What is the history of Infinity? — TiredThinker

In Western thought, try the pre-Socratics, e.g. Thales, Anaximander - matter arises from "the limitless" - and for infinitesimal Zeno as Agent S says. There's a book about it: https://www.waterstones.com/book/infinity-in-the-presocratics/joseph-owens/l-sweeney/9789024711703.

In Eastern thought, try a whole new way of looking at the world that I don't understand. But somebody will.

Maybe, just maybe, the Bible tells us what the men and women of that time were doing was wrong. — Edward235

The wrongs done by men and women of that time and the warnings given by God are constant themes throughout the whole Bible. The subject is never left alone. The result of wrong-doing and the price paid for it by Christ are fundamental to Christianity. You write as if you have just spotted something that nobody else has noticed.

The stories within the Bible show us scenes of gore, rape, slavery, and so many more violent acts, yet Christians sit here and preach that we must do what the Bible tells us word for word. — Edward235

If Christians are telling you to murder, rape and enslave people then go and find another church. They are, as you suggest, not to be believed.

Kidding aside, the decision to take hormone blockers is very serious and can have long-term consequences, and I think is therefore best made by a mature mind. — praxis

True. I sometimes suspect there is an assumption that boys should be interested in fighting and baseball and if they show too much interest in wearing tutus and singing musical hits then they are actually girls and it would be best to get them sex-changed before any trouble starts.

...grades 1-3 of elementary school. — Ciceronianus

First kid: I don't have a dad and a mom at home I have two moms.
Second kid: Really? How is that possible?
Teacher: Please be quiet, you two. The law forbids me to encourage this conversation.
First kid: My mom said she's my first mom and my other mom is my first mom too! [Laughter in class]
Teacher: Let's move on. I could lose my job if I say anything to encourage such a discussion. Anyway, you are too young and immature to understand these things. [More laughter in class]
Second kid: Sir, what's a lesbian? [Hysterical laughter in class. Head teacher enters and suspends teacher]

I don’t think that biology is what makes someone “human”. — Average

It worked ok for me.

Imagine a world in which everyone is a moron according to someone else. — Noble Dust

In the future, anyone who is famous for as long as fifteen minutes will become a national treasure.

......what was his reason to include fossils? — EugeneW

That is something I would like to discuss with him when the time comes.

Ancient Greeks were not the fount of all wisdom. Still, some of them were some of the source of some of it. We don't need Euclid now. The Chinese never needed Euclid. We may still marvel at Euclid and at what he achieved.

And collectively, as a society, we have surpassed the Greek culture collectively as a society in wisdom. — god must be atheist

Well, I'm a Cynic in the more modern sense. I would not say that we have surpassed Greek culture in wisdom, only that we rival them in folly. There continues a lot to learn from the Greeks and learning from them does not mean deferring to them as authorities.

Justified True Belief has been refuted by the Gettier problems — Cidat

Has it? I thought Gettier drew attention to vagueness around the concept 'justification'. Something that counts as justification in one context may fail to do so in another. Looking like a barn is usually enough for something to qualify as a barn. In Fake Barn Country, looking like a barn is not enough to count as justification. Mistaking a dog for a sheep is not enough to justify a belief that there's a sheep in the field; even though, if it had been a sheep, it would have been enough. So what is enough? It's tricky. But Gettier doesn't refute JTB. Just gets us to think more about J.

While, in effect, the route to happiness is completely different. — god must be atheist

Well said. However, the Greeks were no fools. They knew about everything you said. And being Greek they had a philosophy to fit the occasion. It was Cynicism - live the simple life, the life of a dog, turning your back on the emptiness of social distinctions and material wealth. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Cynic-ancient-Greek-philosophy

I have an idea that two months ago the average English member of the public did not know whether Ukraine was a district of Russia (as Yorkshire is a county of England) or a federated country with devolved powers (like Scotland) or a province (like Northern Ireland) or an occupied territory (like the North of Ireland) or an independent country (like Malta - 'Oh, is Malta independent?') . They could not point to Ukraine on the map or name its capital or its language. Some of them would have thought it was part of former Yugoslavia. A few would have insisted it is a fictional country featuring in a Bond film. Most will have heard of chicken Kiev and some would know the reference in the lyrics to 'Back in the USSR'. And now? Now, I listen to phone in radio and it seems like every expert medical epidemiologist of the past two years has suddenly retrained as a military strategist with intimate knowledge of global politics and European history of the last 1,200 years.

