I think I already know what Banno will say, but what do you three make of this argument:

1. There is a way the world ought to be only if there is a God.
2. There is a way the world ought to be, even though the world is not the way it ought to be.
3. Therefore, there is a God.

Interested in your thoughts.

from God.

Okay, where does kindness come from?

Thanks, yeah I think you may be on to something when you say the desert is not merited due to the infinite dignity of the offended. I would tentatively suggest the desert is due to the objective nature of the offense, that is to say, the intentions and actions of the offender.

That depends, when you said:

the only coherent notion of goodness we have to work with is the human one — Janus

did you mean kindness?

Okay, then why can't an offense against a being with infinite dignity come in gradations?

Goodness

Implication?: the creator of life is good.

Implication?: the Creator of all life is supremely good.

What do you make of a sacrificial act that is done for the sake of another? Good or bad?

"Wisdom is vindicated by her deeds."

Can offenses against "finite dignities" come in gradations?

Where does it come from?

Who said that sin is transient? There is, I think, no way to erase a sin; the only way forward is through forgiveness.

Okay yeah, agree with 1.
2. What do you mean by "upshot?" Jesus is considered the Word of God, what God the Father has spoken, according to my faith tradition.
3. Disagree with 3 on the basis that I don't think Jesus is "animated" by God (as though he were once inanimate) but rather is God fully just as He is fully a person who shares in the divine life of the Godhead and is eternally begotten by, and consubstantial with, the Father.

Having started the introduction but with no specific quotations in mind, my impression is that "contradiction of concept" may also refer to the tension between the thing and the noetic thing/concept. That is, a concept at the same time is and is not that that it conceptualizes.

Or, thought, that is to say negation, concretizes itself so that the thing is what it is to the mind, thereby negating, in a sense, the real individual thing and replacing it with a conceptual/mental object. Concretion?

Just a hypothesis so far.

Pretty sure it is illegal to yell "fire" in a crowded theater.

Based on SEP, something like Hegelian dialectic, or just that, appears to be Adorno's target.

I am not sure if Adorno is saying teleology failed in enlightenment. I am speculating, but perhaps he may argue that the "teleology" (or point of arrival) of Enlightenment is self-destruction (have you ever spent a really long time thinking about something, it's exhausting). Maybe telos' relation to enlightenment is discussed in DoE.

Yeah, I think he wants to maintain the negatives that appear to result in synthesis as "determinate" or unqualified or unsynthesized, rather than saying that those negatives are committed to any kind of teleological function. In fact, a telos to negatives would mean the sort of positive affirmation that Adorno wishes to deny, or "negate."

I am equating telos with synthesis, but I guess they could be disparate concepts.

Why those negatives constitute a dialectic is not clear, but maybe that's the point, the recognition of negatives in their negativity is to negate the dialectic itself.

By ‘X’ I am thinking of something like capitalism. — Leontiskos

Not sure I agree; I think it is important that we distinguish liberal practice from the ideology that many identify as liberalism, and I think it is that ideology that is taken issue with, not most liberal practices. I think the problem you are noting with capitalism as it relates to liberal practice, is whether the liberal institutions we have can adapt to the problems that technology and something-like-capitalism have presented. I personally think the answer is yes and that rights should remain part of our discourse, as well as private property, and limits on state incursion. The historical story of liberal practice should not prevent us from making it better today - the same is true for capitalism.

Timothy noted that it is a certain conceptualization of freedom that is most problematic with liberalism. That is, the conceptualization of the self in an atomic way whose self must be asserted and where freedom is optimization of my choices, voluntarism, homo economicus, the procedural (and what Michael Sandel calls) unencumbered self, that vestige of enlightenment thought.

So towards an alternative, I would argue that there is freedom, not in the reification of desires since this probably just leads to addiction, but rather in, in a word, self-knowledge. To demand others acknowledge my desires is to make myself and them at the behest of those desires, and really to control another seems to me to control oneself in some sense, that is, to construct a mental prison for oneself and others.

Greater freedom is surely to be had in recognizing the limitations of reality that are constituted by my mortality, biological self, and others. This bounded system gives me a space that, precisely by its closure, allows me, no, compels me, to have goals; boundlessness gives no reason to pursue goals.

But of course there are alternatives to Marxism. Liberal government is one such alternative! OSHA is an example of a peaceful political change to accommodate the then extant problems with industrialization.

Predicting a rights violation before it happens would be great, if you have any recommendations of how we can do this, I am all ears. But really I think this kind of predictive ability is not beyond only liberal governments, but any government that does not have a crystal ball or precogs or something like that.



