Another God-botherer, eh? Feel free to make an argument though. — apokrisis

It's not about God, your metaphysics just doesn't make sense though. The argument has already been made, you're just avoiding it.

A: Quine. — Baden

Mosesquine? From what I've seen he has been terrorizing the blog of @darthbarracuda for some time >:O

I read this almost interminable discussion and I side with MU. Apo has just made an entire jumble of categories and treats them as if they were convertible from one to the other. Also he often talks past what is said to him and just repeats his story with new words. A story which makes sense only if you grant him an irrational point of departure and an irrational point of finality. With those two small sleights of hand, everything else can be accounted for.

One of my friends, for instance, is a physically muscular Samoan guy who is a giant marshmallow and wouldn't hurt a fly and squirms at the sight of violence. Is he masculine? — TimeLine

In regards to his physical strength and physical size yes. In other regards, no.

Love is not violent — TimeLine

Maybe not in itself, but to the one who is violent, love is also violent. Violence cannot see beyond itself, and will perceive even love to be of its own nature fundamentally.

What you say does not make someone masculine or feminine, it just makes someone stronger or weaker. — TimeLine

Okay but objectively, because there is a difference in physical strength between men and women, it is physical strength that is associated with masculinity. Physical strength isn't used to denote just the physical aspect though as it seems to, but rather any kind of brute force that overwhelms the other through its very application. That's why control over the army is similar to physical strength - it is masculine, the kind of power that overwhelms by brute strength - by compelling the other will to obey it forcefully, rather than - for example - persuading it or manipulating it.

Persuasion is born out of love, but manipulation and brute strength are forms of violence.

This woman at my gym who has an arm the size of both my thighs is not masculine, she is just strong. — TimeLine

I would say that that's precisely one thing that makes her more masculine than you in that regard.

The emotional attachment to this imagined masculine-feminine paradigm yields the actual belief that they love the person that personifies the same archetype and that those who conform to the same attitude are their friends and comrades. That is how stupid they are. It is nothing but a relational mode of identification. — TimeLine

Okay I agree with this, but it doesn't have to do with what I said before.

Alright, think of it like the gender-neutral harmony between masculine and feminine attributes in Taoism; the Yin Yang solidifies an inseperable bond within that cultivates the dissolution of vicious or cruel behaviour through moral virtue and ethics. This is an individual, subjective challenge and whether physically you are a man or a woman, to find this balance you need to welcome and identify with both. — TimeLine

Sure, as an individual each has both feminine and masculine traits.

moral virtue and ethics — TimeLine

That depends from what perspective you look. I will demonstrate with the example below.

A woman that stays with a man because he controls and manipulates her into thinking she loves him and for him to think that she loves him is insanity, it will only last as long as he continues inflicting fear, which is why many men control women by preventing them from work or education because as soon as their partners start growing professionally, they begin to realise that they are not actually happy and end up leaving them. Real love is about two people who genuinely want one another, an equal balance. — TimeLine

Real love does not require the consent of the other, it is purely an individual choice - it only has to do with the individual, unlike violence which always has to do with the other. Nothing, not even rejection, can stop real love from loving. But from the point of view of the wicked party - of the violent party - love is the absolutely most violent and cruel phenomenon.

Many people treat virtue and compassion as weak and ineffective - but the truth is that they are like two swords - the sharpest of swords.

Take your example of the manipulative man. His behavior justifies - in the eyes of the woman - her betrayal of him. Her violence is justified by his violence in her eyes, and therefore she can commit it in good conscience. She can betray her husband, because he has first initiated aggression. And her husband will react the same way she reacts - through an escalation of violence because he is now justified to be more violent, which of course does nothing but cement the woman in her violence towards the husband. She is proven to be correct in her eyes, she has all the right to betray him, she has all the right to be violent. That is, of course, a great lie. She could just forgive him.

But now imagine that the husband always encourages the woman in her career, and always seeks to help her. Now there is great trouble... even if she wants to leave him, she cannot - at least not in good faith. She cannot leave him in good faith without seeing herself for what she is - a traitor. The Socratic irony is that love ends up being the best form of control, and the sharpest sword, even though it looks like it is the weakest of all. To betray her husband she will have to first do great violence to herself and repress the truth of her actions. Such is only possible in bad faith by lying to herself and will never be justified. And so, if she is a wicked, selfish person, she will perceive her husband's love as the absolute worst form of violence, and will probably try to provoke the husband to violence, in order to have a way to justify herself.

This is what Jesus Christ revealed through His Passion. By allowing Himself to be killed by the forces of evil without opposing them, he revealed their true nature. Evil could no longer play the game of its violence being justified - it could no longer pretend that the victim is guilty and deserves death. And so we are reminded of Dante's image from the Divine Comedy of Satan nailed to the Cross.

I am shocked that my post have been deleted. I will try to form my thoughts in a different way so nobody gets offended.
We know that females are evolutionarily programmed to attract males in order to reproduce (females choose one male). Males are programmed to reproduce with as many females as possible to diversify their gene pool. Humans and a lot of other species have this tendency.
In today's society women use their arsenal to attract men. This arsenal consists of dressing or specific acts. The same can be told about men but while men are programmed to 'accept' every women; women usually will only accept a small % of the male population. This can lead to a lot of sexual frustration in society because a lot of males will be ignored meanwhile their senses excited by women. So as a member of the group of the ignored males I really need somebody to defend my rights as I get offended every time I see a beautiful seductive woman ignoring and despising me.

As I am free to express my opinion and I did not inted to offend anybody I ask you not to delete my post again. — Meta

The evolutionary game is designed for you to lose. Trying to play the game is like going to the casino and trying to beat the house. It's stupid, you never will. And that includes both men and women.

