I must say this intrigues me mostly because I have no idea how you could achieve this or what it entails. Could you explain it more in depth? — Sentient

I have to find a Muslim holy person. With Christianity, It's not too hard to at least identify the title of a guy who is supposed to be a holyman. I've found that with Islam it's not quite so clear. This image came to me:

Imagine you buy a toaster and it doesn't work. You take it back to the store and the manager says: "I'd love to return your money, but I'm not authorized to do that." So you head up the ladder receiving the same answer on every rung... "I don't have that authority." You finally head out to the house of the guy who owns the company and knock on the door. He appears and in answer to your appeal, he says the same thing the manager of the store said. You say "Wait. Don't you own this company?" He says.. "Well, not exactly. There used to be owners of the company, but they died and though I'm holding down the fort, I'm not the owner. You see, the original owners left behind instructions for company operation. My job is to make sure everybody in the company follows those instructions."

You say: "Dude. The instructions didn't say anything about returning money for toasters that don't work?" He smiles and says. "I'm sorry. No." You say, "Well.. I think you should probably start writing more instructions. He says: "You know, you sound just like one of our former employees. His name was Ruhollah Khomeini. He caused a giant disturbance that polarized the employees. Some divisions of the company have worked out promising solutions to it, but in other sections, the walls are still covered in fresh blood. We can't really do much with the instruction issue right now."

You stare at him thinking.. but wouldn't this be a good time to write instructions about not killing fellow employees? But you don't say that. You just walk away with one lingering question: why is this company still here? It's had plenty of chances to disappear altogether, and it abides. You have an intuition that if you can discover the answer to that... the money for the broken toaster might just have been worth it.

I think with any religion, there are facts to be gathered that will explain why that religion exists. But there's a dimension of it that has to do with beauty.. not the mundane "beauty products" sort of thing. The deeper thing.. it's tied to perception of the ideal.

How do you presuppose one finds 'truth' in art and in what way? — Sentient

It's something you feel. In analytical philosophy truth is often understood to be a property of statements or sentences. Correspondence Theory uses the idea of a truth-bearer, which can be a statement or a belief. It says that a statement is true if it corresponds to a truth-maker. There is intuitive appeal to Correspondence although it quickly becomes a puzzle on closer examination. See the SEP entry: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truthmakers/.

With aesthetic truth we can see the same general form: that a comparison takes place. But the truth-maker isn't a state of affairs which "obtains" or something like that. It's a vision of the ideal... what should be.

I could tell a story that might convey it. My mother took a class in Chinese watercolor painting when I was a kid. She didn't take to it so I inherited the supplies she'd bought for the class. I had already been doing watercolor painting and my own style of painting was starting to emerge. I took to the Chinese painting at first fusing it with my own style, but I also read the guide book that came with the tools and experimented with doing it the Chinese way.

When I was about 16, I found myself in a Chinese restaurant in NY. There was a large watercolor painting depicting a cascade of koi. I was seeing mastery. I could feel it. To try to put it into words, I'd say it's like seeing the raw force of the universe taking shape in simplicity and elegance.

Being able to see how a painting falls short of its ideal self is the goal of exploring aesthetic truth. Not surprisingly, books on drawing or composition sometimes fall into philosophy as the author tries to convey that the book only offers training wheels. Jesus is supposed to have said that all of the Law can be reduced to one thing: love. All the laws of aesthetics reduce to one thing: beauty.

Imagine a person who doesn't seem to know what love is. Speculate about what happened to cause that. Maybe this person could "overcome" it. But some would say this wouldn't be a matter of growing a capacity for love, but undoing the structures that are blocking it. It may be that those structures formed originally for protection. There's a similarity there to the way artists talk about striving to be transparent like glass to inspiration... to undo the things that block it and muddy the outcome.

How does it tie into the other disciplines you mentioned? — Sentient

It came to me recently because I was trying to understand something about Islam. I read three books about it and back up material to understand the books.. and one day I realized this path wasn't leading anywhere. I was on the verge of dropping it. All at once the Keats quote went through my mind. For a second I gulped because applying that idea to understanding Islam seemed like something that was way too arrogant for me. But as it settled in, I realized the truth. The answer to my question about Islam can only be answered by seeking aesthetic truth. And nobody can hand me that. I have to find it myself.

