would you describe yourself as a duplicitous person?

it is just impossible. — Angelo Cannata

Why?

I have read the baghavad gita but I don't remember the whole thing.

I already acknowledged that the Bible has examples of warfare waged by the righteous against the wicked.

If we disregard all of the evidence that contradicts a pacifistic interpretation then our self-fulfilling prophecy will indubitably be fulfilled. — Leontiskos

Why are you speaking in riddles?

if you are familiar with the four canonical gospels then you must be aware of when Jesus instructed his disciples to sell their cloaks to buy swords — Leontiskos

He must've intended for them to turn them into plowshares because when Peter uses the sword he is told by Jesus that whoever lives by the sword will die by the sword.

I don't think anyone knows what the allegory of heaven means exactly — Tom Storm

If this is the case then perhaps christians have failed in their missionary mission.

They did that a lot of that sort of thing after they attained state power. — Paine

Spartacus fought the romans without state power.

I see no problem between Christ's mission and self-defense. — NotAristotle

Christ didn't practice self defense when it was a matter of life and death.

They did that a lot of that sort of thing after they attained state power. — Paine

As far as I know they never attained state power.

Suffering is kind of the point of most forms of Christianity, isn't it? — Tom Storm

I know of no interpretation of christianity where suffering is the end and not the means. If this was the case then hell would be the goal and heaven would be avoided.

Certainly, biologically, we are here to reproduce — jgill

I think that you would agree that there is more to human life than our reproductive organs. I don't think that life exists to serve reproduction but I do think that reproduction exists to serve life. In other words I don't think that life exists to produce reproduction but rather reproduction exists to produce life. I apologize for saying the same thing twice but it seems like an important point. If all we ever did was reproduce we would be in no way different from the chickens we use as food. They reproduce and then their offspring goes on to reproduce but only for the sake of the slaughterhouse.

This very strongly presupposes a deity, who has requirements of some kind, preferences in human behaviour and standard according to which humans are judged. I can't help you with that: I don't believe in gods. — Vera Mont

I don't know if a god exists or if there are many gods and I don't care. I am completely indifferent to such questions.

we are free to set personal goals, meet obligations incurred in social existence, decide to what endeavour we dedicate what portion of our life. — Vera Mont

I am not trying to take away your freedom or persuade you that it should be taken from you. I am trying to discover the best way to use the freedom that I do have. You seem to think that I should imitate Jimmy Carter or someone like him who has "mastered the craft of living" but whatever the case may be I don't think that my role in life is one of imitation although I could be mistaken. I don't even care about ethical questions like what we do or do not owe to the members of our species, not that there is anything wrong with discussing these subjects. My attention is simply directed to a different goal. It may be the case that I am incorrect in concluding that my life has a purpose and if that is the case I should like to learn about my error from anyone who is willing to reveal it to me. Perhaps nobody's life has a purpose and we are "condemned to be free" as someone else put it but I am convinced that I am alive for the sake of some end and that it would not be wise to resist this even if it cost me my life.

only you benefit from discussing your particular life; the rest of us are not invested in your ambitions. — Vera Mont

It was never my intention to discuss my personal ambitions or even my particular life. I don't see how I would benefit from that. I hope you'll give me the benefit of the doubt even if you suspect my intentions.

I suspect we would learn more from watching a master carpenter use a hammer than we could from talking about the hammer. — Vera Mont

I don't know any master carpenters but if you do please tell me where I can find one, although I fear that you may be deliberately stretching my analogy to the breaking point for the sake of making me look like an idiot.

I don't know much about souls so If I was forced to chose between the two alternatives I would probably select the first option instead of the second. Another way of putting it is that I believe I am alive for a reason and that there is something I am supposed to do with the life I have been allowed to enjoy. Perhaps it's similar to a duty or responsibility that I am obligated to respect. I can't say for certain but I don't think I should live my life doing whatever I enjoy simply because I enjoy it or doing whatever benefits me simply because it benefits me. instead I view my life as entrusted to me and that I should use it in the best way possible instead of the worst. I don't want to to disgrace myself anymore than I already have by pursuing the inferior things in life because doing that seems shameful and ignoble.

I can't offer you any money in return for your assistance but I can offer you my gratitude and if there is anything that I can assist you with I will be glad to do so. However I would like to suggest the possibility that we can all benefit from a discussion of this sort. For example if we were to inquire into the nature of a hammer in order to discover it's purpose we would be able to extrapolate from the particular instance of the individual hammer we happened to be discussing and extend our conclusions to all hammers or whatever tool we wanted to examine. I would be surprised if every human being had a unique purpose separate and distinct from all other humans. In other words it would be strange if some human beings were made of gold and some were made of silver or Iron and brass as plato famously suggested.

