And you are wrong. You are confusing apples and oranges. — Bartricks

Sorry to break it to you but you saying it doesn't make it wrong. You began by telling me the Euthyphro dilemma is metaethics and virture ethics is normative ethics which I presume is what you mean by (comparing) apples with oranges.

I did admit that the above distinction is accurate but then I went on to show you that the metaethics of Euthyphro's dilemma has everything to do with the metaethics of virtue ethics. You're refusing to acknowledge this plain and simple fact. I confess I couldn't articulate my thoughts well, I was zoned out yesterday. With this clarification in place, you might be able to make sense of my previous posts. G'day.

Sorry, I just don't believe in the Malthusian Trap. — Shawn

Oh! If that's how you're going to come at the issue, no problemo! Whatever floats your boat.

G'day!

I'm not too sure if the Malthusian explosion is really a phenomenon that humanity would experience if overcrowding occurs, whatever that means. — Shawn

Whaddaya mean? The Malthusian Trap

Everything we know, Everything we think we know
Retrace our steps, if back to the beginning we go
Our journey will end
When we meet the philosopher who set the trend

Only mass 'biological immortality' has Malthusian consequences, but this prospect will be accessible exclusively to "elites & 1%ers" unless, however, a nonbiological alternative (e.g. "mind uploading" ...) can be developed. — 180 Proof

An eye-opener. Thanks for making me aware of other...less conventional...ways we could immortalize ourselves. A time will probably come when immortalizing someone is going to shift from the familiar - books, statues, buildings, foundations, etc. - to the novel - mind uploading, consciousness transfer, and other future tech means of extracting the mind out of the brain, preserving it and moving it to a new medium.

How to change the world?

A tough question to answer because though it may be tempting to think there's a one-size-fits-all answer, each of the myriad problems the world faces - from poverty to pollution and everything in between - seem to have unique features (causes, perpetuating factors, etc.) that preculdes any kind of success where success is defined as above - one solution for all our problems. And I haven't yet mentioned how these problems form a tangled ball of complex interactions that display diabolical synergy - problems spawning or complexifying other problems - that all together point to only one future for the entire world, a catastrophic one. Mind the hyperbole.

As far as I can tell, I'm optimistic when I look in the rear-view mirror. The world has a good track record when it comes to positive change - slavery is now history, global literacy rates are allegedly higher, morbidity and mortality statistics were better until the COVID - 19 pandemic took the world by storm, the overall situation for women is better though there's room for improvement, political freedom has reached new heights, and so on. The world has come a long way, the winds of change have swept through all nations and it feels right to pat ourselves on the back for making it this far.



I shift my gaze now from the rear-view mirror and look around and at the road ahead and come to the realization that these positive changes have yet to touch the lives of people in some regions of the world, even as we enter the second decade of the 21st century. Such inequity is proof that change ain't easy, it takes decades and even centuries to bring about even the slightest shift in mindsets and attitudes, key drivers of change. The world as it is now is, some say, in the grips of an overall outlook that's going to prove to be our undoing. What exactly this outlook is I'm not sure but the pundits seem quite certain that the path the world is on ends in disaster. I can feel the first signs of pessimism set in.

One is dead, and the other isn't?

Did I win anything?? :-) — Foghorn

You won the prize but you may not like what for. :lol:

Assuming about half of the current world population do not already have children, if all of them had one child, as did each of their children, etc, and starting now nobody ever died again, global population would stabilize at around 1.5 times what it currently is in about half a century (technically still growing at a rate of like 0.5 people per decade globally, but that’s negligible for a very long time). Out of 8b people currently, the 4b who aren’t parents yet have 2b kids right now (and we’re up to 10b), then in 20ish years those 2b have another 1b kids (and we’re up to 11b), and then 20ish years later they have another half a billion (and we’re up to almost 12b now), and then the last half billion are slowly filled in over many more generations. — Pfhorrest

Did you factor in exponential population growth? You need to be careful when you use math to make predictions. :point: Mars Climate Orbiter Once bitten twice shy but...there's a sucker born every minute.

