Well, you sound offended; I didn't mean to offend you. — Noble Dust

So? Everybody gets offended about something. BTW, thanks for not wanting to displease me.

The word computer didnt exist but who says no one computed? — VincePee

We're on the same page. Nothing to discuss.

Meaning isn't use. That one can assign different meanings to a word doesn't, in any way, imply that all there is to words is how we use them.

You mean to say that the word "computer" existed in Babylonian/Egyptian times? I don't think so.
— TheMadFool

Indeed. "Think" — VincePee

Sorry, I didn't catch your drift. Can you expand and elaborate. Thanks.

All that I'm saying is what happens if I take a modern text - a novel, a scientific treatise, a poem, etc. - and take it back 2,000 years into the past and ask the people then to translate it: plane = iron bird? :chin:
— TheMadFool

If a scholar from 2,000 years ago hypothetically somehow had the tools to translate future language into their current language, then I suppose anything would be possible, given those parameters, so then the gravity of the hypothetical question would completely disintegrate, rendering it laughable. This is why I hate these stupid, uncreative thought experiments (P-zombies, et al; take no offense please). — Noble Dust

When you're right, you're smart. When others are right, they're stupid. A common affliction. Join the club.

contradicting yourself
— TheMadFool

? The word computer has more than 1 meaning. — VincePee

You mean to say that the word "computer" existed in Babylonian/Egyptian times? I don't think so.

Of one thing we can be certain - minds. We can't disprove that there are no minds for to attempt to do so requires a mind, kinda like shooting oneself in the foot.

Of one thing we can't be certain - matter & energy. They could be illusions generated by the mind. There's no contradiction if we assume matter & energy are illusory.

Certain: mind; Uncertain: matter & energy

I don't know the etymology of "computer" by heart, but I'd assume it has to do with "one that computes". But technological words are potentially the exception to the rule, although I think they're not unlike naming planets after Greek or Roman gods; established concepts are consciously used to define a new technological or scientific concept - but that's the exception to the rule of how language functions, although maybe increasingly that will change with the evolution of technology. My point is that, barring everything I just mentioned, language functions organically in that definitions arise naturally over time and are substantiated through common use, not through any premeditated design — Noble Dust

All that I'm saying is what happens if I take a modern text - a novel, a scientific treatise, a poem, etc. - and take it back 2,000 years into the past and ask the people then to translate it: plane = iron bird? :chin:

people have a word like computer back in the old days
— TheMadFool

What are the days? Before the computers there were computers. — VincePee

Is this - contradicting yourself - deliberate/accidental? Never mind.

I'll admit I'm not sure what you're trying to convey, but how would you apply it to this description? ->

'Toward early morning he woke, sat up quickly and looked about him. It was still dark and the fire had long since died, still dark and quiet with that silence that seems to be of itself listening, an astral quiet where planets collide soundlessly, beyond the auricular dimension altogether. He listened. Above the black ranks of trees the mid-summer sky arched cloudless and coldly starred. He lay back and stared at it and after a while he slept." — Arcturus

There are different kinds of descriptions is all I can say.

It looks as though description is synonymous with definition. The objective of definitions being to condense information, the description, in one word. It's very much like the concept of radix in math in which you pack quantities in different powers of a given radix. See packing problems.
— TheMadFool

But at no point in history did anyone say "let's condense information into a single world and then we'll have a definition". I think you're thinking about it backwards. Definitions of words come after their use in language. Definition is academic; use is public and first. — Noble Dust

It would depend (a lot) on how literature compares historically. Did people have a word like computer back in the old days or did they use compound words like calculating-machine. Sorry, I'm too lazy and inept to Google.

Reasons. I think I have reason to believe I am thinking, and that I have reason to believe that thoughts cannot exist absent a mind to think them, and reason to think that I, a mind, exist. But then if I have reason to think those things, and reason to think them true with certainty, then I have as much if not more reason to think reasons exist. And thus reasons exist with complete certainty. — Bartricks

Reasons are mind-stuff. To be certain that reasons exist entails that you be certain that you have/are a mind.

No, a view can be true and not believed. And a view can be true and not believed with certainty.

