do not insist that it is correct. — Fooloso4

Thank you for being lectured by you in a paraphrased form by telling me what I had just expressed. After refuting your own argument so eloquently; what should we do next time you claim something that we do not agree with?

Sorry for being so blunt. But once in a while it would be nice to hear from you, "Yes, you're right."

I think the decline of Christianity in the Western World can only be reversed by the correct "reinterpretation" or "reconsideration" of these two central commandments which together have always formed the very foundation of the Christian Faith. — Apollodorus

I think the decline could only be reversed if the dumbing of the population by not teaching anything useful in schools and by a heavy emphasis on cultural pressure to become Christian can be spread to other areas of the world, from the United States of America.

People are not dumb in other countries. They will be forced to see (if they have any analytical ability; which they do) that god created evil, yet god is forced to be believed to be infinitely good. They know the impossibility of the quality of omnipotence. They know 3-1 is not equal to zero, and never will be. Your presenting to a billion atheists and agnostics Christianity without first carving their frontal cortex from their skull will encounter a lot of derisive laughter.

"In Marxist dictatorships, people were convicted of crimes with mock trials, others were executed without a fair trial despite the law required it." -- Not a verbatim quote, but I agree with it.

I don't see much difference between that and the possibly true undercover operations of the FBI and the CIA. I don't see much real life example of the FBI killing people without trial, true. I see plenty of it in movies and on tv plays. However, I am aware of the ongoing atrocities and human rights violations committed illegally by US agents on a larger scale in Quantanimo bay.

Is that not an act of a dictator? To order actions that go against the law of the nation and get it carried out?

Take another, more peaceful example. Canada's prime minister allegedly stole billions of dollars from taxpayers. The details are secondary for the purpose of this post; the truth is questionable. Is committing a crime and getting away with it because of political status, not a dictatorial act? The facts are not known by the public, there are allegations both in the press, the media and in the parliament, but still.

The point is that dictatorial acts happen in the cleanest, cuddliest, most innocent democracies as well.

The first mention of sin. What was the concept of eating of the forbidden fruit called? Eaten by Adam and I guess Eve. Disobedience? Going against God's will? I appreciate that the Hebrew word for sin was not used, maybe, but the concept was coined right there and then. Is that true, or not true?

Sin, evil, is not only sin and evil because we call some actions sinful or evil. Sin and evil exist because the concept required a word for itself to delineate it, describe it, and make it usable in the language. Concept came first, word second. Because the word sin appeared in the story of Cain and Abel, one -- at least I think so -- can't deny that the concepts had been already in place before such moment as the concept was named a unique name.

If I was wise I would know what it is, but I ain't. (...) I don't think anyone else is wise either. — Fooloso4

My response to your claim is very dry reading, but it's perfectly logical, as follows:

So the language has a word with no meaning and no application. Maybe the word has a meaning, or a conceptual meaning, but no application. It is an adjective that you don't know what it is or what it means, and you categorically deny that anyone possesses this quality.

You don't know what wise is. So you may be wise, except not knowing what "wise" means, you may be already possessing that quality, except you don't know it.** Not for the lack of what being wise imbues you with, but for the lack of a definition. If you had a definition for "wise", you would have some knowledge what it is. But since you don't know what it is, you don't have a definition... ergo, you can't know whether you are in possession of wisdom, or else if you are wise, or not.

Saying you don't know what "wise" is, but you'd know if/when you were wise, is not logical. Inasmuch as it could be true, or not be true, but is not necessarily true. Since you don't know what "wise" is; since you don't know what being wise is like, you consequently can't know what it does to you. Only empirical evidence would show whether it would make you know what wisdom is, and the empirical evidence, so you claim, is missing to date.

** since you deny any knowledge by anyone to know what being wise is, you can or anyone else could, be wise, and nobody would recognize he or she is, because there is no knowledge what it is, therefore there is no way of recognizing it when encountering it as someone's quality in real life.

Socrates talks about the desire for wisdom, a passionate pursuit for something you do not possess. — Fooloso4

"You" as the general "you"?

I think wisdom is a set of accumulated insights a man or a woman or a child or a hermaphrodite on non-binary spectrum garners in his / her / its/ / their life, and applies to the advantage of himself / herself / itself / theirself/ singly or collectively.

This ain't macrophysics. Anyone can have insights.

should philosophy and [physical] science work together to help better understand consciousness? — 3017amen

They've been doing that singly and collectively since their inception.

