Human cults are much bigger. Based on the definition I invented, which is a social unit which claims for itself the right to decree truth, then cults can be huge. The entire Soviet Union was a cult for instance. They cared more about the truth of their doctrine than the empirical evidence that their country was falling apart. I would argue that the political affiliations in the USA (Democrat & Republican) are also cults. For instance, it is argued by some that gender is a social construct, even though this would have appeared absurd even to medieval peasants. There is also the view that criminals are victims and need support, and thus some large cities have done bail reform and let out lots of prisoners. These cities have seen an increase in crime and closure of stores such as Wallmart and Walgreens as a result, but the cult members blame the stores for closing rather than the city government for not punishing looters. My view is that cults are THE primary way that humans organize themselves in large groups, and thus you should expect to see them wherever there is large scale social cohesion. Some cults have more absurd beliefs than others. Identification with a cult is basically the same as asserting agreement with the truth statements of that cult.

My motivation for writing it was that I was lonely because nobody lived in the same world that I did, I was trying to understand why it's so hard to convince people of things, and I was woken up at 3am by my baby and couldn't get back to sleep,

I do not believe that my motivation was to make myself feel better than other people. I remember what this feels like. The main way it feels is that I feel better about myself when I convince myself of the truth of what I'm saying, and I feel offended when people don't agree. I was not feeling superior, but lonely and depressed, but if I imagined that it's just not in human nature to love truth and that most people are not going to ever understand what I care about if I care about the truth, then everything became simple, if a bit disappointing. I think I was also a bit curious to see what kinds of replies I'd get.

Ask yourself this: Are you willing to think about a logically viable world where a God does not exist? Or are you more concerned with getting other people to think of a logically viable world where a God must exist? — Philosophim

I was concerned with understanding and describing how people actually experience and think about God. I was concerned with phenomenology rather than ontology (apart from some speculative metaphysics related to the cosmological argument which I have not mentioned in this post). Since I was thinking about how people think about God, removing God from the equation would make no sense.

They're not curious as to whether there really is a God, they just want to preserve the emotional comfort and benefit their worldview gives them. — Philosophim

. This is the main point of this post.

Second, try to keep your topic focused. The values of necessary thought started with complaints about other people not reading or thinking about your topic, accusations that we're all cultists, and then a reference to fear of God. It's a bit all over the place right? And as you can tell from the replies that you got, people are going to take one or two salient points and address those. — Philosophim

. I agree with this criticism. But I do genuinely believe that humans are hardwired to live in cults. This is most of our social organization. This belief makes everything easier to understand. Of course, some cults are more extreme in their detachment from reality than others.


I am not so thin-skinned that I am not able to receive your criticisms. I have said much worse to myself.

I suppose I do think I am intellectually more capable than most people, but that is not what I meant in this post when I was talking about "stupid". I meant that a lot of people choose not to use what intelligence they have, because they just don't care about the truth. I would imagine that choosing to post to a philosophy forum is an intelligence filter, so that probably at least 1 person replying to my original thread has a higher IQ than me. At any rate, IQs are given to you for free at your birth, so they are nothing to be proud of.

It is a bit ironic, maybe, that I felt lonely because of how rare it is to be able to talk to someone who understands the things that trouble me (this is probably my own cult-instinct trying to find a group to attach myself to). But if everyone were in perfect agreement, I feel like there'd be nothing to discuss, and it would be boring.

I am a bit handicapped in pointing out what I believe to be the most stupid in arguments about things that are in the social consensus, because I believe that if I mention the topic, I might get immediately booted from the forum. But I have made arguments in the past (not on this forum), such as, "The same person cannot get killed twice," "Causes must precede effects", and then linked to some New York Times articles about the relevant subject. I got replies which denied all of these points. I literally got a reply that quoted me saying, "Causes must precede effects" and it gave a one word answer, "false". I also got a reply denying the existence of the New York Times articles which they could have found themselves on the New York Times website. These are the replies which are most stupid, and I believe that they are so stupid because it is a matter of social consensus, and most people are unable to think outside of the social consensus because of the extreme discomfort that it would cause them. If you are willing to understand the argument, it is easy, because it is kindergarten level deduction. But it is impossible to understand if you do not want to understand.

You begin with "On the Values Necessary for Thought" and end with 3 paragraphs on "Fear of the Lord is the Beginning of Wisdom." And you raise many issues in between. I do not wish to discuss all the issues raised and I do not know which of the many issues raised is the one you wish most to discuss. — Arne

I see that it is rambling. I suppose if I wanted to summarize the things I thought were most important for this particular post they would be: humans are hardwired to lie to themselves to please themselves, and to lie to themselves for social consensus, and these are blocks to understanding truth.

I started with talking about the importance of values (because otherwise the argument that values determine one's success in finding truth would not make sense). Then I talked about how it is I believe that humans are hardwired to live in cults, and evolutionary reasons for how this might have happened. Then I talked about what I consider to be the main point (how people lie to themselves, described in the above paragraph). Then the conclusion is basically that fear of having big problems from real life causes people to not want to lie to themselves.

BTW, I didn't get any replies to this thread so far that I thought were stupid. I don't agree with absolutely everything that was said, but everyone wrote coherent thoughts that were on topic that I was able to understand. What I consider to be most stupid is when people are completely off-topic, or when I am not able to figure out a coherent argument from what they have written. Maybe pointing out the behavior that I didn't like made people self-conscious and not post those things.

For my part, I'm with Dewey in believing that we only think when confronted by problems or situations we wish to resolve. What we consider problems or wish resolved will be determined by what we value in many cases, obviously. — Ciceronianus

So we are not really in disagreement on that point.

