Preferences against something, where you don't care for it.

In the sense that all preferences are, sure.

I want people to keep mainstream religious view to themselves and not influence society with them because I don't agree with those views--not most of them at least. I don't like the social mores they've contributed or amounted to.

And for Christian beliefs to be restricted in their influence, where others you favour are not? This notion that Christians should keep their beliefs to themselves, as if they should have no part in the discussion, seems ill considered given Christianity’s role in forming Western society, and what it can still offer us. Its admonishments against greed seem especially pertinent now, in our age of rampant and harmful cupidity. — AJJ

I don't agree with the majority of the ethical views of the major religions. So yeah, I want to see what I prefer have influence rather than stuff I don't agree with . That shouldn't be surprising.

This seems to assume Christianity has had no positive influence on Western societies, and also that there could somehow be a society that isn’t guided by its beliefs. — AJJ

The latter part I'm not thinking--I would just like (what I consider) better beliefs to be the influence.

Re positive influences of Christianity . . . well, I like gospel music a lot, and it's inspired some great art aside from that, too. ;-)

Religion may have a black spot or two or too many for Hitchens, but what of its all important message that goodness is great and evil is condemnable? — TheMadFool

The conventional religions have a completely warped view of what is good and what is evil in my view.

I agree that religions are very negative. They'd be fine if folks could somehow just keep their beliefs to themselves, but religions massively impact cultural mores, laws, etc. That's not just keeping the beliefs to oneself.

So, someone points to a piece of chalk, you can say that it's part of the set of "everything," right?

And if someone points to the emotion of love, you can say that's a part of the set of "everything," too. And if they point to Brownian motion, and so on.

You should be able to identify each thing as part of the set of "everything."

It fails because it can also explain A-time? Odd. — Banno

No idea what you're talking about there.

I don't think so? I'm not sure what that would mean exactly though. — csalisbury

In other words, for anything someone points to, literally or figuratively, directly or indirectly, it's part of everything. That shouldn't be difficult for you to identify.

Anyway, again, the stupid "always there or something came from nothing" problem is not the issue. The B theory fails because time is change or motion, and the B theory doesn't dispense with change or motion. It just moves change/motion to psychology or the so-called "illusion" of time, which means that there is time in the A theory sense after all.

I'm not sure why you're thinking of influence rather than a having an impact on others.

You can't get outside of it with because either the block of time always was there or there was nothing and then time suddenly appeared.

Someone only need erroneously to interpret completely innocuous action as being 'disapproving' — Isaac

Okay, but what does that have to do with someone disapproving action x without them feeling that action x is wrong?

If they disapprove action x, they feel that it's wrong. It's basically two ways to say the same thing.

I wasn't disavowing truth or reasonableness or anything like that.

I was explaining that I don't agree that science, philosophy, etc. (whatever we're talking about) have developed in a manner of continual improvement, with some unified progression where we increasingly have approached truth, getting nearer to it all the time. It's far messier than that, and I see it more in a way analogous to the arts ONLY in that there's plenty of good stuff and crap stuff in all eras. Some of the good stuff gets overlooked, forgotten, etc. Some of the crap stuff gets a lot of traction for reasons that have nothing to do with its merit re truth. There's a vast number of complex social interactions, with a lot of different social and psychological factors at play all the time.

That would be a very unusual definition of "authority" then. That term usually has connotations other than any random thing that someone does counting as authority.

In any event, so how would someone start the ball rolling re disapproving of action x without that person feeling that action x is wrong?

Good/bad are assessments we make, based on our prefences.

I believe nature is fundamentally logical and that it can be accurately described using logic IE maths. — Devans99

In my view logic and mathematics are basically a way that we think about the world. They're a type of language. So it would be saying that the nature is fundamentally English-oriented, say (which I don't believe).

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you but that's the B theory of time? — Devans99

No. I was thinking of it in terms of the A theory (because I don't think that the B theory even makes any sense).

With either the A theory or B theory, you can have infinite time or not, it can either have always existed or it could have been created at some point (re the latter, with A theory, if it was created it can't also be infinite, with B theory, it can be created and infinite).

can you expand some on that thought - — Rank Amateur

I see it more in a manner analogous to artworks. There's some good and bad (and everything in between) in all eras. It's not a progression overall from worse to better (or vice versa).

