↪god must be atheist KK is a waste of time. Mr. Kid isnt intellectually honest and reading their posts insults one's intelligence. — Harry Hindu

One wise person told me never to chalk up to malice what you can explain with ... well, with stupidity. I don't think Kenosha Kid is stupid... far from it, but his mind has become muddled. Maybe not, but his writing style and his getting lost in the explanation of his own point indicate that he maybe was very strong intellectually in the past, but he is no longer. I don't know him, I only go by what I see reading his posts. I may be off the mark totally, but I did notice that he can't express what he thinks, because most likely what he thinks leaves his mind before he can succeed in writing it down. Or else he remembers he used to think something, but that thing is gone now. As simple as that.

Sorry to see that, maybe he will get better. I wish him good luck with his health.

I don't mean to be mean. I sincerely think what I wrote here, without any intention to hurt or to offend.

There is nothing to explain. I think the ball is in your court. If not, then the ball got lost. I'm okay with that.

Social commentary on Apollodorus's mind. I tried to be ironic, but I guess I failed. I was too rational and realistic in the views of other respondents to this OP, so you people took my post at face value. At least I figure that's why you asked.

I think the reliability of economic data from a secretive dictatorship like the USSR is rather doubtful. Plus, the Soviets received a lot of financial and technological assistance from the West in addition to what they stole through worldwide industrial espionage operations, etc. This may be among the factors that account for it. — Apollodorus

Obviously the Russians are incapable of normal thought, and their entire economy is based on thieving, pilfering and fraud. Their economic miracle can be fully explained by huge aid monies and technological injections by the USA, which is clearly the world leader in honesty, technology, shitting, and economics. And in superior knowledge of god and the scriptures, far surpassing even the Vatican, child's play, really.

Russia's double-digit increase in industrial output as you rightly say, can be explain by their being unscrupulous lying bastards, mother lovers and child abusers. They eat little kittens for breakfast, and cute puppies for dinner. They also reject the kingdom of Jesus Christ, the Savior. They say their economic output is nearing the level of Jesus. Satan often visits Russia, and he is the guest of the state -- his chair is right next to Putin's right during gladiator sports, when Christians are fed to lions in an arena, strictly supervised by international soccer referees. They are on a point system there.

I can't see you make an argument to show that recorded history now is less indicative in this set of ethical questions than the recorded history of say, 500 years ago.
— god must be atheist

Eh? {ED: your question}

Great. You know you can follow the posts back by clicking the name of the person in the quote? {ED: your own set of instructions how to answer your own question expressed as "Eh?"} — Kenosha Kid

I am not responsible for your immediately forgetting what you had said in a one previous post. I am not going to tell you what you have written and opined, just so that you understand what I am responding to and why my response makes sense if you consider first what YOU had said.

This is very frustrating for me. If I can't rely on you to remember what you have said and thus make sense of my response, whom can I rely on to make your memory jogged?

OLP does not point to a set that satisfies (and, again, notice the skeptical fear of inconclusiveness); it uncovers the criteria of how we even are satisfied (here), or not. — Antony Nickles

I wonder if you could provide a simple, tangible example. Not a complicated one at all. A simple one. How a OLP uncovers criteria that makes us satisfied (in what sense satisfied?).

OLP does not point to a set that satisfies (and, again, notice the skeptical fear of inconclusiveness); it uncovers the criteria of how we even are satisfied (here), or not. And it is not a "solution", say, on the terms/grounds of mathematics. — Antony Nickles

I see, you did not take my advice on how NOT to explain things with negatives - how not to explain a thing by saying what it is not. You used two negatives with one blurred, muddled, ineffectual, vague positive claim. So... I don't know your point, until you state it in oridnary language. Simple, ordinary, common language. You seem to be the worse user and disciple of the very thing you advocate. You advocate ordinary langauge; and you use vague concpets expressed by negatives (in saying what it is not) when I have shown you that is not at all a good way of expressing your opinion.