I guess this is hard for most people to understand because it's a new way of thinking about it, but when I was thinking about God, I was thinking about, "What things do people actually experience that they associate with God? What are these things and how do they work?"

So then you get God as morality, God as creator of the universe, God as the ordering principle of the universe, God as social consensus, etc. These are things that people actually experience and associate with God. You are free to redefine God as a bowl of fruit if you want, but I don't think very many people experience God as a bowl of fruit, so, it wouldn't really explain much about our behavior.

Because people experience these other things, you can ask questions like, "How do they work?" So like, for instance, Christians, and especially Protestants, seem to associate their conscience with the Holy Spirit, which they believe is infallible. If the conscience is actually just a subjective private voice, then this would go a long way towards explaining why there is so much confusion in the church when so many people are convinced that they are right.

God as the ordering principle of the universe is not distinguishable from the laws of nature. If you imagine that there is an unconscious God who makes matter operate according to fixed laws, then this is really not different than a secular person's conception of the laws of nature.

It is a whole other question entirely to what degree the ordering principle of the universe is associated with a persons' conscience, but they are related by both being things that people typically associate with the idea of God.

The main point of this post, however, was that it seems like a lot of people reply only to buzzwords and do not try to understand the content. So they see an argument like this, and reply as if I were asserting that God were a magic man in the sky who tangibly answers prayers.

You can use a truth table to prove NOT X <-> (X -> F).
(X -> Y) <-> (X -> F) in the case where Y is false, so this applies to Curry's paradox as well as "this sentence is false".
— Brendan Golledge

Yes:

|- ~X <-> (X -> F)

If Y is false then (X -> Y) <-> (X -> F) is true.

That's not Curry's paradox.

Then you take your definition X := (X ->F) and substitute NOT X for the second part.
— Brendan Golledge

Who does that? You? Did someone previously define?:

X := (X -> F) — TonesInDeepFreeze

To add to the above:

If X := X->Y then X <-> (X->Y).

But we don' t have the converse that if X <-> (X->Y) then X := X->Y.

So X := X->Y is not equivalent with X <-> (X->Y).

So we can't dispense the paradox by incorrectly saying that it reduces to X <-> (X -> Y). — TonesInDeepFreeze

It seems to me that everybody is being super-pedantic about this. I am studying formal logic informally (without being in a class), so I'm not surprised if I'm not using some symbols correctly. However, the logic should still work

Who does that? You? Did someone previously define?:

X := (X -> F) — TonesInDeepFreeze

"X -> F" is supposed to mean, "This sentence is false." "X := (X -> F)" is supposed to mean "This sentence says, 'This sentence is false'."

That's not Curry's paradox. — TonesInDeepFreeze

I've seen in multiple sources that Curry's paradox is defined as X := (X -> Y), and some of them then change it to X <-> (X -> Y).

If X := X->Y then X <-> (X->Y). — TonesInDeepFreeze

You yourself said that this is allowed, so I don't know why you are arguing with me about this.


I am new for formal logic, but I understand algebra just fine. If I define Y := X + 1, then it is impossible to say that Y is false, because Y has no outside definition. However, if I define X := X + 1, then this obviously involves a contradiction. It seems the same ought to apply to formal logic. I do not see how you guys can argue about this so much.

Maybe the difference is that I come from a physics background rather than a math background. If I can make the math give me the answer I want, then I think it must be right. What I'm doing here gives me the answer I want, because the truth table for "This sentence is false" shows that X <-> NOT X, which is the same answer you get by working through the paradox with human language. In Curry's paradox, the truth table gives that the sentence is self-contradictory if the assertion is false, which resolves the paradox. It seems to me that mathematicians get stuck on arbitrary definitions & distinctions, like := vs <->, even if doing so makes everything harder and nothing easier. If the proof of Curry's paradox is correct, then we get that logic is broken, because there is a paradox. However, using a truth table to check the definition shows that the definition is contradictory, and thus there is no paradox. It seems bizarre to me that people are arguing with me that I can't check the definition for consistency when doing so makes everything so simple.

To add to the above:

If X := X->Y then X <-> (X->Y).

But we don' t have the converse that if X <-> (X->Y) then X := X->Y.

So X := X->Y is not equivalent with X <-> (X->Y).

So we can't dispense the paradox by incorrectly saying that it reduces to X <-> (X -> Y). — TonesInDeepFreeze

I can do the same thing without equating := to <->


You can use a truth table to prove NOT X <-> (X -> F).
(X -> Y) <-> (X -> F) in the case where Y is false, so this applies to Curry's paradox as well as "this sentence is false".

Then you take your definition X := (X ->F) and substitute NOT X for the second part.

Then you get X := NOT X

Clearly, there has to be something wrong with that definition.

yea, I missed option 2

Somebody asserting that something is logical doesn't make it logical. I'd have to actually read their arguments to be able to judge their reasonableness. We do know that the supreme court can make mistakes, because it has reversed its decisions before. Considering that there is no precedent in the history of the USA prior to SS of arbitrary wealth transfer from one person to another, and that intellectuals during the time period repeatedly warned about the dangers of such things, I am still really skeptical that the founding fathers would have agreed with the modern conception of welfare. If you continue this principle, if white people wanted (or any majority), they could simply vote to have everyone else's property, call it "welfare", and it would be legal.

Yes, I really don't like the 16th amendment, but I decided to focus this post on unconstitutionality, and since the 16th amendment is part of the constitution, it is not unconstitutional.

I think I got the basic idea. I've never seen anybody else say stuff like this before. You would think that this stuff would be fundamental to our way of being, but most people don't care.