Brian Greene's book The Elegant Universe points to the way a sense of aesthetic truth can influence scientists.

To this end, it would be interesting gathering views on what 'bad art' constitutes and why. — Sentient

This question coincides with my recent ponderings about truth. I don't use one theory, I use several. One of them is aesthetic truth. A statement of that theory could be:

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," – that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know -- Keats

It's this theory that applies to judging art, understanding morality and justice, understanding cultures, religions, science..and other things.

Are skeptical probabilities not enough to pragmatically determine if something is real or not? So being sober and fully rational would make experiences more probable of being true than experiences under the influence or while in an irrational mindset? — darthbarracuda

Pragmatism is focus on outcomes. A pragmatist accepts a thing as real "for all practical purposes" and finds no value in trying to go beyond that. If you're driving down a highway, it's practical to accept that the road is real and will meet your tires as you speed along. If you lack sobriety, you shouldn't be driving a car... not because you might lose confidence in the reality of the road, though. It's because your ability to react appropriately is diminished.

What do you mean, "interpretation"? Sorry, I was confused with this part of your response. — darthbarracuda

My theory of "experience vs interpretation" comes from the fact that I had dreams that came true when I was young. As an older teenager, I decided that it was my mind playing tricks on me. That was a nice theory, but committing to it set me on the course toward a crisis. If I accepted that my mind is dysfunctional, what was the basis for ever believing its testimony?

My solution was to set a rule for myself. I won't ever deny what I experience. I experienced having dreams that came true when I was young. What I won't allow is inflexiblity of interpretation. I don't know what it means that I experienced that. Maybe there was something wrong with the chemistry of my brain. Maybe there's more than one way to experience events in time and a dream can be an alternate to the waking mode. I don't know.

I note that some realists would be outraged by my flexibility. Bottom line is: it's not like I have a choice. Maintenance of my sanity is my responsibility. I've done a pretty good job. Unfortunately, that doesn't translate into a sturdy argument. :)

What if you are on LSD and see a zebra prancing down the street? Is that zebra real? — darthbarracuda

I cross myself like a Catholic when I relate some of the stuff I experienced on acid. Never saw a zebra, though. LSD isn't a so-called "true hallucinogenic." Datura is. It undermines a person's ability to tell the difference between what's real and what isn't. Conventional wisdom says only fools take it because nothing good comes from it.

But to answer your question, if I saw a prancing zebra, I wouldn't deny what I saw. Deciding what it means that I saw it (whether it was real or not) would be an interpretation.

Presumably, if one can assume they are in a rational state of inquiry (not dreaming, high, or hallucinating), then things that are perceived by the senses can be seen as real, as in existing. — darthbarracuda

Yes. In fact, I won't ever deny the data of my senses. I saw what I saw. I heard what I heard. I will allow some flexibility with interpretation, though. Reason might conduct some negotiations where there's doubt.

The problem that I see with this is that exiting the "reality bubble" has the effect of making all fictional claims seem like they are not truth-apt, not just the ones that we can't know the answers to. So at this point I'm not convinced that we can leverage that idea to support the notion that complete knowability is the criterion for unreality. — Aaron R

I claim that Moby Dick is a fictional whale (as opposed to a squid). That statement is true. But you're right.. I don't think the scientific community knows everything there is to know about whales, so there could be unknown truths about Moby.

Yea, I think you killed my theory.

LOL. I wonder why we zero in on that.

There remains the question of why should a historian ever decide to write a history. — Mariner

Imagine that you woke up with amnesia. You find out your name and occupation, but none it means anything to you. You don't know who you are because you can't remember your history. The oldest histories, like the Old Testament, are like community memories. They keep the community from falling into amnesia.

Interestingly, one interpretation of the epic of Gilgamesh, particularly his search for immortality and his meeting with the flood survivor (kind of like Noah), is that it's about the magic of writing... writing bestows immortality.

