Imagine if more money was put into mass transit. Bullet trains, underground subways. Imagine if every city had worked out a way to transport people where anyone living in a metro area was never more than five minutes away from a stop for mass transit. Imagine a world where there were so many various train routes going from city hub to city hub, there wouldn't even be a need for highways. Imagine if one's personal or commercial goods were moved from various tram-like / light rails along with cable cars that could be connected right to a drive way to a residence. Or, if we had anything interesting, we could use robotic pickups and dropoff of large materials to the locations of our choice. Imagine a world where automobiles were rare, and mainly used in rural areas that were extremely remote or for emergency purposes only. — schopenhauer1

Some corners of Europe are already a bit like that, though you can still own a car anyway. Amsterdam comes to mind. If I recall correctly, in some areas they have bikes and trams, but no cars.
Prague's public transport system is mindblowingly good.

This topic has been discussed in this The Necessity of Genetic Components in Personal Identity and Reasons for believing in the permanence of the soul threads. I would recommend taking a look and then editing your OP so the discussion does not start from 0 again. :grin:

He explains here: "One day I realized that when I am grumpy due to hunger, it means that I care more about the feeling of discomfort in my gut than I do the people that I am being grumpy with. I wanted to think of myself as a developed and spiritual person, so this thought was humiliating. Whenever grumpiness arose again, this thought returned, and I was humiliated, and the anger subsided. After only a few days, I no longer had emotional reactions to common physical pains."

This means that if just one atom that was present then, was not present right now, then the universe, as we know it, would not exist. Now, considering how many atoms just one person consists of, then it makes sense to me HOW MUCH JUST ONE SINGLE PERSON MATTERS. Of course, you could say, well, does it matter if the universe exists or not? But, I would say that most people would answer: yes. — Beverley

That simply seems to be the butterfly effect. Obviously, the oldest know object in a causal chain is going to be the most important one. Without the invention of the wheel, we would never have the internet. But is the wheel more important than the internet? No way, the transformation caused by the internet was unforeseen.

To give an example, if you thought somebody had stolen your money, you'd probably be mad, because anger is the feeling which responds to perceived attacks on things that you care about. There are 2 ways to consciously change an emotion: 1. change your perception of the event (in this case, that would mean realizing that you had lost the money and that nobody had stolen it) 2. change your values (convince yourself that you don't care about the money). — Brendan Golledge

I don't want to do either.

it means that I care more about the feeling of discomfort in my gut than I do the people that I am being grumpy with — Brendan Golledge

Does it? How do you prove that the lack of nutrients is not something that involuntarily changes your mood by affecting your brain chemistry?

Overall your post seems to be about controlling one's emotions (self-help). From my understanding of Nietzsche, that is not central to the ubermensch, contrary to it even.
I understand that "First, I will define what I mean by Ubermensch. By this, I just mean that I can generate my own values in an objective way, and that I have a higher level of consciousness than most other people."
You might have demonstrated how you have a higher level of consciousness than others, but what about generating your values in an objective way? You talk about changing values, but for what goal are you changing values? It does not seem to be because you think this value is right, but because it is productive to you (letting your hand freeze while taking an ice bath). Since productive implies the notion of producing something, you are just pushing the issue further. What you are aiming at when you change your values is what your values actually are.

You claim the Crusades are somehow comparable to the jihad. That is a statement that only survives if one completely ignores the politics and history of the Middle Ages.

The Crusades were intended as defense against the Muslim aggression, an aggression that continues to this day against Christians.

Whether some bandits broke off from the intended purpose — and indirectly caused the second and last fall of the Roman Empire — is a completely different matter.

A representation of an energetic wave — Gnomon

Wave is propagation of energy, there is no such thing as "energetic wave".

one a natural function and the other an artificial mental model of that function — Gnomon

None of these things are well defined. What is a natural function? Every model is artificial, and the fact I can model something means that that something exists, or that at least I perceive it.

An ocean wave is a modulation of water, but what is the real substance of a radar waveform? — Gnomon

A wave of water is a wave of water. Modulation is a transformation of a wave. Separate issues.

That's because a waveform is a mathematical idealization, — Gnomon

Looks like a real thing to me, and it is a wave.

You might want to read up a bit on the Crusades. — Ciceronianus

Have you?

How are you deciding "relevant", other than as a way of describing the reference that supports your own view? — Hallucinogen

Let's see the description for your one source:

This authoritative dictionary draws on Oxford's unrivalled bank of reference and language resources in order to explore the stories behind names and sayings that can be found in classic literature or today's news. Questions it seeks to answer include: What are Anglo-Saxon attitudes? Who first tried to nail jelly to the wall? When was the Dreamtime? Would you want the Midas touch? Should you worry about grey goo? Answers cover a range of topics, such as classical and other mythologies, history, religion, folk customs, superstitions, science and technology, philosophy, and popular culture.