There already are some "man's rights" groups, like MGTOW, but there's a lot of hatred of women and the like involved in those groups, much like in feminism there's often a lot of hatred of men. So I don't think such groups are good at all, except to point out that much like women have women-specific problems in the evolutionary game, so do men. These groups are stupid because they are inherently polarizing - they attempt to end violence by committing violence through the a priori expulsion of the other sex. They are just a continuation of the evolutionary game and it is precisely the evolutionary game that must be stopped.

And you shouldn't feel on the short end of the stick, even the "successful" men in the evolutionary game are losers. They too lose the females they sometimes get, so what's the point? Only a loser plays a game where loss is certain, even for the so called "winners". You think you'll be any better if you have sex with that beautiful girl and tomorrow she rejects you? Probably you'll be even more miserable.

So go look for people who aren't playing the evolutionary game anymore. You know, people who have higher values and a deeper understanding of reality. And before that, stop playing the evolutionary game yourself. This talk of males have evolved to, etc. is stupid. Human sexuality is 99% social and cultural. There are no set rules, you create the rules by the people and cultures you associate yourself with. The findings of those studies merely reflect the cultural and social attitudes of the societies in which they are undertaken, and these results are mistaken to be biological as opposed to cultural and social.

I am a Christian. In the group of serious Christians sexuality isn't such a big deal. Things are quite simple, no sex before marriage, and once you get married there is mutual care and fidelity between the partners, including sex and physical intimacy until death. We're more concerned with other things such as spreading the Gospel message, making the world a better place and so on so forth. Sex plays a relatively minor role in the good life.

Say you. Nah nah nah pooh pooh — schopenhauer1

>:) Of course.

Whenever someone brings up the idea of questioning whether existence itself should be continued for future people, a common response is that it is a juvenile topic — schopenhauer1

Well, that's because it usually is a juvenile inquiry :-O

Instead, the fully functioning adult is too immersed in the details of the world. The more detail regarding a particular matter (whether at work or entertainment), means the the less likely "larger" existential questions arise. — schopenhauer1

The focus on specialization has to do with the effects of industrialization and maximising the efficiency of individual workers. That's why everyone has to do a fixed thing repeatedly. So obviously all work ends up being very detailed, and not broad ranged.

Working out the exact 'recipe', or proportions of each ingredient is a science in itself. It is called concrete mix design. A good mix designer will start with the properties that are desired in the mix, then take many factors into account, and work out a detailed mix design. A site engineer will often order a different type of mix for a different purpose. For example, if he is casting a thin concrete wall in a hard-to-reach area, he will ask for a mix that is more flowable than stiff. This will allow the liquid concrete to flow by gravity into every corner of the formwork. For most construction applications, however, a standard mix is used.

​Common examples of standard mixes are M20, M30, M40 concrete, where the number refers to the strength of the concrete in n/mm2 or newtons per square millimeter. Therefore M30 concrete will have a compressive strength of 30 n/mm2. A standard mix may also specify the maximum aggregate size. Aggregates are the stone chips used in concrete. If an engineer specifies M30 / 20 concrete, he wants M30 concrete with a maximum aggregate size of 20mm. He does NOT want concrete with a strength of between 20-30 n/mm2, which is a common misinterpretation in some parts of the world.

So the structure is actually a connected frame of members, each of which are firmly connected to each other. In engineering parlance, these connections are called moment connections, which means that the two members are firmly connected to each other. There are other types of connections, including hinged connections, which are used in steel structures, but concrete frame structures have moment connections in 99.9% of cases. This frame becomes very strong, and must resist the various loads that act on a building during its life.

These loads include:
Dead Loads: the downwards force on the building coming from the weight of the building itself, including the structural elements, walls, facades, and the like.
Live Loads: the downwards force on the building coming from the expected weight of the occupants and their possessions, including furniture, books, and so on. Normally these loads are specified in building codes and structural engineers must design buildings to carry these or greater loads. These loads will vary with the use of the space, for example, whether it is residential, office, industrial to name a few. It is common for codes to require live loads for residential to be a minimum of about 200 kg/m2, offices to be 250 kg/m2, and industrial to be 1000 kg/m2, which is the same as 1T/m2. These live loads are sometimes called imposed loads.
Dynamic Loads: these occur commonly in bridges and similar infrastructure, and are the loads created by traffic, including braking and accelerating loads.
Wind Loads: This is a very important design factor, especially for tall buildings, or buildings with large surface area. Buildings are designed not to resist the everyday wind conditions, but extreme conditions that may occur once every 100 years or so. These are called design windspeeds, and are specified in building codes. A building can commonly be required to resist a wind force of 150 kg/m2, which can be a very significant force when multiplied by the surface area of the building.
etc. etc. — schopenhauer1

Wow, feels like I'm back in university! :D

Does manhood get any purer? — Baden

No >:O

A psychopath's truth is very clear to them. — Baden

No, I don't think this follows at all. Clinical psychological practice illustrates very clearly that a psychopath is self-deceived to a much greater degree than most people, and engages in actions they think will bring them satisfaction but which never do.

And the old mythological understanding of this phenomenon is also true. In the past, psychopathy was understood to be synonymous with demonic possession, which involves the loss of true autonomy and a clear understanding of the world - it involves acting according to another's interests (the demon) while you think you're acting according to your own.

This is very closely related both with Plato's "lie in the soul" and with the idea of borrowed whims and desires that I was talking with Wosret about earlier.

On top of that, most people have a psychopathic shadow lurking not far underneath the surface — Baden

Yes, no doubt that many people are capable of doing immoral things.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside, but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and every impurity. In the same way, you appear to be righteous on the outside, but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous. And you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partners with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ So you testify against yourselves that you are the sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers’ sins. You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape the sentence of hell?