Some questions and speculations sound dumb and are dumb and some sound dumb and yet aren't dumb and it's hard to tell the difference. Suppose you were travelling fast enough to keep up with a photon - would time stand still for you? That sounds crazy. What if things need a force to stop moving and not just to keep on moving? Bonkers. What if the earth goes round the sun? (Duh, step outside and you can see the sun going round the earth.) Etc.

I there is no way to determine whether a proposition is true or false, even in principle, then it is meaningless. — T Clark

I read an interesting challenge to this logical positivist view, called 'Toy Story'. When the cupboard door is shut the toys come alive. We have no way of confirming or disconfirming this story. But it has a clear sense.

Right, but in order to be a model of good behaviour one needs to be educated in ethics. — DingoJones

I don't think so. You just need not to be a bad person. Example: you lose your temper and take it out on the kid who didn't do nothing wrong. Then you teach them about the Kingdom of Ends. They will smell a rat. Kant, they will learn, is for people who care nothing for justice. Which would not be the learning outcome intended.

What would your own ideal education in ethics look like in elementary and high school? — DingoJones

I would remember that children and young people are amazingly observant, impressionable and very alive to hypocrisy. The best education is to model good behaviour. If we can't do that, ethical theories are so much yaddah.

Oddly enough, the issue was discussed from the opposite angle in another thread about 'hinge propositions'. There is a view that 'hinge propositions' are part of our 'animal' nature, an almost pre-verbal behavioural response rather underlies our core beliefs.

"Of course, their being ineffable does not prevent our hinges from showing themselves in what we say, but here too, certainty is animal. My hinge certainty that 'I have a body' is much the same as a lion's instinctive certainty of having a body."
— Danièle Moyal-Sharrock, p8

https://www.academia.edu/25773618/The_Animal_in_Epistemology_Wittgensteins_Enactivist_Solution_to_the_Problem_of_Regress


https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/652559

Sorry, still off-topic.

Just don't say any word beginning with the letter 'w' until you are ready to leave.

She doesn't analyze it. She just is. — EugeneW

I'm with you on this. Wittgenstein said that if a lion could talk we would not understand him. I disagree. If the lion said "I'm hungry and you look good to eat", I would get the idea.

When the cat scratches at the cupboard door it's because she believes her food is in there. To think she doesn't have beliefs because she doesn't have language I would have to have a pre-existing theory about beliefs that would stop me thinking that. But why should I?

[What has that got to do with the start of everything? I just saw the thread title]

When they put central heating in Oxford Colleges it must have made tutorials less exciting but quite a bit safer.

I think he is being pretty sloppy with terminology — KantDane21

Firstly I would double-check the third-person pronoun there before holding forth on that complaint.

My Creed has six items as follows:

I do not know the original cause of existence.
I do not believe anyone else knows.
I do not believe that anyone has a plausible account that would be likely to command widespread consensus.
I believe that if anyone has ever stated the original cause of existence truthfully, then it was sheer luck.
I believe that we will never know whether such a truthful statement has ever been made or by whom.
I do not believe that any assertion or denial as to the original cause of existence has any basis whatsoever.

The original cause of existence is, in that respect, quite unlike the cause of the formation of clouds, which are (relatively speaking) fairly well understood.

Do you trust Biden or Putin more with nuclear weapons? — Christoffer

I couldn't answer this question. I tried finding the one I trust less and then picking the other one but I couldn't do it that way round either. Maybe Biden. America is a civilised country. America would never be the first to use nuclear weapons. On the other hand, Russians are easily contented with a ready supply of vodka, animal fur, football teams and mansions in Knightsbridge. Making war would be the last thing on their minds. I give up.

I wonder if the church will ever absolve Eriugena’s condemnation — Dermot Griffin

Not until he apologises for calling the Frankish king a drunkard. https://twitter.com/iamreddave/status/1191325868553060354

You mean the fallacy of equivocation? — KantDane21

It could be that, if the claim is that (1) and (2) mean the same. Or it could be a non-sequitur, if the claim is that (2) entails (1) or the other way round.

Making sense of either statement is the first problem.

The meaning of the symbol "/" in (2) may be important. It is sometimes used to mean: "I am unable to find the right word and so I am writing two words which are both inadequate but which together may cause enough vague confusion for my lack of coherence not to be immediately obvious." That is an awful lot for "/" to mean and it may not mean that in this context. It's a very hard-working symbol.

One problem is equivocation.

Two things can be (a) not the same and (b) linked. So being the same and being linked are not equivalent concepts.

