More simply, “Superman” and “Clark Kent” are not different names for the same thing. The whole point of a disguise is to create a “name” that does not reference the true referent. — Leontiskos

A judgment of equivalence is inherently a conclusion rather than a premise. Equivalence is never intuited or stipulated. — Leontiskos

I think that says a lot.

There are conclusions prior to the three parts of the Lois/Clark syllogism based on prior contexts that necessitate non-equivalence for “Clark” or “Superman” to then make sense enough to consider whether they are also equivalent or not. What led anyone to conclude P1? That conclusion (not premise) could only be made by someone who knew both the differences and sameness between what is a “Clark” and what is a “Superman”.

How the heck is this case deemed so important? — Leontiskos

What’s weird is that the person interested in this sort of thing might respond, “Okay, so Superman isn’t the best example of this.” But what is the best example? — Leontiskos

P1: X = Y
P2: Z is ready enough to say "X can fly."
P3: Therefore, Z is ready enough to say "Y can fly."

I don’t think this apparent controversy is about an apparent flaw in the notion “X = Y”, but from the insertion of the “Z is ready to say that…”. Z’s belief creates a new context in which we must redefine X and Y. So we can’t substitute the use of either X or Y from P1, in any sentence following P2; P2 has redefined X and Y according to Z’s belief.

Lois is ready enough to say "Superman can fly"', that that sentence is not about Superman, but about something Lous says. — Banno

Exactly. Lois isn’t talking about the Superman or the Clark Kent from the first premise.

a word about underlying philosophical visions — Joshs

Yes, please. Don’t make me show the gains and benefits and progresses of wokeism. That side of the discussion is sorely missing on this thread.

Questions about the underlying vision of wokeism:

1. Is everything about politics? Or economics? Or race? Is anything in the public sphere simply not about these things, and if so, are those things good or bad for the community? Or should we focus on power structures?

2. Is there anything good we should preserve from white, patriarchal, historical Europe? Sub-question: who are genetically the victims in the world, and who are genetically the privileged oppressors, if any one. (“If any one” is a clue to my own answer.)

3. Will there ever be a dictionary that solidly supports a “correct” use of the word “he”?

4. When one is offended by another person, whose fault is that feeling of offense? The hurling of insults is certainly the fault of the one hurling insults, but the feeling of offense, who is responsible for that?

5. Diversity requires differences. Equity requires no differences. So which is it? Because if we are all equal, then a board of all white men is equal to a board of any races, genders. But if a board of all white men is just aesthetically repugnant, how can woke create better looking boards, and be equitable, without dividing everyone up and excluding certain groups? Seems like impossible criteria to make truly coherent, and truly just, while being truly good for the company/entity the board is supposed to run. Seems utterly pie in the sky, with no sense of flavor, just that vanilla is gross.

Help me, help you.

So do you consider Trump to be a force for good in a world taken over by Leftist fanatics? — Tom Storm

Would you consider someone who did think so would be welcome to discuss such opinions in the back offices and around the water coolers of 98% of the news media and educational institutions? Honestly, is expressing a positive opinion of one thing Trump did a good career boost over lunch with colleagues in those extremely powerful and influential institutions?

Trump is doing some good. Force for good? Remains to be seen. But I will evaluate for myself, not from any ideological standpoint.

Do I think the “world” has been taken over by leftist fanatics? No. Just the media and our educational institutions. The political takeover is an ongoing battle. The focus on the media and education didn’t work, at least not yet.

Has wokism ever had a direct impact on you personally? I’d be interested in personal experiences. — Tom Storm

My cousin was fired from his job because of some stupid DEI bullshit. He’s a great guy. Period. To everyone he meets. Some petty asshole misunderstood something, and HR has no idea how to handle people anymore thanks to DEI initiatives. Nothing could be sorted out before a message had to be sent that had nothing to do with my cousin. Utterly destructive, for sake of promoting confusion and no justice. Nothing was clear except the coworker was in a “protected class” and my cousin wasn’t. (Although we are of Italian descent, which I like to think is in a class of its own, sort of like white black guys, best of all possible worlds with great cuisine, but that’s probably evil of me to say…). My cousin has plenty of support because, he’s a great guy.

For the woke, there is no debate or winning the argument - just shutting someone down who won’t agree.
— Fire Ologist

To an outsider it looks like this would describe the world of MAGA too. — Tom Storm

I agree with that. Don’t particularly like hearing “MAGA” lovers speak. Unless they are speaking with the other side in a debate, as here in TPF.

Honestly, all of politics and government is discussion of lesser or necessary evils. All strong opinions requiring political and governmental action are fraught with peril.

My interest in woke/anti-woke is cultural. Wokeism makes everything political - it’s one of the things I disagree with about it.

I wonder if at this point in their presidencies what the count of positive news stories and negative news stories was from Biden and for Trump (second term). I am fairly confident that regardless of what either of them actually did or are doing, and regardless of how powerful either of them seemed, there are more stories about how Trump is bad in the legacy and leading media than there were Biden is bad stories, and less Trump is good than Biden is good stories. So even with the his evil Trumpiness on the throne, not much debate and challenge is actually being shut down. Wokeism remains the king of systemic cancellation - precisely because they have the media.

