I see what you mean allthough I am also of the opinion time must be taken for thinking things through as well depending on the (perceived) problem, variables do exist. Thanks. — Seeker

I actually don't like thinking at all. That's why my life's a mess. I'm rather pleased that it is. Go figure!

So the OP boils down to the query "how mindful should we be?" Is there a sweet spot for vigilance between excess and deficiency?

For starters, it's a good question and would require a cost-benefit analysis since, despite Janet Jackson insisting "the best things in life are free", there's no such thing as a free lunch.

As for an ideal society, I don't see how being mindful helps in establishing one. Bees, ants, termites and other social animals come close to ideal societies in some respects and the notion of being mindful seems N/A, at least in the sense it's applied to humans.

Let me be honest here, I really like your EnformAction idea and its BothAnd foundation. Religion needs an update and pronto; the best way to do that is with the aid of science which has in recent times becoming an opponent of religion, but that doesn't mean there's no middle ground! You have, by proposing a synthesis of the two, found that middle ground (BothAnd). I applaud you for it! :100: :party:

The opposition from the science guys and the lukewarm reception from religious folks you're met with is in my humble opinion because ...

Too mathematical religious for musicians scientists and too musical scientific for mathematicians the religious. — Numerius Negedius (comment on Leonhard Euler's Tentamen novae theorae musicae)

In attempting to unite two rivals for our attention not to mention benefit, you've lost the support of both. This however doesn't mean your philosophy is wrong/bad; what it actually means is that the chimeric philosophy you've developed fits like a glove with reality as we know it. In most cases, I've noticed, people are happy only when they get what they want and utterly disappointed by hard facts.

Good day!

:up: On point mon ami, on point. I've seen people cry during goodbyes even when they knew very well the person leaving was going to return in a year or had found a better life elsewhere. We mourn our loss and in so doing we honor the dear departed.

A question, how do you explain the desire to kill one's enemies and the pleasure one experiences when/after doing so? If the dead go to heaven, why would anyone want to murder one's foe?

Why do people cry when their near and dear ones die? It can't be because the deceased is going to a, ahem, "better place". Ergo ... either nothing or hell awaits us ... postmortem.

However, we're pleased relieved by some deaths (euthanasia, suicide) for the simple reason that there really is no point to living with pain that's unbearable. Ergo ... nothing ... postmortem.

Hence, postmortem one of two things will happen, you'll either cease to be (nothing) or you'll jump from the frying pan into the fire (hell). Put simply ...

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

A very informative post Jack. I'm in your debt.

Clearly there's been a lot of research since I last touched a book on biology. My files are outdated; nevertheless, since something is better than nothing, I'm ok with hanging onto what I learned many suns ago in college. That's that.

I wish there was someone here on the forum who knew more about the sexual revolution and no, I'm not talking about the one that happened in the 60s - 70s. At what stage in the evolution of life, did it undergo the mitosis-to-meiosis transformation and why? Sex, from what I know, is the dominant mode of reproduction in metazoans. The natural question then is this: is the LGBITQ community a sign of a reproductive revolution (asexual $\to$ sexual $\to$ ?)?. From a mathematical perspective it makes perfect sense - more combinations & permutations there are, the better it is. I haven't worked out the deatails though so don't ask me to explain. Have an awesome day Jack.

I'm no expert and I really haven't given the matter the attention it demands.

If you want my opinion, I'd say contraries can be resolved usin' the via media approach; with contradictories, it's impossible and a choice hasta be made, between mind and heart - the former accepts only sense and the latter yearns for peace. Looks like we can't have 'em both since one's the negation of the other.



Perhaps it's a lack of imagination on our my part! As they say where there is a will, there is a way. We could enjoy the best of both worlds, but as soon as we realize everything has pros and cons we're faced with Protagorian-style counterdilemmas.

The Buddha's madhyamaka is, it appears, not to affirm both sides on an issue, but to deny both. The middle then is actually not in the middle like it is in fuzzy logic where different degrees of truth & falsehood exist on a scale/spectrum, but in some place which is, at present, beyond my event horizon. Suffice it to say that I'm utterly bewildered (aporia). That'a all she wrote.

Aye!

I'm an advocate of skepticism - there's no point to thinking, forget about overthinking. It's not that you'll get to truth anyway for the infinite regress argument clearly demonstrates, no matter how many proofs you line up, how many finite steps you take, you'll be as far from the truth as you were when you hadn't even started. The epistemic project was doomed from the start, oui monsieur/mademoiselle? The other alternatives are go around in circles or scream "because I said so!" The choices then are:

1. Exhaustion (infinite regress)
2. Vertigo (circularity)
3. Exasperation (axioms)


The follow-up to that is obvious, too obvious to mention, oui?

