In terms of self awareness, simply posing a question to ourselves in our head could be considered ‘a prayer’ as we ask ourselves what to do. Often answers come to us when our thoughts are redirected towards other items.

It is does not take much to see that there is a connection between asking a question (or crying our for an answer) and said question/call being answered by some unseen force within.

A human’s sense of authorship shifts and changes quite a lot. Some people even believe we are just ‘passengers’ of a sort and that the claim to authorship is lain on after the said events.

Morality is absolutely ridiculous and silly. End of story :D

@schopenhauer1 What do you make of Ernst Becker?

And my point here was that the person was quite aware that he had a leg - not delusional. He ‘felt like’ the limb was not his own (and said so) and ‘knew’ that physically it was his limb but still wanted it removed.

The ‘logic’ used by the other person you mentioned claimed that ‘feeling’ is equivalent to ‘knowing/thinking’ something to be a true physical fact hence why I not responding to them for about a month - a little rule I have here that works well for me.

“model”

Bye bye (that means you get a response from me for around a month).

Have fun :)

The link I provided you numb nut :D

From a dictionary:

“A 'dogma' is defined as a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority and held to be incontrovertibly true.”

Truth is not directly what science is about. Science is concerned with how things work by refining proposed rules and laws and making observations.

Dogmatic attitudes have existed amongst science-based persons. Yet when evidence is brought forward they DO NOT deny the evidence. Evidence is taken into account and minds are changed. There is no ‘god’s word’ or ‘scripture’ that cannot be changed.

This is basic stuff.

Note: I am NOT saying that all religious people are aligned with such dogma but enough are to cause problems.

Cannot read it because not willing to give details.

It is obvious to me that people have plenty to offer on subjects they are not experienced in. It is daft to suggest that men cannot talk about women’s rights or that non-jews cannot comment about the holocaust.

If the article addresses why these idea have grown more of late (if they have) then what does it say?

It is nonsense to say only x can talk aboud x is what I meant. Busy atm … will read later …

In the OP

No. That is not the definition I was using at all. It is one plied by religious dogmatic types to justify labelling science as ‘dogmatic’.

Based purely on that snippet it is nonsense. I will read later …

No. Religious institutes have attempted to combine ‘dogma’ and ‘doctrine’.

There is no dogma in science. There is dogma in religions.

There are dogmatic and non-dogmatic people in both.

Not by the APA certainly not in the UK nor would I imagine in most European Countries.

Where do you live in the world? UAE? Saudi Arabia?

Perhaps if you read the OP and the link you would see? If you have and don’t see what it has to do with the OP I can only suggest you try harder.

That makes no sense. There is no ‘dogma’ in science because science makes no claim of absolute truth.

Just because scientists can be ‘dogmatic’ it does not mean that science contains dogma … that is just plain wrong. Religious texts on the other hand are the very definition of dogma by claiming to be irrefutable truths.

English is a messy language, but it bothers me that people choose their own meanings and uses for words to suit their weird ideological views.

Where is this? In an African country or bible belt state. I don’t really regard either as an authority.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

Er, no. That is not stating that homosexuality is an illness.

Any more nonsense to offer?

No. Science is not dogma. Scientists can certainly be ‘dogmatic’ though with their beliefs and ideas.

There is a reason why scientific theories adapt and change over time and The Bible and Koran remain exactly the same - one is Dogma and the other is constantly changing.

Is homosexuality an ‘illness’ too? It was classed as such not so long ago.

So your argument boils down to complete nonsense.

There are instances where people FEEL something yet KNOW that they are not physically the case. The woman who has had a burning sensation on her left arm for decades KNOWS her arm is not burnt or burning.

She does not walk around waving her arm around saying ‘my arm is burnt’ because she knows it is not.

Are so out of touch with basic argumentation that you think that ‘think’ and ‘feel’ are the same thing? Utterly ridiculous. Bye bye

Read again? It doesn’t matter what the physical truth of the matter is if someone ‘feels’ a certain way they ‘feel’ that way. That is not the same as saying they truly believe they are that way … like with examples of people who ‘feel’ physical pain yet there is no physical reason for them to do so (phantom limbs etc.,.). We do not simply tell them ‘you don’t feel pain so stop complaining’ and they know the ‘pain’ is not coming from felt source of pain BUT it is still felt.