I had a very similar idea about existence itself being good, but from a totally different argument. I like the original post, because it does seem to objectively prove (if we treat a "reason" as being "something", and assume noncontradiction) that morality cannot exist if there is no existence. My proof just shows that it's possible to believe that existence is good without contradiction.

I started the proof with the a thought experiment: What would the moral value of the Earth be if all life on it died? It seemed to me that the obvious answer would be that it would have about the same value as Mars, whatever it's value is. But it does not seem to me that Mars is evil.

If we assume that existence is good, then bad can only be the loss of existence (such as how murder is bad because it takes away the life of a man, which is good). In this case, God can't take anything from us which he didn't give us first. We cannot be killed until we have first lived. We cannot lose our health until we had it first. If pain signals the loss of health (which it usually does, since this seems to be its purpose), then we cannot feel pain unless we have first had health. From this line of thought, it makes eternal torture seem like a strange idea, because if you felt pain continually without losing all your health and dying, then it means that that pain is meaningless. I suppose if God did create a place where we could be tortured indefinitely without dying, that would be a very strange and bad thing.

Anyway, if a person can accept that nothing is not evil, and his bad circumstances are not worse than a meteor destroying all life on Earth, then it must follow that his circumstances are on the net good. What appears to be very bad is actually just the change from good to less good.

In Genesis, it said that every time God created something, he said it was, "good." So, I think people have been wrestling with this idea for a very long time.

I typically think of values as being arbitrarily asserted, so, it is more natural for me to make the claim, "It is possible to claim that existence is net good without contradiction," than to prove, like you appear to have done, that existence must be good if morality exists at all.

I have 2 more similar arguments: It appears that only living beings have the experience of "good" and "bad" (this observation is so fundamental, you might actually define life as being those things which have preferences). So, if we want our values to have an affect on the material world, then we must limit our morality to the actions of living beings. It could have an effect, for instance, if I teach my daughter not to steal. It will have no effect whatever if I said the same thing to a rock.

The second argument comes from evolution/game theory. It seems to be necessarily true that those moralities which are good at propagating themselves will become more common, and those that are less good will not propagate themselves. I like to call this "God's morality", because assuming that God made the world the way he likes, then God likes moral beings to try to propagate themselves and their morality. This is the morality that WILL BE.

Technically speaking, the is-ought dilemma still holds, so that these observations are only objectively moral if we assume that we want our morality to have an effect on the material world, and if we like for our morality to not be self-defeating.

The second argument leads me to the idea that morality is enlightened self-interest. I am composed of several parts, including a body, mind, and "heart". I am also a cell within a social body, and I am incapable of propagating myself into the distant future by myself. So, it makes sense that I ought to take care of each of my parts: take care of my bodily health, educate my mind, try to find (or assert) the good, try to do good to my social unit, etc. This train of thought leads roughly to the standard morality that most people would recognize.

I'm skipping over the middle pages btw, because it's too much to read.

I think there is some confusion about moral subjectivity/relativity/objectivity.

The question can only have 3 answers: there are no true moralities (nihilism), there is one true morality (objective morality), or there are many true moralities (subjective/relative morality).

If you are treating morals as being "real" in a similar sense to how we believe our sensory experience is real (like that there really is something that one ought to be doing), then the only true answers are that there are either 0 or 1 morality. If we believe in reason (noncontradiction), then we cannot believe that there are two distinct moral systems that are equally valid that have different prescriptions. There is either only one true morality, or there is no morality.

I think in practice, many people claim to believe in relative morals because they want to have their cake and eat it too. If there is a contradiction in a logical system (such as evidently exists in the simultaneous reality of contradictory moral systems), then anything can be proven to be true. This means that such a person can be filled with righteous indignation when somebody does something that they don't like, and likewise feel righteous when they themselves do the exact same thing.

When you say that you are a moral relativist, if you mean that you observe that different people appear to have different moral opinions, then this is a sensory observation rather than a moral stance.

It is not subjective because it is necessary to avoid a contradiction in the question of morality, and necessary for morality to exist.

This is a metaethical claim, and what justification or argument do you have for it? Avoiding contradictions, as a normative judgment, is not necessarily a judgment that expresses something objective. — Bob Ross

If noncontradiction is not an objective stance, then there is no logic. "Objective" as I understand it means that it's something that everyone can look at and agree on. If noncontradiction is not an objective preference, then no argument can convince, and we are all wasting our words.

Your distinction between normative and metaethical confused me. Do you have the idea that there ought to be a basis for morality outside of morality? We have the experience that values are arbitrarily asserted, so this doesn't really work. Because of the is-ought dilemma, it is impossible to make moral conclusions without assuming moral premises. If you are looking for a basis for morality outside of moral assumptions (such as that we do not like contradictions), then your search is futile. In my phenomenological metaphysics, I treat sensory experience, reason, and values as all being independently properly basic. This is because we cannot prove the validity of our sensory experience without reference to our sensory experience, we cannot prove that reason is reasonable without reason, and we cannot prove that anything is valuable without first assuming that something is valuable.

So what's the difference? One is a definition and the other is a logical equivalence? I don't think you can get away with any arbitrary definition. If I define X to be equal to 2, then it must be that X is also equal to 2. I feel like you are just playing semantics. If I define X to be NOT X, then that is a contradiction. C := "If C, F" is also a contradiction, if F is false.

I think these paradoxes can be solved by using a truth table on the definition.

If you say, "X is false", clearly that could be represented as X -> F. Then if you say that X is "this sentence," then you could write something like "X <-> (X -> F)". This is very similar to the sentence used in Curry's paradox: "X <-> (X -> Y)", where Y is any arbitrary statement.

