A heap denotes a number of things. It reflects the import of the resource in question. You never have a heap of donor kidneys. — Cheshire

Yes... and the collective pronoun is a paucity of donor kidneys.

Interesting response. I generally work not to intentionally insult people or be hectoring in any discussion. Dialogues don't work when they get abusive or uncivil and there is nothing more boring than the ritual of combative internecine tribalism. I won't interact with people who are repeatedly abusive. Mainly because there is enough grandstanding and name-calling in the world already without adding to it. Privately I may call someone a duplicitous cunt or a carpetbagging pissant, but that's just for my own amusement.

Something being ill-defined is a good reason to refute it. As I've already said, non-physical doesn't make sense as a concept: either it interacts with the physical, in which case it's physical, or it does not, in which case it cannot make itself known. This is the refutation of non-physical mind you refer to. It doesn't need further elaboration: it is simply that which does not supervene on or is not supervened on by physical reality. — Kenosha Kid

I think this probably crystalizes this entire debate (and many others). How would one define or identify the non-physical?

Thank you. I figured it was an issue about usage, as issues so often seem to be.

Nicely put; I like that a lot.

Sorry mate, what am I missing in Shawn's identified problem here?

Depends on what you understand as change. What this saying refers to is when a tradition is disrupted or the change comes after a period of consistency. Especially if there is minimal consultation.

In relation to Christmas a change would be not getting a present for the first time, or indeed getting a present for the first time. We do also speak of welcome changes. Democracy after dictatorship may be another such example - although there are always counterrevolutionaries

Generally we are ambivalent or hostile to change when something new and unsettling is required from us after a period of stability.

Shawn, I may be missing something, I am not a philosopher but isn't language arbitrary sounds used to describe things we experience differently? I am more shocked when there is exactness. For this I guess math is a source of gratification. Perhaps Banno can clarify this for us.

The expression 'hard work' always stuck me as delightfully fecund.

How is it context? — Shawn

How is it not context?

Can you show me a specific example of how this language imprecision cause harm or an insurmountable problem?

Well, it's a prime example in philosophy, and with my concern over epistemic discursions over criteria I think, it's a really interesting case example to argue for a more formal way of using language. — Shawn

I understand your point but my version for the world doesn't have straight lines or precise definitions (except by explicit agreement) so it is a problem which doesn't impact. It's context. If someone says to me; 'I'll give you heaps of money." I might ask, "How much is heaps?" But if someone says, "There's a heap of wood in the back yard for the fire", I probably will be satisfied by this.

Why do you think this vagueness of the predicates such as a "heap" or a "hole" arise in language? — Shawn

My own instinct is that language has usage, not meaning and for everyday functioning such words have been more than adequate. I have more concerns with words like democracy and truth.

Thanks. I don't entirely understand syllogism one. But I understand the others. I held a view very similar to this. I see your reasoning. You're essentially adding texture to some utilitarian notions.

One issue to consider (and you may have done so) is whether you take a situational or deontological view of these principles? Is it wrong to cause suffering for a greater good - eg - was taking down Hitler ok even if it involved mass violence?

I'd be interested what others would say about the soundness of the argument.

And although I do believe that I "can use language to arrive at meaning and a moral system," this is not a supposition, because I have good reason to believe it. — Herg

Having good reason rests on the supposition that reason is a sound arbiter, which in itself relies upon reason and is a circular argument. Anyone using the laws of logic or logical axioms (identity; non-contradiction and excluded middle) needs to presuppose that reason is sound. I don't disagree with this, but it is located in a particular approach.

Thanks. And thanks too for the Michel Bitbol referral. I have watched a few of his lectures too. What a lovely man he seems.

:up:

Interesting stuff, Joshs. I have a very limited understanding of phenomenology but that accords with what I have gleaned. I recently saw a couple of lectures by Evan Thompson, professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia who takes this perspective in his critique of scientific objectivism.

Is there a very basic summary, written simply and succinctly that careful lays out this essential position as a starting point? When it comes to language, I am in the Orwellian, plain English camp and I am allergic to the circumlocutions so often present in academic writing.

It seems to me that people are not understanding this perspective partly out of an internalized deference to the dominant culture but also because the ideas are hard to convey in a way that sticks in the mind of a newbie.

It is not just about reading the right books, or the right book, but, What is the right book for me right now? — Pantagruel

And for some of us there is never the right time for certain books and authors. People often read books the way they travel to other countries, to have bragging rights. But have they understood what they have read? In my experience books are quickly forgotten and misinterpreted or simply not read closely enough by readers. I wonder what the point is.

