Eh, but my initial post to you asserted that Realism is not "metaphysics-free," to use your phrase. You responded by eschewing metaphysics and pointing to your appeal to common usage while ignoring your appeal to Realism. ()

Are you now accepting that Realism has metaphysical commitments?

I'll admit to a prejudice towards a relatively direct, common usage sort of realism. No apology. — Banno

So do I.

Do you inhabit some metaphysics-free space? — Banno

Of course not. Do you? You seem to claim the power to shoot down metaphysical claims from a metaphysics-free rooftop.

Perhaps the rest is just shite we make up. — Banno

All I am seeing are thin double-standards about what is shite and what is not, or what is metaphysical and what is not.

I wasn't appealing to "another metaphysical claim", but to common usage.

I won't ask you to get a cup out for tea. Heaven knows what might happen. — Banno

Well you appealed to "realism and common usage," but the relevant question is whether you made a counterclaim in response to a metaphysical claim. Wittgensteinian hand-waving isn't a real response.

See how metaphysics leads one astray? — Banno

I basically agree with your position vis-a-vis Kant, but I don't think it is right to associate metaphysics with Kant and dissociate it from Realism. If the claim that there are two cups is metaphysical, then so is the counterclaim that there is only one. As the tired truth goes: you cannot rebut a metaphysical claim without appealing to another metaphysical claim (generally speaking). If the question about cups is metaphysical, then so are the answers.

Edit:

An obtuse reference to another of Bob's threads concerning the legitimacy of metaphysics. — Banno

Perhaps your claim was more rhetorical, then?

Thanks , that's great stuff. :up: I think I agree with most all of what you say, and the categorization of the different kinds of knowledge as expressed in the analogy of the divided line is a helpful aid. I am not going to comment in detail, only because I've been on TPF a bit too much in the last few days and I don't want to get enmeshed in another complex discussion. :wink:

I will say that I have been slowly reading James Stromberg's, "An Essay on Experimentum" (part 1, part 2). To put it in modern terms, it basically looks at "the problem of induction" from an Aristotelian-Thomistic perspective. In another way, it is an investigation about how the first steps along the divided line are taken. It was originally some sort of thesis or dissertation out of Laval, and is not at all polemical.

I don't find that account implausible, from a philosophical perspective. It also foreshadows the later 'doctrine of the rational soul' you find in Thomas. In that later form of hylomorphism, nous is what grasps the form or principles of things, while the senses perceive its material (accidental) features. — Wayfarer

These debates about the nature of the mind can get tricky. As I understand it, Greek writers will commonly use dianoia to indicate the more discursive aspect of the mind and nous to indicate the less discursive aspect of the mind, but this is not universal and nous has a wide range of meaning. Latin philosophy seems to retain the dianoia/nous distinction with ratio/intellectus, and sometimes in English we also speak about the reason as a faculty distinct from the intellect. But from my limited understanding, in all three languages this is not a hard and fast rule, and there is a blurring of lines between faculty/act/knowledge.

Further, I am sure you are familiar with the more precise subdivisions of the mind found in Indian thought. The Western tradition does not seem to be as precise, but at times increased precision does emerge. For example, in many of the Early Christian Fathers of the East 'nous' is used to represent a rather exalted non-discursive faculty, closely associated with the divine and with divine faith (pistis), and my guess is that this is a more Platonic angle.

if, as you assert, there is a telos of reason, then it has to date failed to complete or realize itself. — Fooloso4

Not all acorns become oaks.

Would I be correct in saying that Plush only supports a sub-set of BBCode, i.e. not all the tags are implemented (e.g. tables)? — Wayfarer

Yes, but this is not so unusual. I have never used a BBCode editor that supports all possible BBCode tags.

The completion of reason accordingly would be the truth. Aquinas, however, says that God reveals things that transcend human reason. In other words, the completion of reason does not yield the whole truth. — Fooloso4

You are committing the fallacy of affirming the consequent, claiming that because reason is ordered to truth therefore (all) truth must be derivable from unaided reason. A revealed truth does not undermine the thesis that the telos of reason is truth.

