what is a humanist standard of good? Isn't this largely Christianity without Jesus?

No.
Humanism.

I was thinking more in terms of this forum, but yes. — Banno

Oh, the irony!

Philosophy is overrated anyway. At the end of the day, philosophers, too, are "just people". And forum moderators at a philosophy forum don't even wait for the end of the day!

The horror, suffering, and anguish of a situation is all the more reason to invoke anekantavada. One party involved has failed to give the other's point of view the attention it deserves. — TheMadFool

It deserves such attention? "Deserves" by whose standards?

Waiting for others only makes one a victim, and if persisted in, eventually, a martyr.

The BIV scenario takes for granted that there is an outside and an inside.
— baker

Does it? — Constance

Of course, which is evidenced by asking questions such as, "How do the scientists know they are not brains in vats, themselves, being controlled and experimented on by other scientists who could also be brains in vats?" You wouldn't be asking this if you wouldn't think that inside vs. outside is a meaningful distinction.

This makes the BIV a metaphysical problem, for there is nothing foundational presented.

No, it makes it a poorly conceived one.

There are, despite the ubiquitous, absurd pop philosophy to the contrary, very many things that we know. — Banno

List 3.

Many people are interested in the ancient texts be it bible or literature, because they are interesting in many ways. — Corvus

Interesting how?

Unless we're talking about a simple curiosity (or more like: attempts to relieve one's existential boredom), the pull one feels toward an acient text surely has something to do with the historical reception and influence of said text.

IOW, you're someone who wants to read and understand the Bible on his own terms, quite cut off from the religious tradition it is part of.

Why on earth would anyone want to do that??

Take the No True Scottsman fallacy, for example. In most cases of it, which concern terms that denote national, racial, political, ideological, or religious identity, what is actually going in is an equivocation, because terms that denote national, racial, political, ideological, or religious identity are complex, multilayered, thus, internally incoherent.

Without the basic knowledge of the literal meanings, one cannot progress to the other levels, be it faith or spirit. — Corvus

I am confident that actual religious people will say it's the other way around.

This, I suppose, is the Buddha's madhyamaka/the middle path. — TheMadFool

The Middleness of the Path

Anyway, there's a right perspective i.e. though everyone is entitled to an opinion, we can still get to what might be called an objective truth (see addendum 2 in my OP) which no one in faer right mind can/would deny. This however doesn't imply that two parties in a dispute, philosophical or otherwise, are wrong though. All it means is the real (?), the whole truth is more intricate, thus more beautiful even if also exasperating, than we imagine it to be. — TheMadFool

This is a romanticism that someone living in the real world wouldn't indulge in.

You've, I'm afraid, missed the point of anekantavada which is to point out that there are no real contradictions but only apparent contradictions. Your whole argument is predicated on the former. In true anekantavada spirit, my response would be you're right but, for better or worse, I'm not wrong. Let's just leave it at that. Feel free to disagree though. — TheMadFool

No. What you're failing to acknowledge is that in your quuest for egalitarianism, you're bulldozing over the opposition, or at least trying to do so.

Underneath your optimism, idealism, egalitarianism burns a fire of supremacism
— baker

From a certain perspective that could be true and I feel sorry that I could be read that way:

After all your speeches and posturing you're nothing but a common thief.
— (Die Hard)

All I can say is I'm just an African ape, like Richard Dawkins takes great pains to point out when referring to h. sapiens, trying to make sense of faer world.

Hey, false humility makes for false pride!

It would be difficult to imagine that one can understand the Bible without knowing the rich meanings of the old, exotic or even plain words in it, when it even says that God has given the language, so that men could study with it their way to know him. — Corvus

It is vital to read the Bible in the right spirit, with faith and humility.

Understanding specific old words like "ephah" is, for the most part, irrelevant.

Without the right spirit, one can be a scholar in ancient languages, and still miss the point of the ancient text.

Reading the Bible has never really been a question of understanding a literal account, it is embedded in a 'community of discourse, faith and practice', within which it is meaningful. — Wayfarer

Exactly. Which is why outsiders who are not thusly embedded cannot hope to have a meaningful experience with the Bible. Similar goes for other ancient texts.

In original Christianity, those who heard that were never expected to understand it. They were expected to believe it. There was no question of ‘interpretation’. Interpretation was having an opinion, which is what ‘heresy’ means.

We live in a different world now. We wonder about what it means. But in the original setting, it was simply recited by the priests, and you simply listened to it. — Wayfarer

Exactly. The fact that at the time, the majority of the population was illiterate actually helped this state of affairs and probably made the whole experience of listening to sermons more meaningful for the people. (Note that the Roman Catholic Church was not in favor of simple people reading the Bible because the probability of misunderstanding was too great.)

Why should I read them if we don't know what they say? — Gregory

Indeed. So why do you feel pressured to read them? Can you tell?

No, it wasn't obvious. God is a Social Darwinist and so somehow evades responsibility for his actions. — Banno

No. The reason why God cannot be held accountable is because he is God, not because he is a Social Darwinist.
God couldn't be held accountable even if he was a humanist.

...and your subservient pandering to a tyrant god is not at all idiosyncratic.