The right wing was never upset about speech being shut down, at least not on the top ten list of the problems with wokeness.
— Fire Ologist

Firstly, what?
"Cancel culture" has been a top headline — Mijin

It’s not about free speech. It’s about the cancellation. The physical shutting down. No one on the right is telling the left to stop arguing and debating and talking. The feds just aren’t paying for a one-sided opinion as much anymore.

I said twice already. The woke should ignore it. There was nothing of import for society to respond to. It’s a stupid ad.

Do you think the controversy may have been intentional on AE’s part? — praxis

I answered that too.

They probably got way more than they hoped for out of this. And it probably back-fired on some fronts. But this very conversation is so small potatoes — Fire Ologist

I don’t think this controversy could have been predicted. Wokeism is not coherent enough to allow one to predict weeks long political discussions based on an ad.

BTW, you really rarely give your own opinions. Despite calling for them from others. Closest thing was how you feel you can’t say “white supremacy” anymore.

The right wing was never upset about speech being shut down, at least not on the top ten list of the problems with wokeness.

It’s the physical changes to culture - men competing in women’s sports; men who choose to be called ‘women’ with outrage when not obeyed (as if ‘man’ never meant something simple); the destruction of language itself; the lack of simple protections of children; drastic child trans therapies in the name of ridiculous psychology and physiology (a grand experiment that one is a deplorable “MAGA” man if one challenges its safety or value, or even functionality towards its own ends); etc.

You decry cancel culture, but when it's shutting down messages you don't like, you're all for it.
And these rationalizations are, frankly, pathetic.

What I should have done is give examples of right-wing speech being shut down, wait for the outrage — Mijin

You won’t get any outrage. Not a bit. That’s a done deal. The progressives rule the media, the news, and education. With an iron fist. Right wing speech was shut down long, long ago. That’s just a tiny part of it.

They weren’t rationalizations. They were rational though.

A positive defense of the value of woke cancellations would do better then to try to see if you could catch me in an unprincipled contradiction.

Deeply ironic that you can’t say “white supremacy“ anymore.
— praxis

Who can't? It's all over the fucking place. What are you talking about? — AmadeusD

Deeply ironic that you can’t say “white supremacy“ anymore.
— praxis

What are you talking about - — Fire Ologist

:lol:

So now here’s the analytic side of it. Leontiskos does the above make sense to you? It’s not expressly dogma, or from someone else - just my attempt to speak about the Trinity and how is see it. Where is there blatant error and where is it correct?

I think you, Leontiskos can check my math and see coherence with the basic doctrines in some of the above, see the logic of it.
— Fire Ologist

I think the general thrust is correct. — Leontiskos

The only way for me to be correct about my own interpretations/applications of the Trinity, and for you to confirm the general thrust, is if there was a coherent logic to the Trinity.

So another person who simply concludes the Trinity is as nonsensical as a square-circle, can’t be seeing the difference between Trinity and a square-circle. And further, can’t see the logic of the Trinity that enabled you to check my math.

I would think this would be mildly intriguing to an analytics first proponent.

What is a person?
— Fire Ologist

:up:

Aquinas sees this as the preliminary question to the whole discussion. — Leontiskos

How did I end up analogizing the Trinity to a single human person, and it jibes with Aquinas, but I didn’t go to Aquinas? Incoherence in the notion of a ‘Trinity’ would make this an utter accident.

Or, as I just stated, a genuinely original piece that just so happens to look identical to the other piece (maybe two artists even name the painting in the same way too). — I like sushi

You are talking about two pieces of art that are identical but each not made to mimic or fake the other.
That would be a crazy coincidence of two “genuine” pieces of art.

Do you think American Eagle is innocent and had no idea that their ad would be viewed as it has been? — praxis

I answered clearly. Yes, the woke can ignore the ad.

But this rephrase of the question is a bit more.

Do I think American Eagle is innocent?
- of fostering racial tension?
- of hinting at racial tension to foster conversations with the word “American Eagle” in them?

Do I think they had “no idea” playing a a pun on jeans/genes would be hated with vitriol or make its way to a presidential tweet?

I don’t think Am Eagle is actually white supremist. That’s stupid business if the world found out. So that dog whistle is ridiculous.

Honestly I have no opinion on those other detailed marketing questions. And don’t see this as a matter of guilt or innocence. You just mean intention or not.

They probably got way more than they hoped for out of this. And it probably back-fired on some fronts. But this very conversation is so small potatoes.

There is nothing whatsoever offensive to me with a person of any race saying their genetic coding makes them awesome and they look good in jeans because of it - all to sell jeans. And American Eagle didn’t go that far. You have dig real deep in a pile of horse crap to pull out something offensive there.

Everyone is allowed to be proud of their genes. And say it.

The ad controversy was just…dumb. And it hurt proponents of woke because they have no judgment of what matters and what doesn’t.

a genuinely original piece — I like sushi

You said it yourself. These are both genuine.

So your discussion is about "what is the thing in itself that is called a fake" What makes a fake a fake?