It's a mode of critique more than a set of solutions. It's basic tenet might be "cut the bullshit". — Banno

Critiques are solutions too. Inasmuch as solutions can be found. In the sense that 5 <> 6 is a solution much like 5=5 is a solution.

A solution can be expressed in two ways: Positively, "X is ____", or negatively, "X is not ____." A criticism expresses the solution in the latter way.

After all, solutions point to a set that satisfy the criteria in question. You can point at a solution within the set; and you can point out the solution by pointing at things NOT in the set and declaring they are not part of the set. The solution is delineated either way.

Most people like to think of this in terms that criticism leads to a solution, but it is not the solution itself.

Thus starting with a summary reduces philosophy to a set of answers people judge and regurgitate or dismiss; it trivializes the point of going through the process of being changed by reading. — Antony Nickles

You're right, but only in the cases where non-philosophers read. I am in the opinion that although everyone has philosophical thoughts and like to ponder questions, not everyone is a philosopher. Much like not everyone has a sense for physics, for horseback-riding, for parachuting, for etc. etc. It takes a philosopher to think like a philosopher. It can be taught to a non-philosopher how to think like a philosopher, much like creative writing can be taught and uneven parallel bars can be taught. But a natural-born philosopher with no prior reading experience in philosophy would benefit greatly from summaries.

After all: all philosophy textbooks are summaries, albeit a bit more detailed than Wiki.

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When the teacher appears, the student is ready. It does not matter what portal to knowledge one takes; as long as he or she goes through the portal. It could be via summaries, via detailed annotated and discussed readings of the Republic, via learning about the brief history of philosophy, the apt student's ability will make him or her learn quickly and effieciently, no matter what portals one takes to get into the subject matter.

One word of advice, which you can take or leave: If you speak in negatives, for instance how you speak of ordinary language philosophy, the negatives on one hand do not help the student's learning; on the other hand are irritating to the reader; and on the third hand contain no useful information. When you try to introduce new paradigms in knowledge to someone, the negatives are ballast. Speak only in positives, what it IS, not what it is NOT.

For instance:

"A car is a motorized vehicle for transporting two to six people and which runs on four wheels."

V.f.

"A car is not a toy. A car is not a newspaper article. A car is not my grandmother's nose. A car is not a toilet seat."

Thanks for writing the above, but I actually don't see how it relates to our argument. My position is that a summary may be a good starting point while not being (or else being) a good summary at all, of philosophical (other other types) of enquiry for the otherwise uninitiated. Your counter point was to decry three-sentence or shorter garment label descriptions (so to speak) of any philosophical trend, particularly the trend of ordinary language philosophy.

Nothing has changed in this stand, as you haven't made an argument against mine yet. I don't know if you wish to continue; I'll be glad to drop the dialogue.

No no, now that you're right I disagree with you. I still haven't actually tallied them up, but even so the point was that incest has been more taboo since records began. It might be that right now or in the near future it isn't, but that doesn't change the past. — Kenosha Kid

I can't see you make an argument to show that recorded history now is less indicative in this set of ethical questions than the recorded history of say, 500 years ago. Because you need to prove, if it turns out that murder and rape and blasphemy was less of a taboo than incest in recorded history from 200 years ago and before, than in the more recent times, that the societal value system of that era is more indicative than the value system of our present era, of what the value system must have been in prehistoric times. I am curious how you will do that.

I've never read any scientific research that suggets the only way that climate change is reversible is to drastically reduce the population. But if you have any peer reviewed journal articles that explicitly say so, i'd be happy to go through them if you drop the link below — Gitonga

You are talking about climate change and how it's not documented it's reversible by reducing the population. But that's not a refutation of my argument. My argument was that polluting and poisoning the environment can be reversed by reducing the human head count.

Please line up your ducks more carefully. I hate it when a Strawman, or in fact any, fallacy is used against my argument. Please spare me the trouble. Please do read what I write and respond to what I write, and not respond to something I did not write.