Another problem is sense:

"Thing-in-itself is appearance" does not sound like an English sentence. It may be garbled Kantian technical language. If so, then it needs to be expressed clearly. The same applies to the second statement.

I suggest you tackle the second problem as a priority. If a sentence does not make sense then it cannot be used in any argument.

To me, this would be a good time to think not as individuals, not as partisans, not as patriots, but as a species. Are we tired of living yet? — Olivier5

– “ … you must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on” — Beckett,The Unnamable

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” — Beckett, Worstward Ho

When you look at the division in Christianity in that part of the world there is definitely a much older feel. — Dermot Griffin

Ninth century is a little after my time, as you might guess from my name...:pray:

I was delighted to read his account of Eratosthenes's calculation of the earth's circumference and compare it with a twenty-first century version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yaYDOHL1Gg - Jonny Ball on Eratosthenes

Now, scaphia are circular vessels of bronze which indicate the passage of hours from the height of a rod that is set up in the midst of their base. This rod is called a gnomon, and from it as centre lines are drawn to the rims of the vessels, and these lines divide the whole circle of the sundial into twenty-four segments, that is to say, into the twenty-four intervals of hourly duration through which the circumference of the whole celestial sphere revolves about the earth until it returns to the position of the natural horizon which it held on the previous day. Therefore the aforesaid Eratosthenes by careful observation of the movement of the rod’s shadow through the segments of the sundial came to a clear understanding that the movement of the shadow through the hourly intervals about the rod [716D] of the sundial was proportionate [to the circuit of the night through the same hourly intervals about the earth’s circumference], so that whatever is observed in the vessels of the sundial [which represents
the sky] by analogous contemplation may be understood of the motion of the heavenly bodies. Thus, at the Vernal Equinox the length of the rod’s shadow is equal to half the length of the gnomon on Meroe, which is an island in the Nile, and at Syene, a city of Egypt. But the diameter of the whole circle of the sundial is also [717A] equal to half (the length of) the rod, and therefore both the shadow [of the rod at the Equinox] is (equal in length to) the diameter of the sundial ; and, because every diameter is doubled by [the very] sphere or circle of which it is the diameter, the shadow of the rod must describe a circle that is double (its own length)..... [etc.] — Eriugena

It's entertaining. — Olivier5

But only in the same dismal way as whistling in the dark.

What would a physicalist explanation of mind look like? — Agent Smith

I'll have a stab at it. We have an idea of what the proper functioning of various body parts and organs should be. Disease is, roughly, when there is a malfunction, for whatever reason. Physical intervention can redress the problem. It's the same with the mind. Someone's mind is not functioning properly. Let's hypothesise some physical cause and see whether we can fix it. When the mind is working ok, that is because the physical conditions are in place to allow it to do so. Also, as with the body, self-correction is possible. Just as I can mitigate back ache with physio exercises, so I can relieve mental distress with talking therapy. The effect of talking therapy is (under the physicalist hypothesis) to enable some self-correcting mechanism to start up and get my mind functioning normally again. As with physical disease, I may find interventions that work without knowing why. I don't know if any of the above is true. But I think it at least makes sense or is not wildly and obviously incoherent. But I've no skin in this game. If it turns out that physicalism is false then I can happily live with that.

Fascinating, thank you. J S E is linked with Platonism and I am struck also with the echoes of some pre-Socratic philosophy. The title Periphyseon - 'on Natures' - pluralises a title used by Anaximander and Empedocles - peri physeos. That's just a title. This passage on what can and cannot be spoken of and thought about seems to be a response to Parmenides, who also used the title 'Peri Physeos', who thought that all you can truly say of anything is that 'it is'. On the contrary:-

For whatever negation you make about Him will be a true negation, but not every
affirmation you make will be a true affirmation : for if you show that He is this or that you will be proved wrong, for He is none of the existing things that can be spoken of or understood. But if you
declare: “He is not this nor that nor anything”, you will be seen to speak the truth, for He is none of the things that are or of those that are not, and no one may draw near Him who does not first, by
persevering in the way of thought, abandon all the senses and the operations of the intellect, together with the sensibles and everything that is and that is not, and, having achieved a state of not-knowing,
is restored to the unity — as far as is possible — of Him Who is above every essence and understanding, of Whom there is neither reason nor understanding, Who is neither spoken nor understood, for Whom there is neither name nor word. — Eriugena

https://ia801709.us.archive.org/31/items/periphyseon-the-division-of-nature-by-johannes-scotus-erigena-john-joseph-omeara/Periphyseon%20-%20The%20division%20of%20nature%20by%20Johannes%20Scotus%20Erigena%20John%20Joseph%20OMeara.pdf

Why was he banned? Is it Eriugena or Eurigena or Erigena?