And one of my sources:

This bestselling dictionary is written by one of the leading philosophers of our time, and it is widely recognized as the best dictionary of its kind. Comprehensive and authoritative, it covers every aspect of philosophy from Aristotle to Zen. With clear and concise definitions, it provides lively and accessible coverage of not only Western philosophical traditions, but also themes from Chinese, Indian, Islamic, and Jewish philosophy. New entries on philosophy of economics, social theory, neuroscience, philosophy of the mind, and moral conceptions, bring this authoritative third edition up to date. It is the ideal introduction to philosophy for anyone with an interest in the subject, and it is an indispensable work of reference for students and teachers.

Which one seems more relevant to philosophy of religion's terminology?

I should point out that appealing to dictionaries is going to be completely fruitless for your side of the argument, since dictionaries aren't reason-giving. — Hallucinogen

Correct me if I am wrong, but the OP mentions dictionaries and definitions at many points, and some arguments seem to be based on these definitions. The Oxford definition from the Fables book is followed by this:

Therefore what should define atheists is claiming to know that God does not exist (or synonymous phrases such as denying God exists), and this goes together with believing that God does not exist, since belief and knowledge are coupled. — Hallucinogen

But putting agnosticism together with atheism is contradictory, despite their shared lack of belief, because of what they know differently. Agnostics don't know whether God exists, while atheists know God doesn't exist. You can't be in two states about knowledge. — Hallucinogen

This whole argument references the sourced definition of atheism you used. I am saying your source for that definition is not a good source.

atheism -- The theory or belief that God does not exist. — Oxford Reference

You conveniently chose the reference that supports your argument, from the "The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable".
Let's see what the relevant dictionaries say:

• A Dictionary of Atheism Stephen Bullivant and Lois Lee: "A belief in the non-existence of a God or gods, or (more broadly) an absence of belief in their existence".
• A Dictionary of Philosophy (3 ed.) Simon Blackburn: "Either the lack of belief that there exists a god, or the belief that there exists none."
• A Dictionary of Psychology (4 ed.) Andrew M. Colman: "Rejection of belief in God. atheist n. One who rejects belief in God."
• The Oxford Dictionary of the Classical World: "The Greek for atheism is ‘not to recognize the gods’ or ‘deny that the gods exist’ or, later, ‘to remove the gods’."

I think linguists have done a good job showing that atheism in the ordinary sense means more than a mere lack or absence of belief. — Leontiskos

Linguists don't decide the meaning of words, there is no prescriptive tradition today in the English language.

5 minutes ago you believed the earth was round, but had no conscious awareness of this belief. — hypericin

I chuckled when reading this, but not in a condescending way, it reminds me of "The game" or "You are now breating manually" of 2000s internet.

Andrew M. Colman dictionary of psychology defines belief as "Any *proposition (1) that is accepted as true on the basis of inconclusive evidence.

Ted Honderich companion to philosophy as "A mental state, representational in character, taking a proposition (either true or false) as its content and involved, together with motivational factors, in the direction and control of voluntary behaviour."

Simon Blackburn dictionary of philosophy as "To believe a proposition is to hold it to be true".

All published by Oxford, bold is mine.

What you refer to as cognitive seems to mean neurological, which can be explained mechanistically. To believe something invokes a mind. Without a mind, no belief, unless you are reductionist. If you are an eliminativist, there is indeed no belief, and that is fine (but then all of us are p-zombies, and consciousness is an illusion).

On the topic of 0.9̄=1, this is a good read.
TLDR: Even though the equality holds under the standard construction of the real numbers, it could be denied under other constructs.

Even though it may appear I am taking a position here, I am not at all. I am explaining the concept which has not been understood.

A philosophical zombie or p-zombie is a hypothetical entity that looks and behaves exactly like a human (often stipulated to be atom-by-atom identical to a human) but is not actually conscious: they are often said to lack phenomenal consciousness. — https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/zombies

Being that a belief is a conscious process, a p-zombie would not have beliefs.
A p-zombie is a machine, that acts the way it does, to abuse a Descartes quote, "because of the organised disposition of its organs".

Beyond that Etymonline is not a reliable source, as is quite known in linguistics circles, the information in the fragment you quoted is generally correct.

I don't get the relevance of this though. — Michael

The paradoxical claim that English has Roman roots, which was made several times.
Some woke folks would call that "cultural appropriation".

