Formalism, as a strategy (and I don't think it's a strategy with you as much as it is a personality quirk), is designed to jettison arguments and limit discussion. It's somewhat (note the use of the British understatement here) less than a generous approach because it purposefully avoids identifying the merits of the other person's argument by instead offering criticism as to form. — Hanover

I don't think so. With respect to logic, it's designed to jettison bad arguments and limit unreasonable discussion. I use it with the intent to improve. You can't improve if you don't even take the first step of identifying faults. It would be somewhat absolutely wrong to take that as a message to just shut up and stop trying.

It's generous, just not in the nicey-nicey sense of offering a smile and a pat on the head for managing to tie your shoe laces up correctly, even though you forgot to get to dressed and turned up completely naked besides your shoes.

While your tough love approach is heartwarming, I've heard tale of a different approach, where the strengths of the other person's arguments are pointed out and responded to, as opposed to a focus on the errors. There are so many ways to skin a horse aren't there? — Hanover

Yes, there are. But the way which I find the most pleasing is to skin it alive whilst it squeals and writhes around in great pain.

As an aside, I offer you these (actual) words of inspiration from Psalms 137:9 "Blessed is he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks." — Hanover

Yes! Heaven here I come.

The base debate at the creation of the US was the role/power of the the Central government in relation to the power of the individual states. The creation of the electoral college was in relation to this. The less populated states feared that the heavily populated states could dominate a popular election and thereby impose undo power on the less populated states. The electoral college was a way to mitigate that imbalance. — Rank Amateur

Nevertheless, look what has happened. Clearly it has faults which warrant going back to the drawing board.

Oh but we can. FGM is indeed erroneous... — VagabondSpectre

That's irrelevant to morality. Whether it's immoral is what's relevant. You'd have to connect the two, but there's no necessary connection, and to say that this is an example where something is immoral because it is erroneous (according to some standard) is just to make a moral judgement founded in moral feeling. That we share the same judgement is not that we're correct in any kind of transcendent sense.

You've said a lot, but it isn't really doing anything. The same basic problems remain.

"WHY are you leaving the lights on, Akanthinos?" — Akanthinos

Okay, that did make me laugh. We're fucked anyway, unless we all make big changes, and make them fast. So, whether you, Akanthinos, leave the lights on is trivial with the bigger picture in mind.

But the hippies of the sixties were great in my opinion. It was before my time: I was born in the late eighties. But I love the philosophy, the music, the fashion, the lifestyle, the icons. :victory:

...suggests a significant failure of the system. — tim wood

You could add a whole load of stuff to complete that sentence. The U.S. needs a revolution.

The idea is the same as "You can't have a perception without it being a perception (obviously), but the perception can be of something that's not itself a perception." The mistake that's often made there is one of the things that leads to general, overarching idealism.

So obviously you have to be imagining things, it has to be from your perspective, etc., but what you imagine can be a world without people imagining things, and having perspectives, and so on. — Terrapin Station

Ah, someone who gets it. Others still have some catching up to do. It's cringey when they think that they're making a meaningful point, and when they think that we're being so irrational as to deny a truism. They should be embarrassed.

I'll offer you an observation. You seem to require a formalism that others are not nearly as married to and it's a constant source of exasperation for you. It exhibits itself in your demands for proper grammar and spelling down to a wish that everyone be educated in every logical fallacy so that discussion can proceed in a certain orderly and predictable way. — Hanover

Wouldn't that be great, though? That's an ideal worth aspiring to. Maybe if I vigorously reproach people all of the time when they don't accord with my formalism, they'll gradually begin to change their annoying ways, and I'll find myself less exasperated with them. Vigorously reproaching them all of the time is probably not the best approach actually, but "nicey-nicey" just isn't me. :lol:

It isn't me that needs to change, it's everyone else. :lol:

I'd submit that a good part of philosophical debate consists of making the many errors you point out and in debating the significance of those errors to the overall discussion, as opposed to making them the focus of the debate. — Hanover

The errors are always significant. How can the debate progress if they don't get a grip on their errors? The errors are what prevents them from making progress. I'm actually helping them in a sense by pointing out their errors, because they then have an opportunity to fix them and strengthen their argument. Imagine if there was a discussion where everyone involved was skilled enough to avoid or keep to a bare minimum the occurrence of fallacies in their reasoning. Wouldn't that be so much more productive philosophically, where it's about the issue itself instead of our own reasoning and our own critical thinking skills?

