Yes. And you are completely correct — Philosophim

:rofl:

knowledge is a tentative — Philosophim

Tentative as in the future may be different from the past and the present?

Right, but just as we lack reasons to believe that the future will be same, we also lack reasons to believe that it'll be different.

In natural predator-prey relationships if a predator is so strong a hunter it proliferates and the prey population declines, their group gets equally wiped out. Would you say in this sense that weakness is necessary for survival, and thereby there is some good in weak people just in lieu of the fact that they are weak relative to their potential? — kudos

I thought it's a rock-paper-scissors arrangement we have in the natural world, like we have in the military: archers beat pikemen, pikemen beat cavalry, and cavalry beat archers. :chin:

You are on topic indeed. You present another path that leads to {G} and {F} above. — KerimF

Good to hear! :up:

Maybe what it's telling you is that your definition of what constitutes religion is too narrow. — Wayfarer

Not to say I didn't catch your drift but there's such a thing as a definition that's too broad too.

With the caveat that it ought not to be 'adapted' at the cost of bending it to fit the procrustean bed of secular humanism, which is more alien to Buddhism than is traditional Christianity. — Wayfarer

Noted with the utmost gratitude. Yet, I have a feeling the Proctustes of secularism found fitting Buddhism into his godless bed to be less work than other religions.

This was my understanding too. Essentially Hume is stating that it is impossible to know what the future will bring. So any knowledge that asserts with certainty of anything beyond the present cannot be true. The only way we could know with certainty, is if we saw the result in the future. Of course, we can't function at all if we don't have some belief that things are repeatable, or that certain rules and laws will remain as such in the future. The lesson is we should always be aware that knowledge is a tentative grasp, and that we can never escape needing some induction about the future in our lives. — Philosophim

Are you, by any chance, referring to the problem of induction? If you are then here's the problem:

Suppose we've made some observations and we've noticed that something, say X, repeats. In this regard, we have two options: 1. Believe that X will repeat or 2. Believe that X will not repeat. The current attitude, if it can be referred to as such, is to go/run with 1 i.e. most people will think X will happen again. Hume, in his wisdom, informs us that we have no valid reason to think so.

Alright! I won't argue with that but look now at the other option, the only one, left for us viz. 2. Believe that X will not repeat. Do we have a reason to believe this? Are we justified, to the same degree or more, to reach the conclusion that X won't repeat?

In a sense I'm reversing the polarity of Hume's argument - it's not just that we aren't justified in believing X will occur again, we're equally in error if we think that X won't repeat. Do you see light at the end of this tunnel?

There was nothing before one's existence that could be forced to do anything, let alone to exist. Am I off topic?

It is reality itself whose tensional nature cannot be simplified in absolute terms. You can see it in yourself, in different situations, etc. Stop and live it, you will get what the third thing is — Felix1982

Believe me, I've tried but, till date, no positive results from stuff like "stop and live it, you will get what the third thing is". I'm not poking fun at the idea itself, just that it's, to my reckoning, the proverbial act of beating around the bush and that too ad nauseum. Why don't we try and get a closer look at this mysterious bush. Is it something real? Is there a truth to be learned? Or, depressingly, is it just a mirage, an illusion, a delusion, a wild goose chase?

He can neither be prisoner nor free, that is, these concepts do not apply. — Felix1982

Most perceptive. Thank you! :up:

a third thing — Felix1982

Any ideas on what this "third thing" is?

One thing that the internet has brought amongst us is loneliness — Konkai

Online communities??! :chin:

meaningful daily conversations — Konkai

Hard to come by (not the whole truth)...hence the internet, other outlets, and platforms.

Great question! Firstly, to tell you the truth, I/we don't know [if cells are conscious/sentient] and the reason this is the case is a big clue in this mystery. The single most important reason why we're in dark on this topic is that consciousness/sentience isn't something that can be observed directly. It isn't something like a rock that one can pick up with one's hands and display it to another with the words, "here, this is consciousness". If so, the first thing we must acknowledge is that it is far from certain that anything (that includes other people) other than oneself is conscious/sentience. I think this is known as solipsism, I'm not sure.