Intersecting gravitational fields are therefore the physical model of consciousness. — ucarr

:shade: :shade:

I got involved in this because I'm interested in the debate about religion. We've ended up with the connection to epistemology, probability theory and so on. In a way, there's nothing wrong with that, and we could pursue our differences (which are many and radical) even on this thread. But I don't want to get absorbed in those subjects just now, and you clearly have a thoroughly thought through system in place, so that debate would be quite demanding. I expect you will get more out of a discussion with people who appear to be more on the same page, or at least the same book, as you. — Ludwig V

Agreed. Good weekend, Herr Ludwig.

That contradicts the sources cited, so I will say for the final time, you are mistaken. — Wayfarer

It is unfortunate because you don't understand the sources you yourself quote despite being explained, or care to read what comes after: "Because someone teaches you how to use a word in a certain way, it does not mean that word comes from there.".

Or are you preoccupied with picking nits? — Wayfarer

I am preocuppied with defending Rome against the barbarian invasions. The weird part is that it is 2024.

Scientific and empirical and proposition are definitely philosophical

Spinoza and Descartes initially published in Latin, and 'substantia', as the Encyclopedia Brittanica notes, was a neologism coined to translated 'ouisia' — Wayfarer

These two are separated by 1500 years, and Descartes published his works in French too, which word did he use? Substance.

The use of 'substance' to denote 'any kind of corporeal matter of stuff' is attested from 14th c (source) It too is originally derived from the Latin. — Wayfarer

1 – Etymonline is not a reliable source.
2 – Etymonline itself says the word comes from Old French (like most non-basic English words).
3 — Even etymonline itself points that the word already had the philosophical meaning in Old French, it was not coined in the 14th century. What it is saying is that the word substance in English is first seen with that meaning in the 14th century.

The word substantia already had the philosophical meaning and the "matter" meaning you are talking about since Augustinian times. Old French substance also had the philosophical meaning.

Sure it might have also come in via French but as noted Latin was the lingua franca of philosophy up until and including Descartes. The historical roots of English have nothing to do it. — Wayfarer

There is no "also" and there is no "via". It comes from French, it is a French word.
That was also addressed before:

English substance comes from French and it matches usía in meaning likely because of the way the equivalent word in other languages has been used in European philosophy. — Lionino

Because someone teaches you to use a word in a certain way, it does not mean that word comes from there.

That's the substantive point. — Wayfarer

Wonderful French word, mon Seigneur français.

The true philosopher-kings: the editors of wikipedia! — Moliere

I am confident this is what Plato had in mind:

We went through this exact argument before, and I have to repeat it over and over.

Firstly, even though their claims are accurate, the SEP and Encyclopaedia Britannica are not authorities in either Greek or Latin, far from that.

The SEP quote you gave says "substance" corresponds in meaning to ousía, the meaning is transmitted through Latin because Latin adapted the word from Greek; it does not mean English comes from Latin, because it does not.

There is no word 'substance' in Latin, where does the word 'substance' exist? In French, because that is where it comes from.

Oxford Languages dictionary on Google shows the etymology. You are wrong:



It is from French just as much as the sky is blue and 2+2=4.

The point about hypokeimenon (not hupo-) is completely unrelated. Besides, Latin substantia is inspired off ὑπόστασις, not off ὑποκείμενον, ὑποκείμενον is a participial adjective, substantia and ὑπόστασις are deverbal nouns. That ὑποκείμενον matches substantia in meaning is tangential. You have no clue about any of this.

Which is where this whole discussion started in the first place, so with respect to your assertion that the philosophical term 'substance' originates with the French language and not the Latin, you are mistaken. — Wayfarer

That is most bizarre. You bring up Spinoza, a Portuguese Jew, and Descartes, a Frenchman, neither of whom knew English, to validate the categorically wrong claim that the word 'substance', pronounced sΛbstæns, comes from Latin. It is completely unrelated.

You understand that half of English's vocabulary is French, right? That Roman influence in Britain was negligible, right?

Romans conquered Britain, saw it as a mostly worthless colony, and retreated from it before they completed 400 years there, 200 years before any meaningful Germanic population settled there. There is no Roman heritage; and if any, it was transmitted by the Bretons (modern Welsh). There is plenty of French heritage however, because they ruled England for 200 years, and French rulers were on the English throne for longer than Romans in Britains (over 400 years).

And so, having reformed the army quite in the manner of a monarch, he (Hadrian) set out for Britain, and there he corrected many abuses and was the first to construct a wall, eighty miles in length, which was to separate the barbarians from the Romans. — Historia Augusta

Thank you. I was looking into reading Parfit but I did not know where to start. I will give it a read when my mind is free. For now, time to eat a fat cheeseburger (which I don't usually do) to release some endorphins (or whatever).