You are forcing the obvious and passe into a discussion.

Only 24% consider it a metaphysical possibility which is a much weaker claim than saying consciousness doesn’t exist. — Kmaca

56% of the best minds in the world think that the best way to decide philosophical questions is by consensus. Furthermore, of this 56%, a 32% think that if consensus can't be achieved, then at least a 2-point margin must be validated by voting to make true what the largest minority thinks.

The source information is lost. However, 64% of all Hindustani-speaking car mechanics and 32% of all left-handed dentists residing on South Hokkaido Island, believe that the industry borrowed the two-point lead idea from Ping-Pong.

Not according to Neil Gaiman. He says step one in creativity is to allow yourself to become bored. — frank

True. Daydreaming follows to allay the boredom. You end up either creating the Theory of Specific Relativity, or masturbating.

So we agree then. — Apollodorus

I'll run with that.

Yet, isn't sin, understood as immorality/bad independent of god re Euthyphro's dilemma? — TheMadFool

How can it be independent if all that is creation is creation of and by god?

In the beginning there was nothing. God created everything.

Maybe there was god and evil? Before creation? The bible vehemently denies that.

You CANNOT divorce evil from god. he is fully responsible for its creation.

The only way to reconcile this by LOGIC (not by faith) is to
1. Ignore it
2. Abandon the faith.

However; if you have faith, then you can bully your mind into believing absolutely everything you've ever wanted to believe.

Let sleeping dogs lie. If you believe in god, a god which has the attributes Christianity ascribes to it, despite all reasonable thought that tells you that that unit is impossible to exist, then so be it, I am happy for you, and you should go in peace and spread the good news.

Has anyone actually done this experiment, or is there any anecdotal evidence of how actual people have acted in such situation? — baker

I think they did try this experiment. Forgot the name, but it's well documented. Where the subject was supposed to deliver a painful electric shock to a third person, unseen, if he gave the wrong answer. High, high voltages were driven through the people who gave the wrong answers, many times the lethal dose. Yet people did this, despite their better judgment.

Whether you let the man die for 100 million dollars, or you save him from certain death, is not a moral question. It is a stupid, ill-thought up question.

OP, you should put up your money and try this question on, let's say, 1000 people, to make it statistically significant. Talking about "What would you do if...", makes everyone speak like a seventeen-year-old contestant on a beauty pageant. We are all innocent, nice, and our shit don't smell. That includes myself, of course.

This sort of experiment is for the birds. "If you had a chance to push a button that would blow up the word, would you do it?" Well, gimme the REAL button and we'll see.

Talk is cheap.

By attributing a quality to a blob of wet clay, honestly I thought it was symbolic of all dead matter.
— god must be atheist

You were correct, it is, — James Riley

SYMBOLIC OF ALL MATTER. You agreed.

I did not divide ALL things into being good and not good. — James Riley

I really don't understand why you can't think back what you had said just five minutes before.

So by saying that you don't judge all things, the only thing that remain exclusive of your judgement are living things. All things that are dead matter, are good. Living things are neither good, nor bad.

Gaaaaa!!!!!

In referencing clay, I talked of nothing else (i.e. not all dead things). Then, in explaining how man is not the measure of all things, I referenced All as the measure of the rest, good or bad. — James Riley

But you contradicted this, by this:

By attributing a quality to a blob of wet clay, honestly I thought it was symbolic of all dead matter.
— god must be atheist

You were correct, it is, — James Riley

If you were consistent in your statements just for five minutes... it would be so lovely. You'd make sense, and there would be substance to your reasoning.

You keep calling me an idiot, whereas I only try to make sense of you utterances (or rather, point out that it is not possible).

What am I supposed to say to your barrage of attacking me, calling me out on all kinds of drummed up reasons?

You were correct, it is, but my saying so says nothing more than my subjective opinion is human. It does not make man the measure of it simply because a man acts like a man. It is my philosophy that All perceives itself through All it's parts. That would make clay, wood, whatever All would have it be. Not us. Not man.

But you say, that the buck stops at blobs of clay.
— god must be atheist

There you go again, telling me what I say. LOL! — James Riley

Well, on one hand you said it is not all things that are dead matter that you judge, and on the other hand, you agree it is all things that are dead matter you judge.

it is easy to refute my point, when you contradict yourself, because no matter which of the two-part contradiction
- I attribute to you
- I disprove,

you will say (and HAVE said) that I am wrong in doing so, by drawing my attention to the opposing side of your contradictive claims.