If one finds the idea of solipsism ridiculous then, perforce, one must conclude that cells are conscious/sentient. After all every aspect of cell behavior has a matching counterpart in complex organisms that are treated as sentient/conscious. Using humans as the paradigm case of sentience, we have the following: humans eat, cells eat; humans avoid harm, cells avoid harm; humans respire, cells respire, humans excrete, cells excrete, humans reproduce, cells reproduce, and so on. If you take this as an argument from analogy the "and so on" would look something like this: humans are sentient, hence, cells are sentient.

Put simply the same difficulty we face in deciding whether cells are conscious or not - that we're unable to directly observe sentience/consciousness - is present, alive and kicking, in making the inference that other people are sentient/conscious. :chin:

At the other extreme is the notion of a superorganism - a conglomerate of individuals behaving as if it were a single entity as it were like bee and ant colonies. Is the human family colony exhibiting such behavior as to justify the label of a superorganism and, more to the point, is the human superorganism sentient/conscious? Back to square one, and again. We can only observe the behavior of the human superorganism that takes the form of families, communities, nations, organizations, etc. and, clearly, observations suggest that the human superorganism, in its various incarnations, is sentient/conscious.

The crux of the issue of whether anything is sentient is that, to be frank, no level or detail of data/information short of directly experiencing consciousness in an other will ever be conclusive and that's impossible (as of now, I must admit).

I see that in many of your posts. — Wayfarer

Thanks for noticing! :smile:

But in the popular imagination, heaven and Nirvāṇa are often equated. In popular Asian PureLand Buddhism, the accepted aim of the faith is rebirth in Suhkavati, the 'realm of bliss' from where rebirth in Nirvāṇa is then assured. This is to be taken as an article of faith resulting in calm assurance (shin-jin).

One a different note - the Eastern ideal (if it's an ideal) of liberation, moksha, nirodha, is elusive, precisely because it's non-verbal. It arises from a kind of gnostic insight into the fetters that bind the personality to the wheel of transmigration. Is that religion? Yes and no. It requires a kind of religious dedication and spiritual purity, but it's rather different to mainstream Western religion. It's the 'religion of yoga' (not in the sense of physical postures but of purificatory practices and renunciation.)

Western culture is very hung up on religion - same as Victorian culture used to be about sex - because of the history of religion in the West. There were massive conflicts fought over religion in European history. Arguably the Catholic Church was a model for authoritarianism in some important respects. So this has lead to a massive cultural back-lash along the lines of 'anything but God'. Ideas associated with religion are rejected or suppressed, and the West continually tries to re-invent itself without reference to them. I see that in many of your posts. That is not a personal slight or pejorative, it is a consequence of the culture we inhabit. 'Don't mention the War!' — Wayfarer

:up: There was a thread a couple of weeks ago about how Buddhism has become, or is amenable to the interpretation that it's, psyschoanalysis or psychology, I can't recall which. In any case, I was opposed to such a view on Buddhism for the simple reason that there's a huge difference between Buddhism and psychoanalysis/psychology in terms of their methodology - at the very least, in the simplest sense, among other things, Buddhism is about breaking habits, all of them, and claiming one's independence so to speak but psychology/psychoanalysis is about modifying/tuning one's habits as if we're animals in a training facility.

Anyway, the point is no other "religion" can be adapted in similar fashion to modern theoretical frameworks of the human mind. I'm tempted to take this as evidence that Buddhism is, as some might come to believe, not just a unique religion but is actually something entirely different, a philosophy perhaps?! After all, that it can be subsumed by, or more accurately, conflated with, modern psychology/psychoanalytics suggests this.

Any way, I think from the Buddhist perspective, the question of "philosophy or religion" isn't really all that important — TLCD1996

:up:

Why?

The reason why I asked this question is that there's a difference between the philosophical notion of the good life and the religious one of the virtuous life. Granted that both address the issue of how we must conduct ourselves in life but the path to discovery of what the good life is is reason/logic/rationality which isn't so in the case of the virtuous life of religion. This is a big difference for if Buddhism is a philosophy then it's open to criticism and subsequent modifications or even disposal into the garbage can of bad ideas and if Buddhism is a religion then not so.

Furthermore, if Buddhism is treated as a religion then it comes into conflict, by virtue of its doctrinal dissimilarities, with other religions that are around. This isn't a desirable state of affairs for reasons that are obvious - think 9/11, jihad, crusades, and so on. Ergo, it's imperative, to me at least, to know how Buddhism shoud be viewed, as either a philosophy or a religion?