Because of this, I am sending you prophets and wise men and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify, and others you will flog in your synagogues and persecute in town after town. And so upon you will come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. Truly I tell you, all these things will come upon this generation. — Matthew 23:27-36

Aren't people saying the same thing today, about, for example, the Holocaust? They do exactly that - they say if only we had lived during Hitler's time, we would never have been partners with him in the murder of the Jews. But of course, by saying that, they almost confirm they would have been partners with him, for just like him, they are not aware of their own violence.

To attribute physical predispositions to masculinity is a mistake; as mentioned, many men work very hard to convey this physical image and character as 'tough' but the experience of masculinity is entirely subjective — TimeLine

It isn't entirely subjective. Whether someone is the stronger or weaker party is an objective fact. Say someone has a gun and the other person has a knife, the one with the gun is objectively stronger in most situations, even if he's a coward compared to the other one. Sure there is the extreme situation wherein he is such a coward that he cannot wield the gun well enough, but that's not what I'm talking about here.

I may be female, feminine and small in stature, but I have 'bigger balls' then most men — TimeLine

That may be so, but that's only one aspect of masculinity.

If I am absolute in my dedication to righteousness that I would turn my back even on the closest of people if they committed evils, if I believe in honour, integrity that has become a part of the fabric of my personality, if I endure in the face of severe hardship and apply methods to strengthen my fearlessness and courage, does that mean - despite the fact that I possess feminine physical attributes and that I am naturally petite and quiet in nature - that I am masculine? — TimeLine

It does mean that you have some masculine traits while lacking others.

And I wouldn't say being dedicated to righteousness is a "masculine" trait any more than it is a feminine one. Or do you mean to claim that women don't generally believe in honor, integrity and the like? I would think that that would be false - women can believe in honor and integrity just as much as men can and that doesn't make them masculine.

At the moment, this so-called masculine look is very popular where I am from: — TimeLine

LOL! I would say that that guy looks quite the opposite of masculine :P . You need to differentiate between masculinity as an objective fact and masculinity as a social construct. That guy may be thought of as masculine but the objective facts of the situation betray that he's not. It may be possible that for whatever reason females within a certain culture prefer a guy looking like that, but this cannot change the underlying reality. In this case, the said females would merely be deceived by what constitutes masculinity. And such states are artificial and will not last in the end.

The worst part about it is that every guy who now has this look thinks he is original. How exactly is it possible for people to think they are independent and individual when they are doing what everyone else is doing? — TimeLine

Because human beings are mimetic animals, meaning that our desires are not really our own but are acquired from others.

'Masculinity' is a sickness, it is a pathology stemming from a self-defeating desire that mirrors a distorted and imaginative ideal saturated by the influence of fear. — TimeLine

I would say that masculinity is a natural acquisitive strategy that is predisposed to be chosen because of the average asymmetry in physical strength between men and women. The mimetic behavior of children quickly leads them into conflict when they imitate the other's acquisitive behavior for the same object (which obviously both can't possess). Men learn that "masculinity" or physical violence (or at least the threat of it) can get them what they want. Women learn that "femininity" or non-physical forms of violence (manipulation, whether through beauty or otherwise) can get them what they want while avoiding their weakness (lack of physical strength).

For example, two men may like the same women, and the more one of them likes her, the more the other will like her (because they imitate each other). If one of them is more masculine than the other (they have bigger muscles, more money, etc.) then they will use violence to get the woman for themselves. And the violence in our day is mostly invisible - only the unspoken threat of it is sufficient. Simply being bulkier, having more money, etc. is enough to convince the double.

Thus, violence is paradoxically the means through which the escalation of violence is brought to a halt. That is the fundamental trait of all human culture, society, and religion - the resolution of conflict and the establishment of order through violence, which is then effaced and projected unto a victim - oh it was her who didn't like him, she liked me. Or the other becomes sacralized - he's such a great guy, he backed down himself. And so the violence at the foundation of culture remains hidden, which is exactly what is required for it to play its founding role.

Only Christ unearths the violence and sides with the victim.

Also it's interesting to note that the intensity and death toll of such attacks is only rising with time. I think it is clear that violence is on the rise and will probably continue to rise as we enter in the coming dark age.

minds that have lost any intrinsic connection to reality — Wayfarer

Yes, I think this is on the right track. But how does it happen that someone loses their intrinsic connection to reality?

I think understanding this is of fundamental importance in preventing or stopping such attacks from occurring. I mean if we always say they're irrational that's basically like throwing our hands up in the air and saying there's nothing we can do to stop them. But there surely is if we can understand what brings them about and what puts people in such frames of mind.

Well, here we are again. This time, the perpertrator's motives seem completely impossible to discern. No criminal history, no history of violence, no affiliation with terrorist organisations. — Wayfarer

Well, ISIS has claimed the attack actually, there's just no independent evidence linking him to ISIS yet.


However, the fact that he was a very wealthy old man (64 years old) with a girlfriend from the Philippines to whom he was sending many 10,000s of dollars makes it inherently suspect. I highly doubt that his girlfriend wasn't aware of what he was up to, regardless of what she says. She was probably out of the country on purpose.

In addition, you don't know what was going through his mind. He had a lot of guns acquired, so clearly I think there was something wrong with him psychologically... you don't acquire so much weaponry for no reason.

How do you rationalise something inherently irrational? — Wayfarer

I don't find it inherently irrational. I mean I can imagine someone who feels they are approaching the end of their life and are motivated by a dangerous evil ideology to engage in such crimes.

Alternatively, I can also imagine someone who just loses their capacity to feel empathy, care or love for any other people combined with approaching death and a feeling of inherent meaninglessness and total rejection of Truth which just drives them to do such a thing. I'd say they are so "numb" by that point that nothing short of doing something like this can make them feel anything.

What I find most horrifying is the idea that such evil can exist in someone's heart. It is almost a Satanic action.