So you have a Cactus in a pot, and separately, you have a Plastic cactus in a plastic pot.

In one sense, the cactus is a genuine organic plant, and the plastic cactus is a genuine decoration that requires no care. Both are genuine things in themselves (as all things are in some sense genuine as things qua things.)

In another sense, the cactus is genuine and the plastic cactus is fake.

Fake arises because of intention, and inside the perceiver. Someone perceives one of the cacti - they think "it is a living organism," but later learn it was plastic decoration. So they would call the cactus a "fake" AND would say they were deceived or faked out.
Someone else perceives one of the cacti and think "that is a plastic decoration, a fake cactus" and later learn they were correct. In this latter case, they were not deceived or faked out, and they could say they were looking at a genuine decoration made to look like an actual cactus.

So now, what makes a fake, a fake? I think it must come from the perceiver, not the thing in itself. Only a perceiver could say the plastic decoration was the same thing as the organic plant, or that it was related to the organic plant at all intended to be a fake version of it. These are born in perception.

So if you put this conversation in the world of "art" and talk about a replica that is identical to the original, you are talking about "what is art" and "what is fake art". What is "art" is way harder to say than what is a "living cactus". So you may have a bottomless pit to discuss to get an example of "genuine art" before you enter the bottomless pit of what will be an example of "fake art".

I think the fake, fake fake, genuine subject is interesting, but it needs some constraints to keep it focused on that specific relationship.

But there's that elephant.

There is the substance of what you wrote. When I moved my eyes, I saw your words, no other. So in order not to seem totally insane, I didn't respond about how I fixed my toilet this weekend. My words are rationally related enough to your words to allow us to exchange our "digesting" as you said, and as I now must reference if I am to continue the causal relationship between us in this discussion.

You have caused me to digest "I make that point for many reasons:" and not digest "fixed my toilet" (which I am now causing you to digest, and disgustingly using "toilet" and "digest" in the same sentence.) You chose to read, so you are an important cause in your actions. For sure. But I am a cause, as well, because of the elephant - the toilet - the words cause specific effects in others. Just because you choose to consent to your own actions, doesn't mean those actions aren't guided by a context, and part of that context is my words. And context requires rational relationship, like cause and effect.

This has all been explained fifty ways before. I am predicting they have no effect on you. Which now makes it ironic that I re-entered this thread, again. Words really do have no effect on you. That is your victory - like a debate with a granite statue, words can have no effect. (Still ironic you keep using words at all though...)

I make that point for many reasons: so others can read and think about it if they choose to — NOS4A2

Cause: I make a point.
Effect: others can think about it if they choose to.

ADDED:

Me: There's an elephant in your room. Can you see it over there?
You: I choose not to look in that direction and you can't make me.

my point is that you have no reason to censor others. That’s it. — NOS4A2

If your point is that I have no reason to censor others - why make that point if the reason I have no reason to censor others is because making a point can have no effect on anything?

Still irony. You missed my point (but ironically tried to address it.)

So you enjoy debating, but don't care what the content of the debate is? You just take random positions and dig in? No effect on the world outside of your own enjoyment. Meanwhile, back in the real world, the fact that the government curtails speech all of the time with laws against fraud, conspiracy, fomenting riot - you could care less, and are not trying to change any policy. Got it.

Is a fake fake, genuine or fake? — I like sushi

In order to get a fake fake, you have to highlight a ontological difference between an object in itself, and the person who perceives that object.

To conceive of something as a fake fake (so maybe genuine in itself), you have to set out the object and call it "genuine" and then set out the person who perceives that object as a "fake". The person was faked (by some other person or some other third-party context presumably) into thinking they were perceiving a fake. So the designation of "fake" comes from the perceiving person, not from the thing, because the thing in itself is a fake fake, or possibly genuine.

If you don't want get into analyzing things in themselves (or at least some agreed, stipulated objective person-independent context), I don't see how you can get into analyzing fake fakes.

And who decides what those legitimate reasons are? — NOS4A2

You. And me, and everyone in whatever debate is the issue. Then it becomes policy, or not, depending on all of us.

But if you don't believe speech can directly lead to real harm perpetrated on others, then there is no need to debate, no need for any policy.

The irony is, you are trying to debate, with speech, the value of absolutely no government restrictions on speech. You don't see the irony here? You either have no point to be made, because speech can't change anything in the world, or your point is already proven because you have been free to say whatever you wanted anyway.

The cancelling that I am seeing is coming from the MAGA government right now -- federal agencies banned from talking about climate change, educational institutions not allowed to criticize Israel, journalists banned from the white house for being critical of Trump, museums made to remove mentions of slavery, or Trump's impeachment. Lots more if I just google around.

There's nothing remotely comparable on the left.

Since you're so against cancel culture, do you condemn all of this? — Mijin

1. As far as the federal government limiting what the federal agencies do and say - that is called: how it works. That has nothing to do with speech rights in the public sphere. So all of the agencies changing websites and spending money differently and deprioritizing X for sake of Y - go vote according to your own priorities. So nothing systemic to address there. No new fascistic takeover - the EPA, the white house website, NASA, Dept. of Agriculture, always bowed to the whims of the president and Congress and those debates are not "shut-down" - the woke members of Congress are being forced to make a better case.