It is delusional when they say they ARE that way. It is not delusional to say you merely feel a certain way. Why is that so difficult to grasp?

No I don’t have the reference. Watched the documentary many years ago.

Knowing you are not x and feeling like you are x are entirely different things.

I remember watching a documentary about a guy who felt like his leg was not his leg. He had to go through several stages of psychological evaluation to have his leg amputated. Sounds very strange on the surface of it but when you listen to how it felt the only other option would have been to have brain surgery (not that they knew how to fix it) … needless to say losing a leg was the better option.

There is a rather large difference between a beaver and human than there is between a male human and a female human.

Like a fellow human being? :D

Seriously, I think the big problem some people have here is simply down to how in society men and women are different and due to these differences people tend to act in certain ways towards each other. Men interacting with men, men interacting with women, a man interacting with women, and so on and so forth …

For someone trans, that is CLEARLY trans, this simply does not fit into common social interactions for many people - unless you live in the Manila or some other place where trans people are clearly a visible part of day-to-day life.

So how should we interact is probably the wrong question. It is more about how can we interact more often so as for such questions to become background noise like ‘how should men interact with women, or …’

I imagine for a number of generations to come people will have little to no interaction with anyone trans. Once CRISPR does what it is going to do the whole conversation is going to shift dramatically … so we have a few generations to yet so I just suggest we accept people believe themselves to be such and such, just like we should accept that someone who feels like they are on fire when they are not and know they are not STILL feels like they are on fire!

I was hoping to steer away from that topic and address the OP. Looks like that is no going to happen.

@baker Anyway, I never said buddhism was nihilism. I asked what @schopenhauer1 thought about buddhism and nihilism.

As for the other response you gave I will say the same thing I said to Schopenhauer fellow here … ‘no’ is not a helpful answer for me if am I to understand your position. Why no?

No because …

Oh! My mistake :D Maybe I thought you were other person.

I didn’t.

I was not talking to you.

In direct response to the question posed there is an obvious thing to do …

Do not except Schopenhauer’s view as the only valid view. He met his conclusion and came up with an answer to it (kind of) because it was his thoughts he knew best.

Schopenhauer makes good points but I certainly do not agree with everything he says - nor do I with any philosopher/person dead or alive.

To gain a feeling of ‘unity’ perhaps trying some psychedelic drug would help out there. I have personally been lucky to experience something I would describe as ‘more real than real’ (even though that makes no sense!) and there is no reason I can see that every individual is not capable of the same BUT I cannot give them the experience.

Ironically it was a state where all such human existential troubles seemed ridiculously childish … but I admit now that the effects of the experience have dulled with time. I relate all this to what Jung describes as the process of individuation. That may be a place to begin a journey to an answer for you. REALLY though, it is not an important problem … but you will not believe me and nor should you.

Well, we are wired to take note of novelty so being ‘content’ (as I would put it) is not really going to last indefinitely.

I still feel like you are using ‘exist’ in a way I cannot quite get to grips with.

I understand that some people just view human life as ‘eat, fuck and die’ too. I think that is a little shallow though. On the most basic level we map the world onto our and our understanding onto the world.

Familiarity is just that. Someone living forever in some mud hut may not find it at all fascinating or fun, yet if someone else visited they may be in wonder and awe at such a ‘rustic’ existence and point out some things to the person who occupies the mud hut that they had forgotten about.

An ever adjusting perspective is ‘living’ whilst going through the motions is just ‘existing’. To merely ‘be’ is not a ‘mere’ thing at all. Contentment will eventually lead to existential boredom because with nothing new there is no life. Some people are more open than others though. I am sure many are ‘content’ with what they have because they have a way of viewing their life in a certain way.

I certainly don’t buy into the idea of ‘seeking happiness’ as I find that term rather drab and meaningless. As for ‘meaning’ that is something we wrestle with and it is that that brings on existential questions.