It's as if I said that all bears are animals, and you responded by saying, "But Aquinas claims that some animals are not bears, therefore your claim can't be right."

It’s unfortunate that Misago isn’t more active. As things stand, I suppose it would have to be NodeBB or Discourse. I’ll install them both and try them out. I tried Discourse a while ago and quite liked it, but I didn’t pursue it. The big headache in either case will be migrating the data. My familiarity is with relational databases so I’d probably be more at home with Discourse, which uses PostgreSQL. What is certain is that neither has a big button that says “Migrate from PlushForums”. — Jamal

Haha - yes, I agree with all of that.

I have three instances of NodeBB running locally, one on Postgres. NodeBB was originally built with MongoDB, but it runs on Postgres just fine. That's what I deployed it on. I think that compatibility was added sometime in v2.

I’m curious: what is it about, say, Discourse, that steers things away from long-form discussion? From what I could tell when I tried it, navigating a discussion was easier than on other platforms, and it made composing long posts much more pleasurable than here (same with NodeBB: full-screen distraction-free editing, for example). Maybe I’m missing the obvious, but pagination isn’t a requirement for long-form is it? Although it occurs to me that pagination is better for SEO. — Jamal

The simple answer is that I wanted pagination, even prescinding from its SEO favorability. Infinite scroll on a long-form philosophy forum didn't seem right to me. NodeBB offers both, and individual users can even change the setting on the client side. So I'm not a great person to ask about Discourse, as I never installed it. I have it on good authority that it is a bit harder to install and consumes more resources, but those aren't deal breakers. Both platforms are robust, with more to offer than Plush. Granted, I have come to appreciate the simplicity and distraction-less nature of Plush.

I did get the vague sense that NodeBB was more open to accommodating long-form forums, perhaps because they claim to be the successor to phpBB and therefore cannot totally abandon that format. But this is a rather whimsical intuition. I also wanted the "discussion" pages to have a single-column, no frills UI that was deeply content focused, and the NodeBB Lavender theme fit that bill. I actually style my TPF client that way.

I had a lot of picky details that I wanted, and NodeBB was able to fulfill almost all of them. For example, I can set the number of upvotes a user is allowed daily, and, separately, downvotes. I can set this according to the user's post count or status if I want. I can ditch the reputation system. I can place limitations on users' ability to post (e.g. can't post twice within 10 minutes). I can have a sub-forum only visible to paying users, where the merits of internal features can be debated. Maybe Discourse can do all of that too. I am sure that larger features, such as moderation queues for new users and forward-links to replies, are available on both platforms. I will say that the NodeBB community is remarkably active and responsive (but this may also be true of the Discourse community).

I’m really just going by intuition and doing my usual contrarian thing. Sometimes it leads me in good directions. I haven’t really been a developer for years, since I was a bit stuck in maintenance with the last project I was involved with. But yeh, I’m getting back into it nicely. — Jamal

That's fair. This could be a cool way to get back into it. I do advise against starting from scratch. I had that idea until I installed Misago and started digging into the Github history. There are many more features than I had anticipated, especially when it comes to security, moderation, IP tracking, etc.—but I think ChatGPT has already given you a good sense of what is involved. Also, after I joined I realized more concretely that TPF has one thing no other philosophy forum has, and that no forum software can create: a healthy community of users. Without that, it's all just window dressing.

When I joined TPF I was thinking about these questions regarding forum software way too much, but now I'm wishing I had taken more notes. Granted, I was mostly comparing NodeBB, Misago, Plush, Xenforo, and phpBB. My knowledge of Discourse is scant.

Whatever you decide, I think a forum software would benefit from having a philosophical client. The things you guys have suggested and requested from Plush seem spot-on, and are much more thoughtful than the short-sighted requests I have seen from the business world.