You may read all the classics, but if they don't register with something in you, it's as if you did not read them — Manuel

Exactly. Reading, in my view, needs to be a dynamic process - a relationship with the text.

While I would never like to come down against reading, I do think in some people's lives, it might profit them more to get out there and do things rather that passively and inadequately receive other people's insights.

There are a number of works mentioned often in passing that quite properly could be a lifetime's study and you'd still only touch the sides.

My sympathy was always with those poor abused folk who preferred to remain in the secure shelter of a cave with a nice fire and a daily puppet show. Why would you want to leave?

All this talk about morality and, unless I have missed it, I rarely see an example of a system in practical use by anyone. Is killing a small child wrong? Discuss...

So your moral system starts with suppositions that empiricism is true and you can use language to arrive at meaning and a moral system.

Can you do it in a few dot points? I'm interested.

I'm interested in the phenomenon of resilience. While there is quite a bit of recent research in psychology about resilience, I find it to be too general and too abstract to be useful, and I'm more interested in its metaphysical underpinnings, if there are any. — baker

Resilience is a curious notion. My own intuition is it is likely to be found in people's personality and upbringing which has prepared them (for want of a better word) in some way to process and manage crisis and trauma. However I think the cumulative effect of several traumatic events is the hardest to overcome.

I hear you. So how do you tell if someone's ideas are useful? Do you recommend feel or faith?

I like the idea of common sense but it has such a broad definition.

A whole science has sprung up out of this legalistic mindset. And it's the lawyers and control freaks who profit excessively from this dogma. — Protagoras

Interesting - can you give us some examples?

But does the rest of nature have the same value as us then? — Hello Human

I have no idea. Is water more valuable than a human? Not if you are talking a few thousand gallons in a local swimming pool. But if you are talking all the world's water then it is as valuable. If you are looking for a rating system of value for the things in nature there isn't one, my guess is it's situational. Seeing nature as instrumental has very different implications if you have a shovel or a bulldozer.

So the question now extends to humans too — Hello Human

And? To me the difference this makes is twofold. 1) We don't need to see nature as something 'other' to exploit and damage 2) if nature is us, we may be more likely to treat ourselves with some respect and piss the instrumentalism off.

I take the view that we are part of nature.

You've expounded (amongst other things) a fine example of the is-ought problem. Identifying moral properties with natural properties is generally seen as a fallacy. In other words, you can't really make conclusions about how things ought to be based on what is (or what you think happens) in nature. Human beings bend and twist nature all the time, from obstetrics to insulin for diabetes.

So why is one tolerated but not the other? :brow: — IanBlain

Custom and convention - the real answer to almost anything.

Lots of people don't fish for sport for precisely this reason.

Please use paragraphs your stuff is dense.

I tried reading some of those metaphysical nocturnal disseminations but the pages were stuck together...

But atheism is predicated on relative material wellbeing. It's a fairweather friend. — baker

What evidence do you have for that curious claim? I was an atheist when I was broke (years ago) and had to shelter in phone boxes at night to stay dry. My situation made no difference. You are either convinced of something or not convinced of something.

You also made the claim that people lose their religion when life goes bad. So is it the case that you think people's beliefs are held in place by their situation?

Trying to get back to the point I wanted to make. Religion, generally, encodes ideas about the nature of meaning in mythological forms, to try and tell the story in an allegorical manner. Clearly the allegories of religion are out-moded by the circumstances of modern culture. But what was it, that was encoded in those allegories in the first place? And if the allegorical representation of those ideas are discarded, what is discarded with them? — Wayfarer

I'm an atheist but I get what you are communicating, your argument is nuanced and reflects philosophy, not dogma. I wonder if there's a way to reconcile the non-overlapping magisteria.

For me atheism is experiencing the radical absence of any transcendent guarantee. It comes with no pangs of dread or emptiness and absurdity makes only an occasional appearance.

How could it possibly be, when we're embedded in some form of social hierarchy and competition or other? Even at an online discussion forum, if the mods and the Old Boys come in and tell you you're wrong, then you're wrong. If you still believe you're right, there will be no place for you at such a forum.

Some kind of competence is only significant when all the people involved are well-intended enough toward eachother, so that they suspend their usual commitment to hiearchy and competition. Ideally, a team that is working together on solving a problem is like that.

Further, for all practical intents and purposes, competence includes reading the social system correctly and responding accordingly.
For example, a student majoring in philosophy has to be careful not to disagree with their philosophy teacher, regardless of the good arguments the student believes to have. Because such disagreement could cost them a good grade or worse. (It's why a formal study of philosophy is a contradiction in terms.) — baker

So that sounds like you think prearranged status runs everything and there's no hope. Why would you still participate?