Good for you. :up:

:blush:

I don't think I need to explain that to someone of your caliber. Absit iniuria of course.

Exactly! I see it in the same way, indeed :sparkle: — javi2541997

:up:

Indeed, that far back in history the boundary between truth and myth is blurred to the point of being of no real value.

As for Zhuangzhi needing a shrink, it was only a dream and nobody is considered mentally sick for having surreal experiences in dreamscape although a case can be made that one's dreams are a rough indicator of one's character and mental health. Was Zhuanghzi mad? Possible, an indictment in my book of reality - some of us havta lose our minds just not to die. Imagine!

god shaped hole in the heart — Gnomon

Daoism, some say, utilizes the metaphor of dihydrogen monoxide (water) when it describes itself. Water (liquids and even gases) is adaptive i.e. no matter what the shape, no matter how many tiny nooks and crannies there are, water will never fail to adjust its own shape to the vessel. The point Daoism seems to be making is fit in wherever, whenever, you are. Don't be a square peg in a round hole. Does the God piece fit with reality as we know it. The problem is that the God that we want is incompatible with reality and the God that is compatible is one we don't want. Wicked!

:up:

If only we knew how the brain makes such jumps in its capabilities, we could bring them about at will instead of relying on luck. We could trigger a cognitive singularity à la the one some say is coming down the pike viz. the technological singularity. I suppose the movie captures that wish as whoever the aliens are, they seem to possess such knowhow.

The monolith is inscrutable, mysterious, enigmatic, bewildering, undecipherable, i.e. it's an unknown and is an attempt to physically embody the lacuna in our understanding of so-called cognitive revolutions h. sapiens went through in its evolutionary journey. We don't know, we're ignorant of how we got to be so smart and so creative! The Monolith = Ignorance!

Democracy as a personal ethic: a way of living, an approach to not only life but to everything, a technique to achieve harmony between selfishness & altruism. BothAnd @Gnomon

Don't act like a moth to a flame! Humans are not moths nor do they have to act like them. — universeness

Most perceptive. Did you hear the story of Zhuangzi who was confused about whether he was a man or a butterfly? You must have.

I like to look at modus tollens and other (argument) forms based on it in terms of possibility

Modus ponens

1. If I punch X then X feels pain (assuming X is your average Joe with no weird medical conditions)
2. I punch X
Ergo
3. X feels pain

Affirming the consequent (fallacy)

1. If I punch X then X feels pain
2. X feels pain
Thus,
3. I punch(ed) X

Possibility-based Affirming the consequent (not a fallacy)

1. If I punch X then X feels pain
2. X feel pain
Hence,
3. It is possible that I punch(ed) X

The same possibility-based logic applies to denying the antecedent fallacy.

As for accepting the truth of the premises in a valid syllogism and rejecting the conclusion, that isn't possible unless you're Kurt Patrick Wise (vide infra)

As I shared with my professors years ago when I was in college, if all the evidence in the universe turns against creationism, I would be the first to admit it, but I would still be a creationist because that is what the Word of God seems to indicate. — Kurt Patrick Wise

Mr. Wise is onto something in my humble opinion. We're at liberty to believe whatever we want, but falsehoods tend to be injurious to health, like cigarettes, but some say, truth hurts. The dilemma we face, lies or truths, translates into pain or pain. C'est la vie! Choose the lesser of two evils, betwixt Scylla and Charybdis. I talk too much.

If existence is tied to perception (existence $\to$ perception), what we don't perceive doesn't exist (modus tollens). However, what is behind us is what we can't perceive i.e. it is a limitation imposed by our body structure (eyes are looking in one direction only) and that's what we call a confounding factor that simply can't be removed from the equation much to our disadvantage. The point then is to distinguish two kinds of non-perception viz. don't & can't kinds. What I don't perceive (front of us ) doesn't exist, but what I can't perceive (behind us) may exist.

Furthermore, Perception $\to$ Existence [Hallucination (mental illness/drug-induced)]. In other words there are no sufficient conditions, if perception is our benchmark, to decide whether something exists or not. We are left with only the ability to disprove existence (existence $\to$ perception) via modus tollens, but not prove it.

As is obvious to the reader, contrary to what we've been thinking all along, we don't have a definition of existence if perception is our standard/measure. Odd that!

Nothing exists [...] — Gorgias

Skepticism ne plus ultra.