If you do the truth table for X, Y, (X -> F), & (X -> Y), then you see that the definitions are simply false. "X <-> (X -> F)" is exactly backwards, so that "NOT X <-> (X -> F)" is a tautology. "X <-> (X -> Y)" is only true if X = T and Y = T.

Michael said earlier that a definition is not truth apt. I can see how that would be the case if you defined an entirely new variable, such as Z <-> (X -> Y). However, since you are setting X equal to itself, you can do a truth table on it.

I remember hearing that if a system contains a contradiction, then anything can be proven. So it makes sense to me that the premise in Curry's paradox contains a contradiction, hence its ability to prove any arbitrary statement.

I believe this is the logic of humor: It is something we find both valuable and unexpected.

This explains why a new joke is funny, but its funniness rapidly diminishes with familiarity.

It also explains why jokes which some people find funny are offensive to others. For instance, I remember a joke I heard while visiting relatives out of town. A guy said he saw a chain of Obama-voters going to the voting booth with their heads stuck up each others' butts. His friends thought it was funny, but my parents voted for Obama, so they did not think it was funny. I believe this is the logic: the man believed that Obama was bad, and that the conservative tribe was good. So, his joke was in essence a way of saying, "Obama bad. I am in conservative tribe," but he said it in an unexpected and graphic way, so his friends, who shared the same values, thought it was funny. My parents, who had opposite values, thought it was offensive. My mother, however, who hates trump, used to make anti-trump jokes and comments, and to her surprise, this alienated some of her relatives. To give another example, one of my favorite jokes (which I hardly ever share), is, "My pee pee is big enough to fit inside two women at the same time." I believe this is the logic behind why I think it's funny: I have polygamist tendencies (which I've never acted on), and like most men, I like to imagine myself to have sexual prowess. So, when I make this joke, it is a way of expressing this is an impossibly extreme way. My wife, however, who is jealous of my affection, hates this joke, which is why I only ever told it to her once.

I believe humor is an evolutionary way of making us pay attention to important information. Much of humor is social or sexual in nature, because we are hardwired to care about these things.

I read through the previous posts to see if anyone else had already said something similar to what I was going to say. I think this is the closest one.

The philosophy of humour has its very own Stanford encyclopaedia entry by John Morreall. Plenty of philosophers have wondered about humour; most unexpectedly, Thomas Aquinas. Humour involves play and incongruity, the recognition and upturning of norms. It’s bound to be a worrying phenomenon for sensible philosophical types. Perhaps its time has come. If the world has become absurd enough for more people to get the joke. — mcdoodle

Welfare is Unconstitutional:

The 10th amendment says, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Nowhere in the constitution does it say that the government can take money from one person to give to another person for private use. The constitution does say, "The Congress shall have Power To ... provide for the ... general Welfare of the United States," but the meaning of the word "Welfare" here is different from the modern usage. It is one thing to take money from both person A and person B in order to provide for common defense, or to build a road that they can both use. It is entirely another matter to take money from A to give it to person B, entirely to person A's detriment and person B's benefit.


"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury." Alexander Fraser Tytler (not a founding father, but an educated person sharing an opinion from the time period)

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!” – Ben Franklin. This quote is directly applicable to the issue of modern "welfare"

Personally, I hate social security in principle. In the best-case scenario, it is a way of forcing irresponsible people to save for their retirement. As it is actually implemented, it is a pyramid scheme which transfers wealth from the younger generation to the older generation. It exists to take food out of the mouths of the children so that the grandparents can be idle. IMO, one's elders are due honor because they made sacrifices in order to give you life which are impossible to repay. If, however, your elders try to force you to pay them back the debt you owe them, then they have voided all honor due to them.

Anyway, looking up a pie chart of US government spending, it looks like roughly 50% of the federal budget is spent on welfare, which is 100% unconstitutional. Another 16% is spent on the military, which has only been used illegally since 1945. Also, as discussed in the first post, 100% of our money is illegal. So, we can see so far that 100% of our money, and roughly 70% of what the government spends money on is illegal.

Contradiction 9: 100% of our money, and +70% of what the US government spends its money on are unconstitutional.


BTW, Washington DC could disappear, and everyday life for most working people would change very little, apart from getting the equivalent of a 50% pay raise from reduced taxation. Most of the services that people use every day (like roads, police, courts, firefighters) are paid for by state and local taxes. There is very little that the federal government takes in taxes from a working person that he will ever see back again.

Slavery is legal:

The 13th Amendment says, "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

Court ordered alimony is literally involuntary servitude, and in the case of no-fault divorce, it is not a "crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted."

Contradiction 7: The constitution says that slavery is illegal, but alimony from no-fault divorce fits the literal definition of involuntary servitude.


There are no familial rights:

The 5th amendment says, "No person shall be ... deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." If you have a right to liberty and to property, then how much more should you have a right to your own children? Yet many men are divorced for literally no reason and denied custody of their children. Child protective services can also take your children from you without "due process of law". The first amendment also grants freedom of assembly, and yet many fathers in the USA who have been convicted of no crime do not even have the right to see their own children.

Contradiction 8: A person nominally has the right to assemble, to liberty, and to property, which cannot be taken away without due process of law, yet many fathers who have not even been accused of a crime are barred from seeing their own children.

All wars are illegal:

The constitution says, "The Congress shall have Power To ... To declare War ... "

The last time the US declared ware was during WW2, and yet wikipedia lists 33 separate armed conflicts that the USA has fought since WW2.