IN the recent thread on Plato's Phaedo, I was struck by the discussion of whether suicide was ethical. The discussion revolved around the idea that it wasn’t, in light of the fact that humans are chattel of the gods (I think was the expression.) The implication being that as life had been bestowed on us by the gods, it was not fitting to take our own lives, because in some sense we're the property of the gods, that we don’t own ourselves, that we’re not our own property, so to speak. Can’t help but think this is relevant. — Wayfarer

Seems relevant although I don't know how you'll take it.

There is only one really serious philosophical question, and that is suicide. — Albert Camus

Any ideas what the absurdist Camus meant? What's the difference really between someone who takes faer own life and someone who doesn't? We're all, as you once jocularly put it, in the same boat! I have a rejoinder to that - some are in first class and the rest of us are in third class and that might be the difference between life in the lap of luxury, intoxicated as it were with the pleasures life has to offer and thus addicted, we want to live...one more day, just one more day while those at the bottom, who barely manage to scrape a living are much relieved by thanatos knocking on their crumbling doors if they have on that is.

I thought, if you had a teacher that told this to you, then knowing that the end result appears the same as it is to you know, why bother taking the journey? — theUnexaminedMind

Good point!

Metaethics! Metaethical theories are theories about what morality is composed of (so they'd be theories of what 'normativity' is). Normative theories are theories about the content of morality - that is, they're theories about what we ought to do (not theories about what the oughtness itself is) and what has moral value (not what moral value itself is). — Bartricks

Precisely, Euthyphro's dilemma is about what constitutes good and bad. Is it Divine command or is it not?

Virtue ethics is a normative theory — Bartricks

In my book, we can't have reached a normative ethics which virtue ethics is without having passed the metaethics waypoint.

Now, what is the metaethics of virtue ethics? Is it not Divine command theory; after all virtue ethics is about the character of virtuous people and God's commands would no doubt be a reflection of God's character, no?


Perhaps when I spell it out like that, you might be able to make the connection between the Euthyphro dilemma (metaethics) and virtue ethics (normative ethics).

That's how I feel anyway. I could be wrong of course.

What a stark difference from the antinatalist threads that I have seen around and about on this forum. — Shawn

:up: However, the connection between transhumanism and natalism isn't quite as straightforward as one might think. Immortality is quite obviously going to lead to a huge space/resource crunch - how many people can the earth sustain (carrying capacity of a habitat). Both antintalists and transhumanists may want to stop procreation but obviously for entirely different reasons. - for one, it's too painful, for the other it's overcrowding.

My all-time best thought experiment:

What if I "wake up" from a "dream" into the "real world" and then "wake up" to find myself in the "dream" that I thought I "woke up" from!

Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; after enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters. — Dogen (Zen Master)

Virtue ethics is a normative theory, not a metaethical theory. Divine command theory - at which the Euthyphro is directed - is a metaethical theory. So whether virtue ethics is true of false is orthogonal to the issue at hand. — Bartricks

Which ethics is non-normative, may I ask? There would be no point in one, right? Divine command theory, as I understand it, is to quite literally put our faith in, trust completely, God's moral decisions. That's the metaethics of virtue ethics; if that floats your boat, amen!

That out of the way, virtue ethics is predicated on a person's character and one horn of Euthyphro's dilemma is what is purportedly an undesirable state of affairs - good being whatever God command. However, if virtue ethics is what it claims it is - about character - then God's character as the most virtuous person implies, as of necessity, that his commands are good, right?

Would a virtuous person do what Euthyphro was going to do? — Fooloso4

Hard for me to say because virtue ethics is about character/identity of a person as stipulated, it seems, by culture i.e. as some have pointed out, virtue ethics, is relative and that's as big as hints get if you're trying to solve the Euthyphro dilemma - goodness is, to some degree, arbitrary.

If I may be allowed to speculate, Socrates was no fool or, more accurately, he's not the type who would say anything without having thought about it deeply. He must've, at some point, realized that no single moral theory is going to suffice - there'll always be exceptions/special cases that would render them useless on more occasions than can be reasonably tolerated. That's why, my best guess is, Socrates counts reason/wisdom among the virtues for you need them to ensure the best outcome absent a consistent (contradiction-free) and complete (covers all bases). In short, you need to be rational/wise to be able to handle all cases - ordinary/exceptional. Implicit in this emphasis on reason/wisdom is the acceptance of an unsavory truth - there's something whimsical/arbitrary about morality/ethics.