I'd also say that definitions are not brittle, so it's understandable that some will assume differing descriptions of horses and cats than others. Demanding an absolute meaning to the terms is not the starting point, but likely the ending point after the debate is over and such distinctions are made. To the extent you claim some call horses cats, I think that is obvious hyperbole, but usually the equivocation of terms is more subtle and obscured and has to be brought to light. — Hanover

I've already explicitly acknowledged that my example in the opening post was exaggerated and that it can be much more subtle in the discussions on here.

I don't demand an absolute meaning. But I do encourage common sense and self-awareness.

Note: Suddenly found myself wearing my “silly” hat ... I’ll take it off now :/ — I like sushi

You can take yours off?

Of course not, I'm an owl.

It doesn't matter in the sense that morality would be no less important. The problem is getting the other side to see it that way. I see the same errors repeated over and again. They seem to see preference as some kind of affront... It's a quite ridiculous and unproductive way to react. — S

Will this truth stand against the destructive tendencies of relativism? I do not think so, but neither will anything else. — tim wood

First it was "mere" and "nothing". Now it is "destructive".

These are clear examples of loaded language. Maybe try to be more reasonable and less emotional. I know that that might sound ironic coming from me, given my position on the role of emotions in morality, but they're appropriate in normative ethics, not in meta-ethics. It's appropriate to appeal to emotion in judging whether or not slavery is wrong, but it's not appropriate to appeal to emotion in judging which meta-ethical position is true. The latter is fallacious.

It's OK, I'll translate.

Religions all disagree with each other, and with science, that doesn't look too good for the modern theist, so let's make up some shit about 'archetypes' to make it all sound a bit more united. Oh... and we'd better make it on some 'special level' to prevent anyone actually checking whether it's real or not. — Isaac

:lol: :up:

First, and this takes us back towards science, I'm wondering if you are familiar with the drug DMT? Here's an introductory documentary of a research study which you might find interesting:

I bring it up here because the test subjects in this study reported visiting another realm which felt even more real to them than our everyday experience, and they attempted to describe this incomprehensible realm as being saturated with a profound indescribable love. — Jake

I hate it when people use drugs to make a point like that, especially when they pretend they're being scientific. It's about as scientific as conducting a survey in a madhouse. Only a fool would take the results seriously.

You feel all kinds of things, and have all kinds of thoughts, and all kinds of strange experiences when you're on powerful drugs like that. You're also more prone to come out with stupid shit like, "I've just seen God!", which a mate of mine once said after taking ketamine, only to feel dumb and embarrassed about ten minutes later, taking back what he had said.

Do you know what I got from ketamine? When you take enough of it, the dizzy, noxious feeling is nothing. I felt like I had brain damage, and was stuck like that for what seemed like a really long time, with very diminished ability to communicate.

There was a guy in another discussion who was trying to argue that everything is appearance, and remarked that unless you had taken LSD, you wouldn't truly understand. Which is a load of codswallop of course, because I have taken LSD, not that it really matters, and I still strongly disagree with him about everything being only appearance.

It's important not to lose your good sense - presuming you had good sense to begin with - about these experiences of taking strong drugs, tempting as it can be to reach fantastical conclusions.

"The world is made of rainbows!", "I've seen God!", "There's another realm!". No, you just took drugs and had a brain fart. Pull yourself together.