I wonder if it is something like a form of 'demonic possession' - a person becomes seized by an idea or a complex of ideas, so powerful it drives them to commit ghastly, unimaginably awful and irrational acts, and kill themselves after doing it. It really is as if a malevolent demon has possessed the body of an otherwise normal human. — Wayfarer

An interesting hypothesis. But there certainly have to be some factors which make one susceptible to such demonic possession no? I mean could it just happen to anyone? Could me, or you, suddenly turn into mass killers?

There's also the fact that "psychotic episodes" and the like cannot explain such actions because they are clearly premeditated and take long-term planning. There was a case in my country of a police student in training who was just learning to shoot a gun, who suddenly turned around and shot his instructor and then killed himself. Such things can be interpreted as the person having a psychotic attack of some sorts and doing something terrible almost without realizing, and then once they realize what they've done they feel great fear and horror and kill themselves. But this clearly wasn't the case here.

Although I suppose the more mundane explanation is simply that the 'mass murder meme' has now become a template for a certain form of behaviour, and there will continue to be those in whom this idea hatches, and who will then carry it out. — Wayfarer

Yes, but why would they do that? I mean what's the chain of thoughts that leads someone to do such a thing?

the world's most powerful and advanced political economy has somehow created a culture which is powerless to stop them occurring. — Wayfarer

Yes, I agree that it is in large aspects a cultural issue, and not only about gun laws. Somehow this form of mental illness propagates itself, and I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that we don't understand it very well.

This all only true if I couldn't get away with it — Wosret

Could you get away with the effects that immoral behaviour would have on you (and your own well-being), regardless of what other people do? I don't think you can, and that just shows that this is actually quite an incoherent scenario once we understand morality rightly. All this underlines that there are some things that aren't under your control such as what is right and wrong. For that matter, whether you get away with it or not in an external manner also isn't under your control.

To suppose you could get away with it is to suppose you are God and control the whole of reality.

I'm trying to understand, but I really don't have even a vague sense of what you mean. Can I get a concrete example? — Neva

Yes.

For example, human beings are so structured that they all need to consume food and drink water in order to survive. This is an invariant structure of being human which plays a determinate role in the types of behavior and feelings that are possible for a human being.

Another invariant structure is that human beings are vulnerable for a long time after birth, and so cannot survive alone (unlike other animals). This is another invariant feature of being human that determines possibilities of behavior and affection.

And so on.

Does that mean animals are bound by the same moral laws as humans? — Neva

To a certain extent they are, however, morality requires the presence of a rational aspect to the soul. And if this is present, it is much diminished in many animals where instinct governs most of the time. The absence of this rational aspect also makes animals quite incapable of committing the range of immoralities that man is capable of.

No we're not, we're left with motivations — Wosret

So, even if we accept that, we're back to randomness. — Πετροκότσυφας

though they aren't, they're mainly self invested — Wosret

The fact that motivations aren't all random as we'd expect them to be if there was no generative principle behind them points precisely to the need for further investigation. Πετροκότσυφας is correct that we'd expect motivations to be random for he presupposes that different individuals will have different motivations and these would be individually mediated and thus random. However, this is not true. Motivations have a tendency to be self-invested, which points precisely to their common origin outside the individual as such.

So that would mean that you are actually not acting in your self-interest when you think you are so acting by following your whims and preferences, meaning that you are fundamentally self-deluded. — Agustino

And this is actually not that radical of a claim at all. We often say about others "they are not acting in their best interest". It's a phenomenon that we observe quite commonly. How is it possible that they are not acting in their best interest all the while they are certain that they are? And if that applies to them, why wouldn't it also apply to us?

To be even more explicit...

If your whims and preferences are actually not your own, then your reasoning faculty cannot be directed towards self-interest - it would at best appear as if it were so directed, when in reality it isn't. So that would mean that you are actually not acting in your self-interest when you think you are so acting by following your whims and preferences, meaning that you are fundamentally self-deluded.

So to avoid that, you must first determine the origin of your whims and preferences, meaning metaphysics and psychology.

Doesn't matter. — Wosret

It does matter because to answer me that it is your whims and preferences which provide the necessary link between reason and self-interest is to merely obscure its underlying foundation. Where do your whims and preferences come from? What's your underlying metaphysics? Are you an individual who decides by himself what his whims and preferences are? How does this process come about? This is important to understand why your whims and preferences are such that self-interest becomes the goal of your reasoning faculty.

So I hold that based on my preferences and whims — Wosret

Are your preferences and whims your own? What if they're not? Where do they come from?

It also isnt very rational unless it is more personally beneficial to me than anything else. — Wosret

Why do you take your own personal benefit to be the "rational" thing to pursue? It seems to me that on an a priori and purely logical basis it is no more rational than to pursue the other's benefit.

What I'm trying to get at is that your determination that pursuing your own personal benefit is the rational thing to do is a superficial element that actually emerges from deeper metaphysical & psychological beliefs that structure your understanding and behaviour. That is required to provide the logical link between reason on the one hand and self-interest on the other.

So to investigate this, these underlying structures must be unearthed.

What psychological structures are you referring to? — Neva

Those that form the boundaries that delimit human thought and affective capacity.

If there were exceptions, would these people be subject to the same moral laws? — Neva

Yes, in the same manner that blindness (or any other form of ignorance, whether systematic or random) does not make one immune to the structures that are otherwise revealed by sight.

I actually do think that that is true, but that already supposes too much of the position Im question. Without the soul, or truth anyway, that cant be true. — Wosret

Hmm, okay, but surely we can scratch out the soul since it's ultimately a metaphor, what is important is the underlying reality that it signifies. That reality would still exist whether one is a materialist or whatever else because what one thinks does not change reality.