If the founding fathers intended for the president to be able to wage war without a declaration of war, then the power of congress to declare war is meaningless. If they did not intend for the president to be able to wage war without congressional approval, then all of these wars since WW2 have been illegal.

Contradiction 6: All US wars are unconstitutional.

If definitions aren't subject to truth apt, then can I say, "Let 'X' mean a married bachelor," and that this sentence is not truth apt?

You can also do a truth table of X, Y, and X -> Y and see that X <-> (X -> Y) is false. — Brendan Golledge

Is this statement false? If I've done the truth table right, then it means that the first line of the proof is wrong.

It seems to me that steps 1-4 are circular reasoning. You can't use a definition to prove part of its own definition. You can also do a truth table of X, Y, and X -> Y and see that X <-> (X -> Y) is false.

I was curious about how it is possible that we can not be understanding each other, so I went to look up Curry's paradox. I was surprised to see that it is supposed to be a legit paradox.

1. X := (X → Y)
2. X → X
3. X → (X → Y)
4. X → Y (from 3 by contraction)
5. X (substitute 4 by 1)
6. Y (from 4 and 5) — Michael

1. X means that if X is true then Y is true (definition)
2. If X is true then X is true (law of identity)
3. If X is true then if X is true then Y is true is true (switch in the definition of X given in (1))
4. If X is true then Y is true (from 3 by contraction)
5. X is true (switch out the definition of X given in (1))
6. Y (from 4 and 5) — Michael

I did not understand number 5, because it seemed obvious to me that X was false (or I was at least very skeptical), so I did not see how substituting it into itself could turn it true. The source I read explained that step 5 is modus ponens, and given the definition (1), it works. But the paper went on further to prove that if 6 is false, then 1 must also be false. So, it is a bad definition. I hadn't worked through all the logic yet to see the paradox, but I did see that it was false.

:

A) if this sentence is true then Germany borders China
B) if (A) is true then Germany borders China — Michael

If A is false, then B is not false. Given the definition of the sentence you are using, A is false (or meaningless) and B is true.

"A" is not the same as B: "if A is true, then the statement given by A is true". B as written here is true regardless of the truth value of A. I could just as well write, A: "The sky is pink" and B: "if A is true, then the sky is pink". This A is false and this B is true. — Brendan Golledge

So, I guess I just never accepted that the sentence was true, and that's why I did not see the paradox.

"A" is not the same as B: "if A is true, then the statement given by A is true". B as written here is true regardless of the truth value of A. I could just as well write, A: "The sky is pink" and B: "if A is true, then the sky is pink". This A is false and this B is true. — Brendan Golledge

Going over this part again, I understood the whole argument to basically be:
A
B: A -> A
Therefore, A

B is true, but we don't know anything about A without more context. I guess this is not what you wrote down formally, and I just didn't get it, because I interpreted your words to mean the A & B I wrote immediately above.

If A is false, then B is not false. Given the definition of the sentence you are using, A is false (or meaningless) and B is true.

"A" is not the same as B: "if A is true, then the statement given by A is true". B as written here is true regardless of the truth value of A. I could just as well write, A: "The sky is pink" and B: "if A is true, then the sky is pink". This A is false and this B is true.

As for your formal logic, I think I am confused about whether you are asserting logic or truth. For instance, I cant tell whether you mean, "if X is true, then Y is true" (I agree with this logic) or "X IS true, and therefore Y is true" (I disagree with this because I think X is either false or meaningless).

When you used text, I disagreed that a and 2 are equivalent. Just substitute a into 2 and you'll see that it's not. It's the difference between saying "..." and '"..." is true'. When you used formal logic, you didnt prove that x is true, or that x->y is true. If you assert that X is false, then it doesn't imply Y. I don't think you could prove this unless the logic was a tautology, which it clearly isn't. At any rate, the original poster argued that an the validity of an argument cannot be an element of that argument, which would mean that your example sentence is also meaningless.

I think the OP made a good argument. I don't think I can add anything to it.

I have made very similar posts on philosophy forums before, with the same 3 choices, but I came to the conclusion that the only thing we know for sure is that something exists outside the bounds of human reason.

If you look up a definition for deductive logic, you get something like, "The rules of correct inference from assumed premises." We cannot use logic on a first premise, because by definition, it is not derived from any premises. We cannot ever get to the bottom of infinite regression, because humans cannot calculate infinite processes. And circular logic is of course, also not considered valid under normal circumstances.

Of course, Hume was the first OG (so far as I know) to propose this dilemma, but he did not think of the 3rd option.

It seems to me that you can prove that these are the only 3 options, if you assume that logic is linear. Either causality is a ray (it has a beginning), or a line (it goes to infinity in both directions). If you admit the possibility of noneuclidean geometry, then the line could loop back into itself or cross itself (time travel). Actually, I just realized that there are 2 more options: there could be something without causality (a point), or nothing at all. But these other two options are not consistent with our sensory experience.

Since I am alive, I have to try to figure out what is valuable and important in life, even though there doesn't appear to be aby verifiable way to figure this stuff out. I find it useful, therefore, to assume that there is a first cause, which would be consistent with a creator God, because then I can start to imagine what the purpose of the universe is. I don't see a way forward (with respect to having a moral foundation) if the causality of the universe is infinite. I prefer to look to nature to learn about God, than human religious tradition, although the latter may sometimes be useful to learn proper psychological orientation. I have come to the idea then that God is an infinity of abstract potential (like the totality of all math), and that the material world exists in order to tangibly instantiate this potential. Then it seems clear that God is quite happy for existence to be exactly as it is, even if this existence is not pleasing to mortals. This worldview is psychologically pleasing because it provides a foundation for looking at any arbitrary thing and seeing good/beauty in it. This is especially helpful in situations where the attainment of selfish interests is totally impossible. When I can't have what I want, at least I can try to see that at least God is having his way. When it comes to personal or group suffering, the evolutionary process is useful for seeing the beauty of existence. Apparently to God, having life spontaneously improve itself through repeatedly instantiated proof by contradiction (the dying off of unfit forms) is more beautiful than the well-being of any individual organism.