These seem along the right lines. And interesting because within a system of thinking some proposition can express an a priori truth. - universal and necessary. But that in itself no truth at all. Gravity as a force, now gravity as description of the free movement of objects in space-time along geodesics - no force at all.
My absolute presupposition would be "my sensations reflect truth (reality)."....In the previous post, my presupposition may not be true... but it works for me.
— god must be atheist
This gets tricky. APs underlie issues of truth or falsity. They are the grounds upon which relative presuppositions are reckoned true or false. Or perhaps yours a relative proposition that leads back to "sensations reflect reality." You might question whether yours do, but whether sensations in general do a whole other question. — tim wood

You can't get away from the presupposition that your rely on your senses. What else are you going to rely on? Very basically.
A priori knowledge? They are truisms, they don't reveal any knowledge outside of themselves.
If you don't rely on evidence, and you can't rely on pure reason, then you got to rely on something. There is no other "something". So you have to choose between your senses and a priori truth. A priori may not lead you to anything, in fact, it does not. Experiential evidence may be correct or may be totally false, but take it or leave it, there is nothing else. A priori is certain to not be helpful as a most basic presupposition. Experience has at least a chance to be revealing the truth (from your point of view), so you bet on the horse that has a chance, not on the one that has no chance at all, when you are restricted to bet on one horse and only on one of the two.

A knee-jerk, superficial, three-sentence {ED: or shorter} takeaway can't be anything but misleading. — Antony Nickles

Thanks for providing an example of your point:

OLP is not about knowledge or being told anything; it's about texts, and going through a process; answering the questions, seeing for yourself. — Antony Nickles

Not really. Research will elaborate, just look up incest laws and rape laws by country. I haven't done a count, but given the number of countries that decriminalised incest in the 19th and 20th centuries, and the growing number of countries that have criminalised spousal rape in the 20th and 21st centuries, right now or in the near future, it might be that incest is actually more accepted than rape (go you). Of course, there's the prior millennia to take into account too. — Kenosha Kid

So now that you agree with me, I'm wrong?

Okay, I get it. You, personally, find incestuous sexual relationships more abominable than murder, rape, theft on a large scale, and crimes against humanity. I admit that it is your privilege to make personal choices in this matter. You make a mistake, however, when you extrapolate from your own personal views and insist that the entire world feels that way.

No, the entire world does not feel that way. It is reflected in our laws and customs that the world does not feel that way.

Maybe you just need to see that.

It's your word against mine.

Except I can cite examples of what is seriously frowned upon and what is not. You just speak in generalities and claim facts without showing them or accounting for them, but which (if they were true) support your opinion. Well, they don't, until you actually show some evidence.

In America, you get the chair for killing someone. But you go scott free if you have a sexual relationship with your sibling, if you both consent and are of age of majority.

I would say this attitude (not the literal equality of severity of punishment) goes for most of the planet.

I wonder where and how you gather your statistics. At this point I am thinking you, Kenosha Kid, gather statistics from imagining what is the most convenient fantasy to support your theory and you insist that your facts are true, without showing any evidence.

And we don't need to reduce the number of people to save the environment — Gitonga

This is the misconception of the century. Please consider the following, I beg you:

1. It is people who are polluting and poisoning the environment.
2. There is no stopping to it.
3. The poisoning and polluting can theoretically be reversed.
4. The amount of people that we have today can't reduce the poisoning and pollution to a level at which the environment could recuperate. No matter what.
5. The obvious is inevitable: only fewer people on the globe can pollute to a limit at which the environment can recuperate.

Goals of theists: "Drop-kick me, Jesus, through the goal-posts of life!"

Goals of atheists: scored in world cup soccer matches.

Anti-goals of theists: Jesus saves!

Anti-goals of atheist: Henderson winds up... he shoots! But Jesus saves! (Hernando Jesus is the Goal Keeper for the Los Angeles Ducks hockey team.)