Philosophy is, literally, the love of wisdom. — James Riley

It is true, the meaning of the word philosophy when looking at it from an etymological point of view, is the love of wisdom.

So would you say the purpose of philosophy is to satisfy the love one feels for wisdom? To seek out truth, and be able to use logic to defend it?

I would argue, that that's pretty well it. Or very close to it, at any rate.

I did not divide ALL things into being good and not good. — James Riley

Sorry, then I take back my post. Sorry.

By attributing a quality to a blob of wet clay, honestly I thought it was symbolic of all dead matter. I mean, how could I not think that?

Okay, I take it back. So you think a blob of clay is good.

Would you say that a piece of driftwood is bad, or good? or an old piece of tv part lying on the side of the road is good or bad? I mean, if a clay could be judged for being good, I don't see how we can stop at not going on with this.

But you say, that the buck stops at blobs of clay. Fine, I accept that. You don't put everything into good and bad piles of judgment. Fine. Just clay.

"The purpose of philosophy is to learn which side of the toast to butter." A.T.S.

"The purpose of philosophy is to make man feel better a notch than before." = A.T. n T.

"The purpose of philosophy is to find answers to the unanswerable questions."

"The purpose of philosophy is to unify the consensus on what the purpose of philosophy is."

"The purpose of philosophy is measured by the same valuation scale as the meaning of life."

"The purpose of philosophy is to show man how to not disturb nature while we rape Mother Nature, pillage her goods and pilfer it on nonsense like producing The Kardishians or that show which shows four past-middle aged women post-multi-aesthetic corrective surgery sitting around and having a conversation, all speaking at the same time."

"The purpose of philosophy is to counteract as an antidote the serious occupation of work."

"The purpose of philosophy, in particular to the Internet, is to counter-act the potential overdosing on cute cat pictures."

How can anyone's reasoning be so faulty? — James Riley

You mean, "how can someone not agree with me?"

By dividing ALL things into being good and not good, you give all things a measure of goodness or badness. And good and bad are qualities that are humano-centric; without humans (or equivalents) the terms "good" and "bad" would be meaningless.

It's true that language itself also would not exist; but you use the language to translate your judgment of things (good or bad) into human-understood information. Language is a transfer element; the "good" and "bad" are primary judgments, the measure of man, and only of man.

Thank you guys, for the many interesting, interested, and learned responses. I am actually not at all an expert on ancient languages, but my uncle is. He's 95, and extremely hard on hearing, so it'd be hard to elicit a response from him. His mind is sharp, his body is keen, but he lives in a different city, and we can't travel in this country currently. Plus there are more apropos topics to discuss with him in the little time left, like who inherits the knitted elbow-warmer collection of his late wife and whether or not he is a fan of euthanasia.

I'm joking, I love him, he is a fine feller, and I wish him a longer life than he has hoped for. But it's true he spoke fluent ancient Greek in his high school years, and he has retained most of it. He is a genius. It's sad I can't mine his richly learned mind to get some wisdom regarding this topic.

I don't know whether you are countering my claim, or agreeing with it. Sounds like countering, but you are actually agreeing: "Any" includes "scientific".

Polio is caused by a virus, not a bacilli. — Bitter Crank

Polio is caused by a bacilus that carries the polio virus and gets into a human's body.

Joking. I stand corrected.

When I look upon a blob of clay, I see good; not because I see potential for it to be molded into something good (for it could just as well be molded into something bad) but because a blob of clay is good in and of itself, regardless of what we do to it, or what it might become later. Man is not the measure of all things. — James Riley

By saying "good" of something, James Riley inadvertently made man the measure of all things.

How one can shoot himself on the foot in one easy step.

However, supposing we accept reincarnation either as fact or as theoretical possibility, how would we convincingly justify it in philosophical terms? — Apollodorus

Why would you need to justify it in any terms, once you have already accepted it?

I don't care if it's in the lion's nature to eat people. That's why some animals are generally regarded as pests i.e. "bad" for you. — Apollodorus

Right.

Tapeworms and polio bacili are seldom referred to a cuddly little creatures. I have yet to see a four-year-old girl who loves her blonde, blue-eyed, fashionable looking thing from the movie "Alien".

Right or wrong? — Proximate1

I just listened to a street preacher earier today. He INSISTED that we are horrible creatures when we get born, and we are sinners, and never get rid of that rap.

The point is that it is a flaccid designator. — Fooloso4

Not quite. Water is bouncy. Elastic.