That ‘meaning’ is something we construct is probably closer to what you are concerned with here maybe?

Hence parenthesis for ‘replace’

Read more. I don’t have my copy at hand to literally type in the exact passage. I’ve done so MANY times before.

The bit with ‘negative sense only’. Noumenon in the ‘positive sense’ is … well, to refer to it we can only do ‘negatively’. That is the point.

Is that your view or just a random sentence?

Empiricism is something. I am more inclined to lean towards empiricism I would say. What does what it does, does what it does. If it makes no logical sense to me it still does what it does.

The noumenal is not. The very term ‘noumenal’ is a ‘phenomenal’ (both technically and literally!).

Nothing is not nothing. Nothing is the way to refer to the absence of something somewhere not nothing nowhere (because that is meaningless drivel much like ‘potato on yellow under the is and but of it one two trousers’)

@Jack Cummins The basis of it is not that complicated really. That e taken on by many people in different ways is just part of a human’s will to own something expressed by another.

Nietzsche’s concern was how humanity would ‘replace’ religion. Layered within this are many questions like how do we act, why do we act, what do we need/want and we crave for in our inner most core (what we will)?

My view - related to this topic - is that we are all aware that we are more than what we are. Facing up to that and fully realising it is what life is about. The End.

Study physics instead of consulting naval gazers maybe? If Aristotle is your first point of reference I should not need to inform you that things have moved on in the last 2000 years.

Some questions are philosophical and some are not.

@schopenhauer1

It is hard for me to guess where you lie between buddhist views and Schopenhauer’s views on things so just say what you can in your words if possible please.

I do not think there is a simple solution or way to express such things but I will outline something that I find puzzling regarding these views in general.

“Compassion” is a primary focus it seems for both buddihism and Schopenhauer in terms of morality. Compassion is framed as experiencing the suffering of others in some capacity. Also, the aim to end all suffering is part of the doctrine of both it seems?

This obviously poses a problem that looks more or less like ‘the better of two evils’ in the sense that one cannot show ‘compassion’ and not ‘suffer’. So what they both seem to hope for is to ‘reduce suffering’ yet (for buddhists at least) this is embedded in the ‘belief’ that it can be nullified completely.

As for the ‘default position’ in terms of ‘boredom’. I view ‘boredom’ as a kind of stress due to lack of arousal. Basic hand to mouth living certainly has not been the norm for human living as far as we can tell - even back into prehistory. Leisure time is present for most animals, but the difference with humans seems to be our cosmological view (our ability to understand our physical space as ‘finite’). Maybe our recognition of our limitations is what causes an attitude of ‘striving’ (beyond basic biological functions including mating and reproduction)?

Then there is the relation of ‘mindfulness’ and ‘boredom’. The act of ‘mindfulness’ as a meditative technique is interesting here as it is not about ‘striving’ for a goal, nor is it really ‘boredom’. This technique is more or less like boredom in that it is a place where a new perspective appears from the unconscious.

The main issue I have personally with how you word our position is with the terms ‘existence’ and ‘living’ perhaps? As I said previously, what you seem to frame as ‘boredom’ I call mere ‘existence’ - a disconnection from ‘living a life’. This is one reason I am not a big fan of buddhism as it seems more or less like an easy ‘escape’ from life ironically.

Anyway, it is complex topic so pick through what you can and offer up any of your views if you wish.

I imagine you can this being viewed as wanting something for nothing. Do you view a ‘good life’ as getting something for nothing perpetually without worries of ‘burdens’?

Where do you stand on buddhist ideas and nihilism?

Because you have next to no idea what mathematics is.

Like I said though, it is not exactly easy to arrive at a vague understanding and I didn’t realise that merely manipulating numbers (such as what is done is high school and first year of university) is equivalent to calling yourself an artist because you have bought a set of paints.

Having the the ’equipment’ necessary to carry out a task does not mean the task is automatically carried out. That is the best analogy I can think of right now … other than to say it truly is pure magic! :)