Yes, I understood that just fine before reading this post. I am at the level where I can understand much of the formal symbols I have seen in this post, but would have trouble writing them myself. The biggest problem is that since I am learning this stuff randomly rather than as a part of a formal curriculum, there are many holes on my knowledge, and I do not know where to look to fill those holes. I am reading an introductory text on formal logic now, and it is tedious not only because of the tedious nature of the subject, but also because I have to go through a lot that I already know before encountering something that I do not know yet.

I am a lay person trying to learn formal logic, so this post is probably a bit of a lower level than the rest of the posts. Studying Russel's paradox make me think I understand the difference between a subset and a member better. Take these examples:

( A is a subset of A ) = ( {1,2,3} = {1,2,3} )

(A is a member of A ) = ( {1,2, A} = {1,2, {1,2, {A} }, } = {1,2,{1,2,{1,2,{1,2{...}}}}}

From this example, you can see that defining a set as a member of itself immediately leads to infinite recursion.

You are being even lazier, because I have made an argument, and you haven't. You are just asserting that I don't know what I'm talking about without providing any explanation of how that is. I could just as well assert that you're a bot and a troll and provide no evidence.

I googled for a definition of the uebermensch so that I could use a definition which I wasn't just pulling out of my own butt. If my definition is wrong, then YOU provide the definition.

I have made explicit tangible arguments. You (and most of the other people replying) have not addressed any of my arguments, nor made any arguments of your own. You have just asserted repeatedly that I am wrong, or that Nietzsche would think X, without even trying to explain why. I could just as well flip everything that you have said about me and say it about you instead, and it would be just as valid, since you have not made a single argument to back up anything you have said.

If I'm so foolish, and if it's so obvious that's the case, why can no one show a tangible argument to refute anything I've said?

Because of this discussion, I think I have a better idea of what the ubermensch entails than before.

Before the modern era (roughly starting in the enlightenment period), Western people took their morals uncritically from Christianity. But Nietzsche realized that during his time, people didn't really believe anymore the way that they used to, hence, "God is dead." This meant that there was no longer moral consensus within society, nor certain moral guidance for individual people.

This lead to his idea of the "Übermensch" (there, I copied and pasted an umlaut). The idea is that this man is able to come up with his own values without reference to a religious system that people no longer believed in. Here is a definition from the internet, "the ideal superior man of the future who could rise above conventional Christian morality to create and impose his own values, originally described by Nietzsche in Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883–85)"

This definition contains 4 points:
1. "the ideal superior man of the future"
2. "who could rise above conventional Christian morality" -- I take this to mean that his morality does not require the use of Christianity (or other religions) as a premise
3. "to create ... his own values"
4. "to ... impose his own values"

I have argued that values are arbitrarily asserted, because there is no way to point to anything objective to prove them (see the is-ought dilemma). Therefore, I have argued that #1 is ill-defined. There is no way to prove that anything is superior to anything else by the use of premises that other people would readily accept. So, I'm arguing that #1 should be thrown out.


Most of my replies were related to my views on God. I do not actually consider my views on God necessary to my views on value selection, although speculation on God may be useful towards this end. I did argue on a game theory/evolutionary basis that there are certain values that will tend to be more prevalent, which might therefore be called, "God's values". But it's still not possible to prove that the morals that will be are the morals that ought to be.

You might argue that because my views are broadly consistent with many of Jesus' teachings, that disqualifies me from #2. But you could also make the exact same argument about Kant, for instance, because it could be argued that "love your neighbor as yourself" could be derived from the categorical imperative.

I argue that my views on value assertion are not dependent on any religious dogma, and therefore I meet #2. You could also argue that any moral philosopher who did not use outside authority as a premise could also fit #2. Technically, I do use empirical and logical arguments as outside authorities, but I think the secular western man would not object to this.


I set forth a method of value assertion in my original post, and therefore I argue that I fit #3. I could give another example of how to use the technique. I saw this post on youtube today:

"Personally don't feel really jolly at all lately, just seem to be getting more and more grumpy cynical dispondant and fed up with my life, everybody and everything around in life and the world in general."

Presuming that this person doesn't want to feel that way anymore, then the correct thing to do is to mourn (let go of) those things that he wants but can't have. There is a quote from the Bible which is appropriate, "Those who eat the bread of sorrow, rouse yourselves after resting." The message is that resting after suffering a loss is normal, but eventually you need to get up and find something else to live for. A Buddhist would probably say that suffering comes from desire, and so he would give the same advice that he needs to kill his desire. If this person wants to be jolly, then after (or during) the mourning process, he needs to find something else he cares about. This can be done arbitrarily, although a person's temperament will make some things easier than others.

The is-ought dilemma creates something that I like to call the "fact of nihilism", that you can't prove any objective moral statement. But it also means that you can't disprove any moral statement either. So, it's entirely possible to assert that existence is positively good, and that bad is only the loss of what was good. Or you could say that God (or "life", if you're offended by "God") can't take anything from you that he didn't give you first. I don't think it's possible to argue against this. So, it is entirely possible to let go of whatever you can't have (friends, money, status, whatever), and to find something else to live for (art, philosophy, sport, etc). You can't directly change your emotions, but you can directly change your values (by repeating to yourself what you want to believe and then acting on it), and then your values change your emotions. So if you want to develop a new hobby, you can just pick up a brush or a recorder and start playing, tell yourself, "it is good that I'm trying this," and see what happens.