I do not believe materialism is true. But the fact that we can doubt the reports of our senses is not evidence that materialism is false. For we can doubt the reports of our senses even if materialism is false, and there's no special reason to think our senses would be indubitable if materialism were true (I mean, why would they be?).

But anyway, this is now getting off topic. The mind is not the brain regardless of whether brains are material objects or something else. If they are material objects - that is, if they are extended in space - then our minds are clearly not identical with them, for our minds seem to have no properties in common and thus are about as far from being them as it is possible to be. And if they are not extended in space - that is, if brains are not material substances, but bundles of ideas in the mind of God (as Berkeley believed), then our minds are not them either, for our minds are not bundles of ideas, but objects that have ideas.

Those who believe that our minds are our brains invariably have no argument for that view - they just assume it because they are fashion victims and that is the current intellectual fashion - or they have appalling arguments (see Murky above). — Bartricks

:ok:

Descriptive power, it seems, requires only that a language have words that capture very general aspects of life. For example, with the words, "that", "feeling", "you", "get", "when", "lose", "a", "million", "dollars", you can describe sorrow like so:

Sorrow (description): That feeling you get when you lose a million dollars.

It looks as though description is synonymous with definition. The objective of definitions being to condense information, the description, in one word. It's very much like the concept of radix in math in which you pack quantities in different powers of a given radix. See packing problems.

Don't forget to check out Om/Aum

Om (or Aum) is the sound of a sacred spiritual symbol in Indian religions, mainly in Hinduism, wherein it signifies the essence of the Ultimate Reality (parabrahman) which is consciousness (paramatman). — Wikipedia

Interesting. I guess this is talking about our Sun, it's also a changeling - a new star every day. — The Opposite

The words were for the words. The video was for the video.

I don't think that's true - we can be certain of more than that. — Bartricks

Like what?

Does physicalism, to be plausible, need to be indubitable? — Bartricks

Yes, it affirms that all is physical, a statement of absolute certainty. It has no room for doubt but that's exactly what's introduced with Descartes' deus deceptor and Harmann's brain in a vat.

Kool I did not know about that word! That said, what is your argument? Are you saying that recidivism prevents deterrence and rehabilitation from being effective? But if so, how would having Free Will solve that issue? — Samuel Lacrampe

Recividism refutes your belief that criminals can be deterred or rehabilitated. Mind you, not in an absolute sense because in some, but problematically, not all, cases, what you recommend does work.

If free will exists, there's a good chance that a criminal will see the error of his ways and turn over a new leaf in his life but, more importantly, a criminal can resist/overcome his predelictions/tendencies.

Food for thought:

1. Suicide, if it's illegal, it was, carries/carried a penalty less severe than murder. Why? It isn't murder, close to it but not quite.

2. If one is a murder victim, the perp will either be sent to the gallows or is looking at life imprisonment without parole.

Put simply, suicide is, in a sense, both murder (2) and not murder (1).

Too, we could view suicide as, like my dear father-in-law likes to say, a clarion call to address a pressing concern which is that, in our world today, "there are fates worse than death."

Here's the deal: LIFE,

1. Makes suffering a warning sign of death. [avoid death]

2. Makes suffering worse than death. [avoid death/pursue death]

It seems that life wants us to avoid death at all costs. One way, a surefire one, is to make the warning (suffering) worse than that which it warns about (death). That makes sense right? The bark is worse than the bite.

Reminds me of the animation movie Zootopia :point: Meet Mr. Big, Fru Fru Scene



The downside is that when suffering reaches a certain level, a threshold, the sufferer opts to suicide. It seems LIFE considers a few suicides is a small price to pay for many lives saved in the process.

I don't follow.

Whether brains are physical objects or the mental activity of another mind (as, say, Berkeley would maintain) is left open by their existence being potentially illusory. That is, we could be dreaming brains exist and there are none in reality consistent with Berkelian idealism. As such, I don't see how physicalism per se is challenged by what I have said. — Bartricks

Oh! Thank god you read my post. My point is that the only thing anyone can be certain of is that they have minds (the thinker); everything else, the material/physical world, could be an illusion à la Cartesian deus deceptor and brains in vats.

