There is no such thing as a star sign.

They also assume that God or Truth is a frozen already-finished entity. All they have to do is snap the right word-numbers together. But for Hegel the meanings of the words evolve as we do philosophy. Even more radical, we create God (or self-conscious Reality) as we do philosophy. Or God creates himself through us as we try to figure out the truth about God/Reality. God has to misunderstand himself as a fixed object. God has to misunderstand language as a sort of math. Such creative errors are the stairway to reality becoming fully conscious of itself. — ff0

This is all very well and nice, but practicing what you preach is my minimum standard. If he wants to take the skeptical stance, he can't remain a Theist.
And if he thinks he has transcended the problems he lays out then he is deeply arrogant and wrong headed.
What use is Hegel when you have Hume whose skepticism he had till the end?

The 'familiar' is the 'how' of our grasping that we take for granted. — ff0

I do not think he's talking about the how at all. That would bring him in to the realm of psychology if he did. He's talking about shit you absorb, mostly uncritically, the points of reference we take for granted, and that this could be problematic "deceptive".

I think your oversimplification of Popper is basically a straw man.

I understand him, the meanings of all these terms are dynamically and systematically related — ff0

Yes, but in all those words he did not manage to get this bit out.
Add your sentence to mine and you have more information than his whole paragraph.
I'm not sure I'd characterise this as phenomenology, but standard metaphysics, this is not about experiencing life but conceptualising it.

I'd say that quote was ineloquent, and verbose. Something lost in translation if I were being generous. But he's not saying much. "subject and object and so on" REALLY?
I think he's talking about endemic assumptions being deceptive. Why so many words?

For this post i will make the assumption that all the reports surrounding ufology are true. (it should be noted that after my years of research i do in fact believe that many of the reports of unidentified flying objects are of alien origin) — David Solman

You've shot yourself in the foot already. It is impossible that all reports are true since many contradict one another.
The fact is that any moron can and in fact do make up the most absurd claims about UFOs that one would have to conclude were they true the entire fabric of reality was capricious to say the least,

Most of Hegel is gibberish; clever sounding gibberish. He's as bad as Adorno. I've no need to repeat gossip, and my comments do not rely on that. I've read this stuff.

Would complete realization of the Sexual Revolution--complete liberation; complete openness --result in the end of sexual harassment? — WISDOMfromPO-MO

SH is really about a power relationship, and complete liberation of sexuality would not change the fact that some men are in positions of power over women.

Hegel= obscurantist, mystic. Russell did not understand him and it is my view that Hegel did not understand himself most of the time.

What's the point of anything?
You are here. Philosophy is a way of understanding your condition.

Can you read?

I am not sure what the point of this is. Are you merely insisting that the word 'scepticism' describes your position and your position only? If so, that ignores the evident fact that philosophers have used the word 'scepticism' to refer to many different things. I am not sure why you insist on it being used in only your sense. — PossibleAaran

I think its clear enough that your use of the word is idiosyncratic, and atypical.

I think you are confusing meaning.
There is a difference between 1) I believe in nothing, 2) I believe there is nothing, and 3) I believe nothing.

Interesting reaction. I think you could put yourself in danger of seeing the results of the dynamics which are actually contingent upon unique conditions are elevating them into a a series of casual factors. The tail of the system waging the dog of necessity.

This is not skepticism, this is apathy.
— charleton

But this was what scepticism was for the ancients, and certainly for Sextus. — PossibleAaran

No, I do not think so.I think this is more like the case of Catholics calling Protestants "atheists", failing to describe their thinking.
Skepticism was also for many years in the modern period (late Medieval) a term of abuse directed from those that were happy with their certainty, especially about God, against those that preferred to ask questions.
`By the religious establishment a good dose of healthy skepticism was seen as a major danger and was traduced as a "burning issue" in a literal sense.
But those self identifying as skeptic would have a more positive view of their position, as do I.

NO.
You are supposed to ask questions first!

There is supposed to be a general argument which enables us to do this, and it goes by the name Agrippa's Trilemma. The value of scepticism is that it produces first suspension of judgement (epoche) and then peace of mind (ataraxia). — PossibleAaran

This is not skepticism, this is apathy.
Skepticism is the ability to reject the endemic assumption, reject the easy answer, and to examine the question a fresh. Ataraxia is not the end result of skepticism.
Freedom from dogma is the reward of skepticism, but this also goes with potential uncertainty as so often skepticism leads to never allowing yourself the luxury of knowing.

Succession does not always lead to more complexity. It depends on the specific case of the environment.
For example in the post ice age landscape of the South Downs of England the tundra led to a range of scrub, bushes, heathland and trees. The species diversity increases in some instances, but can as easily become less complex by bearing fewer species.
Ash, elm, beach, hazel, will eventually succumb to the climax vegetation which in this case is oak woodland so dense as to make many larger herbivores seek life elsewhere; all the scrubs and less long lived trees will have to give way to the oak.
Then comes a human and destroys everything but wheat fields. The soil erodes away and any growth at all depends on the application of chemical fertilisers.
This is not to say that humans always result in the destruction of the ecology. Aborigines of New South Wales used to practice fore-stick farming. Where the climax vegetation has led to natural monoculture, setting fire to the landscape can have a massive effect of increasing species diversity and the appearance of nut, and fruit bearing plants.

What question? What problem?