Not all addictions are bad, such as addiction to life, truth seeking, fighting injustice, altruism. — universeness

Like a moth to a flame. It's true, moths are attracted to light and, just as biologists say, they do spiral to their doom towards the flame and ... burn to death!

Solutions?

Jokes aside, people seem to have converged on one word as the nub of Christianity viz. love — Agent Smith

People could live life any number of ways and there's no reason that one necessarily needs to prioritize love. — Moses

It is in our attachment to this ‘stuff close to our hearts’ wherein lies the seeds of untold suffering. — Possibility

Comments!

Gender is meaningless i.e. there's no such thing as a male/female mind. :chin:

Eureka! I propose The Mohini Test (named after the only female avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu) à la The Turing Test.

You are to converse (mental task) with a person X via a computer. If you can't tell whether X is a man/woman from that alone, gender is (as the OP claims) meaningless.

I routinely use señor/señorita, monsieur/mademoiselle, sir/madam (as the case may be) to address forum members. This suggests that people, minds to be more precise, pass The Mohini Test with flying colors. Of course this could be due to poor deductive skills, I'm not much of a thinker.

Funny guy. Didn't know about him. Watched a couple of videos ... — Alkis Piskas

:grin:

Oh! Well souls having experienced a different sex in a previous life and that carrying over into this life, manifesting as gender dysphoria is an explanation for the LGBTIQ phenomenon, but is it the right best one? If it were up to me, I'd look for less fancy reasons e.g. a hormonal one.

As for reincarnation ...

Mohini (Sanskrit: मोहिनी, Mohinī) is the Hindu goddess of enchantment. She is the only female avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu (male). — Wikipedia

More at Wikipedia.

For me too it remains a mystery how he rebuilt philosophy, after having demolished it, on the cogito? This is no small feat by all accounts. Remember the Holy Grail of all seekers of wisdom is al-Haqq (the Truth), truth with a capital T. Maybe I exist is the Truth, for Descartes it was.

A possibility worth exploring. My hunch, the autonomic nervous system, but what goes on in one's heart & belly is was once beyond our event horizon; with modern science we can now place sensors that monitor heart rate, breathing, sweating - Wonder Woman's lasso of truth.

:up:

So what you're sayin' is what I'm sayin'. There's a phase in our development when males & females are more similar than they're different. It's true that at puberty there's a clear divergence of the sexes that make each identifiable at a glance. Many a times, I've asked "how old is she?" to parents of boy infants and vice versa.

The difference between men and women is by and large based on physical characteristics, but there are grey areas that sometimes perplex the naïve. The mind though is rather ambiguous wouldn't you say, Jack?

They also reduce children's ability to recognize facial expressions. IOW they reduce empathy. — Bylaw

Ishin-denshin is traditionally perceived by the Japanese as sincere, silent communication via the heart or belly (i.e. symbolically from the inside, uchi), as distinct from overt communication via the face and mouth (the outside, soto), which is seen as being more susceptible to insincerities. — Wikipedia

Right. It all has to do with emotions. And behind them are thoughts. And behind them is mind. That's why so many soldiers --"who do all the dirty work", as you say-- come back from wars mentally damaged. — Alkis Piskas

Yes, by dirty work I mean precisely that! On point mon ami!

I hear veterans aren't treated all that well - no surprises there because how many of 'em is the government gonna pander to? There are quite literally thousands upon thousands of ex-armymen out there ; some are on the streets, others are alcoholics, most never recover from the trauma. Too bad, eh?

What about Jesus Christ or Muhammad or Abraham? — javi2541997

I would give each one of 'em a C+ and, together a B+. The second coming?

Why? First Cause? — john27

Dunno!

:up:

God never gives everything to one person. — Numerius Negedius

That is to say ...

We must all hang together or, assuredly, we shall all hang separately. — Benjamin Franklin

Makes sense, oui?

What about a cyclical process? — john27

I proposed that; no takers!

I recall dividing up the human race into

1. Thinkers (mind)
2. Feelers (heart)
3. Workers (body)

Collectively, we're balanced; individually, we're unbalanced. Team work? :chin:

A bit like the Hindu caste system, but minus all the superiority/inferiority crap, complementarity instead of hierarchy.

Yeah, we need a different tool!

In my humble opinion, animals, you can say, are moral/ethical beings. The objective is to find out why?

A tidbit to chew on while you're at it: Animal Trial

For a photon, so says a Neil deGrasse Tyson, time doesn't exist. Sunlight takes 8 minutes to reach us, but that's onoy from our frame of reference. From the photon's point of view, it travelled the roughly 1.5 million km sun-earth gap in an instant.

I think all that was said was that you exist in 2022. — Richard B

Ok!