:up:

What to me is a striking difference is that in Buddhism, heaven isn't the main objective (like in all religions).I interpret this fact as proof that Buddhism is, at the very least, a quirky religion or, at most, not a religion at all. :chin:. A penny for your thoughts.

What a great idea! However, we'd need to scale down the contents of a philosophical curriculum to match the cognitive abilities of young children. Is this possible? Perhaps elementary school philosophy is a bit too much to ask. High school seems not too bad a choice as an entry point into philosophy. Teenagers, the high school crowd, seem to be capable of dealing with abstractions at a level that permits of productive discussions on and learning of philosophical subjects. As a bare mininum critical thinking seems a must.

There maybe downsides to this though. Some philosophical ideas are as pernicious as they're appealing and I believe there are many precedents where the youth have been, let's put it this way, "led astray". In light of this fact, facilitating a meeting of young minds and certain ideas may not be the best of moves. :chin:

Words will always be saying too much or too little… Oh to be silent! Oh to be a painter!
-- Virginia Woolf — Olivier5

We can split the difference...between too much and too little there's something to be had.

To describe in writing Beethoven's 9th to a completely deaf person so that he would 'hear' it seems indeed impossible. Likewise with explaining the color red to a blind man, or the scent of vanilla to someone who never experienced i — Olivier5

Impossibility, a concept I struggle with everyday...even the smallest things seem beyond my reach these days. Yet, the same seems not to be the case for others who seem to have already grabbed the low hanging fruit by the handful...they're now, quite literally, aiming for stars if you know what I mean, I await, as patiently as I can, and patience isn't my strong point, for the silver-tongued devil who will, for certain, put to words all that we regard, as of this moment, as the ineffable. Such a day/time will come (I hope). My fingers crossed, In this dream, here, there, I tossed.

It seems that if we have two tiles, one a rhombus and the other an equilateral triangle such that the sides of the rhobmus = the sides of the triangle, it's possible to tile without a repeating pattern. For every pattern you detect in the tiling, you can always prevent it from reemerging by fiddling around with the number of triangles or rhombuses. The logic? To my simple mind, every pattern that's possible with these two tiles will consist of a specific number of rhombuses or triangles. Alter their number and the pattern is broken. :chin:

That experience consists - in part at least - of physical interactions. Thus, Mary did not know everything physical about the color red. — creativesoul

Reminds me of a comment made about emotions - actual feelings can't be put into words in such a way that they actually evoke those emotions. I guess Jackson's thoughts are in the same vein. There's something about immediate/direct/first-person experience that escapes description. Is it going to stay this way or are we just in need of the writer/speaker/interlocutor who has, let's just say, a way with words, having such powers of expression that faers words are capable of giving us the first-person experience I'm talking about here?

Actually, they fit together with the way that reality is perceived by us. And our perceptions of reality are produced by our living systems, just like our mathematical theories are. So I'd say that it's not a coincidence that they fit together, but it's clearly not evidence that reality itself is mathematical. Can we say that living beings live in an environment and they have specific needs? Wouldn't you think that the systems which they produce, such as their capacity to move, their capacity to perceive, and even conscious theories, are designed so as to fulfill some needs, rather than as a representation of reality? — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't understand what you mean at all. To run with your analogy, it's one thing to draw a map after surveying the territory but another thing, as in math, to construct a map entirely in our imagination and then to discover it matches the territory, here reality? I agree with you that this is [probably] not a coincidence but because reality has an underlying mathematical structure.

I faced some initial problems understanding your take on Hume's argument but finally managed to make some sense of it...

First off, your argument, to me, proves that even the senses are unable to guarantee knowledge of any kind because, as you said, and I quote,

You don't get knowledge of the empirical unobserved by reason or by observation — Humelover

At this juncture, it's helpful to make the distinction between tentative knowledge and certain knowledge. The former being probabilistic, uncertain, liable to change, based on new observation and the latter being absolute, certain, not subject to modification. Hume's skepticism is about how certain knowledge is impossible but we can, in that case, run with tentative knowledge.

Do you see the difference between the representation (mathematical), and the thing represented? Some people refer to this as the difference between the map and the territory. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm aware that math is considered a language in some circles but the nexus between math and reality goes much deeper than mere linguistics. There are mathematical theories, axiomatic systems as it were, that fit perfectly with some, possibly all, aspects of reality which, in my humble opinion, bespeaks that reality itself is mathematical.

