To maintain that plateau centric POV, we will need to speculate about the existence of alternate dimensions or white holes that teleport the water to other places. — wellwisher

Okay.

Is it possible for one to be justified in believing X while X is unjustified? Or does one being justified in believing X entail X is justified? — mrnormal5150

No and no. See @NKBJ's post on Gettier. But most importantly, injecting psychological condition into knowledge could only result in a blameless error, not justified belief. I hope you see the distinction.

then to view your own conscious experience as being an individual, private, pathological experience. — Inyenzi

Life is a chronic disease?

The philosophy of law, according to those descriptions, involves pondering such questions as "What is law?" and "What are the conditions of legal validity?" These aren't questions I've been asked to answer in my practice. I might be asked "What is the law (about something)?" but no judge or client has asked me "What is law?" — Ciceronianus the White

A guard against metaphysical infection in the practice of a profession that prides itself on objectivity and facts is not unheard of. And I'm not just talking about the practice of law.

(Hello, C. Good to see you again.)

The very practice of such alternate histories questions the sanctity of encyclopedias and dictionaries, for what entries are sacrosanct from pleonexia against the most mumpsimus ideas of a thief, a vicious usurper against the bard? — AR LaBaere

Sadly, encyclopedias were among the casualties of digital prints -- use ghostwords at your own risk.

According to the theory of evolution (TOE) traits that confer an advantage in the environment survive while those that are disadvantageous lead to extinction. — TheMadFool

Who said this?

But in reality, the still pool, before we start the pump is the true t=0. — wellwisher

How do we even detect it if it's not at the level of potential? In your analogy of still pool, is that even possible to detect?

This cannot be time=0 — wellwisher

Please define this.

The first sentence of the text is “Everyone will readily agree that it is of the highest importance to know whether we are not duped by morality.” My first thought was: no, I don’t “readily agree” to that. Because I don’t know what “duped by morality” means. And neither do the succeeding sentences cast any light on the meaning. — tinman917

I see your point, and then some. Sometimes you just need to be charitable and let certain things slide. I would approach the above with "Okay, humor me." Then, keep on reading. The hardest thing to read is not the most difficult to comprehend -- on this you could get help from other philosophers as they each refer to each other's work. The hardest to read is one that turns your strongest beliefs into futility or uselessness (I hope schopenhauer1 is not reading this).

Imagine that.

Anyway, @tim wood and @John Doe have some good things to say.

his parents' friends were giving them a hard time about what a bad boy he was, and he told them this: "Say, 'You don't know how bad he is! The things we've had to put up with -- it was a nightmare! Now the whole world knows, thank God.' But don't defend me. That's a losing game." — Srap Tasmaner

Roth knows how to play this game. And it's not what you think.

Infinite is just another word for more than I can count. — Jeremiah

No. Infinitesimal numbers are infinite not because it's more than what you can count in principle.

Nobody is going to deny that health is good. Yet life is the decline of health. Sooner or later you lose it, no matter how hard you try to hold on to it. Life kills us all, and oftentimes painfully. This is an example of the structural negativity of life. Other examples include our moral impediment, the onerous burden of need and desire, the transitory nature of pleasure, etc. The philosophical pessimistic perspective is that life, stripped of any contingencies (where and when you were born, what opportunities you have, personal traits, etc) is at-its-core negative. — darthbarracuda

That's the whole Earth. So, Earth is negative.

the way we arrived at the correctness of the individual values isn't valid, as it doesn't address the problem. — Dawnstorm

True.

@schopenhauer1
Of course, I don't mean to say you shouldn't complain about life.

Sure, it can be a summary, but then this has to be explained. As I've said, most people will just counter this with "I have good experiences, thus schop1 is wrong". The subtleties are what need to be conveyed. — schopenhauer1

People who use counter-examples to your description are those who believe, including me, that we don't exist in a vacuum. No man is an island, as they say. Do you honestly believe that how you feel towards life has no bearing on your observations of humans around you?
The upstairs neighbor is loud and it forces you to make a decision on what to do. I don't understand this sentiment. In case you haven't noticed, life is a continuing process of defense mechanism. Have fun with it. Sometimes, your hunch is correct and you're able to act ahead of time. Sometimes, you're wrong, and you make adjustments to your way of thinking.

Experiences are fleeting. The burden is continuous and ever-present. While good experiences makes a life go better than it otherwise would have been, it does not make up for the burden of continuous survival, maintenance, and entertainment. — schopenhauer1

Life sucks and then you die. Do you like this summary of one's existence?