Because that's what a thing that was interested, and could understand would do. Pretending to understand is often considered polite, walls aren't polite. — Wosret

So it has some sort of software? Imagine you're walking through a garden and you come upon a statue. As you walk toward it you're startled by a voice. It seems to be coming from the statue. You peek behind it and laugh because there's sound system strapped to the back of it. You realize there must be a motion sensor somewhere. As you listen, it tells you that it's just a statue. It affirms that you are also a statue with a sound system and a motion sensor. Then it asks you what you think about that.

I think I'd have various thoughts... how contemporary art installations aren't really my cup of tea and stuff like that. But would I express my thoughts to the statue? I guess if you were there too and I was trying to make you laugh.

So if I respond to the OP, that shows that I don't believe the last sentence. Can I prove it's wrong? No. I can't prove to myself that I'm conscious. I can't prove what I can't deny.

Tell me all about it, I'm a zombie, and only pretend to understand. — Wosret

So with you, there is no understanding. Why would a thing which can't understand... ask for an explanation? I guess I would be posing that question to the wall. You would only pretend to understand it. It's kind of lonely to ask the wall questions. They just bounce back at me.

OP: I suggest taking a look at the ontology of Alexius Meinong. — Ying

Thanks!

Yes, I agree that "empirical" is not a property of objects. My point was that the real/unreal distinction is better understood in terms of the structure of justification rather than in terms of complete/incomplete knowability. I'm not convinced the latter is viable. For instance, does anyone know how many hairs were on Hamlet's head the moment he uttered "to be or not to be", or what Romeo had for breakfast the day before he died? — Aaron R

This had occurred to me. Fictional worlds imply unknown truths. But look at the statement: "Hamlet's hair-count was 90,000." Is that statement ever truth-apt? The term "reality bubble" comes to me to describe the way we enter fictional worlds, hypothetical situations, and even contemplate possibility. It's a kind of psychological act (to take Ying's inspiration).... to suspend disbelief and accept a fictional world as real. It's when we inhabit the reality bubble that it seems that there are things about Hamlet we don't know. Exit the bubble, and it's obvious that those questions don't have answers.

It's odd that you picked Hamlet. To me, he's a character who is trying to see beyond his reality bubble... which makes it an extraordinary play. I've found that not everybody interprets it that way, though.

. So what I'm proposing is that we understand real objects to be the set of objects that are referred to by the set of claims over which we do not have such authority (i.e. that are not ultimately justified by appeal to anyone's attitudes). Thoughts? — AaronR

Right. Although I think your point about Hamlet indicates that the set of real objects doesn't have a fixed membership.

The only way a computer is going to guess your password is if it's a really bad password, and password crackers have the same chance of guessing your password whether they have the database or not. Hashed passwords do not help the guessing.

And libel lawsuits can happen whether justified or not. I'm not a lawyer but I'd think anyone involved in any official way with this site should be very careful not to actually accuse Porat of a crime for which he was technically found innocent, or this site might be targeted over it? But lawyers feel free to correct me.

Obviously I'm not suing anyone. — Paul

OK. Let's say someone buys a database of login names and hashed passwords, but decides it's just not possible, given time, to crack the passwords that correspond to those emails. Really? OK. But he is in a position to start storing passwords that are typed in.

Compare this scenario with the notion of buying a 10 year old philosophy forum with the intention of growing it for the sake of ad revenue. Let's imagine that there is great success and in a matter of a few years, $5000 per month is coming in for various websites that have been developed. After taxes, a single owner in Montana would have a nice thing going. If it's three guys in NYC splitting the proceeds.. it doesn't become inconceivable, but there's something odd about it. How are they finding time away from their full-time jobs to work on this project, which for each of them is just a mildly lucrative hobby? Are they eccentrics or something?

Eccentrics or criminals? All it takes is the fact that one of the three has a history of being suspected of cyber crime to engender suspicion. Surely, if there's no criminality on the scene, dude will be happy to explain what happened that brought him to the attention of the authorities. But he says nothing that actually makes any sense, but appears to be turning away from opportunities to clear the air. Maybe he has recently addressed it. I haven't been over to the old PF site lately.