The difference between ordinary languages like English, Mandarin, Hindi, etc. and math is that in the case of the former you can't construct a theory in them and expect it to match reality in the sense it proves to be a good description but in the case of the latter a mathematician's abstract theory may turn out to be just the thing we need to make sense of reality.

In short, math is not just a map, it's proven itself, on many occasions, to be the territory itself.

@Jack Cummins I hope you're still interested in the subject of unpardonable sins as I have something more to add: Speaking from what I've gathered from the school of hard knocks, how pardonable a sin is to someone is directly proportional to how big that person's ego is. In fact, to tell you the truth, the very nature of sin changes drastically with the size of one's ego.

Perhaps ego isn't the right word; a better word would be sacrosanct in the broadest sense of that word. So, you could get away easy by spitting at my picture hanging on a wall somwehere - it's a pardonable sin - but be sure that you'll find yourself in a whole lot of trouble if you spit at a church, a temple, a synagogue, or a mosque - it's an unpardonable sin.

An intriguing aspect, to my knowledge, of Abrahamic religions is god always pardons sinners. I believe repentance is a big deal in these religions. I wonder then why lowly beings like us should be offended when some of us poke fun at god and religion?

Is emotional pain an assential part of human life? Or would be just fine without emotional pain? Wouldnt it make life so much easier? What do you guys think — LiveAnotherDay

An intriguing question. That you misspelt "essential" as "assential" lets the cat out of the bag. I'm currently doing a project on the history of the world, nothing special, just my own take on what humanity has been up to till date and hopefully also provide some insight into the future. I've put all my research in a folder I've named fool's paradise. I suppose I should change the name now to ass's blisses. :smile:

I gave the issue some thought. It seems that when we're in the domain of sin there are, at a minimum, two players: 1. the sinner and 2. the sinned (the wronged). It seems to me that so long as player 2. the sinned exists in one form or another, fae can always pardon player 1. the sinner. If, however, player 1. the sinner completely destroys player 2. the sinned, it would mean that there would be no one left to do the pardoning. In short, a sin that annihilates the sinned, is unpardonable.

Like it or not, it's true that belief in god is necessry for being good but only for those who haven't encountered alternatives to divine justice like Karma in Buddhism.

The demographic that's of this view, those who "...have a lower income, less education...", as is evident, belong to the segment of society traditionally viewed as the weak. The weak, for obvious reasons, are the ones deprived of justice at every turn - their powerlessness preventing them from claiming, and/or defending against the infringement of, their basic rights. For the weak, this world, in its current form, is incapable of providing justice to them. For this reason and this reason alone, the weak tend to believe in a god for god is, at least in theory, the perfect judge who'll never allow/tolerate injustice.

Now that I think of it, the powerful too need god if not to shield them from injustice to at least ensure that their privileged status is protected/preserved beyond the grave.

I remember coming across this statement:

Repent and ye shall be saved — Bible

My take on unpardonable sins is rather simple: (another quote)

To err is human, to forgive is divine — Unknown

The last quote suggests to me that sin is the norm insofar as the world of humans is concerned - we err i.e. we sin. Forgiveness, as the quote clearly states, seems to require superhuman effort and thus to forgive one rises above the ranks to be united with god and get a glimpse of the god's infinite benevolence.

Can you unpack how humans are inherently “not free?” — freewhirl

Simply put, inherency of qualities such as good and bad imply that these qualities are hardwired, so to speak, into us - they become the so-called preference list we had no hand in adopting as ours that determine our actions. Inherency of qualities, because we didn't, don't, choose them entail determinism.

It seems to me as though it is possible for both beliefs to be compatible. I believe it is possible for mankind to rule over all animals kindly — Joaquin

The kindest act would be to not "...rule over all animals..." Freedom is a necessary condition for genuine wellbeing.

we live by morals and are able to think rationally, — Joaquin

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?!

I fully agree that on this planet, the only species capable of taking up the mantle of guardian of all life is us, homo sapiens. However, the qualities that make us suitable for this task/ role - rationality and empathy being crucial - doesn't, shouldn't, license us to create a pecking order among the living with humans at the top and other animals arranged in a caste-like manner below. To do this, establish a value hierarchy in the living world, is to immediately disqualify ourselves from the position as life's guardian.

Ontology is extremely important. The entire world, for humans, can be divided into three simple categories: opportunities, threats, and neither. Whatever we treat as belonging to any of these classes must be real or else they're inconsequential and not worth our time or energy. :chin:

Evolution, we're past that point. Our senses have evolved and are at peak performance at least insofar as human-level events and objects are concerned. I'm talking about the situation when this just isn't enough.