Truth cannot be man-made for the simple reason that man isn't God and doesn't control reality. We notice this from first-hand experience - things don't always go as we wish they did. So truth is really our way of signifying what is the case independently of our desires.

Morality cannot be man-made because there are certain psychological structures which are given, which pretty much exist in all people, whether they are aware of them or not. And again we notice this from experience, both in ourselves and in others. These aspects are invariant.

I'm not sure how productive or useful it is to speculate if reality was some other way, I don't think that makes much sense since all our meaning is given by reality as it actually is.

he followed the law because it was right, and not because it was the law. — Wosret

Well yes, it's quite obvious that it's not necessarily immoral to break the law.

The only real objection to that could be that it wouldn't work, that no one is skilled enough in manipulation or deception to get away with it, but that can be reduced to the lack of certainty, and fear of — Wosret

There's also the objection that immorality (manipulation and deception) are harmful in themselves, regardless of the external consequences they bring. That is Plato's entire argument about the "lie in the soul". To manipulate others, you must also manipulate yourself, because manipulation entails giving power to the willful aspect of your soul which seeks to determine reality as it wants it (according to your whims) and isn't concerned with how reality is.

So just like how you manipulate X to do what you want them to do, so likewise you will manipulate your reasoning aspect of the soul to think whatever you find convenient to think, and at that point, you're lost, since you've severed your contact with reality.

Socrates' method of dialectic consisted in showing what something (Justice, the Good, or whatever) cannot, contrary to what his interlocutors might think it is, be. This is done by revealing inconsistencies that negate the proposed definitions. It is really a logical practice of negation. — Janus

Well, that would be if we only consider dialogues like Euthyphro where no positive conceptions are left standing. However, in other dialogues, like Republic, it is shown more clearly that dialectic is a technique of logical critique that is meant to create the right hierarchy of ideas in the soul, and thus bring the soul in harmony with itself.

It is really a logical practice of negation. — Janus

So much more than this, I would say it's a logical practice of seeing into the nature of things, which involves negation of appearances as much as it involves the affirmation of reality.

it is obvious that matter in its totality, considered without limitation, can have no figure, and that figure applies only to finite and determinate bodies. — Janus

Yes, but just as obvious is that matter cannot be "totalized" or considered in its totality, for there is no actual infinite. Spinoza's philosophy is a philosophical attempt at totalization.

figure applies only to finite and determinate bodies — Janus

Yes, this is certain. At the same time, there can be no infinite bodies, as per above.

So since figure is nothing but determination and determination is negation — Janus

See here's the difference for me. Figure is indeed nothing but determination, however determination is not negation. If we take particular examples, when we say "the table is white", then we don't really mean that all colors apart from white are negated. We rather affirm the being of white. "Not white" cannot exist. You could say that determination implies negation, but negation never has being. If I say "the table is not white", then I don't really mean there is such a thing as "not white" that I see. I never see "not white" - rather I see another color, so my saying that it's "not white" really means that I expected it to be white, but alas it was a different color.

The problem is that Hegel (and Spinoza) invert the Platonic/Aristotelian conception of desire. Here:

It is clear that we neither strive for, nor will, neither want, nor desire anything because we judge it to be good; on the contrary, we judge something to be good because we strive for it, will it, want it, and desire it. — Spinoza

This leads Hegel later on to conceive of self-consciousness not as longing for any external object, but rather as longing for its own self-certainty, where what is external becomes merely a means of self-affirmation. This desire is conceived as a nothingness - a void - that seeks to make itself actual or objectified in the external world. This conception of goodness as a mode of desire/thought is the sign of modernity par excellence.

But the Platonic conception of desire situates goodness in the external object that the soul longs for. Goodness is not a function of the will, but rather of eros, erotic longing. This is lost in modern thinkers.

In the bible Jesus talks in parables, some get explained but most don't. — Sir2u

Oh yeah, you're actually expected to think for yourself and relate it to your own experiences, wow, who would ever do that! You should get a room for yourself and put a sticker on the door reading "kids only" :-}

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I set aside childish ways. — 1 Corinthians 13:11

When I dream about someone I know telling me something, I understand what they are saying. Why I had the dream is another question entirely. Does the dream have a meaning is something else again. But I still understood the words that the person spoke. — Sir2u

The dream itself contains the message.

I think what you mean when you say interpretation is guessing at or assigning other meanings which might not necessarily in line with gods words. — Sir2u

Nope.

Apart from actually denying that you are saying something while doings so, which in itself is ridiculous, the rest of this is the same pitiful excuse so many use to make people do things. From politicians and preachers to parents and kids, it is always the same. "You don't know so I am right, listen to me" — Sir2u

I haven't actually said that, I merely drew your attention to the fact that the Bible itself doesn't paint the picture of God that you have in your mind for the purposes of this conversation. This isn't about me or listening to me, it's about reading the Bible.

I have asked you quite a few questions and for several explanations which you have failed to reply to, am I supposed to think that there is some unknowable message in you none replies or do you not think them worth replying to? — Sir2u

I fail to see the questions that I failed to reply. I've replied to everything it seems to me. Is there some unknowable message? I'm not sure what you mean, and why you brought unknowable messages in the discussion in the first place.

so that simple people can understand. — Sir2u

No.

Did Peter not know what god was saying to him? — Sir2u

No, he did not know what God communicated to him through the vision he had. That's why he was perplexed.

Not even his followers agree with some of his ideas, maybe because he failed to write them clearly and wrote with hidden meanings included. — Sir2u

He is a philosopher, not a guru, so he doesn't have "followers".

Is that not the same thing I said? — Sir2u

No. You implied that parables are just a simple way to communicate something that would otherwise be very difficult to communicate and would require one to be very educated, etc.

Are you saying that god is the kind of being that deliberately tries to confuse the people he wants to praise and adore him? — Sir2u

I'm not saying anything, I'm just saying that the text makes it clear that God isn't the kind of being that appears very clearly at the whims and wishes of people. He is a Hidden God.