They both intend to destroy designated targets. It is well enough known that collateral civilian damage (schools, weddings, etc) invariably occurs in bombing raids. Not only they moral equals, the same pilot is ordered to do both, as decided by his commanding officers. Infantry does it across a ditch with guns, or up close, with bayonets. It seems that everyone accepts the moral blamelessness of killing soldiers and munitions workers - even if they don't work night shift, they're housed nearby. Soldiers are just as human as civilians and civilians can be terrorists as people in uniform. Some get a kick out of killing; some do it as a duty; some go mad and do it out of that irrational, uncontrollable hatred some human develop for their victims. You see it among chicken-wranglers, too. If the babies get killed - well, like the helicopter pilot said, "Well it's their fault for bringing kids in to a battle," The babies don't go into the war zone; the war comes to them. — Vera Mont

To be frank, you should know that as a rule I am not going to respond to you, and this post exemplifies the reason why. With limited time, I am forced to limit my energies to the users that I deem more cogent. Hopefully this information is useful to you and helps adjust your expectations.

The exclusion from consideration of anything that is associated with the domain of revealed truth is also a factor in current philosophical discourse. — Wayfarer

The interesting thing here is that Aquinas is rather precise about when a revealed premise* is being used and when it is not. This reflects not only his natural precision, but also the historical situation, in which Aristotelianism was under intense scrutiny. To conflate a revealed conclusion with a non-revealed conclusion would have been fatal given the fact that the whole academic enterprise of that time was scrutinizing the Aristotelians for precisely such slips. So Fooloso's assumption that anything that comes from Aquinas must be revelation-based is not only faulty reasoning, it is also almost exactly backwards.

* A premise derived from Christian revelation as opposed to simple natural reason.

I put these pieces together: — Fooloso4

You stitched four clauses together and added a double serving of non sequitur for taste? This is why I don't often respond to your posts.

- :up:

Right - the corollary here is that morality is not an all-or-nothing affair. The pacifist can claim that all bombing is wrong, but no one is rationally justified in claiming that the night bomber and the day bomber are moral equals. Even if all bombing is wrong, it cannot be denied that some bombings are worse than others.

I should reiterate that I think @Baden's earlier points against RogueAI were decisive. There is no such thing as a moral judgment that does not work from limited information (link). We assess moral situations based on the information at hand, and if we discover new information the moral judgment may change. ...but this is a larger and more unwieldy topic.

However, providing just some context, if it is more than a “clean kill”, or if not “clean”, it was not just collateral damage, but you actually WANT to inflict maximum pain, horror, by maiming and raping, and bashing the civilians in a personal brutal way, versus WANTING to kill only enemy perpetrators BUT in the process impersonally killing civilians in collateral damage, that adds another dimension. — schopenhauer1

This is such an important point, and it runs right through all of this to the very bottom. Incidentally, this is the moral import of killing babies: it is gratuitous evil. It is murder of the innocent taken to its most extreme form.

(NB: I have read the entire exchange between @schopenhauer1 and @Baden)

---

Again there's no moral get-out-of-jail-free card in saying you don't want to do something but then choosing to do it. Their mental games with themselves can't excuse them of the known consequences of their actions. — Baden

Your invocation of intent seems flawed too. There's a crucial epistemological aspect to it that you seem to be substituting out. If I know I will break a window by throwing a stone through it and I choose to throw a stone through it then that's sufficient condition to establish intent and the responsibility that comes with that. That I claim I didn't "want" to break the window doesn't absolve me of any of that responsibility. — Baden

Your core point here is correct. For example, Aquinas says, "For what is always or frequently joined to the effect falls under the intention itself. For it is stupid to say that someone intends something but does not will that which is always or frequently joined to it" (Commentary on the Physics, II.8). The problem is that undue inferences are being drawn from this true premise.