What I'm saying is that the mere fact that Paypal fraud and identity theft is big business whereas ads usually aren't, leads me to what I'd call a legitimate question here. That's it: a question. If anyone has actually accused anyone of a crime, I didn't catch that.

I realize unjustified lawsuits happen. Any moron who sues me for libel will come out the financial loser, though. If your intention was to warn people to avoid committing a crime, that's great. Let's just say that's all you meant to do and leave it at that.

Sane words. It just sounded like Paul was insinuating a threat. It brought out my "bring it motherfucker." As for moving on.. I wish the best for everybody including the old PF.

Libel against another website's owners is not a good way to get started. I suspect they have lawyers. And I find it very far-fetched that they're after anyone's password, especially since they'd expect passwords to be hashed. — Paul

Libel? What the fuck are you talking about? And no.. it's not far-fetched, Paul. How do you think password trafficking works? You don't sit there trying to guess a hashed password. You let a computer do the guessing.

Was the mention of lawyers supposed to be a threat directed at me?

So to give a simple example, justification for claims about Harry Potter will ultimately bottom out in appeals to claims about the attitudes of a particular person (i.e. JK Rowling), whereas the justification for claims about the chemical composition of DNA will ultimately bottom out in appeals to empirical observations — Aaron R

I was objecting to the use of "empirical" to describe a real object. My point was that "empirical" is a property of justifications for accepting the truth of a statement. Real objects have properties like tiny or red... not empirical. The dark side of the moon scenario i wrote about above is meant to make that point. Agree?

I think I can explore a number of the above answers with the same question:

Imagine that we live in a time when we can't see the dark side of the moon. We have the ability to imagine that the moon is a semi-sphere and that the dark side is flat. But we reject that, not on empirical grounds, but on the grounds that it defies reason.

In this case, "The moon is a sphere" is not based on observation. Wosret's comment that we distinguish the real from the unreal by virtue of the potential for effect along with Bittercrank's mention of the original case for the existence of Pluto both point to the part reason plays in distinguishing real from unreal.

McDoodle's view is undeniable. If you go to teach a youngster what we mean by "real" you'll inevitably find yourself pointing to things that aren't real to provide contrast. And the looming possibility here is that there really is no "ultimate" criteria for deciding that something is real. Frequently, as Hanover mentioned, the distinction really comes from getting on with life.

The theory that I posed in the OP comes from the hypothesis that a fair amount of the time, I am thinking in terms of indirect realism. My theory of truth is Correspondence. I'm looking for the representation that best corresponds to the real (mainly when I'm at work.. in my free time I'm a high-functioning lunatic). But I can hear somebody like Banno asking: why does your praxis have to be about representations?

What occurred to me was that of the realm of fiction, we collectively know everything about it because we made it up. It's the realm of the real that gives rise to the concept of the truth which is unknown. And in fact, there's a little bit of unknown regarding everything that's real. That's why I say I'm thinking in terms of representations. I take the moon to be real. But I don't know everything about it. It's here that the divide appears between my representation of the moon and the real moon appears.

If I left out somebody's cogent point... could you say it again?.

I'd suppose that from his point of view it's slander to bring up an incident for which he was found not guilty to make the implication that he was guilty. I doubt that it qualifies legally as slander, of course, as long as nobody actually outright says that he was guilty. — Paul

A problem I've had is that I don't understand what their business plan is. Of the possibilities, the one that's criminal makes the most sense to me. His response to the question about his past reinforced suspicion.

Gotta think.. will be back.

I was about to say I miss 180. How 'bout that?

Hi everybody!

I wanted to start this thread, but considering my history it would be a bit too self-indulgent.

For you: — Mayor of Simpleton

:D. Love it.

This is a song I come back to every now and then. It's about how there are multiple words surrounding you at all times. I first heard it on one of the first alternative stations. This station had trouble paying its bills so it disappeared from time to time.. Don't look at the video.. just listen to the song.. if you want to come closer to what it's like in my world :)

What song would you pick to say something about the world where you spend most of your time?