See a drop of water fall into a pool of water in slow motion. It bounces back.

I actually don't know if the shots I have seen about this referred to pure water, dirty water, someone named Walter in a different universe, contaminated water in a third world country, or to H20 in any world, universe or country.

The reasoning is not fallacious, it follows from the premise that pleasure without anything else is sufficient for the life of a human being. — Fooloso4

But if you did not possess mind or memory or knowledge or true opinion, in the first place, you would not know whether you were enjoying your pleasures or not. That must be true, since you are utterly devoid of intellect, must it not?

Here's an invalid point, it's not a fallacy, but invalid nevertheless. To feel pleasure you don't need to know you are feeling pleasure. In modern times this is easy to explain, but in the times of Socrates, this may be a bit more difficult.

Does one need to know he feels pleasure in order to feel that pleasure? It is a mind that feels pleasure, and it is a mind that knows it feels pleasure.

Cogito ergo sum. Sensato ergo sum. I think therefore I am. I sense, therefore I am.

The mind's capacity to have self-awareness can be triggered by thought, or by sensation. Socrates strongly (and wrongly) suggested that self-awareness can only be triggered by thought, by intellectual activity: memory, comparison, collection of experiences, etc. It never occurred to him that sensations can also trigger the same effect. "If I had no mind, I could not think; therefore because I think, I must have a mind." "If I had no mind, I could not sense (pleasure, for instance). Therefore, because I feel pleasure, I must have a mind." This is not the proof that there is an Ad Hominem argument. It is a proof that Socrates made a mistake in the thought-experiment. However, this mistake carries on; it renders his final argumentation into an Ad Hominem fallacy.

your life would not be that of a man,but of a mollusc or some other shell-fish like the oyster.

Because Socrates transferred his faulty reasoning about the mind's self-awareness, it was easy then for him to degrade Protarchus, to render him to the level of an ugly and senseless sea animal from the level of a human being, should Protarchus insist on the truth of his claim. This is an Ad Hominem fallacy, because the reasoning failed, so the only convincing power is not logic, but a strong negative-image psychological effect: "If you stuck with your argument, Protarchus, you would not be a man but a mollusc or an oyster." To which Protarchus had no response other than "Oy."

Granted, Descartes coined his mind-thought thought experiment thousands of years after the fact. However, if Socrates came up with the idea that self-awareness can be obtained by cognitive functioning, he ought to have also realized that self-awareness can also be obtained by sensing. He failed to see this, or else he knew this, and altered the truth he believed in, in order to win an argument. I say he couldn't have failed to see this, as to his probable knowledge a sensation was FELT, not something that happened without any trace, without any detection of it by the sensing individual. By feeling pleasure, there is a level of registering the pleasure. Socrates said, it can only be registered by intellectual activity. Was he just too hasty, or he really believed that? Well, then does pleasure not have an entity by itself, is pleasure, the sensation, not something that can be effected on an individual? Intellect can detect many things, and when it detects pleasure, it does not detect something else. So pleasure is a real, existing feeling. As it is real and existing, it is a feeling, and as a feeling, which is real and existing, it is NOT dependent on the cognitive mind for the individual to feel that pleasure.

Yes, yes, yes!! Now you are starting to understand. But Socrates DENIES that.
— god must be atheist

He does not deny it. Plato makes it quite clear. He says that we find the Forms in the world of our experience unalloyed but mixed together. — Fooloso4

I have to differ again, sorry. The things in our world are mixed objects that contain Forms. A plant that can cure people of a disease, is both a plant and a curative device. A doctor who uses this plant is both a person and a healer. But the forms in and by themselves are unit-ideals. They don't have sub-components. They each represent a kernel form. The Forms are true, everlasting, perfect. The objects in our world lack in each of these qualities.

So indeed Socrates denies that forms have more than one qualities or essences. I know I am mixing concepts and mixing adjectives with nouns. If this is objectionable, I can rewrite my opinion to make the naming structure uniform, but that would lead to some awkward constructs along the way, awkward language constructs. If you can close an eye to my calling the forms sometimes unique essences, and sometimes of unique qualities, and sometimes of kernel qualities, then please let me know and I'll try my best to get rid of this failing in my text.