The first thing to note is that there is a relevant moral difference between someone who is mitigating evil side effects as far as possible, and someone who is not (or who is intentionally exacerbating these evil side effects). I don't think this is controversial.

The second thing to note is that the descriptions of the OP bear on this point. For example, "The flight is done at night to minimize civilian casualties." This is different from throwing a baseball at a window without "wanting" to break it. The implication is that the moral actor deliberately chose an alternative act because it would minimize evil side effects, namely by bombing when the factory was closed rather than bombing when the factory was open. A morally inferior agent would have either ignored this deliberation, or else deliberately bombed during the day so as to maximize civilian casualties.

Now someone might say, "Well he bombed at night even though he knew civilians would die, therefore he intended to kill civilians." The cogent point here is that even if we grant this claim, the night-bomber is still morally superior to the day-bomber, because he did not intend (in the objector's sense) to kill the more numerous daytime workers. This is not splitting hairs. It is a real and important moral difference.

(Elizabeth Anscombe wrote diligently on this question of intention and "double effect" throughout her life. One instance <came up recently>.)

- Wonderful data here, thank you. This is basically why I chose to focus on Python/Django with Javascript on the side, but I was using secondary sources and not survey data. The GitHut pull requests reflect the exact timeframe I was away from web development.

Yes, it’s the best option. I was only toying with the idea of building my own from scratch because I was getting back into development and wanted a meaty project. NodeBB and Discourse are the two I like the look of most. Vanilla is good too, but I don’t want to get involved with anything PHP (I know everyone says it’s great these days but my experience was traumatic). I’d never heard of Misago. Looks great, and codewise I like it better than NodeBB and Discourse, mainly because I like the combination of Python and JavaScript. I shall try it. Thanks for the tip :up: — Jamal

That would definitely be a meaty project, but rewarding if it could be done. Misago is the Python frontrunner, which is why it was my first choice. Unfortunately it is provided by a single developer who works on it in his spare time, but he is talented and I am sure he would appreciate help (see <this post> regarding the current plans for Misago). NodeBB and Discourse have multiple full-time developers along with the attached commercial interests, and therefore possess more stability. I agree regarding Vanilla and PHP.

A crucial factor in my considerations was long form vs short form discussion formats, as a philosophy forum requires a more long form format. A lot of the newer, asynchronous forum frameworks cater to short form discussion and phones/tablets (Discourse does not even support pagination). They are becoming a blend of forums and instant messaging, running away from phpBB in a way that strikes me as both good and bad. If the architecture is suitable one could restyle them for long form purposes, but I am not great with CSS so I wanted something compatible with long form discussion right out of the box. Plush is good on this score, and Misago looks and feels a lot like Plush.

NodeBB's architecture can support long form discussion, and there is also a prebuilt theme that matches such a use case (Lavender). I also like NodeBB because it is modular (utilizing themes and plugins) and there are lots of different people working on it and contributing. It allows a lot of customization without having to reinvent the wheel. In essence, I settled on NodeBB because it is open source, it is well-developed (commercially backed), it has a strong community, and it is compatible with long form discussion. (I am also on a budget, and I could run a small forum on Misago or NodeBB for $10 a month.)

On the state of things now and the future, I think you're both right and wrong. It's true that the front-end frameworks are the most visible and fashionable area of web development now—even non-developers I know have heard of React—but (a) people are realizing that on big projects where there's a lot of data involved, frameworks like Rails and Django perform better and are easier to maintain, (b) many are saying that things are moving back to the server frameworks now that the speedy front-end user experience of SPAs can be achieved, and with much less hassle, and (c) most front-end applications depend on an API built with something like Django anyway, so even when React is being used, something like Django is being used too. Some would say that this is for legacy reasons, but I actually think it's because Python is so strong right now, and getting stronger. Even if Django falls out of favour, other Python frameworks like FastAPI and Flask will take over. It's a lively area, though less visible than the front-end stuff.