But that is only lack of data, not a way of interpretation. — Sir2u

One cannot interpret or understand without context.

You do not need to know which cat is black to understand the sentence. — Sir2u

A sentence isn't some Platonic object that lives off in some separate realm and can be understood apart from its context. The meaning of a sentence is in the intention of its author. If a monkey typed that sentence, I'd tell you it means nothing, it's gibberish. If a secret agent typed that sentence, I may think it means something different than is at first apparent. Etc.

Meaning is context dependent, and interpretation aims at deciphering the intention of the author.

And the people that wrote the bible would have known exactly what god and Jesus were saying. — Sir2u

Nope, that's not actually the case. The Bible makes the opposite to be quite evident actually. For example:

On the next day, as they were on their way and approaching the city, Peter went up on the housetop about the sixth hour to pray. But he became hungry and was desiring to eat; but while they were making preparations, he fell into a trance; and he saw the sky opened up, and an object like a great sheet coming down, lowered by four corners to the ground, and there were in it all kinds of four-footed animals and crawling creatures of the earth and birds of the air. A voice came to him, “Get up, Peter, kill and eat!” But Peter said, “By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything unholy and unclean.” Again a voice came to him a second time, “What God has cleansed, no longer consider unholy.” This happened three times, and immediately the object was taken up into the sky.

Now while Peter was greatly perplexed in mind as to what the vision which he had seen might be, behold, the men who had been sent by Cornelius, having asked directions for Simon’s house, appeared at the gate; and calling out, they were asking whether Simon, who was also called Peter, was staying there. While Peter was reflecting on the vision, the Spirit said to him, “Behold, three men are looking for you. But get up, go downstairs and accompany them without misgivings, for I have sent them Myself.” Peter went down to the men and said, “Behold, I am the one you are looking for; what is the reason for which you have come?” They said, “Cornelius, a centurion, a righteous and God-fearing man well spoken of by the entire nation of the Jews, was divinely directed by a holy angel to send for you to come to his house and hear a message from you.” So he invited them in and gave them lodging. — Acts 10:9-23

So again, your ignorance of the Bible only shows itself.

They must have written their exact words and both god and jesus must have been very careful about what they said because they wanted, needed people to understand and follow their way of thinking. So why should they include hidden meanings? — Sir2u

"Truly, You are a God who hides Himself, O God of Israel, Savior!"

A parable is not another hidden meaning and is not subject to interpretation, it is just a simpler explication of a topic so that simple people can understand. — Sir2u

You have never heard of Kierkegaard's indirect communication? The point of parables is precisely that their meaning cannot be communicated otherwise, since it's not a matter of reason, but of direct perception and intuition, which requires to look and see via images as it were - to have a direct insight.

So you just ignore the evidence of the Heat Death being all around us? And you ignore the fact that we can look out into the sky and see the start of the Universe because it takes billions of years for distant light to reach us? And you ignore the fact that we can create both the early and final states of the Universe to some degree in a particle collider or other experimental apparatus.

Is there no limit to your ability to ignore the observable so you can maintain your articles of faith? — apokrisis

Stating that the evidence isn't conclusive isn't the same as ignoring it. Yes 'heat death' is a possibility, certainly. A possibility that we don't actually even understand that well either.

We don't see the very start of the Universe. Our understanding of physics breaks down at that point. We see very close to it, and that's all assuming that the laws of physics remained the same through the 13.8 billion years going back. We infer this beginning and we may very well be wrong. We don't know yet. We probably never will.

No we cannot create the early and final state of the Universe within a part of the Universe. I think you realise that is absurd. We can create situations which may resemble particular situations from the early or final state of the Universe, however this is again to assume that the laws of physics which give rise to what we observe today were the same 13.8 billion years ago and would give rise to similar things. That, again, we do not know. It's certainly possible, but we don't know it.

The funny thing is that the story you always love to paint is just as much an article of faith as anything else. It too is just a story made up of a few facts we do have, which may be the wrong story. And you do defend it tooth and nail, and glee over how your opponents are crushed by it and so on so forth. The hilarious aspect is that you do not realise how much alike your opponents you yourself are.

Well either you believe in the relativity you advanced or you don't. Or is inconsistency OK in your metaphysics? [rhetorical question] — apokrisis

I think you should re-read the relativity I've advanced a little bit more carefully.

I think repetition and pattern don't really get to the essence of order. Repetition and pattern are only one kind of order, more specifically the order that arises by having separate things arranged in such and such a way. But, essentially, order is a determination. This means that absolute disorder or absolute chaos must be impossible, for it entails the absence of any determination, and the absence of any determination is just non-being, nothing.

You may think of absolute chaos as two balls moving in empty space absolutely chaotically, without any rhyme or purpose. But that too isn't absolute chaos, because the balls are still determined in-themselves as balls, and also in relation to one another. So all that we're dealing with in reality will be different degrees of order - we can never deal with infinite chaos, for such a thing is incoherent - the negation of all determinations is its own negation.

The table is black. There is order. The table is not white. This seems to be a negation, but every negation is ultimately an affirmation, for nobody actually saw a table that is 'not white'. They saw a table which has some determination with regards to color - but it wasn't the color they expected - so they say it's not white. This "not white" is an underhanded way of affirming its real color. Thus, there is no pure negation. Determination is always prior to negation. — Agustino

Well we have to be careful how we define those terms. Chaos and order are not opposite terms, since there is an asymmetry between the two. Chaos is a relative term. Something is chaotic in comparison to a higher degree of order. But absolute chaos, as I've mentioned in my first post in this thread, is incoherent. A minimum of order is always necessary. — Agustino

The point I'm advancing above is the same point Aristotle advanced. Namely that order and chaos aren't a symmetrical dichotomy the way you'd want them to be. They don't both arise from an X which is both ordered and chaotic. Rather the whole point is that order is primary and chaos is secondary and relative to order. This is what Aristotle sought to show with the primacy of act over potency and form over matter. The point being that your infinite potential - your vagueness from which everything emerges - is incoherent. Your vagueness by itself is inert - in fact, non-existant. There cannot be any such vagueness - nor, if there ever was such a vagueness - could anything ever "emerge" from it. But there is something. Hence why we need a First Cause, which is entirely act and not potency.