You know how probability works, right? If it isn't zero, no matter how unlikely it is, there's no telling that it won't happen. There's a non-zero probability that a pentagon of the type I described exists and if the property it presents to us is always out of step with the sense organ we employ to detect it, it will fail to register on our sensory sytem, effectively making it, for all intents and purposes, nonexistent.

I never understood the naturalistic fallacy. It just doesn't make sense seeing that morality, with its list of do's and don't's, represents a deep dissatisfaction with the status quo and the desire for change that follows from it. It can't be true that ethics can ever be about deriving an ought from an is for the simple reason that ethics is, at the end of the day, a reaction to precisely the is, these reactions taking the form of (our) impressions about how the world ought to be. Note, it's true that oughts follow iss but the relationship between them is actually acrimonius rather than harmonious, a state of affairs that suffices to debunk the alleged is-ought fallacy in morality. There's no such thing!. Am I off topic? Sorry if I am.

No comment.

This is doubtful. The universe is orderly, and we represent that order with mathematics. But as we know, human representations are fallible, so we cannot say that the thing represented is the same as the representation. To say that what causes order in the universe is mathematics, is simply to assume a Pythagorean or Platonist idealism without understanding the separation between the cause of order and the human representation of order. — Metaphysician Undercover

Name a law of nature that isn't mathematical and then we can talk. Plus, the fundamental sciences - chemistry and physics - are completely mathematized. If the ingredients are mathematical, then everything that uses these ingredients must, as of necessity, be mathematical, right?

What you said, whether intended or not, raises an interesting question. We know that the universe is governed by laws, mathematical ones at that. These laws are fixed in the sense there are no exceptions to them. The bottom line is there's order in the universe anywhere you look, from simple chemical reactions taking place inside of cells to the whirling motions of galaxies.

However, it seems that all the laws of nature are in effect at all times, everywhere, and on all things, from atoms to galactic superclusters. This can, in my humble opinion, lead to a vast number of events in which one or more laws of nature are in direct conflict with other laws of nature.

Take the case of the asteroid that caused the Cretaceous-Paleogenic extinction. It was simply obeying the laws of physics from the moment it formed to the instant it slammed into the Earth with such force and energy that the debris from the collision blotted out the sun for years, something that kickstarted a chain reaction of dieoffs beginning with plants and ending with the dinosaurs. In the simplest sense possible, the Crtaecous-Paleogenic extinction was an instance of the laws of physics acting against the laws of chemistry.

In other words, even in a highly ordered system, the laws can and, as I've demonstrated, do work against each other. Given this is so, the best technique to meet such threats which can be as catastrophic as unpredictable is to base life on a trial and error scheme of genetic mutation.

All adult human beings do at least one of the following examples of trial and error:
Dating
Working (It seems rare for someone to work one job for one company for the entirety of his adult life)
Moving homes
Trying different hobbies
Trying different foods — Naomi

Trial and error must be random; the list you provided doesn't contain a single item that is.

One could say that God is omniscient and the reason He chose to create the world in the way that He did is only perplexing to us because we have limited understanding. — Naomi

You're doing exactly what another poster did - you're acknowledging our ignorance and giving it due attention. Hats off to you for doing that.

As for me, I'm simply relying on and using to full effect the framework of knowledge at our disposal.

Our two approaches are poles apart. You're pointing at the shadows and raising doubts; I'm pointing at the parts that are illuminated and making what are, all said and done, reasonable inferences.

Hey TheMadFool, hope you are wel — DPKING

Thanks for the concern but, no, I'm not well :sad: but for the record, that's not important, it never was, never is, never will be,

If we afford the same rights and privileges to plants, mosquitoes, flesh-eating bacteria, and these things come into conflict with one another, are we really to do nothing and allow the eradication of a species because it benefits another? — DPKING

When I say that all creatures, big and small, are equal in god's eyes - we're all faers children - I mean that god won't intervene in our squabbles, disagreements, conflicts, wars, etc. We, on the other hand, are free to resolve differences in the way we see fit - most, some might even say all, of the time this will involve some form of force rather than reason but god will not take sides no matter what it is that we do to each other. This is the gist of what I'm trying to get across.