(In fact, you could say that the existence of the big front-end frameworks is a consequence of legacy as much or more than the continuing presence of Django and Rails: browsers only understand JavaScript and there's no way out of that right now. In software terms, browsers are old technology, in which backwards-compatibility is a big issue.) — Jamal

Okay, interesting! That makes a lot of sense, and it is encouraging to me. I suppose I was extrapolating from the idea that frameworks like Next.js could create a uniform and apparently simple Javascript landscape (with the addition of Rust). I was assuming that the creation of a less complex and less layered web approach might take hold, and that even if architectural simplicity leads to certain difficulties (such as the fact that a language like Rust is unwieldy when compared with Python), these could be overcome by tools that abstract away some of the low-level idiosyncrasies for less advanced programmers, as AI is already beginning to do. But my thoughts here were largely conjectural, and I hope I am wrong. In any case, you are certainly right that a more robust backend will always be required for the most important and ambitious projects.

And the more that asynchronous JavaScript becomes an integral part of Rails and Django development—but without using big front-end frameworks—the more I expect to see them thrive. So I don't agree that robust back-ends are on the way out except where they were never really needed.

What we see is at the level of small-to-medium websites, the server-side frameworks have lost out, and that's probably as it should be. At this level, we have (a) static site generators or primarily static sites and immediate interactivity with asynchronous CRUD to a backend API, and (b) as you mentioned, website builders like Squarespace and Wix. — Jamal

Good points. You are correcting my premature thinking in helpful ways.

Thanks for your thoughts. I didn't know you were a developer. I don't think I could call myself a developer at this point, although I could get back into it fairly easily.

Like Michael, I've toyed with the idea of building forum software for TPF so I can bring the data and codebase under our control — Jamal

I used to write Ruby on Rails and Flash, among other things. This year I decided to try to brush up, so I did some things in Python and Django, with minor Javascript on the side. Then I thought it might be fun to chip away at a philosophy forum, so I grabbed Misago, which is written in Python (although the developer is going to move away from Python and towards a more Javascript-centric approach in the future). It was fine, but also underdeveloped. I looked at some other open source forum software, and eventually settled on NodeBB, which is written in NodeJS. I tinkered with that for awhile, got a working forum running with some nice bells and whistles, but had to leave it in limbo due to time constraints. After that I joined TPF.

Instead of building a forum software from scratch, why not leverage and customize an open source option? Vanilla/Plush seems decent for your purposes, but you could self-host for much cheaper if you are able to provide the technical labor. NodeBB, Vanilla, Misago, Flarum, and Discourse are some of the open source options I looked at. Using NodeBB with the Lavender theme seemed like the best option for a philosophy forum, although Misago is also very clean.

I want your thoughts. Primarily I want to know about the experiences of developers, but even if you have no idea what I've just been talking about, any thoughts about the state of web applications and websites today is welcome. — Jamal

I also noticed that the asynchronous Javascript approaches have made strong advances, where it used to be more common to have scripting languages like Ruby or Python serve the backend. Supposedly speed is king, and Ruby and Python aren't fast enough (even though the initial page load of an SPA can be quite slow).

I'm really not caught up on all of the details, but it seems like the older approach catered to a low barrier to entry, with languages like Ruby and Python being easy to learn. Now I see more emphasis on speed, scalability, and monetization. With Rails you could get a website up and running very fast, but one-off websites seem to now lean towards website builders, a CMS, or a corporate hosted solution. Robust backends are probably going to become less common, although a lot of that probably depends on what happens with phone and tablet software.

Generally, everything is in flux. — Jamal

Yes, and I think this is why static HTML/Javascript is making a small comeback. There is a greater cognizance of maintenance and updating costs. In general it seems that the magnanimity of the tech boom is behind us. Cost and monetization loom larger than they once did when we were dazzled by the novelty and the low-cost-relative-to-the-past.

Quite often it is ordered [...] to what can be made to seem to be true... — Fooloso4

Yes, as often as Sophists operate.