The very fact of determination would demand its dialectical "other" of indeterminancy. How could determination arise except as a departure from the undetermined? — apokrisis

Determination in the sense we're discussing it here does not "arise". Some degree of determinacy is properly basic, it is the first cause. This is the Aristotelian primacy of act over potency.

Indeterminacy is an epistemological concept that you've smuggled into ontology.

You have shown you get the logic. So be prepared to follow it through in every argument. If individuation is a thing, then so is vagueness. — apokrisis

I am absolutely prepared, I ask that you also be prepared to do the same.

I can't help it if your ability to imagine "absolute chaos" is so improverished. — apokrisis

It's not my ability to imagine "absolute chaos" that is defective, but rather that absolute chaos is a chimera - it doesn't and cannot exist.

That is what we should expect from an acceptance of dialectical reasoning. If what emerges is the opposition of two things - here, the necessary and the contingent, or purposeful creation vs meaningless existence - then the vagueness which spawned them must be a state where we can no longer tell the difference. The first cause must look as much like one as the other. The first action must be both deliberate and accidental - and so also, the least of either. — apokrisis

Dialectical reasoning as practiced by Socrates, Plato and Aristotle has nothing to do with this Hegelian version of dialectics that you're proposing here. The problem with Hegel is what the first trio critiqued way before him - he assumed that negation has an equal standing with determination, and that's false.

We now actually know that there is a "quantum Planck-scale" at which definite actions and definite accidents blur into each other indistinguishably. We can give a size to "a fundamental fluctuation". And this starting point is chimeric. It is as much the one thing as the other. And so really neither, if we are being honest. — apokrisis

Again this is just a rationalisation, the equations certainly don't "blur into each other". Furthermore, our physics breaks down when we reach the singularity. We just don't know what happens. You are speculating that a quantum fluctuation gets caught into the rapid inflationary period which effectively accounts for everything that exists in the Universe today. That's possible, but it still wouldn't account for the origin - why is there a fluctuation in the first place?

I only argue that the degree of order is that which is matched to the degree of disordering. Thermodynamics is all about balance and equilibrium. Surely you've heard that mentioned?

So human society is negentropy that is matched by its capacity for entropification. For every city built, a matching amount of frictional heat must be produced. There are no perpetual motion machines. — apokrisis

Yes, you're playing the same trick here that I've mentioned before. You're just telling me you solved the problem by restating it in different words. Our initial problem was why lower degrees of order statistically lead to higher degrees of order over time. Your answer is that the fastest entropic gradient is the one that produces negentropic structures which decrease their internal entropy while increasing the entropy of the external environment much more. See what you've done? You told me that the entropic gradient (ie lower degrees of order) is such that it will lead to the formation of negentropic structure (ie higher degrees of order). But you haven't answered the question - you just restated the problem under different terms. Now the question becomes why is it that the fastest entropic gradient is the one that produces negentropic structures? Why do negentropic structures maximise the degree of entropy? We're back to square 1.

What can I say? I thought you were a smarter fellow. But when you resort to arguments as weak as these, it just looks like you have run up the white flag. — apokrisis

I'm just pointing out that you making the dogmatic statements that you do make requires a much greater degree of certainty and evidence than we have available. If we can know how the Universe started 13.8 billion years ago, why can't we know what the weather will be like in 5 days? It's a bit far-fetched to claim we have such degree of certainty over billions of years based on data we extract today.

Science is explaining the emergence of order very nicely. The ancient metaphysics of a dialectically self-organising cosmos - metaphysical naturalism - is proving true. Exhibit A is the quantum fluctuation. Exhibit B is Big Bang cosmology. — apokrisis

Science is not in the business of "explaining" but rather establishing mechanisms via which order can arise. It cannot tell us why order arises in the first place. That's the business of meta-physics to decipher.

As for the ancient metaphysics of dialectically self-organising cosmos - metaphysical naturalism - that isn't an accurate portrayal at all. By many accounts, Aristotle was a metaphysical naturalist as well. He did not believe in a dialectically self-organising cosmos, but quite the contrary, he thought that act is prior to potency and there must be a First Cause which is actual and not merely potential.

If you want to keep doing metaphysics at this stage of human history, you've got to do a better job of keeping up with the play. The question about "first cause" goes beyond the dichotomous categories you thought were fundamental. — apokrisis

You have yet to show that the two dichotomous categories - act / potency or order / chaos - are really dichotomously symmetrical, because if they are not, then one of them has primacy over the other. Remember - my disagreement with you is not over your physics, but over your metaphysics, and your physics, whatever they are, have no bearing on these metaphysical issues we're discussing. I'm merely pointing out that your metaphysics is incoherent as it stands - it's self contradictory.

Your starting point - absolute vagueness - is a chimera of the intellect, it cannot be actual, it is actually impossible.

So if I write "The cat is black and was a year old when she had kittens" you would not be able to understand it just by reading the text? — Sir2u

No. I need to know, to begin with, which cat.

It means exactly what it says. — Sir2u

Not necessarily. The sentence may be code for something else for example.

So why should everything else be a mystery that has to be unraveled before it can be understood? — Sir2u

I've stated that it must be read in context, taking care to go back to the way it would have been understood in the Judaic culture in which it arose.

