who may have abandoned Christianity but certainly not God and faith in the coherence of the concept of moral good(which amount to the same thing). Is this your view of Kierkegaard? — Joshs

He doesn't use the concepts of God and faith in a conventional way. Those things are in the background to me. It's what he was saying that's amazing, and in some ways not just compatible, but the same as Nietzsche's view.

But if their presence in the background bothers you, I can see why you'd be turned off by him. It doesn't bother me. Since Nietzsche believed truth is always metaphorical and mythological, I doubt it would have bothered him either. He wasn't really the champion of atheism some make him out to be.

My favorite thing about Nietzsche is how he slams a hammer into the religiosity that Kierkegaard struggles to keep alive. — Joshs

Kierkegaard's point was that Christianity is a dead religion. I think you've gone way too long not understanding Kierkegaard and how he was saying the same thing Nietzsche was vis-a-vis amor fati.

Could you say something about the postmodern Nietzsche? Like what does Derrida say about him? If that seems unutterably lazy on my part, sorry :grimace:

One of the main reasons morality sometimes wins out over economic flourishing is that the quest for more money eventually becomes hollow. Prosperity for its own sake isn't enough to sustain a culture's soul.

What is a man profited should he gain the whole world and lose his soul?

This is the Thomas Common translation.

It's easy to access.

This is a Wikipedia introduction:

Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None is a book written during the 1880s by the German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche. Hard to categorise, the work is a treatise on philosophy, a masterly work of literature, in parts a collection of poetry and in others a parody of and amendment to the Bible. Consisting largely of speeches by the book's hero, prophet Zarathustra, the work's content extends across a mass of styles and subject matter. Nietzsche himself described the work as "the deepest ever written".

or in fact reveal what makes him so different from contemporaries like Kierkegaard and Schopenhauer. — Joshs

Schopenhauer wasn't his contemporary. He was about two generations back, and people who are familiar with both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche note how similar they are in spite of apparently being unaware of one another.

I'd just say that if you knowingly get creative with Nietzsche, you're not in a position to dismiss other interpretations. You'll just have to respect everyone else's view. Do you agree?

Thanks and thanks. I think my job here is done. — god must be atheist

Alrighty then.

Maybe, but I am going by the clip on the Video displayed on the top of this page. That, as far as I can see it, predicts human extinction. — god must be atheist

If so, it's bullshit.

My impression was that you said the causes we suspect are insufficient in explaining the phenomenon. — god must be atheist

That's true, but it's like we're collecting puzzle pieces. We don't have all of them yet.

So the statement "we do know what those forces were", is, I am sorry, false. — god must be atheist

True.

the alarmist attitude of species extinction and human extinction can be brought to be questioned. — god must be atheist

Scientists don't expect human extinction to take place due to global warming.

The flora will thrive in the hot, carbon-dioxide-rich atmosphere. They will turn the excess carbon dioxide and water into oxygen and fibres, sugar. — god must be atheist

That's correct. That's already started happening. The earth is getting greener.

In conclusion: Current mainstream scientific opinion is that the CO2 concentration increased, and that was a product of human activity. This causes global warming. — god must be atheist

Correct

We don't know what effected them, and what the forces were; so we are not at a liberty by logical and scientific thought to dismiss those forces as not being a part of today's global climate change. — god must be atheist

We do know what the forces were. I just described it to you.

Do we know what that something else was? this is not a rhetorical question; please, Tate, if you care, tell me just the fact whether we know what that force of heat energy sink or source was. — god must be atheist

Yes. The Earth's axis wobbles. It goes around in a circle over a period of about 41,000 years. There are times when the axial position points the northern hemisphere further away from the sun. Under the right conditions, this will initiate glaciation due to build-up of ice which reflects light back out to space. Then the oceans cool and absorb CO2, cooling things down even further. All of this is possible because we're in a large scale ice age characterized by oceanic currents that allow "deep water.". This is water that never comes to the surface and so it stays cold, cooling the surface.

Another factor is the Earth's orbit, which is sometimes elliptical, and sometimes more circular.

If we know what it was, then we can look for it in today's world. — god must be atheist

They know about those factors, but there are still unknowns.

This is clear indication that there are forces other than man-made that make global warming and cooling. — god must be atheist

Of course. The Earth's climate changes all the time because of natural forces. It wouldn't just stay the way it is now whether we influence it or not.

we're changing the climate
— Tate
Yes, we are!! I am not arguing that. I am arguing that there is or might be natural forces that are precipitating this change, and that the global warming is not created by man alone. — god must be atheist

Ok.