Down roughly a millennia and half later, Kant comes along and refines Socrates' insight that morality is simply a facet of reason/wisdom by formulating the cateogrical imperative (CI). The CI is, to me, old wine in a new bottle i.e. it's simply Socrates's virtue ethics given a new look so to speak. After all, Kant makes it absolutely clear that the bad/immoral entails a logical contradiction, inconceivable as it were. Doesn't this mean the same thing as Socrates's claim that goodness is reason/wisdom in action?

No, it's like knowing what you're talking about. — bongo fury

I don't deny the exceptional utility of classical logics and its spinoffs (Aristotle, Frege, Peirce, et al) but, seriously, they fail to capture some of the nuances and subtleties of nature, no? What's up with so-called temporal logic, fuzzy logic, paraconsistent logic, multi-valued logic, etc? Nobody in faer right mind would've taken the trouble to invent them if traditional two-valued predicate logic could handle the complexities inherent to thinking about reality. Just saying...

I mulled over the Euthyphro dilemma and here are the results:

I find it odd that Socrates should think up Euthyphro's dilemma and also, at the same time, lay the foundations of virtue ethics. The latter, if I'm not mistaken, isn't based on some theoretical framework of morality the likes of utilitarianism; au contraire, it, for moral guidance, simply asks the question, "what would a virtuous person do if such and such were the case?" In a MS word document of Socrates's virtue ethics, do the following: Find & Replace "virtuous person" with "God." That Socrates, in a sense, provides the solution to his own dilemma should jump out at you. Something is good precisely because, the paragon of a virtuous person - God - commands it.

I don't know how I could possibly repay you for showing me this; it's an enormous help you're giving me, and I don't know how to return the help! Just let me know any way I can make it up to you! — Need Logic Help

:rofl:

Can you elaborate on what exactly Dillahunty gets wrong about logic in the video that I think above? — Need Logic Help

To the extent that I'm aware, the argument that DIllahunty is having with the gentlemen who appear with him in the video is all about the nature of universal claims (all As are Bs and No As are Bs) and particular claims (Some As are Bs and Some As are not Bs) in categorical logic, specifically their existential import (statements that imply the existence of members in a given category). I must warn you that my logic is rusty so do take what I have to say with a pinch of sodium chloride.

First, a non-empty subject categories and the four categorical syllogisms

1. All dogs are mammals
2. No dogs are mammals
3. Some dogs are mammals
4. Some dogs are not mammals

1 is true. Because 2 is the contrary of 1, 2 is false (contraries can't be both true). 3 is true because 3 is the subaltern of 1. Also, 3 is true because it's the contradictory of 2 which is false. 4 is false because it's the contradictory of 1. All relationships as described by Aristotle's traditional square of the opposition holds.

Second, an empty subject category and the four categorical syllogisms

5. All unicorns are horses
6. No unicorns are horses
7. Some unicorns are horses
8. Some unicorns are not horses

According to Peter Abelard, the word "some" implies existence of at least one. Therefore, according to Abelard, statements 7 and 8 are both false because unicorns don't exist. Immediately the subcontrary relationship is made null and void since both are false. By subalternation, statements 5 and 6 are also both false but that would mean 5 and 8 are no longer contradictories and neither are 6 and 7. This to logicians was not acceptable. Given two statements that contradict each other, one has to be true and the other necessarily false. Ergo, statements 5 and 6 are to be treated as simultaneously true, out goes the contrary relationship. Since 5 is true and 7 is false, 6 is true and 8 is false, the subalternation relation too is no longer tenable. Thus we're left with the contradictories 5 and 8, 6 and 7. However, 5 and 6 can't be true if they're seen as having existential import (there are no unicorns). Ergo, 5 and 6 have been stripped of existential import: 5 is translated as IF x is a unicorn THEN, x is a horse and 6 is translated as IF x is a unicorn THEN, x is not a horse. The modern square of the opposition takes shape.