At any rate, I misunderstood your statement that I referred to as "yes, but Socrates denies that." And with some tact, I must let you know it was not entirely my fault that I misunderstood you. Let's put it this way: 90% my fault, 10% your fault. You said, "They are found in combination in the world we live in, the world of our experience." I was momentarily lost in finding the antecedent to the first word in this quote by you, "They". I figured those were the kernel qualities, not the forms. And by continuing my faulty line of understanding, I somehow -- entirely my mistake -- figured the combination refers to the contents of the Forms. The things in our world are combined, and they are found in the Forms. What a major mistake I made! My only defense is that I am not so apt at matching antecedents with pronouns. My language processing is faulty in this aspect.

So now I get you. The objects of the world we live in contain Forms, which are not forged, or alloyed, together, but are mixed, and the operation of them is a resultant of their community of qualities, so to speak.

This is a claim by Socrates. But it does not negate my claim, which I quote here for ease of reference:

This is of course conjecture, complete conjecture, but not any more of a conjecture than to claim that each displayed quality is a unique kernel quality, like Socrates claimed. Furthermore, Socrates claim seems to suggest that there are no combined qualities -- each displayed quality is the effect of a distinct unit of a quality source. — god must be atheist

You say Socrates did not claim this, which is true. But it does not contradict the claim of Socrates. While we accept (both of us) that Forms can combine but not forge to produce new qualities, different from those of the forms, it is equally possible (whether likely or not) that the objects found in our experiences are indeed representations of nothing but one single solitary Form, in a somewhat bastardized version of it.

How can the version be bastardized if it is a replica of the Form? And how can it be bastardized if the parts are only of a single Form, and not mixed with the qualities of other Forms? To which I would answer, Why does or why should the mixing of the Forms bastardize their effect, when represented in our world? The problem is that Forms are perfect and atomic. Mixing them with other perfect and atomic essences or qualities, that is, mixing them with other Forms, should not take away neither from the perfection, nor from the truth and its being everlasting.

So there is an effect in our world which bastardizes the Forms. It is not the mix of Forms, because that alone should not affect the objects in ways that take away from the quality of forms. There is a substance in the world we observe, which "dirties" up the Forms, so they lose their everlasting quality, their perfection, and their truth. What is this thing, matter or otherwise, that dirties up the Forms? Well does Socrates name it, or describe it, the dirtying thing? I don't think so, but you may know of one or more.

But again, I digressed. My only job here is to show that Socrates committed an Ad Hominem fallacy.

Socrates claim seems to suggest that there are no combined qualities
— god must be atheist

They are found in combination in the world we live in, the world of our experience. — Fooloso4

Yes, yes, yes!! Now you are starting to understand. But Socrates DENIES that.

There are kernel qualities. Qualities that have no component parts.
— god must be atheist

How do these differ from forms? — Fooloso4

Forms depend on every quality to have a kernel quality. Forms do not contain combination qualities -- you said that yourself.

Yet qualities exist -- you admitted it in the second part of your post here -- that are not dependent on kernel qualities for a one-to-one correspondence.

Now, take a Form. A chair. The ideal chair, that is 1. True, 2. Everlasting, and 3. A form of only one quality. It is an image. Yet chairs have legs; depend on gravity for their operating condition; they must have the quality of comfort; they must be pleasing to the eye. These are all kernel qualities, if you ask Socrates, because he denies that kernel qualities can combine to bring to life qualities that are reminiscent of none of the kernel qualities.

Therefore the Form of a Chair is impossible, in the sense Socrates imagines them. The chair is the manifestation of a kernel quality; yet it has component parts that are kernel qualities themselves: legs, comfort, visual appeal. One can't both be one and not one at the same time. Yet Socrates insists, if you follow through with his reasoning, that it is possible. He does not say that, but it is unavoidable to realize that, once you follow through the reasoning he presents.

The analogy to a sea urchin certainly is not flattering, but a life of intemperate pleasure does not make a pretty picture. — Fooloso4

You just replaced one Ad Hominem argument with another. I don't think your claim is included or even insinuated in the quote, but since you argue that it is, it is easier to show that it's a sideways-shift of Ad Hominem, and not an eradication of it.

1. You can have all the pleasures and joys and gaiety.
2. But you can do this without attaining wisdom and deep thought. (So to speak.)
3. The result will be that you will be a despicable drunkard, a pleasure-seeking old goat, a narcissistic person whom everyone despises, even your own self.

This is practically indistinguishable from
3. you will be ugly and despicable

...and that is a hallmark of Ad Hominem.