2. Educational institutions - generally, since the 1960s, a safe-haven for all things revolutionary, and all things anti-tradition. The default in the institution: if it speaks "truth" to "power" let it speak. But they are such bad judges of what is "truth" and who has "power" and who is "victim". These institutions totally botched their students' reactions to the Israeli war. You say college institutions are not allowed to criticize Israel. That's not the message. It's that college institutions are not allowed to endanger their Jewish members. College institutions do not know how to debate without seeking to crush their opponents, and remove them root and stem. The general university consensus was, Israel has no leg to stand on, so there is nothing to debate. Just shout and speak of a new map "from the river to the sea". There is not enough acknowledgment of the responsibility Hamas has for the predicament of the poor Palestinians. There is not enough acknowledgment that Jewish people need protection and support too, as they did on October 7, 2023. So the move against educational institutions is to level the playing field, not put down the supporters of Palestine. It is a move against the tactics that endangered Jewish individuals, (US citizens versus US citizens not being handled well by the institutions). Plus, college professors have no actual guts - speak your mind and defend your arguments. What injustice is being fostered in the US on US campuses because of the federal government? You don't get easy money for stupid crap for the time-being?

3. Journalists, or opinion makers? Newspeople, or propagandists? Journalists have plenty of power and voice - more than enough to sort the issues there. They instead want to cry about "oppression" and loss of "freedom". That's more bullshit. We all know more about what Trump is doing than we ever did about what Biden was doing. Journalists are not being shut-down. If this one journalist gets shut-down, or that one news agency gets kicked out, there are 50 more to take their place. It's more a market reaction to bad journalism than it is government censorship. Again - wokeists, grow some guts. As the video from 1993 showed, Trump could have run on the same anti-woke platform 30 years ago, and he might have won then. Anti-woke cowards have all but lost the debate (that never happened) - Trump led the "no more bullshit" charge - "make your case!" Finally, the woke need the guts to make their case. Being kicked out of the white house press room is not censorship when 50 people remain in the room. If all 50 people become too afraid to challenge the president, that's on them, that's cowardice.

4. Museums - kind of silly. It doesn't erase history to pick and choose what is highlighted in a museum funded by the federal government and what is not. No one is going to forget slavery, and everyone needs to learn just how horrible it really was. But there are presentations that leave you hating America, put on by the federal government, funded by taxes from families whose children died preserving our country. There is a time and a place, and if done with true equity, the mistakes of the past can and should be presented in museums - but the inmates took over the asylum my friend and a correction might take a bit of the favored method of revolution.

There's nothing remotely comparable on the left. — Mijin

There are so many progressive takeovers of cities, towns, counties - they shut down basic land management, and we get monster forrest fires, in the name of protecting the climate. They want to include trans, so they exclude cis-gender. They want to include black women, so they exclude white men. It's been happening with great progressive success for 40 years. To the wokeist, I must be living in a different world. To me, I am trying to see the benefit of woke policy and can't find it.

What is being canceled today is 'cancellation and oppression with no debate' - so you cancel a cancelation and you don't have the same thing at all.

Since you're so against cancel culture, do you condemn all of this? — Mijin

I'm positively sure there are some injustices being committed in individual cases. I would condemn that. I don't condemn these sweeping policies that are more of a course correction away from oppression. But depending on the individual case, and because I know the nature of people, I'm sure there is much to condemn coming from "Maga" (as if a monolith).

I am against political ideology guiding individual actions. Political ideology should guide political debate. When it comes time to act - do what you think is best and be brave about it. If you are challenged, stay brave and defend your reasoning. Don't rely on a party platform to justify who you are and what you do.

So if you bring me individual cases and allow me to gather all of the facts and allow me to push back on presuppositions and "dog-whistles" and "slippery slopes" and "conspiracy" - I'm sure I would end up agreeing on what is clearly injustice and what is not.

Do you condemn me for not offering blanket condemnation for what Trump's federal government has done to websites, the press room, college funding, the climate change debate, and museums? Is all lost for the progressive victims, or can they just restate their case and show what value has been lost because of Mage, and what value needs to be restored in these arenas??

Deeply ironic that you can’t say “white supremacy“ anymore. — praxis

What are you talking about - anything that comes out of a rich white man’s mouth is white supremacy. Right?

Like the stupid jeans ad is white supremacy. You can accuse anyone about “white supremacy” all day, about meaningless things, that have nothing to do with supremacy, or white.

A challenge to your use of the term white supremacy os not a threat to your right to say whatever you want.

It’s not that you can’t say white supremacy anymore at all - it’s that, as with so many words, when wokists get a hold of them, they lose their meaning.

There are many important words that have lost their meaning: man, woman, gender, rape, my truth, racism. If a conservative argues for a traditional meaning for these words, they can be fired from their jobs. Such a person is likely hiding racism, misogyny, and a homophobe.