...an appeal to the authority of revelation sets things right. — Fooloso4

Who said anything about revelation? You're engaged in axe-grinding.

The irony is that Aquinas' argument is ordered toward a conclusion that may be false. — Fooloso4

You can attempt to give an argument for such a conclusion if you like.

Interesting. I have a hard time pinning Plato down. Like @Fooloso4 said, the dialogues are very nuanced, and say different things at different times, to different interlocutors. In any case, Fooloso was never claiming that death necessarily involves a dualism. Banno's misunderstanding drove that line.

Hello @fdrake. I see that you are away and I don’t mean to resuscitate this conversation, but I do want to say one thing in the manner of a concluding remark, and not least because it seems generally relevant on these forums.

I tend to conceive of words as signs, and signs are triadic. For example, when we talk about apples we have the sign, “a-p-p-l-e,” the signified, namely a particular kind of edible fruit, and the interpreter who assigns the signified to the sign. If two or more interpreters make the same sign-signified assignments, then they can communicate with one another. There is obviously more to be said, but this is the very basic structure.

Once this is in place I think it becomes clear why a speaker needs to know what their words mean (if they are to communicate effectively). The mechanic example also becomes clear, for a sign can be carried from one interpreter to another interpreter by means of a non-interpreter. This is precisely how encoded or encrypted messages work. One could also get their hands on a sign without understanding its public meaning, and then use that sign to influence the actions of others (but in a somewhat haphazard and unpredictable way). For example, suppose there was a foreigner in Germany during the World War II era, who did not speak German. They may have ascertained that the words, “Heil Hitler,” allowed one to move more freely in the country, yet without having any understanding of what the words meant in public usage (and what they meant to those he was interacting with).

Given that armament factories are not usually found in residential neighborhoods, I see no reason to assent to your claim that Group B's actions smash children against walls. Surely there is much less reason to believe that Group B's actions have this effect than to believe that Group A's actions have this effect. Positing some sort of equivalence on this score is not rationally justified.

- :up:

Let us define a final cause to be reducible to the first three causes if there exists a causal model that reproduces the effects attributed to the final cause, that consists only of the first three causes applied to one another in an adaptive feedback loop.

I am asserting that all final causes are reducible in the above sense. This is equivalent to asserting the existence of a computer simulation of all phenomena attributed to final causes. — sime

Okay, so you assert that final causes are reducible to Aristotle's other causes.

Had Aristotle known about evolution, then he could have explained the regularity of nature without appealing to final causes and only to adaptive feedback in the cycle of life. His arguments don't amount to a proof of the necessity of final causes, but to the insufficiency of causal models that don't take into account adaptive feedback. — sime

Does not adaptive feedback presuppose final causality? It would seem that the final cause of Darwinian evolution is something like the survival of life.

This is equivalent to asserting the existence of a computer simulation of all phenomena attributed to final causes. — sime

I think the question is whether the simulation itself involves final causality.

Yes. To say that an oak tree is a "final cause" of an acorn is to speak informally about the evolutionary feedback that determined the chemistry of Dendrology, which when applied to a given acorn refers only to a directed chain of causality whose conclusions are fully determined by initial conditions. — sime

Supposing an acorn is fully determined to become an oak tree by initial conditions, this does not undermine final causality. Final causality means, among other things, that the acorn is determined to become an oak tree and not a poplar or ash tree. It is about the determinate end that its development is ordered to. Now I think Aristotle might say that the formal cause contains the final cause in fieri, and perhaps you could argue from this that the final cause is unnecessary. But the response would probably be that simply looking at the acorn and its initial state is not going to tell you anything about its final state.

My basic point boils down to asking how hard it is to presume for the sake of argument that neither of the two sides are "Nazis" or etc but are a priori morally/immorally equivalent. Anyone who can't do that ought simply to move on to the next thread. — Baden

Right, or they should move on to the next category. If they don't understand how to handle a hypothetical then ethics will elude them altogether. Besides, even judgments of non-hypothetical situations saddle us with the burden of limited information. Limited information is just part of the game, hypothetical or otherwise.