Well, that's why it's a "for us" predicate. — Moliere

You mean just for the two of us?

Who are "we"? — god must be atheist

All sorts of people, but mainly engineers.

Not quite. Scientific research requires a lot of money. Money comes from political sources. I think you know where this is heading. Scientists are NOT free to investigate as they wish — god must be atheist

Well if that's true, we're hopelessly in the dark about pretty much everything. Let's go back to the Stone Age and start over.

That's the elegant solution. — Moliere

I don't know. There's usually blood and guts everywhere when we try to do surgery on natural language use.

But if it's balking at the limitation of truth to human interaction -- yeah, that's pretty much what this would limit it to. No propositions. The focus is on statements used — Moliere

That's fine. It just has to be clarified. We should also note that in limiting truth to the content of human interaction, we're making a judgment about a portion of truth predication in ordinary language use.

We're saying that when people speak of truths which have not yet been discovered, they're mistaken, or speaking metaphorically, or are confused.

How should we address that?

There's some truth to that. Zealotry has set in, and yet scientists are as free as they ever were to investigate.

At this point all we know is that there is no definite theory that gets complete buy-in; the consensus is of the majority, not of the entirety — god must be atheist

We don't usually require 100% buy-in before we accept scientific consensus. Hundreds of scientists the world over have looked at the question and come up with the same answer: we're changing the climate.

I'd settle for any used English sentence, including sentences on this thread. — Moliere

Used? So truth only applies to the content of human interaction?

But it's sunny, so not yet. — Banno

:up:

So stipulating English statements. — Moliere

What do you mean by "statement"? A proposition?

Superficially they sound similar, however the underlying meanings are very different. Context is everything. — ThinkOfOne

Could be. You're a contrarian, so you'll find people always contradict you.

Yeah, it's be good to have a thread on that, so we could go into the detail... — Banno

Maybe just start another thread. Name it something kind of obscure so the moderators will leave it be.

I have tried that Tarski paper more than once, and I wouldn't dare tell someone here what it means. :D — Moliere

Point taken. I'm going from secondary sources rather than the horse's mouth. My understanding is that Tarski's truth predicate is entirely formal. It's not truth as it appears in the wild.

So the T-schema could just as easily be a B-schema:

"P" is blob IFF P.

What's blob? It's just a gear in a logic machine. It's a mistake to read folk notions into that.

truth is so much more than correspondence — Moliere

Exactly.

that Tarski's analysis informs our use of "true" in natural languages. — Banno

You can't really call Tarski's work an "analysis." He wasn't analyzing anything.

If you use the T-schema to say something regarding ordinary, natural language use, you'll have to stipulate how you want to approach that. Tarski doesn't do that for you.

The question is what are you afraid of? — apokrisis

Nothing

Tarski's work doesn't really apply to ordinary language use. Whatever we chose to do with the T-schema, as it relates to ordinary language use, will have to be stipulated.

Why would I bother?

He falls into the silliness of treating the mind as something substantively fundamental — apokrisis

No, he really doesn't. I get it. You poo poo Schopenhauer. I think Deleuze was mentally retarded. We probably neither understand our scapegoats. I know you don't. :love:

Satisfaction is death. Get that, you get Schopenhauer.

and whatever deed he does, that he will reap. — ThinkOfOne

Yes. If you live by the sword, you'll die by the sword.

Believe what you like. I'll get on with my study of the subject. Not all narratives are equal. But you need to have done the work to properly compare them. — apokrisis

Seems pretty straightforward actually. Time only has an arrow relative to an entropy minimum like the big bang. There's really no warrant for "existence is a dissipative structure."

Sounds like what I said, no? — apokrisis

Schopenhauer was one of the first of the irrationalist philosophers. This is a separate issue from his pessimism.

You said existence is a dissipative structure. There's a particular POV where this is true: looking at the universe from our side of the Big Bang. Closer to home, entropy actually fluctuates.

The problem with relying on the larger scale narrative is that we don't know what happens on the other side of the Big Bang. Time might be going backwards there.

So you're favoring one particular perspective drawn from physics, not from your own living experience.

Are we in agreement so far?