Mark Nyquist No, I am giving you diamonds and you are giving me rabbit droppings. — Bartricks

I didn't know, How horrible for you! — Mark Nyquist

Not even rabbit droppings for me! :lol:

jumbled thoughts — Bartricks

Something is better than nothing. — Some Wiseguy

Your mind exists more certainly than your brain. You could just be dreaming brains — Bartricks

Indeed! This is the essence of the problem for physicalism - matter & energy, that includes brains, could be an illusion.

My left little toe, or so I think, because I am quite sure it is smarter than some people. — tim wood

:lol: Don't be to sure of that tim wood!

I did not want to destroy the Bamiyan Buddha. In fact, some foreigners came to me and said they would like to conduct the repair work of the Bamiyan Buddha that had been slightly damaged due to rains. This shocked me. I thought, these callous people have no regard for thousands of living human beings
— Mullah Omar

That is the same as Genghis Khan's reasoning and the lifestyles are similar. What is not understood is building trade and industry can result in the wealth to have schools, hospitals, and feed everyone. — Athena

Mullah Omar has a point though, no? People are willing to spend so much on statues but only paltry amounts on actual people (men, women, and children).

Well, kinda. Both the dim social view and the legal proscription against suicide have their origin in Jewish foundational ethics, wherein the divine command "thou shall not kill" has absolute force. But, within both Judaism and traditional Christianity, the "theology of life" exceeds and in fact predates that deontological ethic. The foundational virtue of the Jewish, and so of the Judeo-Christian, worldview is the unwavering devotion to life itself. Surely we are all familiar with the old Jewish toast: "L' chaim"/"To life". In the northwest Semitic religious traditions, this virtue predates even YHWH, Ba'al, Elohim, and all other early beliefs. As someone raised Roman Catholic, I can personally attest to the centrality of the Church's "theology of life" to the chatechism...this was simply carried over from Judaism into the early church. The strength of the social and legal abhorrence of suicide within our Western cultures is evidence of the depth with which the Judeo-Christian worldview had early on penetrated our 'western' cultural consciousness, and so effected sensibilities both social and legal. — Michael Zwingli

That explains a lot. The Judeo-Christian respect for life gets in the way of suicide becoming an acceptable exit strategy but, if you ask me, respect for life must have, as a central aspect, so-called QOL and whenever QOL is given due consideration, suicide becomes morally justified.

f you want to come at the issue that way, you'll have to admit/concede/accept that the Buddha was clinically depressed and obsessed as it were with suffering i.e. the Buddha was non compos mentis. Wisdom of Buddhism should be the
— TheMadFool

I'm afraid I don't understand your point here. Ive never it said that the Buddha was depressed, he May have had moments of unhappiness but that's irrelevant because his teaching has inspired a whole tradition of Wisdom for thousands of years and is one of the main world religions as well as a major world philosophy. — Ross

If the buddha lived in our time, what I said would appear in a psychiatrist's diagnosis of Siddhartha Gautama's "condition".

As for the link between Buddhism and psychology, all I can say is the latter reduces humans to things, objectifies them,
— TheMadFool

What kind of psychology have you been studying. Are you seriously saying that Victor Frankls book Man's Search for meaning and Carl Jung's notions of The Shadow and Individuation are reducing humans to things. Those two very famous psychologists in fact are against the kind of empirical reductionist materialistic description of the human condition that you find in the logical positivists or Analytic philosophy — Ross

I don't like the fact that we're being studied like we study animals. There's something alien about it. Sends a chill down my spine.

Indeed, my position is very similar to that defended by Plato, however, I am against the hypothesis of a "world composed of forms", which Plato fervently defended.

Project into your mind, my vision of the "metaphysical field", as being a distinct field of that of existence, in which there are no forms, images, perceptions, etc...; it is an endless field and paradoxically with infinite borders, where any and all concepts that already exist, that never existed, and that will come to exist, are.

When a "Being" belonging to existence - a smaller and more limiting field than the metaphysical world - captures a concept through its subjective awareness, such "ideal" becomes "real", and a "movement" between both fields - metaphysical and existential - occur - as if two cubes, one immobile - existence - and the other mobile - metaphysics - suspended over the smaller cube, intertwined -.

"Something can only be real, if previously, it was ideal" — Gus Lamarch

Your view of the real-ideal pair is in line with how things are done. The ideal guides the real i.e. first one must conceive of an ideal (object, event) and then the real must approximate that ideal as best as it can and, once in a blue moon, the real becomes the ideal.