In other words, — StreetlightX

Not quite. I used exactly the words I needed to say what I meant. So it's an 'OK, I can take it' to being called 'bourgeois' (qui, moi?) but a 'no' to any hypothetical stalking, raping, and other lawless violence. 'Fascist' or not, it makes no difference.

As we cannot even Imagine a means of Creating a Consciousness other than by Evolution in a Material Reality — Michael Sol

I can grant that writer and others included in that first person plural cannot imagine it. But others have existed who can so imagine.

simply a silly recourse to Magic. — Michael Sol

And if we call their imaginings 'silly' then the job is, for practical purposes, done.

All very well. A position has been stated. Names have been called. But nothing has been established.

Created Consciousnesses do not count for the purposes of this Inquiry, because of the infinite regression of Creators' Creators Absurdity... — Michael Sol

I think this means - 'If it was God, then some prior Creator must have created God'. I think that is how to understand the statement. It leads to an infinite regress, as stated. But I'm not sure why we would think it is true - or false. No argument either way is given for the statement itself.

Refusing to sit next to J K Rowling reminds me of Harry Enfield's refusal to let Whitney Houston touch his garden railings. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqPAuotjkM4

Of all the things I've said, I wasn't expecting that to be the part to receive such a thoroughgoing exegesis. — Isaac

I apologise. I appreciated everything else you said and agree with much of it. I was throwing away a riposte to a throwaway comment.

So the crux of the conversation is, as you highlight, the fact of the matter regarding where we are on these scales, and how we decide where 'too far' is. — Isaac

Especially that. Thank you.

But I think I have been working to a different understanding of 'civil discourse' from other posters. I do not mean 'polite conversation'. I mean 'civil' as distinct from 'lawlessly violent'. So, for example, I would count (hypothetical) comments on these forums that I am stupid, ignorant, a fascist etc as part of civil discourse, however contemptuous, unfair or provocative such comments might be. I would count a plausible threat to bomb my house as not part of civil discourse. By 'shaming, hounding and making lives permanently miserable' I imagine not unfair and discourteous comments on the internet but stalking, death threats and similar.

Do I lack imagination? Perhaps mine is a little too active. When I read the expression 'eat shit' I think of some things that some people have made some other people do in reality and and with real faeces and not hyperbolicaly and metaphorically. And I know that the comment is hyperbolical and metaphorical. But I remember that such metaphors have been, are and could be unpacked into an horrific reality.

Ah yes, but we're in the comfort of our virtual lounge talking about it. If we can't even muster a virtual cheer for the virtual punching of a virtual Nazi then we've no hope.... — Isaac

You can find lots of people who will say anything and don't mean what they say almost anywhere else on the internet. If you've found an exception here, then you're just unlucky.

Some of the conclusions here could lead to odd conversations. Not so much "Congratulations on your pregnancy" as "Since you couldn't ask the poor mite whether it wanted to be born what gave you the right to inflict life on it?"

Ok, but I'm getting a bit lost in the debate. I think your fury and contempt may be getting in the way of you making the point. Of course when the secret police are at your door then no civil discourse will save you, whatever political name they give themselves. Where does my distinction collapse into name-calling? What is self-incapacity? Which Bush? and possibly other questions.

equivocating between fascists and their opposition — StreetlightX

The distinction I am making is between people who beat down your door to make you disappear and people who prefer dealing in civil discourse. It's a practical, content-sensitive distinction and the difference is plain to anyone who has or even has not faced that kind of threat. The ease with which the seemingly best-intentioned people can turn from the latter into the former is frightening. Whether they call themselves 'fascists' or anything else is, as you say, not covered by this distinction.

That if you seriously cannot 'distinguish' between that, then you lose all rights to make any political judgements - in fact any judgements at all. — StreetlightX

Finding excuses to deprive others of rights is another favoured strategy of tyrants. . My point is that these things are very tempting. We can all be tyrants or fascists, given the circumstances that allow it. Can we get rid of tyrants by being nice to them? No, you are right. We can't. Civil discourse is of no use when they break your door down and make you disappear. Can we prevent ourselves becoming tyrants? Yes, we can. That's where civil discourse comes in. Am I ashamed? For my sins, certainly, yes.