Consciousness requires unanswered questions, unresolved drama, in short, evil in order to stay awake.
— Tate

But that is just more bad psychology. The view from a world being swept up in the industrial revolution. — apokrisis

Yeah, the industrial revolution was in England. Schopenhauer was German. I'd say if you reject his pessimism, you just don't know what it is, because it's pretty obvious.

But he then projected the notion that this was suffering, a pessimistic burden, on to what is a neutral fact. — apokrisis

Not exactly. He noted that consciousness is an arc always headed toward satisfaction, which is the death of the will. Consciousness requires unanswered questions, unresolved drama, in short, evil in order to stay awake.

This was possibly something Nietzsche reacted strongly against, not that he didn't recognize the truth of it, he just believed we have to learn to celebrate ourselves in both our good and evil. Or something like that.

Did you see the thread I started on entropy? Your thoughts would be appreciated should you find the time.

So if will to power is transforming the world in accord with our needs , it is at the same time having the valuative basis of our needs constantly be obliterated , re-directed, and redefined in ways that don’t allow us to claim some sort of thematic continuity in what we want. This is self-actualization as continual self-obliteration and re-invention — Joshs

This doesn't really make any sense. Maybe postmodernism just isn't for me?

Are you saying morality springs from the same source?
— Tate

Yes. — Fooloso4

When there appears to be a conflict between the will to power and morality, say when economic well-being trumps morality, what does this mean? If they have the same source?

Is it that overcoming is needed?

If Hayflick's limit is true (or even maybe true) for regular cells in large complex organisms (such as humans), why do the crown cells (to be honest I don't know if they are crown cells, but for some reason I want to call them that) or whatever cells involved creating the used in animal reproduction ARE NOT effected by Hayflick's limit and/or anything else that involves cellular aging. — dclements

Stem cells? I think they're immortal. Cancer cells are too.

I think Bittercrank may have been onto something regarding the ability of a mortal population to adapt to changing conditions?

All of life is a will to power. It does not make sense to interpret this as the will to dominate. — Fooloso4

I agree. That's just one fundamental aspect of it. Are you saying morality springs from the same source?

In the Genealogy the development of Christian morality is the development of the will to power through man's self-overcoming. It is only later that it becomes life denying. — Fooloso4

What is self-overcoming exactly?

@Joshs

Hi! I hope you don't mind if I moved this over here. I'll need to chew on this a while.

I think this is one aspect of the will to power, the drive to assimilate , dominate and achieve mastery over oneself and one’s surroundings. But will to power also implies a constant re-directing of the drive to dominate.

Nietzsche says the essence of life , as will to power , is its “spontaneous, aggressive, expansive, re-interpreting, re-directing and formative forces”.


What does he mean by re-interpeting and re-directing?
“That overpowering and dominating consist of re-interpretation, adjustment, in the process of which their former ‘meaning' [Sinn] and ‘purpose' must necessarily be obscured or completely obliterated.”

“No matter how perfectly you have understood the usefulness of any physiological organ (or legal institution, social custom, political usage, art form or religious rite), you have not yet thereby grasped how it emerged…the whole history of a ‘thing', an organ, a tradition can to this extent be a continuous chain of signs, continually revealing new interpretations and adaptations, the causes of which need not be connected even amongst themselves, but rather sometimes just follow and replace one another at random.

The ‘development' of a thing, a tradition, an organ is therefore certainly not its progressus towards a goal, still less is it a logical progressus, taking the shortest route with least expenditure of energy and cost, – instead it is a succession of more or less profound, more or less mutually independent processes of subjugation exacted on the thing, added to this the resistances encountered every time, the attempted transformations for the purpose of defence and reaction, and the results, too, of successful countermeasures. The form is fluid, the ‘meaning' [Sinn] even more so . . . It is no different inside any individual organism: every time the whole grows appreciably, the ‘meaning' [Sinn] of the individual organs shifts…”

So will to power is a dominating impetus that exhausts itself in assimilating the world to a valuative meaning, thus jumping from one meaning to another without there being a logical connection between the two. It is not about mere preservation or survival but expansion. And the dominant valuative interpretation will to power imposes becomes obscured or obliterated as it expands its dominance.

So if will to power is transforming the world in accord with our needs , it is at the same time having the valuative basis of our needs constantly be obliterated , re-directed, and redefined in ways that don’t allow us to claim some sort of thematic continuity in what we want. This is self-actualization as continual self-obliteration and re-invention — Joshs