The nonmaterial is wholly the function of the unique structuration of neural matter, not so much the matter itself.
And although information, ideas, concept are material, their essence is not to be understood through the material quality reducted from matter.
You cannot understand the meanings of a famous painting through the chemical constituency of the molecules of pigment that it is made of.
Take two sculptures; Venus De Milo and Da Vinci's David. Bother are made of exactly the same substance; marble. What is different about them is their structural form.
When I read information in a book, me neural matter changes in structure to accommodate that information. The transfer of information is not always perfect but I can often repeat what I have understood. And whilst you can make a fake David, there is only one original.
When I die all that structuration ends, back into its constituent parts.

Faith the the death of reason, the cry of the ignorant and the hope of the desperate.

The existence of mermaids is not contentious; they are mythical.

1,2 & 3. I do not think you have the essential quality of a fact.
A fact is first and foremost a statement of affairs, claimed to be true. It does not stand alone and relies wholly on the story teller.

fertility rate is not directly or significantly related to the issue of rape. It may have been in the past where rape was the norm, but it has little to do with rape now.

"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."
Wittgenstein

2 does not follow from 1
3 greater than what?
4 no
5 no

Conversely, a top-class intellectual might have an aberrant belief in astrology, elves or some other nonsense. — Cuthbert

I think not. H. G. Wells was no intellectual, but a writer of fantasies.
Pythagoras was born into a age of ignorance; ignorance he did much to dispel.
Given the growth in astronomy and science the quote on astrology sticks.

I do not think I would disagree.
There is a good potential for change here. Rape is unacceptable, and this has been the case for a long time. This normative position has grown stronger as time passes. More accusations will lead to more convictions, if publicised will lead to fewer instances of rape.

A good observation, and a strong argument, but does it mean we have nothing to talk about?

I say 'nothing is not' does not mean that 'nothing' can't be described. I mean if you think about it 'nothing is not' is a good example of how to describe nothing. — believenothing

Actually that is exactly what it means.
Nothing has no properties and can be only be described as such. You can even say "nothing is..." or "nothing has..." Because "nothing" cannot have any properties.
I'm not sure "nothing is not" is a description of a thing, and no thing can follow on from that comprehensive description.

Blame is social engineering.
If you think that there ought to be a social element to human life then concepts of blame and shame are going to be part of the world we construct for ourselves.
No matter how much we feel that the criteria of blame, shame and punishment can be objective, they in fact have to measure up against a range of concepts offered us by cultural logic, and these will be specific to the historical and cultural milieu of the moment.
What you do not get to do is to try to pretend that human urges are unnatural no matter how much they contravene current social norms.
From the age of 11 every man each morning wakes up with a natural urge to penetrate. To varying degrees a man's social life is based on the suppression of the natural urge to comply with socio-cultural norms. This can be expressed heterosexually, homosexually or even paedophilically. The urge is not a choice; compliance is.
Successful compliance is based to some degree on the likelihood of censure should a transgression be discovered.
For example; since the likelihood of any danger of so much as an accusation of rape by a woman is low, the incidence of rape is high. Conviction rates are also extremely low, and this obviously is a contributory factor as to why rape is at epidemic proportions now and throughout history.
Times change.
Rape was common in ancient Greece, appearing in many day to day myths. The earliest (surviving) law code; The Gortyn code; rape is punishable by a fine. By today's standards the Code reads more like a shopping list, than a law code with different prices for rape by a freeman, or slave upon a freeperson or slave. A slave raping a freeman had the highest price; the lowest, no surprisingly was a freeman raping a slave.
It does not take much imagination to understand that raping outside the group was not thought of as criminal in most of history.

12 disciples; 12 pennies in a shilling; 12 to a dozen; 12 tribes of Israel; 12 members of a jury - it is just soooooo spooky.

That's what Stanley thought about Livingstone. In fact Livingstone knew exactly where he was.

If there is any credibility in the idea that there are cryptic messages in the stars concerning our future. Then that should be easy enough to demonstrate.
If there is any credibility that a person's character is related to where the sun was at the time of his or her birth then that should be determinable with a few simple questions.
SO. As I said above guess my star sign!
Ask as many questions about my character, as you like then make a guess. You can even have a few wrong answers.
Any challengers?

An out of date and thoroughly discredited science, devoid of any kind of basis.

Guess my star sign beeeatch!

So what, is that you misspoke.
This implies that you are applying a false objectivity by ignoring the ubiquity of varying frameworks.

The use of technology doesn't demand the understanding of the technology and hence underlying science. — ssu

For 99% of human history this was not the case. And that was the point I was making. The industrial revolution divided the understanding from the application, as before most technology was amde more closely to those that used it. From out Hunter/gatherer past where all tech. clothes, weapons, shelter and other tools were all made by the community that used it. Even through ancient times there was little division between knowledge and application.
Now you say there is more science, when in fact science was the intimately applied knowledge of the past.
These days many people can get by with zero science; that was simply not possible in most of our past.
So are we more scientific now or less?

Objects are not subjects. Subjects are not objects. — creativesoul

Actually your objects might be my subjects and vice versa.

I think the argument that we are more scientific than ever before is not well made. Mysticism and superstition have never left us and, as usual, the mythic aspects of the applications of science are still with us.
If there is more science now, then there is also more of everything else too. There is more of every thing. more land destruction, more religion, more people, more poverty, more slavery, more riches, more things, more waste.
It seems to me that science with a small 's' and the technologies that apply it are what makes man. Sincehomo habilis who 'experimented' with stones and their knapping to make hand tools, that is science. With such primitive human thinking, the temperature of the social and technological change was cool.

just be a bias of mine. — darthbarracuda

Yes a bias that has no respect for logic.