Changelings - Gazelle Twin

I'll sit here a while
I'm waiting lonely like a shadow in the night sky.
You sit here a while
And wait beside me 'till the next star rises.

I came and I saw
I saw the end of the world we know
You came and you saw
You'll disappear before the next star rises.

Out of time...
It changes so very easily
Changing over and again and again and again.

So you
You go feel the Son
I'll watch you knowing all your cheaters and liars.

The only constant in life is change. — Heraclitus

Unfortunatly the more she explained the deeper the puzzeled expression grew on the poor fellows face.
— praxis

I would say that's a good outcome for both the interlocutors, buddhist and christian. It's the WTF? moment every buddhist aspires to and wishes to elicit from would-be converts though it is a fact that buddhist sanghas lack an evangelical wing.
— TheMadFool

On principle, Dharmic religions (notably, Buddhism and Hinduism) are not expansive, evangelical religions, the notion of religious conversion is foreign to them — baker

Yes, I wonder why that is. However, I've heard of buddhist kings like Ashoka dispatching missionaries to Sri Lanka.

See Buddhist Missionaries

Creatures without free will can also change. Instead of coming from free will, the change can come from external factors that can happen through deterrence and rehabilitation. I'll stick to the dog example, assuming you agree they don't have free will.

You can deter a dog from barking by using a shock collar. Similarly, rehabilitation or training the dog to obey his master can be done by rewarding desired behaviours and punishing undesired ones. — Samuel Lacrampe

One word, Recidivism

I have nothing more to say.

True. Buddhism does seem to be closer to psychology than other traditions.

Could this be why it is less popular? In India, at least, after some initial successes it got nearly wiped out by Hinduism (and to some extent by Islam) and it has never recovered — Apollodorus

It's the opposite actually, India hasn't recovered from Hinduism and Islam. Buddhism & Jainism are impractical some say, too many impossible demands. However, these religions are not meant for us - we're simply the guardians of these teachings, our duty is to create environments where these religions can be kept alive until such a point in time when they can be practiced without people kvetching about how unrealistic they are. That maybe far off in the future - another millennia?

Indians, Hindus or Muslims, no offense intended. Correct me if I'm wrong! Thanks.

No problemo!

Is wisdom morally neutral?
— TheMadFool

Is it wise to treat your enemies as you would your friends? — Fooloso4

Is it? I'm not sure.

I'm with you on suffering (in the present) for happiness (in the future). Notice however that the best-case-scenario is happiness (in the present) for (more) happiness (in the future). That says a lot, doesn't it?
— TheMadFool

Well, if that was the case, then why would anyone commit suicide in such circumstances? — I love Chom-choms

You misunderstand me. The point is all suffering is meaningless - it's possible to imagine a world without it. Were it (suffering) meaningful i.e. it serves a purpose, it's a necessary part of life, this should be impossible. People commit suicide because they know this to be true and find life, as it is now, insufferable.

Given all that, a suicider reasons thus: not only is all forms of suffering empty of meaning, I (the suicider) have to bear more than that which is due to me and can endure. That's just too much, right?
— TheMadFool

Yes, that is too much but by that standards of the suicider and I have reasoned that the suicider is mentally unstable, he is depressed and pessimistic. Just because he thinks that it is Too much doesn't mane it too much.
Empathetically speaking, yes I would want to let him die if I can't help him any other way but I have said this before, morality based on feelings is unreliable as it changes and my morality is based on rationality. — I love Chom-choms

It is too much! Objectively so. The global distribution of happiness and suffering is unequal and this is true for even within smaller subdivisions of the human family - you can't expect a person to undergo torture and be ok with it when someone in another house, neighborhood, community, state, country pops pills for just a headache.

As for morality, feelings, and rationality, remember suffering and happiness are emotions.

Possibly so. — Amity

Yes, possibly but something tells me I'm right - Gus Lamarch is trying to marry Platonism with art.

faer — Amity

Preferred Gender Pronoun

Take the example of life, biology; it can't really be explained or, more accurately, is only incompletely explained, by chemistry - there's something about biology that defies an explication of it in terms of chemistry. In other words, biology has its own set of features that are unique to its own level of complexity, these features having their own rules i.e. the biological world, although based on chemical reactions, is sufficiently distinct to deserve separate treatment.