- Yes, good points. Thank you.

Clearly what is occurring in this thread is that some are refusing to answer for one reason or another because they do not believe that the thought experiment conforms to the reality in the Middle East. What they should do in that case is say, "Group A is worse than Group B, but I deny that Group A correlates to Hamas and Group B correlates to Israel."

Edit: When I wrote this I did not understand that @RogueAI was pro-Israel. Still, his arguments don't hold water.

i don't think I said or implied otherwise. — Banno

Here is what you said:

The common prejudice is that at death something leaves the body. I don't think that's right - rather the body stops doing stuff it once did. It no longer works in the same way. — Banno

The idea is, "Rather than something leaving the body, the body stops doing stuff it once did." Hence my <post>, noting the false dichotomy.

A similar faux pas would be, "Rather than the engine driving the car, the wheels make it move." Those who claim that the engine drives a car do not deny that the wheels make it move, and therefore such a claim is an ignoratio elenchi.

I had the idea - please correct me if I'm wrong - that in the Aristotelian tradition, 'the soul' is seen as something more like an organising principle, than a ghostly entity. That is what is meant by 'the soul is the form of the body', isn't it? I think there has been a tendency to reify that into a literal 'thinking thing' from which the issue arises of its separability from the body. — Wayfarer

I think that's basically right, but it does get complicated. Speaking plainly, for the Aristotelian the soul is the principle that accounts for the difference between a living body and a corpse. It is the principle of life of a living body, and this includes human, animal, and plant bodies.

The question of separability arises only with rational souls (human souls), and I would have to review the strictly Aristotelian literature on that topic. My guess is that some Aristotelians accept separability and some reject it, but a common point would be that if separated souls exist they are not wholes, but rather parts (i.e. the body is an intrinsic part of the human being, and not a mere appendage).

This nicely captures the problem. I agree that the recasting doesn’t ask us to create any “rational space” between understanding and believing. So my misgivings about whether such a space really exists are avoided. In the recast version, “and then you will believe it” is meant to describe a (necessary?) consequence or perhaps even a definitional identity between “see the truth” and “believe it”. We’re not left wondering whether we can still not believe! — J

Yes, I think that's right.

The point is, neither interpretation of “You ought to see that X is true” is offering a reason to believe it, in the way that “You ought to believe X” does (claim to) offer a reason for belief. The original, unrecast version is claiming that a space is available between truth and belief, and from within that space a person can be adjured to choose belief on the grounds of an allegedly compelling reason, namely that X is true. The recast version doesn’t make this claim.

I remain uneasy about whether such a space makes sense, but I don’t think we can eliminate it in the manner you were suggesting. — J

Your first point is about a "reason to believe," and I would point you to what I said about argument in my last post. These truncated statements are only preliminary, and real reasons to believe only occur (dialectically) in the form of arguments. "You should believe X because [of this argument]."

Your second point is about "space between truth and belief," and I would point you to what I said about learning in my last post. The relevant and fundamental fact is that we are able to learn, and therefore there is space between truth and belief. We come to believe things that were already true. The complement of belief/assent in the sense we are taking it is therefore a failure to learn. (Knowledge is an act, but its opposite, error, is not. You are searching for the opposite of assent/belief in the realm of acts, where it does not exist. The opposite is a kind of privation.)

That might need reworking, but I gather you are asking about what happens at the point of death. The language "divided in two" is loaded with dualism. The common prejudice is that at death something leaves the body. I don't think that's right - rather the body stops doing stuff it once did. It no longer works in the same way. — Banno

But does anyone disagree and claim that the body keeps working the same way after death? An appeal to a soul is an appeal to a reason why a body "stops doing stuff it once did." Plato would not have been surprised to hear that dead bodies act differently than live bodies.