So, I know from experience that it is entirely possible to choose to be jolly and not to be despondent, although the process takes time, and may be easier or harder based on one's temperament. It is totally possible because emotions require cognitive processes in order to happen, and a person can consciously change his model of the world. A person's temperament, however, affects how easily he feels certain emotions, and how strongly he feels them, but you can still cut those emotions off at the root by changing one's mental model of the world. For me personally, it's easy to acquire contentedness, but hard to acquire positive emotions like happiness.

I realized today that the only religions I'm aware of that practice monasticism are Christianity and Buddhism. I believe the reason for this is that these religions are focused on inward development, and this is the job of the monk. Religions which don't value inward development for its own sake have no purpose for monasticism. So, it could be argued that every good monk (and to a lesser extent, any sincerely religious person) fits #3, because have consciously changed their inward self.


I could argue that #4 is impossible in principle, because values are arbitrarily asserted from within. The people who have come closest are dictators like Lenin and Hitler who tried to impose their values by force. They made big changes to the external world, but they still never had the power to change 1 person's heart against that person's will. There were many Christians who died in the gulags, for instance, without being convinced of the truth of communism.

So I think I can fairly say I meet requirements #2 & #3 of being an ubermensch, and that #1 and #4 are difficult or impossible in principle. I heard read many arguments against my personal religious views, but I never saw any arguments against what I have laid out either here or in my very first post.

No. Islam does this. Sikhs too. Bahai. Parsi, Jews. How many other religions do you know well? — Tom Storm

Admittedly, I don't know much of anything about Sikhs, Bahai, and Parsi. After doing a quick google search, it appears to me that Parsi are partially concerned with inward orientation, Bahai are explicitly interested in behavior, and I'm not sure on Sikhism. I showed in an earlier post that Judaism and Islam are both heavily behavior-oriented.

I am a bit familiar with Buddhism. If I understand correctly, the central idea of Buddhism is that if you don't want things, then you won't be disappointed. Stripped of all its supernatural claims, the central idea of the religion appears to me to be objectively true. So, Buddhism is another religion that is concerned with inward orientation of the heart. I've read that Sikhism is related to Buddhism, so maybe it is similar.

I suppose it would be unfair then to say that Christianity is the only religion interested in inward orientation. But I have shown through numerous examples that this is certainly not an element that is common in all religions.

The west is implicitly Christian in orientation, so, I'm not ashamed to draw upon my own cultural background to try to figure things out. I think if I had been more familiar with Buddhism, I probably could have come to similar conclusions by drawing upon that background.

So, there could be 1 million Ubermensch already, but we wouldn't know because they'd be minding their own business?

My real desire in writing this post was to share my psychological model. When I have tried to share it previously, it left no impression. I thought if I used language that other people are nominally interested in, then maybe they would pay attention. I have argued repeatedly that my method fits the criteria of being able to create one's own values, but nobody argues this point. I don't think most people actually care. They want what they want, but do not want to want differently.

I am aware that evolution works by killing off the majority of life that is not most highly adapted.
— Brendan Golledge

No, that's not my argument. I said nothing about evolution. I said that god/s built a creation largely dependent upon cruelty and predation. — Tom Storm

I don't see the difference. Where is cruelty and predation outside of death?

That your definition of the Ubermensch doesn't even match Nietzsche's. — Vaskane

If you look up "what is the ubermensch" the first hit is, "the ideal superior man of the future who could rise above conventional Christian morality to create and impose his own values, originally described by Nietzsche in Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883–85)."

I have argued:
1. I have a method for consciously changing my values and emotions, which I briefly described. This seems to fit with "create ... his own values".
2. I have argued that imposing one's values is impossible in principle, because values are arbitrarily asserted from within one's self.
3. I left alone the issue of being "the ideal superior man". Apart from being quite arrogant to argue, there'd be no objective basis to argue it, since values are arbitrarily asserted from within one's self.

From this definition, I have claimed to have met the only objective and possible part of the definition, and argued that the other parts are impossible or not well-defined.

No. Islam does this. Sikhs too. Bahai. Parsi, Jews. How many other religions do you know well? — Tom Storm

You are just wrong. I've seen interviews from multiple Jews who say that it is not a sin to desire something which is wrong, so long as you don't actually do it. For instance, they said that they don't care if someone is antisemetic, so long as they don't actually do bad things to Jews. They also said that pedophilia is not wrong, so long as it's not acted upon. I think you are projecting your own background onto other people.

I also referred to the actual tenants of other religions which mention explicit actions rather than inward orientation. To say that other religions are concerned with inward orientation of the heart is to argue contrary to those religions' explicit teachings.

Everyone from the West grew up on an implicitly Christian background. I have lived overseas in Russia and China and read ancient books, so I think I have a better idea of my own cultural background than most do, since I have something to compare it to.

While I was teaching English in China, I had an extra lesson where I discussed different moral systems around the world. I taught the students that Jesus taught that If you do a good thing for bad reasons, Jesus would still say that was bad. The students were astonished, because they have never heard such a thing before, and they said that's not fair. So, it's absolutely not true that the Chinese have this concept. It is utterly foreign to them.

It seems worth questioning that last sentence. Why might it very well be God? — wonderer1

"We don't know X. It might be Y." I don't think this sentence requires much proof. It would require a lot of proof if I claimed that X was certainly Y, but saying that Y is a possibility when we don't know what X is, does not seem all that controversial. I mean God here as the omnipotent omniscient bodiless timeless creator God imagined by the monotheistic religions. Although I'm not all that concerned with exact definitions, because we after all, don't know exactly what it is.