I know, I know: you'll dismiss what I've said because I'm clever and belong on Facebook. I don't talk enough nonsense to be a prestigious philosophy-type who rightfully belongs on a forum like this. Sorry about that.

But I also accept archetypal psychology - that religious and spiritual beings and symbols are representations of, or instantiations of, archetypal realities that exist on the level of the collective psyche. — Wayfarer

Sorry, can you say that again in English?

I suggest you click on my avatar. Click on comments, and take a bit of your precious time to learn about what you are arguing against. It would very foolish of you to assume I've not already done everything you've said ought be done, and more...

Help yourself.

We could always take this to the appropriate place. I mean, if you want a real debate, I'm down. — creativesoul

I'm not going to do either of those things. I'd rather you just make a clear point in support of adopting your definition over mine, and a point which I haven't already addressed, or if I have already addressed it, then address that. Again, this is how this works.

I'm still not sure you get the real problem here, because you're still saying completely pointless and unhelpful stuff like this:

I'm proposing that any and all texts written in language that is completely and totally devoid of users is utterly meaningless. — creativesoul

This depends on your definition, so it is trivial in and of itself. You need to start talking about why you think that we should adopt your definition. Everything else is just pointless distracting noise which only looks like doing philosophy. That includes all of the usual "this is existentially dependent on that" mumbo jumbo. But I get it: it's hard to break out of bad habits.

It's kind of funny, because my mum was Christened, and her parents kind of pushed Catholicism on her through her childhood, though she rejected it. So I have Catholic links in my family. And also, much of my family has ginger hair: mum, uncle, gran, grandad, cousins. But do I identify as Catholic or ginger haired? No, because that would be dumb. Do I believe in God? Do I go to church? No. Does my natural hair look a sort of orange colour? No. It looks brown. If you're Jewish, and you're talking about ethnicity - curly hair and the like - then fine. But that's clearly not what this discussion was supposed to be about. That's about as relevant as my brown hair and green eyes.

You belong to a religion if you believe what you're supposed to believe and do what you're supposed to do in accordance with that religion, otherwise it's just sentimental nonsense.

One in every 200 men alive today is a relative of Genghis Khan. How many identify as Mongols? How many go raiding on horseback with a bow and arrow?

Lol, sometimes thats what people need. Slap the PC right outta them. — DingoJones

This is a brilliant and funny example of political correctness exposed:



Her reaction is priceless. I hated YouTubers until I found iDubbbz. Or rather, I still do hate YouTubers, but with the exception of iDubbbz. If you don't know the background and want to know more, then I recommend watching his video on Tana Mongeau. And his video on the Joke Police, for example, makes a good case against political correctness.

We actually had an example of the Joke Police here on this forum recently in The Lounge section. It was pretty funny. "A joke? In what sense?" - Amity.

This is also relevant: Comedian refused to sign 'behavioural agreement' before gig .

I think they learn by observing that's how everything works. I think that's the basis of it. It's fundamental to reality and is observable. — DingoJones

Indeed. It's ultimately untenable to argue against reason. Anyone who does so is using reason to argue against reason. And the alternative to that would obviously be unreasonable. It is one of the silliest positions in philosophy. There's a reason why we apply reason: it works, things make sense, and this is very evident.

I think etiquette is a safeguard against people who are too stupid to get along. Like how you are not supposed to talk about religion and politics. Its because people are too stupid to be trusted to have those conversations...even though they are two of the main things people SHOULD be talking about. — DingoJones

I think that that can definitely be one underlying motive. It can be used to avoid controversy and arguments and to protect the feelings of people who don't have stoical control over themselves and their emotions. This to me seems counterproductive and antithetical to the right way of approaching philosophy.

Someone posted a video in another discussion where Bruce Lee slaps his pupil on the head whenever he does something wrong. Is that politically correct? I'm sure that some people would be up in arms over that sort of thing. But I appreciate what he was doing. And so does the pupil, even though it angers him at one point.

many people acting in conjunction with each other to a particular end, and that's what I'm referring to by "mob mentality."
— Terrapin Station

Under that definition, a group of Amish collaborating to raise a barn is an instance of mob mentality. — andrewk

Nicely done.