Dillahunty's error is that he employs subalternation - moving from a statement like 5 (All Martians are green) to a statement like 7 (some Martians are green) - when the subject category (Martians) is empty [refer to the unicorns example vide supra]

Unfortunately, the materialists will claim that the Gods love the pious man because he is pious which in their view demonstrates that you can be pious without following a divine command.

But good point, anyway. — Apollodorus

I was merely pointing to the fact that "beloved of God" is just another way of saying pious. Socrates' argument only works if that isn't the case. That's how it seems to me. I could be wrong though.

Your concerns are well-founded. Using classical logic and its spin-off predicate logic, logics Dillahunty seems to be well-versed in, would mean thinking in the same way as Aristotle (roughly 2 millennia ago) and Gottlob Frege (approximately a century ago). That's like going to a modern pharmacy with a prescription made out by none other than Hippocrates who lived around the same time as Aristotle. Hippocrates may have been the go to person back then but his methods, not all but most of it, would be quackery to even a first year student of modern medicine.

That's just a figure of speech, obviously. — Amalac

Perhaps there's a grain of truth in it. The expression, "my career ended before it even started" does make sense, right? The way I parse it is, that which has no beginning [before it even started] has terminated [ended]. My career was over before it even began - notice a reversal, a complete volte face as it were in the sequence of events, the events being start and end. The usual way these two happen (temporally) is start first and end second. The phrase "my career ended before it even started" flips this order and end comes first (before) the start which is second; don't forget that it says, "before it even began" i.e. there was/is no beginning. Isn't this exactly the same problem we're facing - a beginningless time that has an end (now) which is the infinite past conundrum we've trying to get a handle on.

By way of trying to get a fix on, zero in on, the intuition that makes the statement, "my career ended before it even began" slip through the logical checkpost with such ease we can again revisit the fact that the order of start and end has been reversed, "my career ended before it even started" In other words, there's an ambiguity - the end is first but that's a start's position and the beginning is second and that's the end's position. While we attempt to wrap our heads around this fine piece of linguistic cum logical gymnastics, what happens is the end and start are swapped because of the ordering and our minds don't feel violated in the slightest way - the end that was before the start is treated as the start and the beginning that never was is the end - a normal state of affairs for a potential infinity which our minds seem to have little trouble accepting.

Thanks! This is interesting. Curious to see what the other users in this thread think of your breakdown!

Can you explain the two tests that you performed? — Need Logic Help

Dillahunty's argument
P1: All things X cares about are things that are logically objective
P2: No things X cares about are things identical to Y
Ergo,
C. No things that are logically objective are things identical to Y

Tests for validity of Dillahunty's argument:
1. Distributed middle term test: Passed
2. Distributed conclusion test: Fail. The category "things that are logically objective", distributed in the conclusion, isn't distributed in the premises. It should be if the argument is to be valid.

Dillahunty's argument is invalid. — TheMadFool

Distributed middle term test: The middle term, the term missing in the conclusion ,the inferential link between the major and minor terms in the conclusion, must be distributed i.e. there must be a premise that makes a statement about ALL members of the middle term. In Dillahunty's argument, the middle terms is "all things X cares about" and it's distributed premise 1 (P1).

Distributed conclusion test: Every term distributed in the conclusion must be distributed at least once in the premises. The term "things that are logically objective" is distributed in the conclusion but it isn't in any of the premises. Ergo, Dillahunty's argument is invalid.

That's all there is to it.

don't know what the question is but I'm sure Karl Marx has all the answers. Or so they say .... — Apollodorus

:clap: :rofl:

The "Euthyphro problem" for theism is commonly misrepresented; as its central question being "Is something pious because it is beloved by God or is it beloved by God because it is pious?" The actual question in the text is "Is something pious because it is beloved of the gods, or is it beloved of the gods because it is pious?". — Janus

Sorry for butting in but the dilemma dissolves once we realize the fact that, beloved of God = pious. So, the question, "is something pious because it is beloved by God or is it beloved of God because it is pious?" becomes " is something pious because it is pious or is it pious because it is pious?" This boils down to, "is it pious because it is pious?" which is the circular argument, "it is pious because it is pious" in question form.