My language is loose. But I know I have heard people say that grumpiness due to hunger is a part of their personality, and other such things, when I know that I am able to consciously change these aspects of myself. So, I think I can fairly say that I have a better working model for myself (what I imagine consciousness to be) than most other people.

I know for sure that when I discuss my psychological model with other people, it's like I'm speaking a foreign language. That was the main point of this post, but people are arguing with me about God.

You express statements which are just claims - to be an ubermensch I think you may need to do some purging of such romantic claims as:

Christianity is the religion most concerned with the heart.
— Brendan Golledge — Tom Storm

I don't see how this is a romantic claim. It is factual. Jesus' top two commandments are how to love. In other teachings, he addresses issues of judgment, offense, hypocrisy, worry, honoring one's parents, etc. The 7 deadly sins (which I know were later made up by Catholics) address feelings rather than actions: "wrath", "sloth", "envy", etc. It is an objective statement that most of the teachings in Christianity concern the inward orientation of the heart. This is in contrast to Islam, where the 5 pillars are external tangible things, such as fasting, giving to the poor, pilgrimage, ritualized prayer, and the declaration of faith (this last one here is shared by Christianity). It is also in contrast even to the ten commandments in the Old Testament, which are concerned with outward actions such as not stealing and not murdering.

There are many insincere Christians. But most of the people who appreciate the kind of inner work I've done are Christian. It is mostly Christians who are concerned with "Do I envy?" "Am I lusting after my neighbor's wife?" for their own sake, rather than as a part of an external moral system.

So, I stand by my statement that when it comes to asserting values on one's own, Christianity is the religion that seems closest to this.


I actually agree that different Christian denominations have inconsistent views. This is part of the reason I'm not a Christian. I think a large part of the problem is that most of them are claiming to have infallible knowledge which they don't really have. The Orthodox have their church councils, the Catholics have the Pope, and many protestants claim inspiration from the Holy Spirit. I think what is likely happening is that protestants listen to their own conscience and believe that is the voice of the Holy Spirit. I think the conscience is a good voice, but that it is a private subjective voice. This is how it's possible that they can all be convinced that their right, while saying different things.

So, looking at nature ought to be a good way of inferring the nature of God.
— Brendan Golledge

That's just a claim. But if I did this I would infer from nature that the god who made it is an evil and cruel monster. Imagine creating an entire ecosystem where the suffering and death of most animals and insects is built into the model. — Tom Storm

I am aware that evolution works by killing off the majority of life that is not most highly adapted. It makes sense that the organisms in this process do not like dying, or else they would probably not live very long. But I don't see a necessity that God has to care about this. Based on how the world works, I would conclude that God finds the evolutionary process to be more beautiful than any individual organism. There is a quote from the Bible which I think is appropriate here, "Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?" We are the clay in this passage. We might not like it, but we have no power to argue with God about it.

It doesn't even really matter to me very much if you agree on my views on God. They are speculation that I find interesting and meaningful, but they are in the end, speculation.

I would argue though, that my speculation is not as arbitrary as you think. I think you have to choose one of these 3 options:
1. There is an ultimate beginning
2. Existence is infinitely old with no beginning
3. The causality of existence is circular (like maybe somebody will go back in a time machine to create the big bang)

None of these options are compatible with deductive logic. This is because standard logic involves the use of unproved premises. If you try to prove the premise with logic, then you have to posit another unproved premise. So, ultimate beginnings are outside the scope of human reason. The fact that anything exists at all is proof that something exists which we can't understand. It might very well be God.

Option 1 seems to necessarily imply something like God. Everything we have experience with is caused by something else. If there were something to get it all started, that thing would be very special. I won't lay out all the arguments here, but if you guess that maybe option 1 is true, then everything else I have said concerning God is very reasonable.


I think Nietzsche's child (from the parable of the camel, lion, and child) might not be very different than Jesus' idea of how a person has to be a child to enter the kingdom of heaven. The lion attacks what is old (like Christianity), but the child does whatever he feels like (which may sometimes involve Christian teachings).

I have personal experience of using many of the psychological elements of Jesus' teachings. So far as these teachings go, it makes no difference to me whether Jesus really was the son of God, because I can independently verify what he said.

Many of the moral teachings of Christians are logical necessities if you believe in moral consistency. If you believe in moral consistency, then how can it make sense to judge your own value differently than the value of other things that are similar to you (like other people?) For instance, if you'd judge someone for stealing, but you yourself steal, isn't that an inherent contradiction in your moral philosophy? Therefore, it makes sense that a person must love other people the same way that he loves himself, or else his moral philosophy is inherently self-contradictory.

One of the psychological roles of God is to serve as a personification and projection of one's highest values. So when Jesus says to love God with all your heart, he may very well have meant something similar to, "Love that which you are able to understand is highest with all your heart." This seems to be a moral necessity if you want to be the most moral person that you can be. I think modern people get confused by this though, since we conceptually separate virtues and vices from personhood in a way that ancient people apparently did not.

I could make a similar argument about envy. Envy by its nature seems to be dislike for what is better than one's self. But if you decide that you love good for its own sake, how can you be envious? I think envy can only exist when a person wants to feel himself to be the best, and hates all goodness which is outside of himself.

From arguments such as these (many of which I worked out as an atheist), I realized that Christianity already said many of the things that I came up with by myself. So, as I said before, it doesn't really matter to me who wrote these things. I am able to verify the psychological aspect of these teachings without reference to outside authority.