A similar logic applies to consciousness; it's biological foundations is an open secret but it's not just biology as we think it is. Love, though it can be said to boil down to the act of coitus, also transcends it; love exists, as a distinct entity, at the level of human relationships and should be studied within that context.

My best guess is @Gus Lamarch wants to say that art has something to do with the Platonic world of forms - faer focus on ideals seems to suggest so. Unfortunately or not, Plato had, so it's said, a very low opinion of art, it being an imitation of an imititation (the world we know being an imperfect instantiation of heaven). Sad that.

The virtues? What are they? All I know is that the highest virtue is wisdom but wisdom is like a double-edged sword as far as I can tell - both being good and bad, pro tos kairon, can be "wise." — TheMadFool

I would like to hear more. It raises some questions.

Should one have good will toward his enemies? Doesn't phronesis include the ability to discern between those who have good will to us and those who are our enemies? — Fooloso4

The two of us are in two minds about the same issue. Is wisdom morally neutral? Not, according to a philosopher who defined wisdom as that which is both true and good. Speaking for myself, I feel moral philosophies like utilitarianism which sanctions evil means to achieve good ends, the only type of moral ambiguity I'm willing to tolerate, are a cop-out; they fail to be, well, imaginative/creative enough, preferring to take the easy way out. Anybody can do that, believe that the ends justify the means; it takes a real genius and an outstanding moral character to always opt for good means for good ends. Such a person, it seems, hasn't been born yet or, the more probable reason, we're just too lazy.

I never claimed nor implied that I "believe in the supernatural". Your OP references it ("God"). Reread what I wrote. Tell me why, without reference to "supernatural" anything, "suicide is wrong, no matter the circumstances." — 180 Proof

The reason why people have a dim view of suicide, I surmise, is because if someone else killed you, that would be murder; that in taking one's own life, you do kill a person, even if that person were yourself, people, I suppose, find it difficult to distinguish suicide from murder.

However, in my previous post addressed to you, people are ok with killing if it ends suffering of the kind that can't be dealt with in a way that preserves life e.g. euthanazing severely injured animals. If that's the case, suicide can't be considered murder and everyone should simply accept it as part of nature's happiness-suffering equation.

That said, suicide is a problem in a social context. Why are there suicides? Why are suicide rates rising? These questions boil down to the question, why are people so unhappy? Something's terribly wrong with a society that makes people sad to the point that they no longer want to live anymore? Suicides then are a symptom of a sick society; a society, is in essence, designed to create an environment for individuals to, well, flourish. I reckon most people when they encounter suicides take this to be a personal failing, being as they are part of the very community that furnished the reasons for someone becoming suicidal. Guilt, it seems, is the key to suicides being viewed in poor light.

Well no I believe that love is a true emotion. But we humans have made many myths and fairy tales about what is "meant to be" and its origin.
In partnership we have combined it with monogamy. Which is wrong for me. These are two different things. Can't I love someone but at the same time want to have sex with others too? I don't see any contradiction to that.

In some cases, as you mention, it is also used to sugar-coat the two-baked-beast. But it's not always the case.
Saying that more or less is two sides of the same coin meant that, if we plant a seed into a couple. That seed would also need plenty of "sex water" also as to grow up and turn into love. There are exceptions of course but in most cases it does need sex. — dimosthenis9

Where's an anti-reductionist when we need one, right?

I have trouble viewing matters best described as supra-biological (altruism, love, courage, god, meaning, etc.) in terms of the biological as the two of us seem to be doing. Is, for instance, love just a biochemical reaction geared towards evolutionary success? Is the beauty and the sweetness of a flower simply meant to incite insects so that they can do the "dirty work" of cross-pollination?

I would like to, if possible that is, make a distinction between different levels of organization of matter and energy i.e. even though it's possible to reduce mind and everything it does to biology, biology to chemistry, and so on, we should still treat these various levels as unique in and of themselves, possessing their own special, level-specific, content and dynamics. Thus, something like love needs to be studied in the world it's a part of (supra-biological emotions) and what's to avoided are attempts to explain them resorting to more basic concepts such as chemistry and physics.