Socrates is right to criticize Euthyphro iff what is beloved of God can be impious but that would be a contradictio in terminis; after all, beloved of God = pious.

Dillahunty makes a logical error here because he presents the argument “P1: X cares about objective logic, P2: X does not care about Y, C: Y is not included in objective logic”, but imagine the argument “P3: Lois Lane believes Superman can fly, P4: Lois Lane does not believe Clark Kent can fly, C: Clark Kent is not Superman”—the issue is that maybe Y really is part of objective logic but X doesn’t know it. — Need Logic Help

Dillahunty's argument
P1: All things X cares about are things that are logically objective
P2: No things X cares about are things identical to Y
Ergo,
C. No things that are logically objective are things identical to Y

Tests for validity of Dillahunty's argument:
1. Distributed middle term test: Passed
2. Distributed conclusion test: Fail. The category "things that are logically objective", distributed in the conclusion, isn't distributed in the premises. It should be if the argument is to be valid.

Dillahunty's argument is invalid.

I have a feeling that you might want to look into, analyze thoroughly, an expression that seems to be, luckily or not, a stock phrase employed by those who face major employment issues, that phrase being, "my career ended before it even started" How on earth can something end before it started? An infinite past has no start and yet, here we are, in the present, an end as it were.

Is the United States becoming more authoritarian? — Shawn

When you're on a train, one sometimes feels the train on another track is moving while the truth is the train you're on is actually moving. It's relative.

Are we becoming more liberal?

The word "pity" always sounds bad, but is it ever bad to pity someone? Going by dictionary definition you aren't looking down on them. Simply empathizing with problems they are having in their life which aren't necessarily permanent? — TiredThinker

My thoughts exactly but I fear some psychological disorder is at play in looking at pity in this fashion.

My own take is there are two kinds of pity but before that a definition of pity: the feeling of sadness you experience when you encounter someone who's missing something in life i.e. the person is, in some sense, not whole. I've heard people say, "so sad" when they saw a paraplegic.

The two kinds of pity:

1. Normal pity: X sees Y lacks something. X pities Y because of that which Y is missing out on. For example, If Y has a bad voice and X is a singer who's made faer mark in the music business.

2. Paradoxical pity: Y lacks something X has but X wastes that something, whatever it is. For instance, X is a talented singer but Y can't carry a tune in a wheel barrow but...X has no interest in music at all. In this case, Y pities X for X is, in a sense, no different from Y; it's as if X couldn't sing even if faer life depended on it and that's exactly how Y perceives faerself.

Perhaps the moral function of pity is wholly predicated on an asymmetry between the pitier and the pitied, the former being in a relatively "better position" than the latter. It's supposed to be that way is what I mean.

philosophical truths, which I hold to lie in the intersection between logical/mathematical and rhetorical/artistic truths — Pfhorrest

Sometimes, a language, despite its immense capabilities, lacks the word that matches the feelings/ideas going through our hearts/minds and then, what usually happens is we choose (have to) the next best word. I believe the concepts rhetorics and art are like that - they're good, good enough, as they say, for government work but deep down, we know they're not it.

Mind you, I'm not saying that you're off the mark (inaccurate); all I mean to say is there's room for improvement.

All that said, I suppose we're on the same page.

How so? — Christoffer

Indeed, it's true that Kant's categorical imperative is content independent. It's, let's just call it, a formula more general than, that's a big clue, than the utilitarian maxim, maximum happiness for the maximum number of people. Endorsing utilitarianism immediately commits you to happiness as the mainstay of morality.

Kant's categorical imperative (CI), on the other, hand prevents anyone from smuggling in any preconceptions about morality - whether it should be happiness-based or something else entirely is deliberately and wisely left out of the equation. Thus, even if the standards of society were to undergo radical shifts, even if these changes affect morality, they won't do anything to alter the fact that moral theories are essentially gunning for the status of a universal law. Given this, the CI being a simple test of whether or not a particular maxim can be universalized, it follows that the CI is like some sort of master key to morality. I'd bet even aliens, with completely novel ways of living, out-of-this-world (literally and metaphoricall) values, etc. will agree Kant's CI encapsulates in one single sentence the very heart of God's (perfect moral being) goodness.