Parfit has a reductionist account which concludes there is no persistent self, but what matters to morality is psychological continuity only. — AmadeusD

That much I can agree with.

Because you're talking about an object in that case, not a being. — Hallucinogen

Every object is a being.

The kind of opposition indicated by the "anti-" prefix is moral. See: — Hallucinogen

'Anti-' means opposition, that is what the dictionary says. You ascribe this "morally" adverb to the word opposition when it is not there. There are countless examples of 'anti-' prefixed words without moral meaning.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/anti-ageing
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/anti-id
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/anti-romantic
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/anti-aircraft
The word anti-matter itself indicates reverse, instead of moral stance or counter-action.

Strenght training. Cooking my meals. Biking to places I need to go (under 10km).

The premise of the TE is what it is. Nobody here came up with it. We're just discussing the premise. A couple of us are saying it is not valid. — Patterner

I don't know what TE is. What is happening here is me having to explain over and over that p-zombies don't have minds. And then people asking me about p-dinosaurs and p-evolution and p-art and whatnot.
Honestly, I don't know about p-art and p-relationships and p-politics. I don't care about p-zombies, it is a derivative issue from deeper issues that have been addressed plenty in the history of philosophy. See.

Yes, so "opposition to something" doesn't mean "to deny". It means moral opposition. — Hallucinogen

"Opposition does not mean to deny, it means moral opposition". You put an adverb next to the verb and pretended that is its default meaning. Opposition to the existence of something is clearly denial of existence. Moral opposition to something's existence is a very weird stance. If I say "I am opposed to the pilot-wave", everybody understands that as thinking that pilot-wave is a bad theory, not that I think the pilot-wave itself is a prick.

Why would the p-zombies of such a world be discussing their consciousness? — Patterner

I don't know. It is you people who brought up all these pointless questions. I am just explaining something that can easily be searched up on Google.

Opposition shouldn't be read to mean "denial of" — Hallucinogen

Well, you said it yourself:

Antitheism means opposition to the existence of a God — Hallucinogen

H'm. Surely what your diagram means is not just a detail? — Ludwig V

The diagram is for didatic purposes. The distinction between strongly, mid-ly, weakly believing is only for communication. If we want to be accurate, we would use something like percentages.

Do you have a background in logic, specifically the truth-functional calculus? — Ludwig V

Not my case.

You can say that it is not a sentence or a malformed sentence (not a wff) and hence no truth-value can be assigned or that it belongs in some third class (truth-value). But you cannot say or believe that it is true and you cannot say or believe that it is false. The same applies to the contradictory - "Colourless green ideas do not sleep furiously" in this case. — Ludwig V

Another issue is self-reference: "This sentence is false". It requires a truth-value other than true or untrue. I don't have an issue with that. I don't think the law of excluded middle always applies.
You may bring up that third-values are troublesome for my view of [0,1] or 0º→180º, but that is another issue that touches on another detail of my view.

I don't think philosophers are comfortable with irrational belief. But many beliefs have emotions attached to them. We're not machines. — Ludwig V

Right. My concern is more whether it is possible to separate emotion from belief when it is attached, or whether it is indissociable.

Something that sometimes happens is a bad basis for generalizing about the concept. — Ludwig V

Right, it is more that, besides wishful thinking, I can't think of another explanation for how the mechanism of emotional commitment works, maybe you can provide one.

What do you mean "discarded"? If I come, reluctantly, to the conclusion that my spouse is cheating, the emotion doesn't disappear. Most likely, it will be reinforced. — Ludwig V

Because whether I believe p and how I wish that it was not the case that p are different matters. I can come to believe that my wife is cheating, and that belief is the same whether I wish it was not the case or not. It would be the same matter if my wish modified the belief, but the belief seems to remain the same regardless of the wish.

I've no problem with you unfolding the fan. But it wasn't clear to me that you think that the strength or weakness of belief is proportional to the evidence, - or perhaps you mean "should be" proportional to the evidence? — Ludwig V

There we have another element. Like most philosophers (Alix Cohen 2013), I don't think direct doxastic voluntarism is possible. As in, we don't choose our beliefs, or will to believe something. So it is not that we proportion the belief to the evidence, but that the evidence pulls our mind in a particular direction of whether p or not-p — of course, to quote Matthew McGrath again, there is also the issue of "Whether you know or appreciate how strongly or weakly your evidence supports p (or not-p)."
Maybe the epistemic-declarative distinction now is more clear. Even if my mind is pulled towards the direction of p, I perhaps still do not take the stance of affirming p for different non-epistemic and/or epistemic reasons.