Wokists think that because what they say is being challenged, they are being oppressed. I know you were joking @praxis but there is a huge difference between someone saying “calling the jeans ad white supremacy is just idiotic crap” and someone trying to curtail speech. You can still argue things are examples of white supremacy all you like on TV, in movies, on the news. Here on TPF. If you have a liberal, progressive, woke, anti-traditionalist, anti-capitalist, anti-religion, Winterval friendly message, the sky is the limit.

But when conservative speakers go to a college campus to give a speech - they don’t get debated and argued with. They get shut down, physically threatened and kicked off campus. That’s woke. That’s an example of “you can’t say X”; the reaction to the wokist critique of the ad was more speech, not an ironic cancellation or shutting down.

@Amadeus discussed the woke’s inability/unwillingness to debate a challenge to their reasoning a few pages back.

I vividly remember the panic over political correctness in Australia in the early 1990's. "You can't say anything anymore!" being the usual refrain. Do you think the concern some have regarding woke is simply a continuation/development of this? — Tom Storm

Yes. It’s the exact same concern, as wokism and political correctness has always been a threat to free speech. And a threat to shut good things down. It’s now the cute catch-phrase “cancel culture” still as alive and well as wokism. Trump is an expression of the anti-woke’s frustration with debating the issues wokeness has created. For the woke, there is no debate or winning the argument - just shutting someone down who won’t agree. That’s what wokists don’t understand - they are oppressive, not liberating. They are self-contradictory, not a clear new vision. They want to defund the police, and are outraged when the police don’t serve them in time of need. Did George Washington and Thomas Jefferson do a good thing, or were they just slave owners and white supremacists? That might not be an acceptable topic for college campus and public debate if there is going to be a strong voice in favor of the good of Washington and Jefferson. Just can’t stand to hear unwoke sounds - like micro aggressions and dog-whistles.

So many new layers of utter bullshit (that could never be challenged) since the 80s.

What is a person?

Do I call myself a person? Do any of us call ourselves people?

I just said “I call myself.” But “I call myself” sounds like two people.

And now that I am talking about what I just said (analytics), I’ve drawn a third person view, on me thinking to say “I call myself a person.”

@Leontiskos

Language itself is tied up in my being a person (Davidson) (and what I’m saying regardless of if it’s like what Davidson is after). And the minute there is language, like the minute there is a person, we, in reflection, take third person views and first person views, we multiply our sense of “self” even though alone, just to think at all.

Each one of us, is like a Trinity.

A mind is like a community of sorts, in order to reflect, to have a mind, and a language.

To know, and to give, and to love, and know that you are loved…

The real personal stuff of life.. Requires a layered activity within ourselves.

The word was with God and the word was God.
The logic of the Trinity is like the logic of being a reflecting thing, a person.

Added:

‘God is your being, but you are not His’ — Wayfarer

This discussion is tied with a discussion of being.
(Now that I havent really cleared anything up, let’s discuss the being and becoming of it all. :razz:

They believed God is everything. — frank

In the sense that God is everything - God is the “in” and “with” of all things.
But in the sense that each separate thing is separate from each other (like this rock and that drink), each separate thing is not God and God is not that thing.

So, confounding the analytics, God and his creation both get to have it both ways.
First, God is everything so we are ultimately somewhere in The One, and second, I, for a time, am NOT God and he is not me

That’s where the cross comes in. I am separated and yet I can remain in Him and he in me.

We become like Gods, like Jesus is God……..

So now here’s the analytic side of it. @Leontiskos does the above make sense to you? It’s not expressly dogma, or from someone else - just my attempt to speak about the Trinity and how is see it. Where is there blatant error and where is it correct?

I think you, @Leontiskos can check my math and see coherence with the basic doctrines in some of the above, see the logic of it.

(And you made a distinction between God as a category of being and God as the living being we know as God. And you talked of “the God” versus “God”. These are all necessary distinctions, but I think it can confuse this further. Meaning, I follow you, but I could see someone misconstruing that you are saying there is more than one God.).

I was talking about Plotinus. — frank

I thought you were showing other places like Plotinus were the source of the doctrine of the Trinity. Jesus Christ’s words and deeds are a better source.

Word was God. (Father)
word with God. (Son)
These are the same word. (Same Spirit in each.)

These are more pieces to say what Trinity is, and where it comes from, and what the idea reflects.

The basic idea was that God is everything. That's what Plotinus believed. — frank

No. Three persons who each are God, is one God. That’s unique information.

you theists — Banno

No difference between us - theists just suck at forming coherent sentences. We still believe in coherent sentences. We just find there are messages that are clear despite the incoherent sounding sentences and the analogies. Messages that are loud and clear.

the similarity is significant. — Leontiskos

We come to know God but seeing him in others.
We come to do God’s work by doing good for others.



We can know the Trinity. We just have to put our calculators away for a bit. Someday the math has to work. Calculus and irrational numbers were new once. There is math of the Trinity, but that is less important and has not been revealed or figured out.

If I could explain the math of one God/three persons, /each who are God - would you believe in Jesus? It’s interesting to a philosopher and a theologian, but it hasn’t been laid bare yet. That’s my hope…

Sounds like an MOT to me. — Hanover

I want to be a member of the tribe. I hope I am.