When you speak of the atomization of the individual, I understand you to be noting a certain lack of community ethos, but also a refusal to engage at the level of rational discourse. This is to an extent, your criticism of liberalism thinkers, that they refuse to submit their own beliefs concerning liberalism to scrutiny. I think it is a valid criticism to an extent, although I again would not accuse liberalism (which I see as a kind of solution), but I would agree that the sacredness with which some purportedly liberal beliefs are held is lamentable, whatever the source of that conception of self may be.

Liberal society has always permitted what has been called a marketplace of ideas; this is the arena that enables and encourages rational discourse and I think an appreciation of this liberal idea is likely to facilitate resolution of the societal maladies.

That is to say, what we need is a more liberal attitude, greater charitability in our rational discourses, not a closing down of dialogue.

I appreciate the problems you are confronting, but I really do not see them as a problem with "liberalism" understood as a political association relating governed to governing whereby rights have an exigent status relative to other social goods. Might "modernity" be a more appropriate description of your target? Seems to me that this would capture the comprehensive nature of the social problems without implicating a form of government in the process.

I think some of your concerns are overstated.

Freedom of speech is a qualified right in the US and probably in most liberal countries. It's true that the qualification isn't explicitly liberal, but it is within a framework that is largely liberal, and by that I mean freedom of speech is protected extensively.

Your concerns about collective power and algorithmic control will turn out to be true If you ignore successful lawsuits against companies like Facebook as well as lawsuits initiated by the United States government for anti-trust violations.

Regarding gene appropriation, have you heard of the case of Myriad Genetics vs. Association for Molecular Pathology?

I would say these can be seen as cases involving rectification of rights infringements, which is a core liberal value.

A primary problem for liberalism, however, has been its historical failure, including the failure perpetuated by Roe v. Wade in recent history, to recognize righthood as such. That is, the rights of all people including the unborn.

But as has already been stated, this is an internal criticism of liberalism according to a freedom that it has itself failed to live up to, not an external criticism involving a failure to define freedom in different terms.

I want to note that liberalism is, to my understanding, entirely compatible with aristocratic or monarchial structures, but I think you are right that it is anti-autocratic.

Lastly, as Banno and Vera Mont have both already acknowledged, critiques alone won't suffice; if you want to change minds, you have to have a recommendation of how to update, modify, or revise the liberal paradigm.

By relational, I mean that information depends on engagement with the substance, otherwise the substance is not a vehicle of informing. There is no information in the substantial form itself because information is always for another, or said another way, information does not fulfill its purpose apart from being for another.

You used the term "critique;" does that mean you think something in the liberal tradition, broadly construed, is worth salvaging, or is it all ideology?

It is ironic that the very totalitarianism liberalism is accused of would seem to be the reality of any state system that would seek to externally enforce the virtue of its citizenry in a nonliberal society.

Is liberalism perfect, perhaps not, but as Vera Mont pointed out, any lack in a liberal society is a consequence of the vices of its citizenry, not a systemic failure of the liberal nature of that society.

As Banno said, what ought the alternative to liberalism be? Does a pluralistic society have an alternative available?

I think the objections that have been forwarded may be leveled against the culture or economic system, not liberalism. After all, cannnot the objections against industrialization or against the discontent toward capitalism, or against technocracy also remain prevalent in a nonliberal or facist regime?

I think another potential issue is the eternal possibility of repentance, faced with an eternal afterlife with no further consequences, why would someone repent? Don't you think the horizon of death, that is, our finitude, is what demands repentance of us?

Okay, I see, then one actually can be subject to infinite punishment, correct? Assuming they never repent (and given an eternity to do so). That is even without perfect culpability, the refusal to change heart is, in itself, meritorious of punishment.

Wouldn't an implication of your view be that everything is ultimately permissible in some sense? Moreover, it would seem to imply that it doesn't matter what we do because even without repentance for sin, there would be salvation. Does that strike you as theologically sound?

MoK, you want to say the information just is the form, right? That's fine, but if you go that route then you seem to be implying that the information just is the form and is contained therein. But if this is the case, information would not appear to be an act that requires engagement between interpreter and interpreted, as JuanZu has suggested it is. For JuanZu, information is relational, not intrinsic to any substantial form. You might respond that the creation of the sculpture is relational, and I think that is correct, but without the audience there would appear to be something, let's say "incomplete," about the information.