I should think so because I have no reason to think otherwise

From my perspective those questions seem a bit ambitious — Tom Storm

I am a very ambitious person.

Thank you for your response it is encouraging and informative.

Bro don't be like that I am genuinely trying to engage in good faith.

Now, once you don't have to worry about the lot of that your focus shifts to just making sure crazy, foolish, or large people don't bother or molest sane, intelligent, or smaller people so society can function as a free and friendly thing people want to and are proud to be part of and so will protect with their lives willingly and by choice, no conscription needed. This is what democracies excel at. — Outlander

Couldn't it easily be argued that democracies also excel at placing crazy, foolish, and large people in positions of power where they then proceed to molest sane, intelligent, and smaller people? Isn't this famously what happened to socrates? Maybe my understanding of athenian history is far from factual but I'd be surprised if democratic regimes never or only rarely behaved tyrannically.

Reason can help to keep our thinking straight in the sense that it is truth preserving. This means that the truth of the premises guarantees the truth of the conclusion of a reasoned argument. — unenlightened

Isn't this only technically true in a deductive argument? I was under the impression that an inductive argument only provides good reasons to believe the conclusion is true but doesn't guarantee that it is necessarily correct.

When we get in a total mess, we might go back and see if another principle will help us better. — unenlightened

You seem to be assuming that you will survive the ensuing chaos. The consequences of self evident conclusions might be too catastrophic for you to simply use as a learning experience especially when all of society is forced to confront the ramifications of someones false political or sociological theories.

I was thinking about this, and what rights a population might have to overthrow the government if it were considered illegitimate. — Hanover

Considered illegitimate by who? If you are suggesting that the consent of the governed and the opinion of the many is somehow the basis of legitimate government then I am forced to cite Edward Bernays and his theories of democratic dictatorship. The electorate, the citizens, or the subjects are easily manipulated by clever and crafty men and women covertly subverting the intellect.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights — Hanover

Is this the deistic formulation of creation which would mean mechanistic materialism? It can easily be asserted that the idea that the truth is self evident is self evidently false. It may sound like a contradiction but how can you refute it if no argument is even provided to support the conclusion? Anything that can be asserted without an argument can be rejected without an argument just as easily. Self evident principles and conclusions seem like they are probably just lazy philosophy.

I asked if that was the correct interpretation of the words you used but you chose to interpret it in another way. Did I ever say that I wanted to play games? Did I ever say that I didn't have an interest in the OP I posed? I doubt that you enjoy being on the other end of it because it's bitter medicine that you prescribe.

How is a question an argument? Don't you need statements that are logically related to one another and derived from each other? I know that you never said those words which is why I asked the question.

I need a little bit of clarification before I proceed. What bit are you referring to exactly? You didn't exactly quote me and or make it explicit.

So are you saying that if these hypothetical or literal millions wanted to die than it would've been acceptable?

Well both are bad. But famine is worse. In reality, no one is forcing your to over-eat, especially if you voted for a self-actualising democracy that makes it your own informed choice. — apokrisis

I don't see how suicide is somehow better than death by natural causes or natural disasters. There is such a thing as advertising and propaganda designed to induce emotional reactions and or emotional eating and other unhealthy habits. Most of the time this stuff is designed to circumvent the intellect and appeal to that which is furthest from the rational side of human nature. I will cite Edward Bernays and his theories of democratic dictatorship in human society. All of this is implicitly applicable to the political side of human life like voting.

I think we finally have a firm foundation to build upon.

So any form of human social organisation starts with delivering food and shelter. It then can start to deliver belonging and esteem. — apokrisis

This reminds me of marxism and it's theory of the base and superstructure. Even though I myself am not a marxist I can understand it's appeal to different people. However I need to insist on the reality that priorities differ from person to person. One could say that man shall not live by bread alone. There are other values besides material ones and one could invert the formula and start with the latter part of this list. After achieving these things we could then go on to construct the so called essentials of housing and food production. What I'm trying to say is that the simple fact of a famine killing large parts of a nation's population doesn't automatically mean its government is failing in terms of its most important mission. For example the opposite extreme could be overconsumption or overproduction and obesity.

Could you define pragmatic and pragmatism in simple easy to understand words so that there is no confusion? I'm not asking because of some passive aggressive sarcasm but because I actually do need some clarification. Are you saying that the long endurance of some form of instituted practice is evidence of it being "pragmatic"? What basis is there to conclude that this is the case?