There is one tribe now, but it still goes back to Abraham and is his as well.

We don't have official declarations that we can't know each other. The Trinity is not just a routine complicated thing. — Hanover

Saying that the Trinity is a deep mystery says this as dogma “whether you understand it or not, this is the faith”. It doesn’t say “you can’t understand it, never will, and shouldn’t try.”

In fact, we are basically all here to know, love and serve God. Know is first. Knowing God means knowing he is Father, Son and Spirit. So knowing about the Trinity increases our knowledge of God; it doesn’t add a layer of mystery.

There is a bottomless pit of mystery who is our God. The Catholic Church says, don’t let that stop you, God has given us a ton of clues about who and what he is. Some of them are a philosopher’s and a scientists challenge, but so are many things and that is just one aspect…

“We cannot come to know the Trinity by reason alone.” (CCC §237)
That doesn’t mean we cannot know the Trinity.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. — John 1:1-5, 14

The word was God is like “Superman can fly.” Or “Clark Kent is Superman.” It’s content. It’s about the world. It is what is, like “I am”.
The word was with God is like analytics. It’s the word about the word. This is the reason when God first told his name to Moses he said he was to be called “I am”. He is an analytic/ontological puzzle, in only his name.

Here is another point that I thought was interesting for people focused on language and analytics.

The Christian name of God is a whole story. “I am” was a name that could breathe. But because of Jesus we speak of God in the name of the Father, Son and the Spirit. It’s like a story playing out. When just saying his name.

We cannot come to know the Trinity by reason alone.” — Hanover

I cannot come to know any person by reason alone. Not you, not Banno, not my children. I cannot come to know many things by reason alone.

But knowing is tied to judgment and reasoning, and believing, so everything I know is mixed with my reasoning. Reasoning is a part of being awake and thinking about anything.

I don't hold my views because they are logically consistent, empirically provable, or factually credible. — Hanover

Maybe not BECAUSE, they are logically consistent, provable. But you can probably formulate them into coherent sentences. You can probably correct people who assign belief to you that you do not hold - all of that takes discussion and reasoning.

why the grappling in the muck with the non-believers — Hanover

Because they asked. It’s as simple as that. And we are all in the exact same muck, here together. I hoped this would be a discussion, and it pretty much became one.

If Christian, confirmation bias is dogmaticaly imposed and it eliminates the possibility of disproof and it entails belief regardless. You can understand then the feeling that there is no value in the debate. Your mind can't be changed by operation of law, so to speak. — Hanover

That’s not true at all.

Heaven, in all its glory, is not sought after, but is brought to earth by good acts. We seek to bring God here, — Hanover

That is Catholic as well.
Faith without acts is dead. The kingdom of God is now.

Quantifying in (from outside) not ok. Lois' t1 not our t1. — bongo fury

”Lois believes that” narrows the multiple permutations among Clark and Superman’s sameness and differences, down to one particular instance. So substitution found in the full story of Clark/Superman may fail in the story of Lois’ beliefs — Fire Ologist

The guts of Davidson's article is the difference between "Superman is Clark Kent" and "Lois believes that Superman is Clark Kent". The former is a relation of identity between two characters, the latter a belief on the part of a third character. The two are very different things. — Banno

:up:

Major: t1 = t2

Minor: ϕ(t1)

Conclusion: ϕ(t2)

Here t1 and t2 are expressions which refer to entities (for example, proper names of people or cities). ϕ(t1) is a sentence containing at least one occurrence of t1, and ϕ(t2) is a sentence that results from replacing at least one occurrence of t1 in ϕ(t1) with an occurrence of t2, eliminating the “=” of t1 = t2. Recurring ti presumes that ti is univocal throughout, and recurring ϕ presumes that the sentential context ϕ is not altered, syntactically or semantically, by the replacement. — IEP

None of that need be about ‘Lois believes that..’. It is all about clarifying the identical.

Referential opacity occurs between contexts. Indeed, it can be considered part of what defines a context. — Banno

‘Opacity’ points to ‘difference’ (one shielded by opacity from the other). Difference is the line drawn ‘between contexts’.

So identity is about sameness and difference. And all of the valid or erroneous permutations that follow, and that can be translated into analytic terms.

The guts of Davidson's article is the difference between "Superman is Clark Kent" and "Lois believes that Superman is Clark Kent". The former is a relation of identity between two characters, the latter a belief on the part of a third character. The two are very different things. — Banno

Yes they must be treated one at a time. Because the two are ‘different things’ as you say.

But, though they are two different things, the process of the third person believing, only occurs once Lois forms some concrete identity in the form of ‘what’ she believes; once she has a ‘what’, she can believe what she believes. So they are different things, but when discussing belief, identity must be part of the discussion. (Which is what Davidson seems to think.)

The ‘what’ in this case is ‘Superman can fly.’ Lois has identified the character of Superman as the particular flying man. She identifies the man ‘Superman’ and believes “he can fly”.

So again, although ‘identity’ and ‘believing’ are different, belief requires there be the identity of what in particular is believed.

We analyze “what” she believes the way we analyze referential opacity, sameness, difference, identity; we analyze believing differently.