As for, your question regarding whether we are to "...really do nothing and allow the eradication of a species because it benefits another?" I'd say it all depends on how farsighted we are. If we're looking in the short term then sure, kill and eat other animals, spray pesticides and annihilate all pests and vermin, in short, do anything to anything that you consider not human enough. However, in the long term this strategy of do-as-we-wish will come back to bite us for it sanctions a superior life-form to treat us exactly in the same way as we treat those we consider less-than-human.

You have made several points elsewhere on this post to say that certain morally bad things, like racism and slavery, “must exist to give meaning to value” — DPKING

I don't recall saying that.

Yes certainly it is possible. We were unaware of microorganisms till the microscope was invented.

If some organism whose temporal perception is much longer than ours, say a single thought or action of it takes centuries or millennia to form, we may be unable to perceive its actions.

Our brains may also be unable to process or even imagine certain phenomena and we wouldn't even know it. Like other animals are unable to think of calculus.

However, if some entity/thing have a material effect on our world, we may be able to deduce their existence. The existence of genes which are responsible to heritability was deduced long before DNA was discovered. — debd

Yes but, not to say that your contribution isn't valuable, I was actually hoping for some insight into probability itself. Whether a probabilistic law that prevents a particular sense organ from encountering its category of perception exists? I mean it happens quite often in games based on dice. For instance I remember playing ludo once and I needed a 6 but didn't get it, then I needed a 2 and I didn't get that either, then I needed a 1 and that too failed to materialize. How long can this go on?

Sorry, I had to be clearer.
When the inputs to a system couldn't be known for certain, the programmer assumes estimated values and conditions for every possible input which is not included on the list of the known ones.
Then, he has to find out suitable algorithms that let the system adjust the primitive estimated values and conditions anytime it is hit by what was considered unknown input. This may be seen as 'trial and error' because the optimum adjust may not be achieved at the first time/try. — KerimF

We're more or less on the same page is all I can say.

Sorry, what do you mean by randomness? Perhaps a practical example can clarify it. Thank you. — KerimF

What you said above.

I think we're talking about two different things here.

Sure the application of a tool(s) is needed to build things and the worker is the one who is applying the tool in their work to build whatever, but without any the material to begin with what can a tool do in and of itself even if a worker uses it?

The same applies to logic.

It is a tool and indeed someone applies the logic to build an argument and yes create content, but if there is no content in the beginning upon which the logic is working with what can logic really tell us in and of itself? — Mayor of Simpleton

As far as I can tell, the mind, if we must look to what is exclusive to it, deals with abstractions, roughly translatable as thoughts. Do you mean that thoughts exist independent of the mind? Sounds rather odd but that's probably just me. Kindly, if you care to, expand on this. Thanks

Seems more fundamental is perhaps a good place to start, as 'seems more so' isn't exactly the same as 'is more so'. — Mayor of Simpleton

I was led to believe that hedges aren't used as often as they should be.

can logic tell us anything? — Mayor of Simpleton

Of course, logic is comparable to a tool and tools need material to work on. The point is the material is not what defines the mind, the tool does. At least that seems to be the received opinion on the matter.

Really, I think that the mystery of consciousness transcends the whole body and mind dichotomy all together, or to put it differently perhaps the mind can be seen as associated with the body rather than dependent on it. — Jack Cummins

Nice! I like where you're taking this but I'm unsure as to what or where it leads to.

So I do grapple with the mind and body problem, partly seeing the matter from the conventional clinical perspective because I have trained in psychiatric nursing, but part of me keeps an open approach to the mystery of consciousness. — Jack Cummins

Do we have a choice? We know so little. Perhaps, as Neil deGrasse Tyson once said, paraphrasing, "a good indication that we don't know what something is is the number of books that are out there on it." If all that we can do is speculate, then let's. Perhaps, if only through sheer luck, one of us will hit the target and not just anywhere but the bullseye.

sn't it a bit too early in the rant for an 'and'?

We've just started and now I need a conclusion? — Mayor of Simpleton

All I'm offering is what, to me, is an opening for dualism to make its case. That's all.

In part quite true applications of logic do indeed provide content, but what does logic without content to process state?

Where does it start? — Mayor of Simpleton

All I can say at this point is that logic seems more fundamental to mind than what it's applied to. Didn't Aristotle define humans as rational animals - no mention of ideas, concepts, theories, hypotheses, the stuff that constitute content as it were.