Ah. I'm trying to make sense of the God idea. This doesn't automatically include that I take for granted that God is on my side or that he will be or could be. Quite the contrary, actually.

So the suffering and cruelty of 'creation' is reflective of a cruel God who behaves like a Mafia boss in scripture? I think a lot of humanists have identified this scenario. It certainly makes sense that if there is a god he is either non-interventionist or 'evil' as far as human morality is concerned. — Tom Storm

Not by human morality, but by humanist morality.

Nevertheless, the intrinsic goodness of God is central to most traditions I am aware of and human beings are supposed to please god by being good also.

Sure. But again, it's not supposed to be goodness by humanist standards, but by God's standards.

You are welcome. And you can have this for after dinner — Apollodorus

Thank you, but I have to unplug the computer and all electronic devices now, because we have a storm coming.

There cannot be demonstrated to be any such higher knowledge, though. — Janus

So? There is no need for such demonstration.

Even the person who purportedly has such knowledge cannot be sure (as opposed to feeling sure) that it is true knowledge.

How can you possibly know that??

It's a conviction that things are a certain way; if things turned out to be that way it just means that the conviction would have turned out to be in accordance with reality.

How can you possibly know it's merely a conviction?

The problem is that no one could ever be sure of that being the case. Knowledge as it is normally understood is always uncertain, and consists in there being found no good reason to doubt, and that what we believe is also true. But the latter is what is always rationally uncertain.

If you wanted to be strictly accurate there is no possibility of certain knowledge that anything is the case, so really humans don't have propositional knowledge at all, they just have beliefs. That said of course within limited contexts we can be said to know things for certain, like I know I am sitting here typing on a laptop, or I know it is raining because I can see the rain falling and things getting wet.

You're taking for granted a measure of uncertainty and human incapacity for knowledge. You could be overstating the case, taking for granted that humans are necessarily thusly incapable. All in all, you are making definite claims about things you yourself admit to not having certainty of.

It's not like there is an actual need to decide about such things! Nobody is putting a gun to your head or a knife to your throat forcing you to decide one way or another.
Whence this need to decide about whether there is consciousness after death??
— baker

That's a silly comment, given what Ive been arguing.

Perhaps I need to adjust my style and be less colloquial.

I've been using that as an example; I'm not claiming the individual should decide one way or another. That's a matter of faith, of personal conviction, and up to the individual. I sometimes doubt you even read what I've written. I'm not even saying someone should not follow what some purported sage has to say; just that doing that is not an example of thinking for yourself, but rather of allowing someone else to do your thinking for you.

My point is that you're presenting the matter in either-or terms, while I think that the decision as you put it forward is not even necessary. It's avoidable, much if not most of the time. For the most part, we do not actually need to decide whether what someone claims is the truth or not.

It seems that most people, when they hear a claim, have the impulse to decide whether it is true or not, to decide whether the person is lying or not, or trying to deceive them or not. I contend that much if not most of the time, this is not necessary at all, and it would be a waste of energy and time to investigate each and every claim. Many, if not most claims that one hears in one's life, can be put aside without deciding about them, without this having any negative consequences for oneself.

Thank you, this will take some processing.

When people believe experts and authorities in various fields it is because they trust that those expert's expertise has been rigorously tested and demonstrated, and could be retested and redemonstrated if needs be. — Janus

It's not clear this is the case. Ideally, it should be the case, but I don't think it is, or only rarely. It seems that most people who believe experts and authorities in various fields don't even have a concept of "rigorously testing and demonstrating". Instead, their believing the experts and authorities is, essentially, a fallacious argumentum ab auctoritate.

The same does not apply with sages and gurus. There is no way to rigorously and without bias test their purported expertise, even in principle, let alone practice.

You cannot "rigorously and without bias test the purported expertise" of scientists either. You don't have the resources, you don't have the data, you don't have the access, and they sure as hell aren't going to do it for you.

But I know what kinds of cultures of gullible mythologizing actually arise around cult leaders and gurus of all kinds; the same kinds of lamentable human dynamics play out everywhere. People happily relinquishing their capacities to think for themselves; listening to the oracular voice of the "master" and believing every word; it's just sad in my view.

There's no guarantee that "thinking for yourself" will make you happy and successful either.

If we don't know what is literal in *religious texts* how can they have a "meaning" anymore? — Gregory

Whose problem is that?

Why should we try to have a certain understanding of what ancient texts say?

You're lucky that you're a moderator, so I can't report you for misrepresenting or anything like that.
You should be ashamed of yourself.


But just vote for Trump, honey, just vote for Trump.

The Talibans are taking life seriously and they don't fool around. This is what makes them so different from many, if not most people.

While all along, you get to be the arbiter of truth, eh?
— baker

Where did you get that from? — TheMadFool

Your words.

Anekantavada takes into account all parties involved, favoring none over the other. My views are the same as anyone elses, including yours.

That is your view. Surely you're aware that other people don't think this way. It's safe to say that most people don't believe that your views are the same as theirs, and certainly not as relevant as theirs.

However, that we disagree, a contradiction threatening to rear its ugly head unless it hasn't already, suggests a higher truth who's projections are the two of us. Don't you wanna what that truth is? I want to.

Underneath your optimism, idealism, egalitarianism burns a fire of supremacism. :blush: