Janus has a point in so far as no one asked anyone I know if they wanted to be part of any contract.

Not implying that social benefits aren't most welcome and most badly needed - but for it's a very misleading picture.

Ah. Yes, it's mind boggling.

Hmmm. But if nothing exists, doesn't that include me (you) as well?

It's hard to say, absent seeing polls. My impression is that you tend to get both, though maybe not in equal amounts.

That is to say some people think the fundamentals are wrong, others think we need to change what we already have, that is to stabilize our to reinforce the pillars, as it were.

I think that these views "capitalist", "socialist", "anarchist" and so on, though important in that they offer a pattern of ideas or a tendency to reach certain conclusions about certain systems best suited for people, at this point in intellectual life, obscure more than clarify.

On an issue by issue basis, it's easier to speak on important topics, even if disagreement is inevitable on many topics. But if we start saying "capitalism" or "communism" is excellent or horrific, we just lose a large portion of the potential audience.

Not necessarily. People just buy the myth and carry on, but when things go to shit, then we start questioning fundamentals such as the 2008 market crash or the Pandemic now.

People are now even using the word "capitalism" to discuss the ideas that sustain it.

The social contract has its limits. I'm currently not seeing a big state showing something different on a large scale. There may be scattered examples of, say, worker co-operatives and similar institutions based on voluntary cooperation and the like, but not on a large scale.

As we've sadly seen with COVID, we can't even co-operate with a damn virus which isn't even very deadly. This forebodes a very bleak future with the urgent case of climate change.

But people will care about that only when they can't find food in the super markets or they can't go outside for too long or they'll suffer heat stroke.

Instead of thinking about how we could perhaps work at an international level on climate change or nuclear weapons, people's imaginations are caught in this whole AI stuff and wanting to go to Mars. This is being done by Important People like Musk and Bezos. So this is individualism on steroids.

So - how to proceed? I can argue why I think most of the promises of AI aren't plausible or I can talk about evidence relating to climate change, but if people don't care about facts anymore, what gives? It's not like speaking of caring for Mother Earth really moves people, outside of certain sensibilities.

Ugh.

It's hard. I mean, I think that the central point is true, we as a society only need philosophy when things go bad or things don't work anymore.

It's just that even defining philosophy is difficult. There are just so many ways of thinking about it and even applying it. And it's not trivial to say that speaking of philosophy is such or such a tradition is wrong, we may not share the assumptions they have.

And when it comes to ethics and especially political matters, I think that the topics can often be devilishly difficult. We no longer live in a time when a person could be very knowledgeable on all topics, there's way too much to cover.

Yet we need it, like she points out. Jeez... I'm tying myself in knots here...

I'm sure this is a common one. It's blown my mind when I try to get my arms around it since I was a teenager. Still does. Imagine nothing. Really nothing. No one to know it's nothing. No space, not quantum vacuum. Nothing. Not anything anywhere. No things. No where. — T Clark

Isn't this the thought that comes to mind when someone tries to think about how it was before birth for each of us? Speaking for myself, when I try to think of any concept at all: long, boring, slow, pain, happy or anything else, none of this applies to whatever before birth was. So I think we all have an inkling of this already.

I suppose the only "positive" thing I could say is that it was dark. Not in the sense of feeling in a bad mood or being in a bad place.

But maybe even that's not correct.

I assume that what happens is what appeared to happen prior to birth, it disappears.

Unless someone can give me good reasons to suspect that the state after existence will be different from the state of before existence.

It was one suggested by Bryan Magee in relation with Kant's idealism, but it could apply to almost any strand of innatism.

He did not say this exactly, but the gist of it is on point. Take any object, say a red ball. You're in front of a red ball and you experience it. No problem. Now imagine losing sight. What do you have in front of you? A red ball still. You can touch, smell it, hear it bounce and so forth. But now eliminate touch. What do you say? It's still a red ball, you can hear it bounce and smell the rubber.

But now eliminate smell, sounds and taste, etc. What do you have in front of you? It's a problem. If you experienced the ball normally but then lose all senses one by one, you have to still conclude that there's something there. What is left of it though? Some kind of mental essence for us and a mysterious nature left for the object, both inscrutable to us.

And if a person happens to be born, missing all senses sadly. What world is there for that person?

It was a profound experience for me at the time and pointed to me to our quite fundamental epistemic situation. I've never ceased to be baffled by it, simple as it may be.

The Nature of the Physical World by Arthur Eddington
The Aosawa Murders by Riku Onda

I know they may not be as urgent, but I have a feeling that novels are quite important for understanding human beings. Just suggesting to folks to read one a year, if not many more...

Then again my intuition could be bs.

Indeed.

:up:

Or attempting to give structure to our stupidity= it's not that wisdom grows, it's that one's ignorance is more clearly seen the more you discover things. :cool:

The case with Socrates is illuminating, he denied he was the wisest man in Athens, maintaining that all he knew was that he knew nothing.

Obviously it's hard to accept the conclusion that Socrates knew nothing, but if he says he is not wise, then there's a problem with the concept. Perhaps we need to think about wisdom differently and instead of attributing to a person, we say that a person acted wisely or said something wise, while not saying that the person is wise.

As for Buddha yes, he would fit what comes to mind when one things of wisdom, but I don't know what he would've said about the topic, as I know almost nothing on the topic. So whatever wisdom is, almost no one will say that they are wise, even if people attribute wisdom to them.

Yeah I tend to agree. Which makes the whole thing problematic, if no wise person will ever say they are wise, then what are we even talking about?

They do have running water. There's a ton of misinformation out there. They're free to build their own facilities but the money gets mismanaged by the governing authorities. Gazans are free to go fishing but I don't know every fishing regulation there is. — BitconnectCarlos

Maybe the people at Oxfam are propagandists on Hamas' pay role. I'd have my doubts: https://www.oxfam.org/en/failing-gaza-undrinkable-water-no-access-toilets-and-little-hope-horizon

But why would Israel do that without a concrete guarantee that the Palestinians have given up further territorial claims? Also it would mean kicking thousands of Jews off of land that they've lived in for hundreds if not thousands of years. — BitconnectCarlos

Palestinians lost 78% of there state in 1948. Yes some Jews lived in communities there, but it wasn't a part of a larger claim for the existence of a state. That exploded due to WWII. Zionism used to have many branches, including anti-State varieties.

The settlers are taking land illegally, recognized by the whole world, except by Israel. I really don't think the whole world is anti-Semitic. 90,000 French settlers in Algeria had to leave because of the war in Algeria. I'm sure they had similar claims to land, or would have made some up even if they didn't have such a claim.

It's a nice belief and I wish it were true. — BitconnectCarlos

One thing is what I'd like to be true another thing is what's likely to happen based on available evidence and reason. I'd like to live in a world without borders that guarantees everybody a generous UBI just for being a human being, under a single currency and a total ban on all guns. That's never going to happen. Likewise, Palestinians in overwhelmingly part because of the occupation hate Israel, yes. I'm sure most of them would love if Israel disappeared.

I get that. I also get it that Israeli's would be afraid of such views and If I were an Israeli, I would not want my state to disappear. In reality, Israel has one of the best military armies in the world, given massive support by the US and has one of the most developed infrastructures in all the Arab world. Palestinians will not be able to expel the Jews. They don't have the means. Nor will they get them.

That's the point. Israel will keep most of its land and will eventually stop being viewed so badly in the rest of the world. Compare Japan and Germany today to WWII, both are quite popular worldwide. Why would Israel be different in 30-40 years? So based on the realities of power, I don't see the massive risks you are concerned about.

Palestinians gaining control of all of the WB just places more Israeli cities in range for Palestinian rockets. We already see what happens with border towns like Sderot where there's bomb shelters everywhere and the place has a massively high rate of trauma and PTSD. — BitconnectCarlos

Sure. But you reduce those threats by abiding to 242, what the world agrees to. How would Israel allow more missiles in the WB even if they gave up the territories? Then there'd be legitimate legal arguments for Israel to make for self defense as well as legal sanctions that could be made to other governments. Yes, every path has risks. You'll have to settle with the least bad option, the one which addresses the grievances of the Occupied in the territories.

Portraying Israel as a victim no longer convinces most of the world. There has to be a reason for that that is not reducible to anti-Semitism.

Tough question. Personally I don't think thinking about who is wise has been particularly helpful in my personal experience. I suppose there may have been a time in which I'd try to look for people who have this elusive quality. The most I ever got of talking to people who are considered wise is a certain genuine humility. That I liked.

But much beyond that, it's just so easy to confuse wisdom with dubious and obscure ideologies that I don't like, nor do I think are good in general.

But each persons experience is unique.

Mind and matter aren't opposites. It's hard sometimes for people to get that point...

Sure.

What's the meaning of autonomy if they don't have running water, they have restrictions on caloric intake, they can't fish as they wish on there shore, etc? That's not "autonomy" in any sense of the word.

I think that if you have back WB and Gaza, things would get much better. I frankly don't understand what Palestinians would do to Israel without facing massive and severe repercussions. The Palestinians aren't getting an army so I don't think there is too much to worry about. But there will continue to be much to worry about if the occupation continues.

Yes, this is likely true. And in a way, it makes sense. A good deal of philosophy deals with questions for which we have no answers for. To account for this we must take up a certain attitude in relation to these matters and since there is likely no way to settle (at lost some) if not many of these issues empirically, we are left with intuition and personal dispositions.

Thus those who dislike being faced with such problems can adopt a linguistic attitude and attempt to clarify or dissolve them.

Those who think that since science has solved a good many issues and will to do so can adopt a scientistic or quasi-verificationist method.

Those who think that one cannot make sense of the world absent human being will go to idealistic varieties.

Then there are people who think the world is so strange that it makes no sense to give it a label might be persuaded to take a neutralistic or naturalistic view.

And many, many variations of the above mentioned and some not named end up being whatever we take philosophy to be. But to profess "objectivity", completely devoid of our inclinations, proclivities and everything else is another kind of philosophical outlook. One which I think isn't really attainable.

But all this is what makes the topic interesting to me. If all we had to do with every possible human problem was to look at the evidence, and nothing else, then there'd be nothing to say. And that would make everything boring. Or so it looks like to me.

I'll hear about criticism or prejudice towards Muslims, but I was asking about Arabs earlier. The difference is that Arab is an ethnicity and there are Arabs of all religious backgrounds who live all around the world.

Islam is open to legitimate criticism. Being an Arab is not. — BitconnectCarlos

The reason for mixing them up is the same reason why Israel is often mixed up with being Jewish, it's a way to criticize Arabs or Jews, without naming them directly, leading to plausible deniability. Needless to say not all Arabs are Muslim nor all Israeli Jews.

Hamas is a fundamentalist Islamic organization but the people who primarily suffer due to that are the Palestinians living under them. Sure the Israelis face bombs and threats, but I'd much rather be fighting that than living under it. — BitconnectCarlos

Yes. But the people living under Hamas don't have much of an option, in that other representatives in Gaza, whatever remains, can't even fight back. Yes Hamas is ugly, but they fight back and that counts for something, whatever else may be said about them aside.

Anti-semitism in the Arab world did not only begin existing in 1948, there's a very long history there. Israel currently is also at peace with a number of its Arab neighbors including Egypt whom it gave back Sinai to in... 1988? It's been some time since these countries were actually at war.

There are Gallup polls that measure this type of thing that I'd be happy to show you if we wanted to pursue this further. These polls reflect deep-seated attitudes that extend far beyond Israel. — BitconnectCarlos

And the peace brokered by Egypt and Jordan were done with the leaders of the country, often at odds with what the population wants. It's not that I don't think Israel shouldn't have peace, it's that it should be done representing in a democratic matter, not by leaders who don't represent the will of the people.

You're argument may have had much more force back in the 50's and 60's. Putting aside wishful thinking by some of Israel's victims, they know that Israel is here to stay. They would probably be much less hostile if Israel gave back the occupied territories and give Palestinians total autonomy within these areas.

That would lead to a much better view of Israel, no doubt about it.

Vilified by who? The Arabs? The western world? I don't deny that settlers in the WB can be provocative, but I don't see them as being the main reason that Israel is vilified. You also have to remember that there has been Jewish communities in the WB going back thousands of years. — BitconnectCarlos

I had in mind many countries in the world, not so much the Arab population. Statistics that go back thousands of years aren't worth much.

One last question:

Sure. But I mean, there's a bound to what can and cannot happen, right? It's not as if an elephant will pop in to existence. Maybe a particle or some small thing pops in for discernable reason, but there's a range of things which are expected within the randomness, or that's not the case?

Very interesting and many thanks for the detail and the visualization aspect, helps a bunch. I recall reading some of this in Hand's Cosmosapiens, but you're wording of it makes it "easy" to picture.

The thing is, if this is true, it looks to me as we're just pushing back the origins question. That is, we have no possible conception as to why any universe began, or if it even makes sense to think so far back to a "first universe" - if it ever existed. But, if the theory is true - which I think it's safe to assume we just don't know - then too bad for our comprehension. It looks to me like Many Worlds on steroids, which would have to be accepted as fact.

I suppose one question that lurks here, which philosophers could comment on a bit, is the idea of causality. I tend to like Galen Strawson's view on this, in which he rejects the regularity theory of causation: that things just happen, for no reason.

I know "reason" is a loaded word, but what he has in mind is, there should be a regularity or a habit for which things happen as they do and not some other way. If there are no "reasons" why, then why have any laws at all? We could say that the next universe over is just a lump of green clay. If things just happen nothing is prevented, I guess. Obviously I'm speaking crazy here, but why does the universe(s) behave in this way?

It's really mind-boggling. I mean, we already have more than enough figuring out stuff here on this tiny planet, to think that there are many universes, well damn. Fascinating.

In my experience very few anti-Semites are pro-Israel. Israel is such a perfect lightening rod that I don't see why anti-Semites would avoid that opportunity. It's just so easy. — BitconnectCarlos

Well take the Evangelicals. Or parts of the far right, like that guy from Norway, Breijvik. The idea is we don't like these Jews, but we like these Arabs even less so let the Jews stay in Israel and take care of the Arabs.

But yes, you are also correct. There is bound to be anti-Semites who hate Israel.

Could you mind citing a few examples? — BitconnectCarlos

You really need sources? I'll give a few. They're mixed in with Radical Islam to make it look less blatant...

Macron:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/10/2/macron-announces-new-plan-to-regulate-islam-in-france

Trump:
https://www.nilc.org/issues/litigation/trump-tweets-with-muslim-muslims/

Australian Senator:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/15/australian-senator-fraser-anning-criticised-blaming-new-zealand-attack-on-muslim-immigration

And etc.

A lot of criticism of Hamas is racism? Why would you say this about Hamas but not apply it to Israel and anti-Semitism? Radical muslims are universally despised even among other Muslims. — BitconnectCarlos

The idea here is Hamas=Radical Islam, hence everything ugly Hamas does is because of Islam.

The anti-Semitism in the Arab world against Israel, is overwhelmingly due to Israel's history in the region. You know this: the wars with Lebanon and Egypt and Syria, the way Palestinians are treated, etc.

And to pre-empt a comment I know will be coming. Yes, there are legitimate criticisms of radical Islam. it exists and is quite ugly, just look at Saudi Arabia.

But radical Christians started too wars just over 10 years ago, that have not ended in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And radical Jews (settlers) are the main reason as to why Israel is so vilified.

Every religion and group of people have radical parts.

I mean, there's everything. There are anti-Semitic people who praise Israeli and those who do not. And there are those who criticize Israel with no idea of Judaism in mind at all.

Maybe the rest of the world is an exception, though based on what I've seen not really, in that hatred of Arabs and specifically Islam is often stated, by Presidents and Prime Ministers no less. No one in the "West" today would dream of saying 1/10'th of what they say about Arabs to Jews. It would be considered racist if done, and quite correctly.

There is no shortage of criticism of Hamas or radical Islam at all. Some of it has merits, sure. But a lot of it is just racism.

So it goes both ways.

Yes. That's the evangelical dimension to Israel. Likely the most anti-Semitic people in the world are those who "support" Israel. Quite ironic.

And Trump should be commended for saying that, because it's true. There's blood on every states hands. It's just that the bigger the state (generally) the more blood they spill...

:scream:

That's brutal.

But I saw the word "recursion".

The history of the bombings in Japan are quite interesting, and horrifying. There maybe could be some kind of argument that could be made about using it in Hiroshima and it should still be considered a war crime, in my view.

But zero justification at all for Nagasaki. While the US is responsible for the use of the bombs, there should be no doubt at all about that - the Japanese fascist government played a massive part in the tragedy too. The leadership, minus a small dissident camp refused to give up when they knew they lost the war. There's also the factor of using the bomb as showing off vs. the USSR and other things, but that would be good material for another thread.

The idea w/ Israel is that, we'd like to think or at least aspire to the notion that we are being less savage than we used to be. Why bother then with all this rights of prisoners of war and non-killing civilians argument? So states know they have a minimum standard they should abide by, though they rarely do. But in 2021 to have a highly developed, industrial country bombing the crap out of an open air prison all the while starving its residents and then calling it "defense", is something that should not be acceptable.

The reason Israel is singled out, is that there is already a known solution, short term at least, for the conflict: go to resolution 242 and abide by that. The US is also directly responsible for Israel's actions and this can do something about this.

There are other horrors: Yemen, Kashmir, etc., etc. but these are much harder to do anything about.

But yes, you are right, in war, people are like animals, but worse.

Sorry if this question sounds stupid, but when it comes to math, I'm really mentally challenged.

This type of system you are describing, it's a kind of recursive system or a "loopy" system, but it has a "starting point". Is this roughly what you have in mind?

Thanks for the info, some clarification:

So empty space contracted into the big bang?

Is this connected to some of these cyclic big bang theories in which it is postulated that the universe expands and contracts many times?

As I understood it, and apologies if I state it incorrectly, the Big Bang was a moment in which everything in the universe was compacted in a very small point of very high energy.

"Before" that moment, there either was nothing or it's part of a cycle.

We can tell stories about it, but I don't think we have a clue.

We can psychoanalyze them or say that when we dream our brains are at the deepest state of rest or something along those lines, but it says virtually nothing of what "purpose" they have, if any.

It's very interesting. But supremely difficult.

Probably useful to note there is no such thing as time in the universe. There is, on the other hand, how we look at it and attempt to understand. — tim wood

Sure. Just trying to use words to try and make some minimal sense of the things "out there", well aware of the myriad of complications attached to doing this.

And others like Smolin say time is emergent.

If Smolin is correct, it's very hard - if even possible - to think of anything "before" the emergence of time. But one must assume that there wasn't nothing in the sense of absolutely nothing: no energy, no quantum vacuum, etc, prior to the emergence of time.

But if Hawking is correct, then at least time "remains". Though it's very hard to make any sense of any of this.

:clap:

Yes. Also had a bit over half a decade of such experience, powerful ones at that. The only thing they taught is how powerful the mind/brain is, but it did not offer me an iota of evidence of anything else. These types of experiences tend to support whatever you already tend to believe in.

It may be possible that there was an initial moment and yet time extends infinitely into the past. Think time dilation and the Big Bang. Just ruminating, pay no mind. — jgill

If the Big Bang is true and complete, how can we speak of time before that? It would be analogous to saying what's a feature of Earth that is higher than Everest.

What did you have in mind with time dilation?

So, when talking about the timeline of the universe, which part of it are you saying would be infinite, and how would that imply that “we could not be here”? — Amalac

I'm not sure I follow completely, I may be, but I may not be. I think that part of the problem may be that there's our innate conceptions of space and time, or spacetime if we are to incorporate modern physics and spacetime outside our conception of it.

This may be the wrong way to state this...

I think that by now, we should try to distinguish our conceptions of spacetime with spacetime in the universe. Absent human beings, strictly speaking, yes, we can't speak of time "elapsing" or as I prefer to say "passing", as these terms must imply our conceptions of them.

But if there is spacetime outside our conceptions of it, as appears to be the case then I think that in order to speak at all, we are forced to use our human vocabulary. Perhaps we can speak of one infinite span of time, or an infinite number of events, this would go on "backwards" forever.

The time in the universe, on this thought experiment, goes back forever. If it does, how can we get to any point at all, given that an infinite time preceded our species?

Why is it that we had to begin somewhere?
Doesn't that beg the question by already assuming that there must have been a beginning in time? — Amalac

We as a species evolved at some point in evolutionary history. It's from that perspective that we began as a species. It does not presuppose a beginning of time in the universe, but it does presuppose a beginning of time as we conceive it. In that respect I'd stick my neck out and say that we "began" once we had our conception of time.

since in the very definition of time elapsing, a beginning and an end of the lapse of time are pressupposed. — Amalac

In our conception of time yes. I think it differs in the external world.

But I could be way off. Again, just throwing out ideas.

The statement that the universe cannot be infinite towards the past because that would imply going through or traversing an infinite number of events to get to the present seems false to me, since it seems to assume that in traveling such a series of events one goes through or traverses from an initial moment to the present, while this infinite universe towards the past by definition has no initial moment.

If, on the contrary, the journey begins at some point in the past which is not an initial moment, it does not matter how much one goes back in the timeline, the events and time from that moment to the present will always be finite, and there is therefore no impossibility in a universe whose time is infinite to the past. — Amalac

I'm aware that you used Kant in the discussion. I'm more interested in the thought experiment itself of time going "back" infinitely. It's been in the back of my mind recently and I was going to start a thread on the topic, but then saw this one.

Maybe this is cheating and is probably also quite ignorant but I'd like to put aside what physics says and just take the topic as is, meaning, if time is infinite and had no beginning, how could we be here?

Let's me take a stab at your argument, for my own benefit. As I understand what you're saying: even if time had no beginning it would not matter because we are finite, so we can place ourselves anywhere on the timeline and no be bothered about how we got here.

Isn't the counterargument here that in order to get to now, we had to begin somewhere. But if time is infinite, how could we place ourselves here? An infinite amount of time has gone on before we got here.

Either a part of infinity is finite or if not, it is also infinite. If a part of infinity is also infinite, regardless of not having starting conditions, we could not be here.

But this raises more problems, if a part of infinity is finite, wouldn't we have to go through an infinite amount of time to reach a portion of infinity which is not. How's that possible?

Unless I'm stuck with a linear idea of infinity.. Sorry for the length, but I'm curious about a reply. It's likely muddled thinking on my part.

I think it was Nagel who argued somewhere that experience was a net positive. It's an interesting idea and perhaps quite plausible.

On one hand, all else being equal, being able to have experience and being marveled at the puzzle which is existence is a luxury afforded to the living, which is but a small potential of everyone that could have been born that wasn't. It just so happened that one specific sperm, as opposed to another one, fertilized an egg and here we are.

The problem, on the other hand, is that the end of the journey is sad for others. Or most frequently. Sure, a few lucky ones live a long life and get to say they did everything they wanted in life and are grateful for that, but that's a minority of a minority.

Of course, death doesn't suck for the person who went through it, that's over. But for those who remain death really stings in a bad way.

So yes, experience can be a net positive compared to the alternative. Although, if someone has no existence, there is nothing to miss - good or bad. So it's a difficult question.

:up:

Sure and it's probably impossible to get out of the intellectual context in which one lives and see things "objectively", standing atop the highest clearest mountain if you will.

As for that specific Harari quote, it's not too clear in the sense that I've never really understood what people mean when they say "science says", as if "science" could be separated from the scientists who engage in these projects. It's an obvious comment but there are all kinds of scientists who believe in all kinds of things. Granted one can see a tendency in them to be, say, non-religious or "hard nosed" but this is a tendency.

Philosophy is important in that it can help us make sense of the world. I want be as inclusive as I can be when I use the term - which is why I insist on the philosophic aspects of art.

But yes, the problem of culture and ideas is fascinating.