(I realize this is all quite far from the point that @Fooloso4 was trying to make.)

That can be put in terms of identity. The body no longer serves to present the characteristics that made it the person it once was. In the same way one looks at a person in pain and understands that they are in pain, one understands by looking at a corpse that it no longer functions as a person. — Banno

Well, the interesting thing is that it cannot be put in terms of identity, because the identity of the body comes from the fact that it is a unified organism. Once it dies it is no longer a unity, and it is therefore no longer one thing, possessing a single identity. It will quickly decompose into a million different parts. The disintegration occurs because the "soul" (unifying principle of life) is no longer enlivening the body.

Just for fun I should add that a substantial change takes place at death, an essential corruption. When a human dies the human no longer exists, and only the corpse remains, where the human and the corpse are two fundamentally different kinds of things. Whatever "grandpa" was, he is most definitely not the thing in the casket. It is inadequate to say, "Grandpa is now functioning differently."

If we engage in a debate on the universe and its free will, where would we end up? — Corvus

You will end up asking, "What do you mean by that term?," at which point a definition will emerge from below the surface, where it was always waiting. We use words when we know what they mean, when we know their definitions. When we come across a strange word or usage, we inquire into the definition. If we have a new concept or reality for which no word exists, we coin one.

I was wondering if human mind can ever grasp the true essence of the universe. If we cannot conceive the true reality of the universe, how could we conceptualise it? — Corvus

I would say in a partial, patchwork manner. We stitch together the various different things we know about it.

Libertarian free will presupposes a radically free soul... — Janus

A libertarian is simply one who rejects compatibilism and determinism. The specific varieties differ. According to SEP a libertarian is simply one who requires "that one’s action not be causally determined by factors beyond one’s control" (link).

it feels like it implies that a person can literally exchange money for free time which might not be possible for most socioeconomic classes — TiredThinker

Not everyone can afford it, therefore...?

...when they arrive still makes a person feel cheated — TiredThinker

Why do they feel cheated?

My thought is that there is nothing wrong with it. Issues only arise when no substitution is taking place.

Group B's [...] actions smash children against walls too. — mcdoodle

Do you suppose there are a lot of children hanging out at armament factories during the night?

Had Aristotle known about evolution, then he could have explained the regularity of nature without appealing to final causes and only to adaptive feedback in the cycle of life. His arguments don't amount to a proof of the necessity of final causes, but to the insufficiency of causal models that don't take into account adaptive feedback. — sime

I feel like you are making a category error with respect to 'final cause'. What do you mean by that term and why does your 'initial cause' make that meaning superfluous? — Leontiskos

Why is a fearless person on a different level from a brave one?
The short answer is ego. — TheMadMan

I would say that the brave person confronts fear, but the fearless person has no fear to confront. Yet the fearless person is irrational, for some things deserve to be feared.

Moderation in the feelings of fear and confidence is courage: of those that exceed, he that exceeds in fearlessness has no name (as often happens), but he that exceeds in confidence is foolhardy, while he that exceeds in fear, but is deficient in confidence, is cowardly. — Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, Book II

History is replete with examples where violence to gain independence was acceptable. The point being that if the Palestinian cause for independence is justified, every action by Israel against that is already contaminated as something immoral. — Benkei

But this is false. Not every action taken against a justified cause is immoral, much less punishable. I agree that one can retaliate (in due proportion) against an oppressor, but this is a separate issue. In particular, one must recognize that not all means to independence are licit.

I feel like you are making a category error with respect to 'final cause'. What do you mean by that term and why does your 'initial cause' make that meaning superfluous? Surely Aristotle was not "speaking informally about evolutionary feedback" when he used the term, given that he was not aware of Darwinian evolution.

Is the pilot and the group of armed men morally equivalent? — BitconnectCarlos

Of course not. Intentional and unintentional killing are not morally equivalent.

(I didn't understand the substance of the question until I saw the sophists arrive, claiming moral equivalence.)