Stepping on some toes without always saying whose. Sorry in advance. — MindForged

Don't be.

Hear, hear. Some of it is so petty, and counterproductive, and undeserving of respect. Here on this forum I live out my principles which clash with principles of political correctness. I do respect way more someone who says it how it is, or who remains on point, then someone who tone polices, or virtue signals, or calls you names like rude or unsophisticated, or who tries to repress your freedom of expression. Fuck etiquette.

Why are you stating the obvious by saying if we cannot find meaning in something it has no meaning to us? If you’re suggesting that because we cannot find any meaning in something there isn’t any possible meaning that is no more than a mere assumption.

What “false dichotomy”? You appeared not to know the difference between “history” and “pre-history” so I told you. It is something anyone who knows a reasonable amount anout history and archeology should know. Understand you’re saying something equivalent to the differentiation between “the bronze age” and “the iron age” is a false dichotomy.

Still waiting for what your “argument” is. Hope is dwindling fast so maybe your time would be better spent replying to the other guys here. I’ll take a back seat. — I like sushi

I agree with your analysis. This has become more about what he is doing wrong than the actual topic about ancient texts. That happens with certain people on this forum. Some people try to do philosophy, but it just ends up effectively being an invitation for other people to analyse their errors in thinking.

You are imagining a scenario without humans, but when you are then trying to look at that which remains, you are looking at it from a human view
— Echarmion

Finally. Tacit understanding it is absolutely impossible to do otherwise, and only the rationally inept will attempt it. — Mww

You both still don't seem to realise that that, in itself, is beside the point. Yes, of course I'm imagining it from my human perspective. I am a human after all, and I can't imagine something without doing so from my perspective. That still doesn't mean that I can't imagine a scenario with no humans, and therefore no human perspectives. You're just playing with the language to make it superficially appear as though there's an impossibility which is logically relevant. It involves a sleight of hand, and is therefore an example of sophism, rather than philosophy.

It's impossible for me to imagine something without imagining something: if you're saying something like that, then that's true, but trivial and irrelevant. There's a number of related truisms I could mention here. I can't imagine something without being alive, or without being capable of imagination, or without knowing anything about the thing that I'm supposed to be imagining, and so on. None of them are of any logical relevance.

It's not impossible for there to be a scenario, which can be imagined, whereby in that scenario, there are no humans, and therefore no human perspectives; and that in that scenario, there are rocks, and a sign which says "Caves up ahead". Obviously, I am not in that scenario, so it doesn't matter that I'm human or that I'm imagining it and so on.

If you don't get this, then you're rationally inept, @Mww.

I didn't intend to suggest voluntarism in my definition. — Terrapin Station

Okay.

That sort of thinking will impede you. Definitions can be wrong. There is a difference between 'just asserting' a definition and arguing for one. Apparently, you do no see the relevance of justificatory strength either, and all that that involves...

Put down the axe. There are no proper grinding stones around here. — creativesoul

Ah, you've stopped ignoring me, at least for a moment.

I agree that definitions can be wrong, in a sense. That would be a much more productive direction for the discussion to take than where you began with your opening post, and in what you've done in many subsequent posts, where you merely assume your own definition and point out logical consequences.

There has been a lot of this:

The general point is that an ancient totally unfamiliar text is meaningless if all it's users have perished. As a result, there is no ability to decipher one if that's all that is had. — creativesoul

But that doesn't do anything at all.

I haven't seen any arguments from you about why we should accept your definition in the first place. And without that, then the logical consequences which follow from your definition are trivial.

Or at least, I haven't seen any good arguments. I do recall you appealing to "meaning is use", but you interpret that poorly, in a way which leads to undesirable logical consequences.