We analyze “that” she is believing X with newer/additional terms. These may refer to referential opacity, but again, that is its own issue (or can be treated as its own issue).

Whatever sort of thing that belief is, it doesn't allow the sort of substitution we are envisioning. — Banno

Now we are just getting into the nature of the permutations between sameness and difference in references to Clark and Superman, and a way error and correctness can occur when misapplying the analysis of what is identified and what is not (Clark is the same as super; Clark is different; Superman can fly; Clark cannot fly;)

‘Lois believes that’ narrows the multiple permutations among Clark and Superman’s sameness and differences, down to one particular instance. So substitution found in the full story of Clark/Superman may fail without incorporating Lois particularly intentional, identity awareness, purpose in speaking (she may be lying about her belief).

the latter a belief on the part of a third character. — Banno

And we, the readers and analysts are a fourth party, necessary to account for the coherence of a belief (Davidson’s communication needed for objectivity.)

Bumped into this clip from 30 plus years ago. Shows a lot.

- The fact that woke issues/analysis was so precisely tuned by 1993 shows how the woke attitude became ubiquitous in the 1980s. It was mostly led by women’s rights, but also gay rights (called LGB), but all the moving parts were in the public consciousness (except the word “woke”).

- shows how the woke make something intended to have zero political content into a political outrage.

- shows absolutely zero progress has been made towards advancing the conversations, or reducing any sense of injustice. This could be a scene from yesterday in any US university (except the teacher would have been physically kicked off campus, fired, ruined, “cancelled”).

- shows how in-fighting was always a feature of wokism because there is no way to possibly talk and act right and woke.

- shows how the main result of wokeism is the break-up of the art class, representing the dismantling of institutions and how the woke are always shooting their own society in the foot (this is the main product of enforcing wokism: everybody just shut up and go home; no more X institution for anyone.. No thought to what will replace some pillar of society)



ADDED: Kids in the Hall was probably one of the most woke things in all of media when this was released, but today, if they did a skit like this, making woke people look silly and unreasonable, and not showing serious consequences for the non-woke, this skit would be considered anti-woke, harmful to the cause.

And logical precedence is a different animal to temporal precedence. — Banno

Yes, but they are analogous.
Like logical immediacy in the Trinity is analogous to temporal immediacy in eternity.

**Fire Ologist's telling concession:**
"We are not going to explain away the fact that one plus one plus one equals three, and three does not equal one"

This is essentially admitting that the Trinity violates basic logical principles while trying to maintain it's still somehow reasonable. — Claude

Yes.

But the trinity is not a math/logical problem. If you make it one, and see that as a threshold issue to making the Trinity anything else, it will only make no sense. (Which is I think where you want to leave it.). You don’t yet see the Trinity let alone start to see how to do the math of the eternal Trinity.

**Fire Ologist's position is genuinely incoherent** - he wants both mystery and rational explanation, both revealed content and logical analysis — Claude

(How is that amusing. :angry: )

But yes, that is exactly what I want. Is it either a something of a mystery or something of a rational explanation? Will quantum behavior ever be predictable? Any mystery versus rational explanation there?

I don’t give much more import to the Son coming from the Father than I do to Pegasus springing — Banno

Well you should quote me, because I was talking about any normal son and any normal father (temporal relationship) to make a point about eternity (God the Father, God the Son, with self-same Holy Spirit - one being in eternity….)

Is the concept of eternity incoherent? Just the concept of the eternally present now? Kind of makes no sense what of now was before and what of before is still now? At the very least what was before, was before now so not like now so not eternally present. Maybe ask Claude - how can we use “eternity” coherently and validly…?

As far as import. I’d love to know what is more important to you, worth speaking about, than the analytics and coherence of things spoken? I knew all along you didn’t give any importance to the content of this discussion, other than whether some sort of linguistic puzzle might provide token content to dissect and/or prove. I get that. I am saying to you, you didn’t allow yourself to get to a place with the content where the analytics might begin. That’s fine. I’m surprised and thankful it went this far. But I remain puzzled at how you address speaking about the world, and about people in the world and knowing such things apart from any language that might attempt to capture them. I don’t know how analytics cannot be damned at times because of something more important. I’m sure it is (as it is for all people and as all people deal with mystery at some point). That life is the content of interest to one seeking to understand the Trinity.

I admit I am not able to directly answer your question.

I also think you just don’t see the content of which I am speaking.

The Trinity is as mysterious as the human self. Hard to speak of these persons.

And tell Claude he doesn’t know his USB port from a hole in his head.

I don't see how entertaining time in the equation actually helps. — Banno

Before there is a son, there has to be a father. So the son comes after a father. And for something to proceed from a son, the son comes first and what proceeds must logically proceed afterwards.

That all takes time.
That is also how we reach logical conclusions. We first have a premise, then draw inferences or otherwise, and from these conclude something else.
That is a process having a before (ie “if…”) and an after (…then…) .

So to talk about God’s inner life (which reason can’t discover unless God shares it in revelation) we must talk about something eternally present.
And to talk at all, we need to say things first, and then second and then so on (like taking time…) .