Multiple Choice: If you choose an answer to this question at random, what is the chance you will be correct? — Jeremiah

Saying they each have a 33% chance is suggesting they all have the same probability of being chosen by the chance event, which is not true; 25 has double the chance of being selected than the other values. — Jeremiah

Sorry if I'm still trying to understand this problem, you seem to have moved on to another thread.

I think (as other participants here are seeing also), the "chance of being correct " in the first quote above, and the "probability of being chosen [by chance event]" imply two different commands. I say "imply" although it is clearly obvious. In the second quote from your post, you are referring to 'what's a chance that each choice will be randomly selected. This is a good question if you're doing it in a blind selection. But the choices are out there listed as multiple choice. So, the question as I see it is, how many times a 25% occurs? That's 50% of the 4 choices. (As you correctly identified).
Then, there is a second question -- what is the chance you will be correct?
So, let's say 25% is the correct answer -- and it occurs twice in the multiple choice, giving it 50% occurrence rate, does it also mean that the chance of us being correct is 50%?
I'm choosing from 3 unique answers, not 4.

My question is really for this:

I'd argue the frequency of the answer's appearance in the multiple choice list should not affect the chance of the answer being correct. — Fool

This is what's at stake.

Also odds are not the same thing as chance. — Jeremiah

In that case @TheMadFool and @VagabondSpectre are correct. :smile:
Here's why. This is not marble-picking. This is choosing a unique answer from among the choices of four. There are only 3 unique answers, as two are the same.

If both of you are reasonable and tolerant, you will go your separate ways and not think too poorly of the other person — darthbarracuda

Good.

Why can neither person change the other persons mind? — Andrew4Handel

Time, not the best argument you have, will change the other person's mind. If, at the moment, you have satisfied yourself with your own argument, then you've done your job. Walk away in peace.

When philosophers become kings, eh? — Posty McPostface

I hope not. Just benevolent advisers would suffice.

Well, given that we require someone with at least some background of education, I tend to think that they can be reasoned with. Does that mean that we need less impulsive and more cool headed leaders? Yes, I think so; but, I don't know what can be done in that regard, speaking of the US, here. — Posty McPostface

Cool headed, intelligent,benevolent advisers to world leaders. The right arm. Within inches of the leader.

To live in fear of one another is certainly not how we ought to live. — Posty McPostface

I don't know if there's statistical studies done on what we should fear the most. Death by car accident at hundred miles an hour, terminal disease, natural disaster, or nuclear explosion?

How does one surmount this dilemma? — Posty McPostface

Diplomacy and philosophical principles.
Yes, I know. Diplomacy is the most maligned political move given the nuclear temperament. And so is mind over matter doctrine.

Is it possible to know something with absolute certainty? It seems more likely that all things are mere possibilities due to the fact that often our own senses and reasoning possess faults and cannot be depended on entirely. — Lone Wolf

Yet we act with absolute certainty all the time. Do we hesitate entering our house each time we come home? No? Oh cause we know it's our address, that's our street, that's the entrance to our house. And yes, those are our family members, no doubt.
There are things we can doubt, but not this, as Wittgenstein says.

Why does philosophical theory not have a similar evolution whereby philosophical conjecture evolves into established maxim? — Marcus de Brun

Philosophical inquiry is a continuing process of questioning established beliefs and theories. It is misplaced to compare the trajectory of scientific experimentation and conjecture with philosophical quest for truth and reality.
I am tempted to say that if you are still in that line of thinking ( your OP), then this philosophy site, and all the other communities of philosophy out there have not done a good job articulating to you the purpose of philosophy.
But, I can also see that your post is a philosophical question itself. So, all the more reason why you should seek good books on the subject.

By "think" I mean how you're using it in this thread. Such as a "sense of reality" in your opening post and think as in seeing reality.

Is it better to habituate ourselves to be alone or is it better to resign ourselves with dealing with the frustrations of other people as just the cost of being a social animal? — schopenhauer1

I have no idea.

To what extent is this same aesthetic in force in regard to what we think of as the real world? — frank

To the extent that Wittgenstein is not a philosopher.
We think in pictures, as in complete picture, one shot at a time. This is a problem of certainty and determinism.

@ArguingWAristotleTiff Cool furniture. Awesome! No I haven't seen anything like that.