Setting oneself up as the authority on what should count as standards of rationality (and on what is real) is a matter of social hierarchy and competition. — baker

Is it ever based on competence?

Of course, but this thread is about the proverbial foxholes. Ie. those times and places when health and wealth are gone, when friends, family, home are gone. — baker

I understand - my first response was:

.... people often jettison belief systems when things get very hard. - whatever those beliefs may be. An ontological crisis can generate significant disruption wherein the old ideas no longer seem to work.

That said, it goes both ways. A significant crisis is also an opportunity to seek a new belief system, perhaps for consolation.

The secret to being happy in the foxholes is probably to expect chaos and suffering in the first place. Some people are fortunate and do not get to know the foxholes.

I hear you and I agree.

There are, of course, numerous Christian apologists (e.g., Matt Slick) who make the argument that atheism is self-refuting because no meaning or logic is possible if all that exists is just matter and chemistry behaving. Also since evolution is not about identifying truth, only what works for survival, then anything that comes out of an evolutionary perspective (e.g., anything by Dawkins) has no truth value. We've seen this one from some more sophisticated philosophers too.

I'm an atheist who finds meaning in the usual things, probably not much differently from theists and other non-believers. I think that's just what humans do. Calling any values 'underwritten' is just a labelling exercise - like having a brand of marmalade that is sold by 'appointment to her Majesty Queen Elizabeth' (reference for Commonwealth country folk).

Strictly speaking, of course, ‘astonishment’ is itself simply a byproduct of adrenaline and ought to be given no especial significance (unless, of course, it’s an unconscious echo of Dawkin’s Anglican ancestry which might be mined for a bit of irony.) But that’s what the scientifically-literate atheists are seeking to persuade us of. If you feel that they’re wrong by all means feel free to correct them. — Wayfarer

Hopefully this isn't a pile on Wayfarer thing. :smile:

Isn't that a bit of a crude apologist style argument, based around pushing the point too far? I think the atheists would argue that meaning exists because we are meaning making animals who endlessly invent things - a range of loose, shared meanings being amongst these inventions, which include mores and morals. We also have evolved to have empathy (how else could we rear our young?). We have invented whole worlds and landscapes of meaning despite the lack of an obvious transcendent one. These meanings still matter to us and our emotional lives and have a continuing traction and relevance, even if they do evolve over time. Do we need more than this?

It's so interesting to see you all focusing on this out of the entirety of my argument. It's like you don't get my point whatsoever. — Christoffer

"It is possible to accept life, nature, the universe, as it is, no more or less..." "...it is possible to accept the pointless existence of life and the universe and still feel meaning"

Given people do precisely this, it must be true. I think for all the lofty talk about meaning requiring some transcendent foundation, I believe people obtain meaning from being in the world, interacting and doing things. Possessions, nature, music, food, friends, family, home, whatever you are into is where your meaning comes from. I believe this is true for theists and atheists alike.

Doesn’t really have any bearing on my post, though. — Wayfarer

Just that it isn't so easy to contrast the barren atheist with the loving believer. Notions of the Absurd are really the domain of faiths where the above evils seem to happen so often on behalf of transcendence and moral foundations.

What is important about religion is finding the source of what Christians call agapé, unconditional compassion, and what Buddhists call bodhicitta, buried behind all the ruins of the ancient faiths. It is both the easiest and most elusive thing in the world. To turn your back on that because of religion is the cruelest irony. — Wayfarer

Religious people are just as likely to be abject and bereft as anyone else. After 30 plus years of working in the field of mental ill health and substance misuse, I am more likely to meet with people who have a faith than not, particularly amongst the suicidal. I think this is because they are more likely to harbor guilt and other negative emotions as a consequence of surviving church initiated traumas. The high levels of sexual abuse and violence perpetrated and covered up by religious organizations has become one of their defining cultural legacies.

“Religion is based primarily upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly as the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand."

Bertrand Russell

My great grandmother, who was still alive when I was a baby was a baby during the US Civil War. Dying is one of the most human things we can do. — T Clark

I shook hands with a man who shook hands with a man who knew Oscar Wilde. It doesn't take long for eras and folk to come and go. The only people I've known who fear death are Christians who did nasty things when younger. Fear of judgement after death is still a thing.

In fact, I will go so far as to say: suicide is absolutely unjustifiable, but I imagine that the best excuse for it would be physical pain. — Merkwurdichliebe

Not sure what rule book you've pulled that notion from but for me suicide is a right and a lovely idea in the right set of circumstances.