I've already made points for adopting my definition over yours, but obviously you ignored them, which in my books is tantamount to accepting defeat. So unless you have a response, I win by default. That's how debates work.

So you don't think that if there's a standard, it has to be something, it has to have become the standard through some particular means, etc.? It's just unanalyzably present? — Terrapin Station

You could take the three fundamental laws of logic as an example. You either get it or you don't. The vast majority of people simply get it. They get the law of noncontradiction. It works.

I'm not saying this is necessarily what's going on, but it's not uncommon for people to look at "belonging to a religion" as being akin to ethnicity. One is "born into" the religion in question, due to one's family, one may have undergone various rituals under that religion as an infant or child--christening/baptism, bar/bat mitzvahs, etc., but one might not consider oneself religious despite this because one doesn't actually have any religious beliefs. Some people even do this while still going to church/temple/etc. occasionally--it's more of a social thing for them. They might choose to get married in a church/temple setting, and they might even sociale their kids into the religion in a similar way, despite a lack of religious belief, just because it's seen as a part of their family's tradition. — Terrapin Station

Yeah, I understand that, I just don't relate to it. Even if I was Christened as a child and whatnot, I still wouldn't call myself a Christian for those reasons. And to me at least, anyone who does this isn't really a true Christian. I don't see Christianity as something that superficial or accidental. It's not like your natural hair colour.

lol at the idea that it has to remain a mystery and it's somehow off-limits to investigate it. — Terrapin Station

No, it's not that, it's a fundamental disagreement about appropriate lines of enquiry. I'm a foundationalist, and as such, I think that some lines of enquiry are misguided. This is one such case. That's why I don't think that it's very clever to keep asking, "Oh yeah, and what establishes that?". As often seems to be the case with you, the problem is your question itself. It presupposes that there's a certain kind of answer.

Why is dog? What colour is Tuesday? Who invented rain?

Well true, it is a claim anyone can make. Like being reasonable. There is a fact of the matter of whether or not its actually true in both cases.
You asked me “what now” at the end of your case example. The answer is “apply reason to see which person is correct.”. That doesnt require an address of where the standard comes from, not in the case of reason, because reason is our most basic function of making sense of things. If you do not accept it, if logical fallicies seem fine to you for example, then no sensible or worthwhile discussion can be had. Conversation over. (“You” is intended in a general sense here, not “you” as in Terrapin). — DingoJones

:up:

So the standard isn't established by any consensus. What's it established by?

(Note that I'm not arguing pro consensuses or anything like that. The aim here is to get folks to think more about just what they're claiming re how this stuff works.) — Terrapin Station

What you're doing isn't very clever, in my opinion. It's just like a child who keeps asking why. The standard is just the standard. If you act in accordance with it, then you're reasonable, and if you act in violation if it, then you're unreasonable. That's it.

Hardly surprising. For example in my country 3/4 of the people belong to a church (vast majority of them to the Lutheran State Church), yet only 27% of the people view themselves as religious.

Besides, today 'a religious person' might be defined a bit differently than before: a fundamentalist, a zealot or a person that believes that the Bible (the Koran etc.) is to be taken literally and anything other is heresy. — ssu

If I had wanted to express surprise, then I would've used a different emoticon. But instead, I raised an eyebrow. Let's just say that it's not something that I would do. For me, both would have to go hand in hand, otherwise it would seem superficial and pointless.

67% of 58 voters say that they belong to a religion, yet only 36% of 58 voters say that they consider themselves a religious person. :brow:

I argue for my position. — creativesoul

Not really. You just assert a definition and point out a logical consequence.

Bravo. :clap:

...the original meaning does not persist, it cannot persist because of the nature of meaning. — Possibility

I've reached the conclusion that statements like the above are naive, because they think that they're saying something about nature, rather than, really, something trivial about their own use of language.

yea so what are the other positions beyond doxastic voluntarism, the status quo(?). — Nasir Shuja

Doxastic involuntarism. I went through some of the results, and there's an academic paper which basically says that this position is the standard epistemic position in philosophy, and that it is more widely accepted in more educated places, and that the other position has a big correlation with Christian thought. There's also a link in the results which says that Hume thought that doxastic involuntarism was obvious.