Act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law — Stanford Encyclopedia Of Philosophy

But there you point out the action is immoral before the examination of whether or not it is. If it is universalized in a society where stealing is the way we feed ourselves and being viewed as a good act that helps people and that anyone can do it or protect against it. You cannot say it is immoral because it is in our society considered so. This is why both stealing or not stealing can't be universalized because that would demand the foundation of society is universal, which it isn't, it is an invention by us. — Christoffer

If one considers adopting the personal maxim, "I shall steal", this maxim only provides benefits in a world in which stealing is a no-no! Now, if you want everyone to steal, then stealing is permissible. You then have the contradiction: Stealing is not ok (your maxim would be pointless without it) AND stealing is ok (stealing is universalized).

you can also universalize that killing someone to help another is morally justified — Christoffer

That's exactly what I meant - the point, if it is one, of morality is to cover all the bases i.e. any good moral theory must eventually pass the Kantian categorical imperative (CI) test. If a moral theory is only partially implemented - as is the current status quo - we'll never get anything done so to speak. Free will appears to be a crucial factor in that if we accept it's real, immoral people will have to be included in the moral equation and this is the stuff that exceptions/special cases are made of.

you could easily universalize stealing — Christoffer

It's not that immoral actions can't be universalized. They can but you would be guilty of a crime against logic, contradiction.

But it also requires having an active rational mind rather than fall back on a spreadsheet of moral laws. — Christoffer

Indeed, I worry about that. A moral theory will operate just like a mathematical function; you input the relevant information regarding a particular moral question and it'll output the right answer and by "the right answer" I mean you wouldn't have cause to doubt its goodness. A very formulaic approach but at least it's reliable insofar as the moral theory in question itself is.

The answer is found in Plotinus. — Apollodorus

Gracias! I'm sure I'll get around to reading him one day. Let's hope I remember the pointers you gave me these past few days.

spirit (nous), mind (psyche) and body (soma) — Apollodorus

:up:

The 'mind' thinks but trying to work out the logistics is not that easy. — Jack Cummins

You hit the nail on the head Jack Cummins. I remember the time when I really, really liked this girl (seems I'm a heterosexual) but the logistics was a nightmare. It didn't end well for me at all. :sad:

Is philosophy like plumbing? I have made this comparison a number of times when I have wanted to stress that philosophising is not just grand and elegant and difficult, but is also needed. It is not optional. — Mary Midgley

Midgley means business! First impression is the last impression as far as I'm concerned.

When the concepts we are living by
function badly, they do not usually drip audibly through the ceiling orswamp the kitchen floor. They just quietly distort and obstruct our thinking — Mary Midgley

Heeeelp!

Great philosophers, then, need a combination of gifts that is extremely rare. They must be lawyers as well as poets. They must have both the new vision that points the way we are to go and the logical doggedness that sorts out just what is, and what is not, involved in going there. — Mary Midgley

I thought lawyers were rhetoricians disguised as logicians. Anway, gets the point across well. Logic + Creativity = Philosopher.

Plainly, social contract thinking is no sort of adequate guide for
constructing the whole social and political system. It really is a vital means of protection against certain sorts of oppression, an essential defence against tyranny. But it must not be taken for granted and forgotten, as a safe basis for all sorts of institutions. It needs always to be seen as something partial and provisional, an image that may cause trouble and have to be altered. — Mary Midgley

In true scientific spirit! Birthing science has paid handsome dividends to philosophy.

Freedom, here, is no longer
being viewed as a necessary condition of pursuing other ideals, but as being itself the only possible ideal — Mary Midgley

Reminds me of money! It's become an end unto itself. With money, you can buy, I kid you not, everything and anything. Freedom must be like money.

This ought to make it
easier to admit also that we are not self-contained and self-sufficient, either as a species or as individuals, but live naturally in deep mutual dependence. — Mary Midgley

Yeah, but my aunt doesn't agree!