Okay, now I think your trichotomy of object, audience, and artist is spot on and I also agree that the audience is the interpreter. Contrary to my initial thoughts, it is the interpreted who transcribes the substance into an informational content, that is, into a substantial form through which information can be had, that is, what I have called the communicative act.

And since the communicative act of informing is a two way street, we may add that just as the artist communicates to the audience (but where such communication is itself obscure to the artist because he knows not what his art means to the audience), so does the audience communicate to the artist and leave an impression on him -- "what a beautiful sculpture" or "I don't really get it."

It is interesting because you said the substance informs the interpreter. I have heard that great artists talk of a marble block "speaking" to them of what to sculpt.

Perhaps this is the right way of looking at it, but I would qualify this appraisal by affirming that the substance in itself is not doing any informing, and instead aver that the interpreter must first interpret, translate, transcribe the substance into a "form" that is understood by it as information. This I will call, tentatively, the communicative act. Interested in JuanZu's thoughts on this.

I think what is being said is that the object lacks form, but the interpreter, through an act, communicates information and thereby gives the substance a kind of form; think of the artist molding the clay.

Can You give me more context to that question? — JuanZu

I have in mind the USB stick. It appears as it is, but the information, that is the written document file, is in a sense encoded in the USB stick. That is what I mean by the information being other than it appears.

While information may be an act, not a substance, it would seem to rely on substance for its instantiation because there is something that is acted upon. In other words, for there to be an act of interpretation, what is there must be translated into what is meant. Does that sound right?

I just don't think God can be a man. — Bob Ross

Would you elaborate on why you think this? Is it not in God's power to have a trinitarian existence and to take human form? Does your thinking change if the man is a perfect man?

Do you think all information requires some kind of interpretation? Is information always other than it appears? Is there always the-thing-itself, and in addition, the information that may be interpreted from that source?

making God the victim — Bob Ross

Exactly, have you heard of the doctrine of the Trinity?

"What you did not do for the least, you did not do for me." (To paraphrase the Gospel).

Perhaps one way to think of it is that to sin is to value some temporal good above God; that is, to worship an idol; that is to prioritize something over God; and that is to will the sacrifice of God for the sake of some temporal good. Hence sinning contributes to the sacrifice of Christ.

It may make sense to think of everyone as "God's property" though a more sensible description is that of father to son or daughter. If someone physically harms another, they would be physically harming a son or daughter of a father, where such father will surely be offended. So it is with God. That is not to mention that, according to my understanding, Jesus suffers the weight of all sin at the cost of death, so any sin even if it is against another other than Jesus, still directly offends Jesus, who is therefore the one with the authority to forgive.

Sure, could be random, that doesn't change that Bob2 likes a different book than Bob1, the source of the difference doesn't really matter, what matters is that that source that has affected Bob2 would have affected Bob1 were he made aware of it.

I am not sure if this has been proposed although javra may have been suggesting a similar notion concerning the realities of lived experience. What I want to stipulate is that Bob1 likes this book, maybe he is reading Watership Down. But then Bob2 comes along and likes Game of Thrones better as a novel. But I thought Bob1 said Watership Down was the best. Does this not point to something like the fungibility of the will. Sure, it may be conditioned by desire, but it is not set-in-stone, as it were, towards a particular, though it may be moved towards some form. We might say something like, had Bob1 read GoT, that would be his favorite book, not that he could have known better, but that it is true that he would have chosen it had he known of it. What do you think? Does this make the will free in a way that a free will libertarian would accept? Is the will in this way acceptable determined by desire and other factors consistent with the deterministic position?

I’ve stopped feeling joy because of it, I think that if I do something I like it means I value joy and pleasure and would have to accept the experience machine and plug in. — Darkneos

I encourage you to seek out a professional therapist. Feeling a lack of joy may be indicative of a mental health need or signal depression.

I think your questions are apt. Indeed, if we are just chemical processes then there isn't a fundamental difference between us and the machine that is purportedly sending the experiences to us.

Epistemic humility is certainly a virtue. On what basis do you think everything are chemicals? Are you 100% certain? Are you willing to subject your emotions to this belief? In fact a large number of people, probably the majority, will disagree with your claim that everything are chemicals. Do you know everything? Are you God? If the answer to these questions is no, then I don't see why you wouldn't be open to beliefs such as those involving souls, justice, God, love, and other such transcendentals. But don't take my word for it alone, you said the problem bugged you, that something doesn't seem quite right about it. Is there something transcendental about that itch? Can you explain it in chemical, biological, or evolutionary terms?