It's paper that's meant to wrap up meat or fish, but is often used for all sorts of other crafty things. — Moliere

Ah. Yes, I got one from a boxed furniture. It's a long paper, good quality.

butcher paper — Moliere

What's a butcher paper?
Awesome work!

Some individuals have trouble reconciling these two halves of their being myself being one either losing control of their shadow and acting out in unpleasant ways, or in my case, rejecting their shadow and becoming weak and easily manipulated. — Eric Wintjen

I refuse to believe that there are only these options.
There are people who truly reject cruelty and war. Their shadow could be that they have no aspirations to be powerful.

Some quotes I use as maxims:

Kids need your love most when they deserve it least. — Erma Bombeck — Srap Tasmaner

So true. I agree.


Here's one:
"You breed crows, your eyes are gonna get pecked."

This is similar to Kurt Koffka's (correctly translated) phrase "the whole is other than the sum of the parts" which itself is sometimes mistranslated as "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts", a translation that Koffka disagrees with.

So it seems the particular term "greater" is a misquote. — Michael

This is good! And true to its meaning. Another philosopher had posed the question, at which point do we see the heap instead of the millet.

Yes, actually that is what I'm getting at. What do we humans have to do en masse to change the structure and thus change the habits? — schopenhauer1

To the sociologists, 'chaos'. This is a courageous thing to say coming from them, of all people. They said this before the 2007-2008 collapse.

No point in straightening you. You will always be crooked.


Some ________ are round, and some ______ are _________.

If a true atom is irreducible and the smallest thing there is it can't have a top or a bottom because then it could be reduced even smaller to the top part and the bottom part. — Purple Pond

I disagree. By 'object', philosophers really do mean intelligible objects. The "top" or "bottom" part of an atom, as you say, is unintelligible. They don't count as objects.

Below explains something else that could help with this problem.

Aren't quarks irreducible? From what I recall, when one attempts to subdivide a quark, the combined matter and energy result in the creation of two quarks exactly alike the one you are attempting to split. — CasKev

Do you think the modern business dynamic is just a natural outgrowth of what humans really want out of life? — schopenhauer1

Not so straightforward as "what humans really want out of life". There is some structure that humans want. It's in the background. It just happens that the result is what we now have -- jobs, goods, recreation, buildings, material possessions. If you want to change human habits, you need to change that "structure", whatever that may be. (And now we are speaking about humans as if we're not of the same composition!)

You are taking that a wee bit too literally — schopenhauer1

Sorry, guilty as charged. I truly thought that was what you were asking. Explain the line again, "People who have hearts that don't work very well...."

Either way, I don't think it is organic in how you are using it. People don't, in my opinion, have a natural tendency to like office spaces, corporate culture, hierarchies and the like. T — schopenhauer1

And do you think that sea turtles enjoy the barnacles growing on their backs and legs? That's organic. That's natural tendency. The work situation as an organic growth is how it is. And I don't mean having tall buildings and a million offices. Work can be at a farm, or a forest, or at the sea, or underground. I don't think pilots call their cockpits offices.

If by organic you mean that it came about through an array of sources, well yeah I agree but as you stated, that has no normative value and is pretty self-evident. — schopenhauer1

No, not just an array of sources. By organic I mean we are an active participant in its growth.

By adding the word "organic" does that give more import to your statement? — schopenhauer1

Yes.

Do you think the modern relations were "organic" or rather the result of a number of factors that may or may not have lead to ideal conditions as it is now. — schopenhauer1

Yes, I say that in the most sincerest of the truth.

Even if it is organic, does that mean it is good? — schopenhauer1

No. I said nothing of that sort. When I say organic, I mean it in a descriptive way, not normative.

Some people have hearts that don't work very well and need help from inorganic sources. — schopenhauer1

While it appears we have now digressed from your topic, I'll indulge you. People who have hearts that don't work very well and need help from inorganic sources should go get a heart from inorganic sources. We haven't grown inorganic hearts in the lab yet. But certainly, we now have body parts that are inorganic. Like hip, knee, and heart pacer.

What does that mean? — Bitter Crank

The reductionist explanation of the world. You do not need to look at every instance of the most fundamental thing in order to explain reality. That's the job of the empiricist -- it's all white swans until we find a black swan. Then 'all swans are white' is false.

How much are we missing with our current model of the modern workday? — schopenhauer1

Why don't you ask the Federal Bureau of Futility?
They must know something.
The work situation is an organic thing. Humans do want responsibilities. They want to be tied to an organization.