Reality is limited by what we can know and experience. . — Thorongil

But Thorongil, I know Santa wears a red suit. Santa is not real.

I tend to think of the real as that which is empirical. What exactly counts as empirical is already a philosophical question, but I'd distinguish the real from the existent, and from being. — Moliere

Would you say that empirical is a kind of justification? Statement X is true. The justification is empirical. Statement Y is true. This is justified by reason.

Couldn't both statements be about something real?

Or Tsar Alexander's Holy Alliance. Maybe there are different ways to think of origin.. the first appearance of the idea vs why they actually did it.

Regarding natural selection.. over time, some cultures survive and others are lost (often subsumed). Military power and some kind of intolerance (ethnic, religious, etc.) can both be seen as cultural survival tactics. A strong sense of group identity is perhaps another. The British had all three. Today, pretty much the same British imprint can be seen in places all over the world. The effects of that sort of thing can be somewhat hidden because when a perspective becomes ubiquitous, it falls out of consciousness. There are portions of the Islamic world where the British Effect is in view. Pakistan is an example of a nation that wanted to be an Islamic state, but the British culture it previously absorbed is stuck there. They can't get rid of it because it's part of who they are now.

This raises interesting questions about the role of the quite novel concept, the universal citizen, a class of individuals that really don't identify with any particular village, tribe, or nation-state, but rather identifies with humanity as a whole. This is actually reflected in material form with things like the previous League of Nations, or the United Nations today (although in practice it is merely an arena for conflicts over nation states), International Socialist Movements, Worker's Movements, Anarchist Movements, Marxism, International Solidarity, Doctor's Without Borders, and so on. The concept of the universal citizen has its roots, likely, in some sort of egalitarian thought, but was then co-opted by the nationalists into a concept that justifies empire and eminent domain over others. — discoii

The League of Nations and the UN both came out of despair related to world war. Like: "Surely we aren't stupid enough to keep doing this to ourselves."

I think you could look at nation-states in terms of natural selection. There was something about them that was irresistible in both positive and negative ways. If the rise of that form of life now threatens the human species, an alteration is on the horizon.

What is the movement of the moment? — Bitter Crank

There's a PBS show called Art21 which presents various contemporary artists and their work. A lot of it is about artists creating environments.. like sculptures the public walks through... lots of videos.. one lady sits members of the public down and just stares into their eyes. Weird, but fun.

So, to sharpen up the concern that led me to the OP: what is it that leads people to write histories of X? This is a personal decision; in theory, the historian has absolute freedom. But there must be some common trait or traits between salt, clothing, mammals, France, science, the West, the Universe and childhood; these are the stuff about which histories are written of. — Mariner

Someone suggested earlier in the thread that there is nothing that could not be a subject of history. The list of possible subjects you presented in the OP mentioned both human and non-human constructs. That's everything. Do you agree?

The answer certainly points up to some movement of the historian's being towards the preservation (or, the bolstering up) of something cherished. People write histories because (a) they thing the subject is meaningful, (b), they want other people to know about it, and (c) they think that, by telling other people about it, they are participating in the life of the subject. The historian creates and enters the history he writes. — Mariner

I started studying history because I came across the idea of social cycles. My ability to see and understand (broadly speaking) is dependent on my ability to see patterns. Early on in my attempt to see patterns in history, it occurred to me that my project was similar to seeing patterns in clouds. If I see a dolphin in a cloud.. where is the dolphin? Noticing that, I became bound to the contradiction. I'm blind without the pattern, but I don't have a passive relationship to patterns.

As contradictions play out, convoluted situations develop. I'm attracted to historians like John Ferling who explained that when he was young, he thought of history as a parade of ideas expressed in human action. As he got older, he realized that mass events are really the fusion of diverse individual agendas. The more simplistic a history is, the more inaccurate it's likely to be. And yet what the simplest history expresses is a pattern... like a skeleton waiting to support the meaning of fleshy details.

I settled down into doing what Nietzsche appears to me to have done. I allow myself to become passionate about a narrative only if I'm taking the pattern of it with a grain of salt. Another way to put it is that I realize in the background that the world is a mirror.