But if we can once get it into our heads,that a model is only a model[...] — Mary Midgley

What's wrong if "...a model is only a model..."? :chin:

The alternative to getting a proper philosophy is continuing to use a bad one [...] — Mary Midgley

Tough call, philosophers (men, women, and children)!

That realization seems to be the
sensible element at the core of the conceptual muddle now known as Postmodernism [...] — Mary Midgley

Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science (1998; UK: Intellectual Impostures)

Myths are stories symbolizing profoundly important patterns, patterns that are very influential, but too large, too deep and too imperfectly known to be expressed literally. — Mary Midgley

A uniquely interesting point of view on mythology. Myths aren't falsehoods, they're truths too deep for language. Am I reading this as intended?

Examples like these led Enlightenment thinkers to denounce all myths and to proclaim, in Positivistic style, a new age free from symbols, an age when all thoughts would be expressed literally and language would be used only to report scientific facts. But the idea of such an age is itself a highly fanciful myth, an image quite unrelated to
the way in which thought and language actually work. All our thinking works through them. New ideas commonly occur to us first as images and are expressed first as metaphors. Even in talking about ordinary, concrete things immediately around us we use these metaphors all the time, and
on any larger, more puzzling subject we need constantly to try out new ones. — Mary Midgley

Ironic, don't you think? That there is no myth is the greatest myth! :chin:

Thought is incurably powerful and explosive stuff [...] — Mary Midgley

:up: This was a thought :point: (Tsar Bomba October 1961)

That is the way people often do interpret this kind of claim, and it is particularly often brought forward as a reason for doing science. But Socrates [the unexamined life is not worth living] was surely saying something much stronger. He was saying that there are limits to living in a mess. — Mary Midgley

What a fine mess we're in! I would've screamed in frustration but it seems I'm not alone and it's not polite at all to vent like that, right?

But wisdom itself matters everywhere [...] — Mary Midgley

Everybody knows that, right?

It may well be that other cultures, less committed to talking, find different routes to salvation, that they pursue a less word-bound form of wisdom. — Mary Midgley

What the literal can't do, myth (metaphor) can; what myth can't do...

Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must shut our gob — Ludwig Wittgenstejn

Those who speak don't know. Those who know don't speak. — Lao Tzu

Live and let live. — SYT

What say you?

As others have commented, science is just a tool, it is neither good or bad in itself. — Foghorn

A surgeon's keen scalpel can neatly cut out a tumor; taken to the jugular, it's a different story. :up:

That said, science is the poster boy of the rational, no-nonsense mindset that prevails in the West and now also in the East. In that sense, science must be considered good, right?

If God's the (only) reason that keeps you on the straight and narrow, then you'll have to answer one question, why? My best guess, from my own experience is, people usually adhere to rules, morality being one such set of rules, because either 1. it makes sense to them or 2. there's a rather brutal enforcer making sure everyone stays in line but it could be both. Notice though that if the reason why you're good and not bad is 1. it makes sense (to you), you're already committed to the position that it's not God that matters but you (you decide what's good/bad). If the reason is 2. there's a rather brutal enforcer, you don't think too highly of morality, right?

:ok: :up:

Given a point in a plane, how many lines exist such that they do not pass through the point? — anon123

The answer: The number of lines in a plane - the number of lines in that plane that pass through that point = Infinity - Infinity. It's been a long drive, I'm tired. Here, you take the wheels.

Why assume "I" thinks?

Why assume I "thinks"?

Descartes confused himself (us): "the cogito" concludes to nothing more than thinking, therefore thinking happens which presupposes, not proves, existence.

Why, Fool, assume it's "self" you are aware of? — 180 Proof

Indeed, some wrinkles that need a hot iron. At best, all I can reasonably assert is, "Thinking is going on." Does that mean there's a thinker doing the thinking? Is the TV in your living room actively generating the News you're absorbed in or passively receiving them from the cables? Suppose there is a thinker. Can I assert with complete certainty, I am it? God knows! Your guess is as good as mine.

fighting racism with racism. — Harry Hindu

[...]As fire drives out fire, so pity pity[...] — Brutus