So I mentioned time to in a way acknowledge that the Trinity can’t really be said analytically. I just still don’t see the analytics as the only priority for us to understand something, particularly another person (or three persons).

The theology here does not stand well in public. Might be better to seek an alternative. — Banno

Neither does the set of all sets. I will never stop believing in sets either, nor need an alternative. (I’m sure you could show me how analogizing Russell’s paradox to the Trinity is not apt.)

I said many things and you addressed only a few. That’s fine. But I don’t see the end result affecting how well the Trinity stands in public. No need to speak for the public.

The Trinity is a mystery beyond human understanding. You alluded earlier to John 1:1. Religion scholars identify that as Logos mysticism. It's cool stuff. — frank

There is plenty of mysticism to be had here. But, although linear, more readily analytic reasoning, may seem remote in some of these sentences, it is not non-existent, and things like this are not just mysterious. It is not beyond human understanding, in my view (despite how it sounds incompressible, I see a solid thing there to understand - just a complex solid thing there that we will ever approach enclosed understanding…

Bob has been explicit that he thinks the Trinity can be derived within natural philosophy — Banno

I know he said that. I disagreed with him.

When folk say that Jesus is god, they mean that when they say that Jesus died on the cross, it was god who died on the cross. — Banno

Yes.

We can substitute "god" for "Jesus" and maintain the truth value of the assertion. — Banno

Well, yeah, but… Jesus became a man first, and then died on the cross. The father didn’t do that. So it is true to say God died on the cross, because Jesus is God, not because the Father is God. So yeah…

And when they say that they are imbued with Holy Spirit, they mean that they are imbued with god - substitution works here, as well. — Banno

Yes.

But it is not true that they are imbued with Jesus; becasue Jesus and the Holy Spirit are not the same person. And it is not true that the Holy Spirit died on the cross. — Banno

Well, Jesus’ spirit is the Holy Spirit. Through him, with him, in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit…
I agree it is not true that anyone has Jesus qua Jesus in them, but they may have Jesus’ Holy Spirit in them.
And I don’t know how the Holy Spirit attended to the death of Jesus of the cross. The Holy Spirit may have in fact been with him as he died in the cross and maybe so intimately that the Holy Spirit died with him, and maybe the Father as well, in a sense. But I think we start to misunderstand what the Trinity is and how the three are united and that this eternal union is God. They are immediately not each other and given over to each other completely. It is love; that is eternal life for each as one.

And you, Olo, don't wish to appeal to pure mystery here since you "believe there is reasoning that explains this".

Trinitarians use identity as it suits them, but drop it when it is inconvenient. The very epitome of "ad hoc". — Banno

I think the way I maintain some rationality is first equate temporality, like a timeline, with linear analytic reasoning (like you say is “how the language actually functions”) Then equate eternity with the present moment, right now, and only now, but the same now eternally - as if repeating but already repeating what was exactly. We string out God, father, son, spirit, and unity and difference in the timeline and things start to contradict one another. This is the way language works.
But what we are talking about here is an eternal thing - at once the father, son and shared spirit is God. In that present moment, there is no room for contradiction - just diction. And god said… and the word was with god… and the word was god…

So you don’t need to accept my answer for “is” but it is an eternal thing”is” not a temporal “is”. (The temporal “is” came later, by analogy, and led to the son becoming a man, dying and rising again before our eyes to teach us what it is like to be God… to love with no bounds…

But this does not mean that the doctrine is divorced from reason. — Leontiskos

Exactly. Nothing, that we say we know (so nothing that we say we believe because all things we believe we also know) is divorced from reason.

I think we are still waiting for an explanation of what the "is" in the Trinity is, and why. — Banno

We can only show you analogies. And then, in between them, you start to see the analytic reasoning and logic. From there you can attempt your own analogy. If you nail an analogy, maybe you have something.
And the full “is” and explanation is something approached asymptotically. There is always more to say and clarify.

The Trinity is like two people in love. The love is bigger than each one, but also completely known and found in each one separately. (You don’t have to believe love is a real thing, but if you do believe in the lib you may share with a child, or a spouse, that is like the life of God.)

We are not going to explain away the fact that one plus one plus one equals three, and three does not equal one, but that one person is fully God, the other person if fully God, and the other person is fully God, but though there are three persons, there is but one God. If you are looking for some explanation that provides a new math, that may never come.

If such explanations are all you are after and all you think are worth discussing and all the world of language has to offer, I think you are just being rebellious against your own experience. Life is full of absurdity and mystery and seeming contradiction - there is more to say than “that’s absurd.”

But imagine a single being who is the one God. This being’s personality is to give. Just is. When God gives, he gives everything. So when he gives the Son is begotten and this son has everything that was the fathers so this son is God. But this son, as with the father, is therefore a giver. The son does not take any credit for being God, but gives it all to the father, so much so that between the father and the son is the same spirit of giving, and so much so this spirit is God.

Now imaging this happens all at once in an instant - father giving all to the son who gives all to the father such that the All that is given is the God who is the father and the son.

The Trinity is analogous to something like that.

This is full of things to analyze and subject to scrutiny and refine and correct - all steps requiring reason.