Would you see this as a progression of thought ? Similar to the progression of science? Would your logic be the same for Copernicus as it is for Aquinas ? — Rank Amateur

I don't see either as a progression in the sense of improvement.

Which is not a number. Basic maths says there is no number X greater than all others because X+1>X. No infinite numbers. So my proof holds. — Devans99

Right, there's not going to be a number. It's infinite.

You're not being a mathematical realist, by the way, are you? (I'm not a realist on mathematics.)

Would you exist if the moment of your conception was removed from time? — Devans99

If I were to always exist, there couldn't be a moment of conception for me.

There has to be a first moment of time (t) for the next moment (t+1) to exist, — Devans99

No, there doesn't. If it extends back infinitely then there can't be a first moment.(Also acknowledging that there are no real "moments," there's just real change or motion.)

They might, but it needs to be demonstrated. — Gortar

Well, the easy thing to demonstrate is that a lot of these influential folks haven't thought through things very well. A ton of well-respected stuff is basically crap in my view.

The problem there would be that you're saying that an infinite series has to be a (definite) number that's greater than any number. There wouldn't be a specifiable number, it would be an infinity.

Also, why would there have to be a first member for it to exist? That's contrary to what we'd be positing in the first place.

(Not that I want to focus on this issue, again--it's not the problem I'm referring to)

I actually don't at all agree with your first premise. I think social forces have more to do with it.

I'd say that an infinite regress is counterintuitive (and only because of the "always existing" notion), not incoherent. I'd ask you to explain how it's incoherent to you, but I'd understand if it's something you can't explain, as incoherence will often naturally be.

I explained above why B theory is stupid, because it doesn't get rid of change. It just moves it to so called "illusion"

Something always existing makes sense. You can't get something from nothing so something must have always existed. Could it be what always existed is the B theory version of time and space? — Devans99

If that makes intuitive sense to you then there's no problem with infinite regress.

And no, it can't be the B theory because the B theory is incoherent.

I see it more as time is something that enables change and enables cause/effect. Time flows even when nothing changes. If you have a clock and empty space next to it, time is changing equally for both. — Devans99

Obviously I don't agree with this. I don't buy that there is something, "space," that can be empty, either, by the way. In my ontology space supervenes on extension and extensional relations. It doesn't exist "independently" so to speak. (I also don't agree with necessarily linking time to cause and effect or to entropy.)

True, many people do not appear especially anguished, but we maintain that they are merely hiding their anguish or trying not to face it. Certainly, many believe that their actions involve no one but themselves, and were we to ask them, “But what if everyone acted that way?” they would shrug their shoulders and reply, “But everyone does not act that way.”

I have absolutely no clue what Sartre means with the word “that” in the question. Does “this” mean the belief that their actions involve no one but themselves? So then it would be
“But what if everyone acted in a manner that their actions involved no one else except themselves?”

I really want to take the most out of this small transcript of his speech... — Marius

"Act that way" --whatever way that Sartre finds dubious as a moral action, because of the categorical imperative. He's not specifying the action in question because he wants it to function as a variable where it can refer to any morally dubious action. He's pointing out that the "excuse" for the action in question is basically that the person can get away with whatever it is because not everyone acts that way.

Sacred cows are a bad idea. Really, it's all just people saying stuff. Everyone has reasons for what they say. This doesn't imply that no one is right, of course, but they're never right because of who they are, because of the amount and degree of respect they receive, or even because of their track record.

With B time, you still have the problem (for intuition) that it either appeared "out of nowhere" or always existed. You don't have an infinite regress, but the intuitive problem isn't the regress so much as either appearing "out of nowhere" or always existing.

But that wasn't what I was referring to. Time (in my ontology) is simply change or motion. Claiming that it's "just an illusion" then is incoherent, because the "illusion" involves change (it seemed like that, then it seems like this--that's a change) and hence it's not an illusion after all. Something changes or moves. That is time.