Oh please for all that is good in the world save me from philosophical summaries. — Antony Nickles

Philosophical summaries are useful for those who are only getting acquainted with a topic or subject. It's a good starting point, from which one can advance by learning the inherently distinguishable differences that the summary does not mention, and thus proceed to learn about the topic's more intricate details.

In summary, philosophical summaries are not not good as philosophical summaries, but they are good as starting points for the dilettante.

Utilitarian ethics indeed does provide for some self-contradictory situations.

As an example:

What is the best thing that can happen to mankind right now, that would benefit with the greatest amount of good to the greatest amount of people? Well, for arguments' sake, it is the saving of the environment.

The environment is (for argument's sake) being destroyed by humans. So to save the environment, humanity must be reduced in numbers, and kept constantly at a lower headcount than now.

For this, most of humanity must be destroyed and / or else not allowed to reproduce.

Therefore the greatest amount of good for the greatest amount of people is to reduce the benefits to the greatest amount of people and to disallow them to practice their greatest biological benefit, which is reproduction.

Your conclusion is the same as mine albeit better expressed. However. I wonder what would happen faced with a phenomenon that can not be explained in even the most speculative way.
I think that the explanation of it being created by 'sufficiently advanced civilization must have its limits. — Jacob-B

What would happen if something happened that is not scientifically explicable? is your question.

I chalk it up as wishful thinking by the religious. It has never happened yet; to our knowledge. You could also ask, "what if nothing will ever happen that will disprove science?" with the same logic and intuition.

To rely on the faith that something that has never happened and likely never will, but is going to happen is the strength of religion.

However, the supposition that "logic dependably works", that one can trust logic, is an absolute one. You cannot prove that logic is true or efficacious because you would need logic to do so. — Olivier5

This is a good one, but I would file the acceptance that "logic is logical" under sense-sensation. Our entire intuitive world, including language and understanding language, is based on the reliable relationship between sensation and stimulus.

I agree with time and space, though, that was right on. With a caveat as below.

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That said, there is a tendency among modern logicians that postulates that logic as used by humans is a product of evolution, and it has some, but not all to do with reality. In microphysics, i.e. in quantum space, an effect can occur before its cause; it needs the cause, but the cause will happen sometime later than the effect gets born. Also, there are a lot of other difficulties to conventional reason that QM presents: a volume of space contains more energy the smaller it is. In our logical world, if you add two things, their sum is bigger than either of the additives. But in quantum world the sum is smaller than the additives individually. ETC. Therefore MODERN LOGICIANS have divided the world of logic into two segments: human-intuitive, that is, evolutionarily ingrained logic, the one that corresponds to our senses and the logic of the language; this is called LOGIC 1. LOGIC 2 is non-intuitive logic, something that is part of reality, but it baffles every human the first time we learn about it.

Here're some examples of how ordinary language philosophy solves philosophical problems.

Example 1:
Person 1: "I wonder how long the universe has been in existence."
Person 2: "Since time infinite."
Person 3 (supervisor): "Quit slaffin' off; get back to work, the two of you."

Example 2:
Person 1: "I love her so; I would give my life for her. Yet I don't know what love is."
Person 2: "I'd sleep out in the rain if that's what she wanted me to do. And yet I also don't know what love is."
Person 3 (wife): "Shut your clapper! Tell your buddy to take a hike, and then take the trash out already."

NO. :sweat: (Welcome to the club!) — 180 Proof

I'm weirded out of course because of my ego. Then I'm weirded out because I don't know that people don't argue with me because they ignore me, i.e. I'm totally ignorable, or because my points are so very right on that there is nothing to argue about.

But what really worries me is that I'll get weirded out to the max the moment people start to respond to me. What if I get responses? I won't know what to do with them. I am not used to them. I don't have experience with the "responded to my points" paradigm. In a way I'm like a dog that chases cars, and then one day he catches one. Then what??

It's an inference from the fact that incest is the most widespread taboo in the world. — Kenosha Kid

Except that it's not. There are bigger taboos: child molestation, rape, murder, overthrowing the government, picking your toes during dinner. The biggest taboo, of course, is not defending your mother's honour if you're a guy. She's sacrosanct. But there, still is Oedipus.