Why don't you try to state what's wrong with my definition (the full one, not your cherry-picked version) without an appeal to definition (especially one that doesn't contradict my position)? — Txastopher

I told you what's wrong with what you did: you made a bare assertion relating to a controversial position in philosophy as though it was an established fact.

And you aren't using the term "cherry-picked" correctly. What you mean is quoting out of context, but it's ignorant of you to accuse me of doing that, because the rest of the context isn't relevant to my criticism, which is only about the part that I quoted. It's about the choice part. The rest of it is irrelevant. It's silly to expect me to quote it in full when the rest of what you said is irrelevant. Quoting out of context is only a fallacy when it makes a relevant difference, it's not a fallacy to simply quote part of a larger text. I wish more people would actually take the time to learn about this stuff.

So the guy who is contradicting himself says that he is being reasonable. You and almost everyone else says he is not, and says that he's not following "the" standard.

So once again, the question is whether "the" standard is determined by consensus. — Terrapin Station

No, of course it isn't determined by consensus! If he contradicted himself then he contradicted himself! It doesn't matter what he or anyone else says or agrees to about it. What a silly thing to suggest.

They are both applying reason, though. — Terrapin Station

Applying reason is insufficient. Being reasonable is what matters. There's a difference.

Re a standard--so some consensus? (Hence my initial question.) — Terrapin Station

I don't need a consensus to know, for example, if someone has presented an invalid argument. If the standard was validity, then they're being unreasonable. That's how this works.

Validity is just one example. Any claim or argument put forward can be reasonably assessed on a range of different things which can either count for or against it. Things like explanatory power, intuitiveness, consistency, strength of evidence, and so on. There are pros and cons, and you weigh them up.

Are you saying that it's an established fact that it's not? — Txastopher

That doesn't really matter, though, does it? This isn't about me. If you're going to play that game, then I can easily retract what I said and rephrase it to avoid a burden. Are you going to do likewise, or do you stand by your original claim?

So a question might be, is there anything about morality that is true? To which the substance of any answer is, there had better be! — tim wood

I get that, which is why - having rejected moral objectivism as without warrant - I pragmatically opt with moral relativism, which means that moral statements, suitably interpreted or suitably qualified, are truth-apt, and some are true, whereas others are false. There is truth to be found in or relating to morality. You just have to look it at in the right way.

The alternative would be error theory, which keeps the interpretation of moral objectivism, and simply accepts that all moral statements are false.

Or emotivism, which denies that moral statements are even truth-apt.

And moral objectivism simply isn't a viable option, because it is without warrant, and no one when put to the test ever proves themselves capable of providing warrant. Moral objectivism is for dogmatists.

Evolved thought is merely movement of thinking through time, presumably and seemingly to some determinate end. — tim wood

Presumably and seemingly make it okay with me. So it's just opinion which is itself considered to be progressive. I don't find that so objectionable. You might even have a lot of people on both sides agree with you on that point. Human rights certainly look like progress to me. But this is still all ultimately just a subjective matter. A huge number of people feel the same way, so we did something about it.

Someone above objected to my use of "mere" as loaded language. — tim wood

Someone? Har har. You know full well that it was me. You named me earlier for that very reason.

Mere means only, being nothing more than. — tim wood

Yeah, yeah. Except that you knowingly used "mere" instead because of the connotations.

And you're still being uncharitable, I think. Did you ever bother to seek clarification about what exactly was meant by "nothing more than" in the context of what you were quoting? Or did you just assume your own interpretation? I think that Terrapin Station, who is presumably the author of the unattributed quote in your opening post, just meant something along the lines that it is not objectively true, rather than that it's not popular or useful or seemingly progressive.