Now do you really just want opinions or a rational critique of how to take this further? — apokrisis

Honestly I think that both could be beneficial.

It’s your argument. And you have provided no facts to ground your position. — apokrisis

What position? I don't remember making any kind of deductive or inductive argument. Maybe I did but I definitely don't remember it. Maybe I haven't made the first move because it's your turn. All I did was ask for other people to share their opinions in an attempt to resolve some of my philosophical puzzles.

I am asking what does it even mean to be a king except that you have a kingdom. — apokrisis

Couldn't you just as easily ask what does it mean to be a kingdom except that it has a king? I mean it seems kind of strange to define something in terms that are etymologically linked to it in the first place. That would basically be a circular definition. At least that's what I think.

History has already shown that. — apokrisis

What about historical revisionism? How do you know that your understanding or interpretation of history is actually factually grounded. Even if it is why am I under any obligation to accept it as such without doing my own due diligence? Simply asserting things like this doesn't seem that persuasive.

Sure. It would have to be resilient in the face of perturbations of all kinds. That is part of the design criteria. — apokrisis

This seems like a strange yardstick and I'm not sure what it is supposed to measure. If it is the "coherence" of foreign and domestic policies I'm not sure if there ever was a social system that lived up to such a high standard of excellence. Obviously it would be a lovely ideal to try and strive towards but it might not be the most useful tool in terms of day to day decisions. As you stated even the mighty T Rex went extinct but does this mean that it was less majestic as a result of it's mortality? Immortality might be nice in theory but in practice we are probably stuck with the inevitable end in the form of death. I don't want to ramble too much so I apologize if some of this is tangential or seems like irrelevant nonsense.

I’m just pointing out where I would start. Which is defining what counts as his “kingdom”. — apokrisis

I'm no pro so in other words I'm just an amateur arm chair philosopher indulging in pure speculation. I confess that I have no idea where I would even begin attempting to describe what counts as a realm in terms that could qualify as a definition. One man's trash is another man's treasure as they say so I don't know if your method is my cup of tea but I think I can appreciate your insistence on definition.

We would expect likewise that the monarchies would start to fail when having to deal with new and more effective varieties of social organisation. So there would be a time when they stop working as something better has come along. — apokrisis

Couldn't a government experience instability as a result of alternative factor such as plague and natural disasters? I think it is a bit unorthodox for someone to automatically conclude that the only explanation for failure and malfunction in a social system is some form of obsolescence. Correlation and causation are notorious for the ease with which they can be incorrectly identified.

What is a king if he has no court, no lords and ladies, no knights or servants? There has to be some kind of hierarchy in place otherwise a king lacks all the usual distinctions that would make him any different. — apokrisis

I think that what you are referring to would constitute a government in exile which could at least theoretically regain or establish its hegemonic position as the dominant force in society as well as on the international stage of warfare and geopolitics. I'm not sure that the list of things you mentioned are as decisive as you seem to think but I am also open to the idea and I could be wrong so feel free to try and sway me. On the whole though I would say what I have said already which is that correlation and causation are actually very relevant. The things you mentioned may indeed be correlated with regnal power but may not be causally connected in the sense that they are what gives a king his essence.

Excellent questions and I will do my best to answer all of them. I would like to state in the first place that I have no idea why the economic or demographic information would be relevant. I know of no monarchy that was formed in response to these calculations. The idea that kings and queens must've been a "suitable" part of some social structures at some stage in history relies on some standardized conception of "suitability" that we mutually endorse and adopt as a part of our own universally applicable philosophical and linguistic categories. You also asked me the question "Why did they work in the past?" which assumes that they did "work" which could be interpreted in a number of different ways so I have no clue how to answer it. I want to apologize if my replies do not satisfy you. I think you asked a lot of really good questions and my answers might not be as good as they should be.

You have a very interesting perspective and I thank you for sharing it with me.

I won’t pretend to understand a mathematical concept like infinity. Also discourses that involve algorithms as an important component will inevitably be viewed by me as somewhat cryptic due to my limited exposure to such notions.

I know nothing about computation but I think I get the idea. You need to perform an experiment to test a hypothesis. That’s basically what you’re saying unless I’ve misunderstood you.

I don’t know how empiricism is connected to these concepts but I’m glad that I understood your intended meaning.

I don’t know how empiricism is connected to these concepts but I’m glad that I understood your intended meaning.