Incest is not the most widespread taboo in the world.

:razz:

Doesn't anybody FUCKING read my fucking posts?????!!!!!

*&*&^%$$#^!!!!

Incest has been taboo since prehistory, likely not because of an anti-liberal agenda, but because it leads to unhealthy babies. — Kenosha Kid

I don't know about prehistoric times. I also don't know how you get your information from 5000-plus years ago when there were no recordings of social customs.

All I know is that ancient Egyptians believed in the matrilineal inheritance of divinity of pharaohs. Therefore -- this is a recorded fact -- most pharaohs married (legally, while they may have had countless concubines) their sisters, aunts or mothers, in the hopes to produce a male offspring that was legally and by religion acceptable to be the next pharaoh.

Ancient Egypt lasted about 5000 years. That's not bad for an empire commanded by successive generations of children born to incestuous marriages.

I bet they don't. A tenth man's day is not always honky-dory. BTW, I didn't use any facts or assumptions that you hadn't provided. But that's okay, I won't resent your bitterness.

I think the question ought to be rephrased: "Do you prefer homosexuality or else incest, when it comes to your lifestyle choices given only these two? In the state-wide pilot social experiment currently conducted in the states of Rhode Island and Jew Jersey."

All TPFians are liars! Chew on that, god must be atheist. — TheMadFool

Whoa... where is the tenth man? You are supposed to be OPPOSING all the points, not agree with them.

The paradox in the Delphic Oracle's words, "surety brings ruin" isn't as interesting or important as the honesty that it exudes. — TheMadFool

But it has made you into being a liar. Where is the honesty and virtue in that?

someone who refuses to believe even if there's a mountain of evidential support to point out what the Delphic Oracle, 2500 years ago, warned us against: Surety brings ruin. — TheMadFool

Being sure of the Delphic Oraculum's truth demands of one to be doubtful. Doubting it makes one to be sure.

This is a good paradox.

How is a life lived in the spirit of a paradox?

Surety brings ruin. — TheMadFool

But doubt divides. In unity is force. There is no unity without surety. Time is money. If you live your life to the predictions made 2500 years ago, you must live an interesting life. "A great empire will fall." To one side it brought ruin; to the other side, victory. You concentrate on the losing side. But the winning side is just as important. Ruin is very seldom unilateral. You have to choose your position carefully. A position of betting against a winning horse is a position, but I am not sure if it brings you any success. But I may be wrong.

So you disagree when people present good, solid arguments. Good to know. Where has this got you in life? I am not facetious. Maybe you got much farther with this than one other would expect.

I would be more inclined to believe a out of the ocean theory instead of out of Africa — MAYAEL

What is the out of ocean theory?

conversely, what works for others? I daresay the same thing. Of course their opinions may be different from mine: their presupposition may be the existence of the Christian god and its influence in the person's life. From where I sit, their presupposition is false, and it can be replaced with mine for better effect.

In the previous post, my presupposition may not be true... but it works for me. I don't need any more supporting levels of presupposition; I don't need a basis for that presupposition. It is the gestalt, the "is", the "est".

My absolute presupposition would be "my sensations reflect truth (reality)."

This of course is only in retrospect. When my suppositions and presuppositions formed, this was not an issue. But even at that time -- as a baby, or newborn, I tasted my mothers milk and found it was palatable, and it was pleasant, and it took away my hunger -- I sensed that some things over and over again take away the pain of hunger and replace it with the pleasure of fulness. This established for me the presupposition in a non-philosophical, but empirical, experiential way.

Sort of like an old newspaper cartoon I read. A kid, eight-year-old, and supersmart computer whiz, types into his Commodore 64 (cutting edge tech then), "What's the nature of god?" To which the computer answers, "Two eggs, a pound of flour, baking powder and a cup of butter". The kid's hair stands on air, then he calms down and says, "I gotta mark these floppy disks more carefully."