It is really up to the administrators here. The PF Facebook page, which I was removed editor of with the sale, — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Oh, I thought it was your page. Nevermind. :)

Tiff.. I was wondering... would it make sense to put a blurb on the facebook page that directs people to the old PF... just to explain what password trafficking is and how to stay safe?

The Rand analysis is nonsense. — Hanover

Well at least I mentioned a philosopher. That's got to be worth something.

Of course, I didn't say anything about Syrian refugees not wanting to settle down. Here, you might find these more helpful. Refugee, Migrant — Πετροκότσυφας

Right. An immigrant can start out as either one. Some of these refugees have no intention of returning. ISIS destroyed their communities. So those people would be immigrants.

Where money is involved, don't take any action personally and don't expect justice which doesn't involve a lawyer. Business is business.... I learned the truth of that saying through a bunch of stupid shit.

What the new owner of PF has is control over a fairly large amateur philosophy community. This site doesn't have that. Doesn't mean it couldn't develop into that.. but it would take a while.

So.. what do you want? The cool stuff that only comes with that larger community? Then just go back and see what you can do to preserve it. If the owner acts like a fascist.. don't sweat it. That's a waste of energy. Just make whatever he's doing work to your advantage. That's what he's doing in regard to you. And if you take this path.. remember not to be a jerk when Ayn Rand comes up. You're proving that she was right about some things... which she was.

If down the line, you find that Ayn Rand isn't working for you.. you can part ways having lost nothing.

I just want to share, though Baden. To me, you should just be some guy on the internet. But you're actually part of the way I realized that my only connection to Europe is the genetics of some of my ancestors. The truth in my world is all Ayn Rand. That actually hurt my feelings. I didn't want to know that. This last paragraph, which probably represents TMI (too much information) has a philosophical connection to your OP. Sort of.

Syrians (and not just them) are fleeing from war and persecution. They didn’t wake up and said let’s hike to Turkey, swim in the Aegean, sleep rough, be bullied by armed forces, probably die along the road, so that we can be laborers in Europe — Πετροκότσυφας

Right. I realize they aren't migrant workers. It may be a matter of semantics. A fair number of Americans are descended from immigrants who were also refugees. A refugee is not an immigrant if he or she has no intention of settling down. Maybe Europeans define the words differently.

It's a question that accompanies the global warming issue. We don't have any means for planning much beyond a hundred years. We've just never had to do it.

In some cultures an ancestral continuum is perceived. I think it's sort of like: imagine looking into a mirror and grasping that you are looking into the eyes of your ancestors. In your heart, you should know that they bless you. If you can feel that, then you know you bless your own descendants.

Me.. I love future humans. Is there some action I could take to help them? I don't know. There are too many variables. I find I have a certain amount of faith in them, though.

That's all fine and dandy, Hanover. I won't comment on the Enlightened Dutch and all that. I'll just say that your post is irrelevant. Syrians are refugees, not immigrants. — Πετροκότσυφας

You mean they aren't migrant workers? I think "refugee" will be a type of "immigrant" unless some measure is taken to isolate them. Is the EU building an Israeli style refugee camp?

The medical analogy [and more than analogy] seems to embody a number of philosophers, as the academic [Lyceum] model does as well. My sympathies lie closer to the medical model, though that would only be natural as one who isn't in academia -- I'd imagine the reverse to be true for someone who is. — Moliere

There's folklore that Freud didn't really want to help people, but since he was Jewish, it was easier to become a doctor than a theorist.

On the other hand, Mani (the founder of Manichaeism) was criticized for failing to spend more time healing people (which implies that sages were expected to be healers in his world).

I became philosophically minded at a young age due to questions that plagued me. A question can be like a wound. I made up a story once that talks about consciousness in terms of a primal wound. But my story says the healing of the wound is oblivion. The last lines of my story are identical to the first lines (which I recently found out is the way one really old version of the Gilgamesh epic is presented...)

That makes sense.

So long as he behaves himself. — Yahadreas

Speaking of which, would it be a problem to ban posters who have paid a fee? Would it be like incarcerating people even though they paid their taxes? Or more like breach of contract?