One factor that hasn't been mentioned is the idea that some propositions have a special status in that they are foundational and more or less immune to refutation. This is the category of what used to be called a priori or "analytic". — Ludwig V

It was briefly mentioned here:

I would say "A bachelor is a single man" is very close to 180º degrees (belief with certainty), while "A bachelor is a married man" to 0º degrees (disbelief). If we wish to talk about synthetic propositions, we could use "A square has four inner angles", very close to 180º also. The law of identity could be said to be 180º degrees, as it is the basal rock that every other belief depends on. — Lionino

I will also say that some beliefs X are more certain than others W exactly because W depends on X. Perhaps when we talk about the strenght of belief we don't have something in absolute terms, like "X is 95% sure" and "Y is 15% sure", but a hierarcy or relation, where the surest propositions (if there are such things) are defined as 100% and the most evidently false (a bachelor is a married man) as 0%, and every other belief is measured in reference to those two. I prefer the latter.

Minoan civilisation > Bronze Age > bronze > alloy > mixture > chemistry >science > scientific method

I really was not expecting this to work. Some sort of alchemy?

The zombie brains have to be doing some kind of information processing. — RogueAI

A p-zombie has some kind of behaviour triggered by a causal chain that starts in the outside world. A sleepy plant closes when touched by something. The plant is not thinking, yet it reacts to the outside world. A p-zombie would receive light, sound, smell input, and react accordingly.

I've often pointed out that it originates with the Latin translation of Aristotle's 'ouisia' as 'substantia', thence the English 'substance' — Wayfarer

For the 5th (fifth) time, English 'substance' comes from French 'substance'. You are not Greek or Latin, you will never be, that is not your history, you are French, monsieur.

Ah, Parfit, I have heard of him. I was told he holds a process philosophy view of self. I am yet to read it, but I don't like the argument that getting drunk kills you because it changes some mental states — by the same argument, going through a break-up makes you die too.
That was the main topic of my first thread.

If you have one solve a math problem and look at what it's brain is doing with a brain scanner, you'll observe it's brain is doing something. If that something isn't "thinking", what is it? — RogueAI

That reasoning rests on the redutionist materialism doctrine that all mental states map to neurological states.

The epistemological status of belief is relevant only to those who insist it must be. — Arne

I don't understand what that means.

Tidying up just for the sake of a system is regimentation, which has its uses (in mathematics and science, for example) but I see no virtue in it for its own sake - and it can be oppressive to people and misleading in philosophy. — Ludwig V

That is understandable. You will also understand me once I tell you that my background and (one of my) passions are physics and mathematics.

emotional commitment (like belief in God) count as believing strongly and believing something reluctantly (like believing that your friend has scammed you) count as believing weakly? — Ludwig V

I have to say I have not thought much about emotional commitments yet, I was dealing primarily with rational belief, where evidence and logic are used as justification. I tried searching into irrational belief and emotional belief and I could not find much unfortunately.
I can say however that emotional commitments such as "I believe my wife is not cheating" can sometimes not be belief. Sure, they say "I believe", but what they really mean is that they "want to believe", but in the back of their heads they know it is not true. I am not sure if in someone's psychology reason and emotion will always be separate in belief-formation, or if they mix sometimes.
I would say that for believing something reluctantly, the "reluctantly" is the "I want to believe part", which can be discarded when we give an assesment of the strenght of the belief.

Agnostic because there's no (not enough) evidence is one thing; agnosticism because the concept of God is incoherent is another; agnosticism because religion is the cause of much evil is yet another. — Ludwig V

That is our difference, I only count the first as agnostic. Recognising p as incoherent for me implies believing not-p.

I think you are fastening on a specific feature of belief - that it can be strong or weak - and turning that into an entire system. But belief is more complicated than that. — Ludwig V

I would say otherwise. Many people hold the black-and-white view of belief where you either believe something or you don't, or the black-white-grey view where you believe, don't believe, or disbelieve. I open the folding fan and show there are many shades inbetween. Whether we want to call a region of those shades "strongly believe" and the other "weakly disbelieve" is simply a semantic detail.

Suppose we have a world similar to ours was 50 million years ago. There are little p-zombie hamsters running around avoiding p-zombie dinosaurs. The p-zombie hamsters evolve into p-zombie humans. You're claiming the p-zombie humans would go around talking about lies and occasionally accusing each other of lying? How would their language have any referents to mental states? — RogueAI

I am not sure how biological and linguistic evolution would be different in the absence of mind, and I don't even wanna think about it, but it is tangential to the matter.