According to Aquinas, God by nature cannot have a body. — SapereAude

According to someone, any arbitrary thing you'd like to believe.

The only answer I can really give is "I'm not sure" because I can't manage to make sense of the B theory of time really. It just seems ridiculously incoherent and kind of stupid to me.

So you'd say that either there's no creation of heaven and earth until humans, as a species, develop consciousness, or that there somehow keeps being no heaven and earth for each individual until they're about five years old?

It isn't one. The proposition I was responding to was that the theory (of following authority) runs into the problem of having to find the first authority. I was just pointing out that this is only the case if 'the authority' is a single, universally known source. Where 'the authority' is your neighbour (and you are theirs) there's no need to find a first. Random variation takes care of that. — Isaac

In other words, if you're not saying that any random thing that anyone does counts as "authority," then you weren't really addressing the point he made.

Not at all. Imagine a game with three players. The rule is only that each player must only copy the others, no other actions are permitted. The game will proceed in complete stillness for some time as none of the players are permitted to move. But very soon one will twitch, sniff or cough involuntarily. The others will now follow suit. In theory, this will then lead to an endless stream of coughing as each copies the other, but one of them is going to get it slightly wrong, perhaps put a hand to their mouth by instinct. The other players can now copy this. Scale up to 7 billion players over a million years, add in a system of natural selection which weeds out behaviours which are excessively self-defeating and you have modern society. — Isaac

What sort of definition of "authority" is that?

On the one side, the statement “time today” may have a sole significance. — Number2018

Nothing has a "sole significance." Meaning is something that individuals do --it's an active, dynamic process executed by individuals, and it's done variously, by different people, at different times, in different contexts, etc.

"Confirmation" in the sense of proof a la "Can't possibly be wrong." That's what's not available. In order to count as science, any claim has to at least in principle or hypothetically be open to revision should conflicting evidence come along. That includes claims that people feel are very well-established, such as the spheroid shape of the Earth.

I'd say that everything could be described as a bundle of properties.

Re essence, it's simply an individual's criteria to apply an abstraction or concept. In other words, it's what an individual requires to call some x (some particular) an F (some universal/abstract/concept term).

If we weren't able to differentiate cards from other things, we wouldn't be able to identify them. — csalisbury

Are you able to identify "everything"?

What I am getting at is, does our brain require information to be processed into an artistic form in order for it to be completely accepted? — AngryBear

A worthwhile thing to contemplate when wondering this is how we could know whether our brain requires this or not. How would you know that what you experience while awake isn't just a direct line to what is the case external to you?

There's classical music and there's also the Classical period of classical music--the period follows the Baroque period and predates the Romantic period.

If you look at the common definitions of "classical," it explains why the music came to be known by that term:

(1) relating to ancient Greek or Latin literature, art, or culture.

Classical music extended ideas first established in Greek music theory

(2) (typically of a form of art) regarded as representing an exemplary standard; traditional and long-established in form or style.

Classical is the traditional form of non-folk music, and as the only type of "formalized" music for many centuries, it was seen as the exemplary standard.

relating to the first significant period of an area of study.

Again, classical was the only game in town re a formalized approach to music for many centuries.

Re why the classical period became the Classical period, if I remember correctly, that was the era when "classical" first came into widespread academic usage for the music, and for one, musicologists of the era wanted to distinguish the then-current stuff from the previous stuff. It's more that the small-c "classical" became the default term for that approach to music overall at a later time. (No guarantee that I'm remembering that correctly, though, and who knows if the professor(s) who told me that initially had it right.)

The basis of this comes from the idea that consciousness is a soup of natural instincts, emotions, knowledge, emotion etc. So if during sleep our dreams are a natural way to process information, then why is this not the case during waking life to some extent? Like a nutritious diet, this possibly natural thinking in the day could be more fulfilling to our unconscious whereas atheistic views could be damaging like a poor diet. — AngryBear

I'm confused, first off, why "consciousness is a soup of natural instincts, emotions, knowledge" suggests anything about religion/spirituality to you.

And then I don't understand what you're asking about dreaming. You're wondering why we don't dream when we're awake just the same way that we do when we're sleeping?