Keeping things in context helps understanding. — Sir2u

Ah yes, indeed. I've been saying this for awhile.

But did he ever transmit any super secret information through them? He used parables to make sure that nothing was hidden. — Sir2u

Yes, parables are indeed a way to communicate information that cannot be communicated otherwise. What's your point?

what now counts as strongly supported knowledge. — apokrisis

No knowledge with regards to the very far future and the very far past counts as "strongly" supported. You cannot just assume that you can extend your graph indefinitely and the same relations will hold.

OK, you're familiar with the concept of spatial expansion, that's good. So observational information is taken and interpreted according to the precepts of relativity based theories. The interpretations show that distant objects, stars and galaxies are all moving away from us. Of course we cannot conclude that all the objects in the universe are moving away from us, because that would make us the centre of the universe, just like geocentrism. Also, we wouldn't want to admit that relativity theory is defective, because applying it makes it appear like we are the centre of the universe. Instead, cosmologists have produced the theory of spatial expansion.

Now we have the motions of objects which are subject to relativity theory, plus motions which are subject to expansion theories. Since relativity theory is supposed to apply to all motions of material objects, then the latter motions, those explained by expansion theories cannot be called motions. So we have "motions" those which are consistent with relativity theory, and "non-motions", those motions which require expansion theories to explain. Instead of recognizing that relativity theory is inadequate for interpreting all the motions in the universe, cosmologists prefer to accept contradiction. They allow that there are motions which are not real motions, because they are inconsistent with relativity. Then they are forced to produce new theories, spatial expansion, to account for these contradictory motions. — Metaphysician Undercover

You mean similar to how geocentrists first addressed errors that appeared in their model by introducing different fudge factors to account for the actual orbits of the planets?

I certainly agree with that. But it points to a "first moment" that is a vagueness, an utter lack of determination. — apokrisis

Utter lack of determination is a logical contradiction, for it aims to be a determination itself and fails. Your vague potential is nonsense. A logical impossibility that is the equivalent of absolute chaos. Every lack of determination observable in the world is actually a masked determination. My argument is laid out very clearly here:

I think repetition and pattern don't really get to the essence of order. Repetition and pattern are only one kind of order, more specifically the order that arises by having separate things arranged in such and such a way. But, essentially, order is a determination. This means that absolute disorder or absolute chaos must be impossible, for it entails the absence of any determination, and the absence of any determination is just non-being, nothing.

You may think of absolute chaos as two balls moving in empty space absolutely chaotically, without any rhyme or purpose. But that too isn't absolute chaos, because the balls are still determined in-themselves as balls, and also in relation to one another. So all that we're dealing with in reality will be different degrees of order - we can never deal with infinite chaos, for such a thing is incoherent - the negation of all determinations is its own negation.

The table is black. There is order. The table is not white. This seems to be a negation, but every negation is ultimately an affirmation, for nobody actually saw a table that is 'not white'. They saw a table which has some determination with regards to color - but it wasn't the color they expected - so they say it's not white. This "not white" is an underhanded way of affirming its real color. Thus, there is no pure negation. Determination is always prior to negation. — Agustino

You are offering the best argument against intelligence design. Any "God" must now be a form of immanent pantheism at best, not some supernatural deity with a grand purpose in mind. — apokrisis

Not necessarily, but this is not the point here. We're arguing about a first cause now, which must have certain characteristics. That's all. So we didn't yet reach the point of discussing pantheism, immanence, etc. We didn't even reach the point of calling this first cause God or separate from the Universe for that matter. The question whether the first cause is "immanent" - what does that even mean? - hasn't been addressed (it would also presuppose that there is something which contains the first cause, otherwise, the first cause cannot be immanent ;) ).

Who says they do? — apokrisis

You. That's what your argument entails. It entails that statistically, lower degrees of order will lead to higher degrees of order. And that's precisely what is under the question. You take that as a brute fact, while it clearly asks for explanation as shown by the OP first of all.

Well in fact it is well constrained by observation now. We know - because of dark energy - that a de Sitter state Heat Death is pretty much looking inevitable. And anyway, we are not even 3 degrees away from absolute zero right now. So we know a hell of a lot about the outcome, even if most of this knowledge is less than a century old. — apokrisis

LOL! No, the scientists themselves are not that sure. We don't understand dark energy very well. We can't even predict what the weather will be in 5 days very accurately, you think we can predict what will happen to the Universe in many billions of years? :P In addition, all our predictions assume that the laws of physics will stay the same, and we just don't know that they will.

What, now you are appealing to emergent chance? Not God descending in chariots of fire to reboot the Heat Death cosmos?

Talk about consistency. :s — apokrisis

It's simply called limiting myself to proving one thing and allowing everything else as possibilities. Otherwise I'd have to write you a book.

So the way to get rid of a stain on the carpet is to disguise it with a bigger stain?

Great thinking Batman! Wrap your mystery in a bigger mystery. Pretend something useful was said. — apokrisis

No, you didn't understand it. The intelligent designer solves a problem. There is no problem that is required to be solved in order to postulate a designer for the intelligent designer himself. So why would we do it? That would be irrational. As irrational as not postulating the intelligent designer in the first place. It seems you like dwelling in irrationality though :P

What's the difference? If the designing intelligence doesn't require a designer then why would anything else. — praxis

We look at the Universe. We understand that to have lower degrees of order lead to greater degrees of order, there needs to be an intelligence at work. That's where we're at. That's what the intelligence explains. If you have lower degrees of order leading to greater degrees of order by itself that is contradictory - it's the same as having something come from nothing.

Now when we reach the first cause, we have no reason that requires us to go back. There's nothing else that needs to be explained.

Calling something 'First cause' is ignoring the paradox of creation and existence, not solving it. — CasKev

The solution is that something is a brute fact since non-existence is impossible.