Did Socrates give logical reasons, that make a narcissist repulsive? No, he gave visual images. (And he did not even give those... your fantasy and pulling in ideas and event and opinions from other parts of the book did this, which were not part of the argument.) TH...US could not have comprehended this argument, which you claim were part of Socrates' stance, because Socrates did not say them. TH...US is not a mind reader. No, Socrates stopped TH...US on purely emotive effects.

That is what helped Socrates achieve an Ad Hominem fallacy that was remarkably effective on TH...US.

Whatever Socrates' values were, are immaterial in this argument. Everyone has values, and they are personal emotive stuff. They can be different or the same, between two people, but if they use only logic, then the values' differentness or sameness will not affect the strength of their arguments. Fine, Socrates valued these things, and I am not going to try to take it away from him.

But this debate between you and me is not about Socrates' values. It is about Socrates employing an Ad Hominem argument. You failed so far to refute that. Socrates' values may have been displayed for the readers of the book; but the actual debate between TH...US and Socrates turned around on an Ad Hominem argument.

That's how far I am willing to take this, because that was my initial proposition: Socrates did not shy away from fallacious reasoning to win arguments.

.

Socrates argument is not simply against this person but all those who would choose a life of unbridled pleasure. — Fooloso4

This is obvious, not need to mention this.

He was not against pleasure but against a life of unchecked pleasure. — Fooloso4

Fine. This I accept site unseen. And again, my claim has not been or contained the notion that Socrates was against pleasure... you are this near to uttering a Strawman. But I accpet your claim, because I never made any counter-claim to it, and because you are much more widely read of Plato than I. By light years. But this still does not prove that a human being who has attained pleasure, gaiety, joy, etc., needs retrospection, wisdom, etc. This is the preference of Socrates. He can't prove, and does not even attempt to prove, that this is actually true for every human. But here I am going out of the scope of this debate. The scope of this debate between you and me is whether Socrates used fallacious reasoning or not.

But what about those qualities that they are combinations of? Are they just combinations of qualities too? — Fooloso4

Again, originally I did not express myself well.

There are kernel qualities. Qualities that have no component parts.

There are combined qualities. Qualities that comprise component qualities, that essentially are kernel and / or combined qualities. Some combined qualities together make up a quality that is not equivalent of any of the component qualities.

This is of course conjecture, complete conjecture, but not any more of a conjecture than to claim that each displayed quality is a unique kernel quality, like Socrates claimed. Furthermore, Socrates claim seems to suggest that there are no combined qualities -- each displayed quality is the effect of a distinct unit of a quality source.

Another, much simpler way of transcribing Socrates' argument against TH...US, would be this:

"If that is your opinion, you are a sea-urchin, not a human. And since that is your opinion, you are a sea-urchin."

Plato did not write dialogues to show Socrates winning an argument. What would be the point of that? — Fooloso4

I don't know... to give validity to the theory of the Forms, the Men in the Cave, to make sense of what Socrates was trying to show and say? These are wild guesses.

Yes, you're right, I believe. To show that Socrates won his arguments, would lead to a futile case of proof or acceptability of his ideas. That obviously Socrates was not trying to achieve, and Plato, faithfully to his teacher's legacy, also wanted to avoid doing.

(Please notice the sarcasm.)

The Forms are not sums, they do not have components. They are each one, singular and unique. — Fooloso4

Absolutely. And that is based on the view that each thing that is of unique description, has a quality, a singular, real, existing something in it that gives it its unique quality. If this was not accepted, then the Forms would not have been born.

But this was accepted only because Plato (and originally Socrates) had no argument to defeat the counter argument, that there are no unique qualities, but combination of qualities. Had this second "combination" argument been accepted, the idea and the world of Forms would not have been created the way they have.

I don't know... why is this criticism so hard to accept? I think more than one serious thinker can get biassed and abandon logic due to the effect of cognitive dissonance. Nobody I know can accept when shown, that Socrates was a cheat and his theory crumbles once you alter the outcome of one of the unfinished arguments in which he had been partaking. This goes beyond logic for most thinkers; their basic assumption, namely, that Socrates could not have been wrong, is so strong, as to form an impenetrable an impervious bias against logical thinking. Especially when the proof is offered by a complete no-name, a despicable little Hungarian who has no business in dabbling with the "Big" thinkers' works in such light. He (i.e. I) should be docile, and shut up and accept the status quo, otherwise he, (i.e. I) should go and fuck myself.

----------

On this we disagree. The argument obviously refers to the man but I do not see it as a fallacy. — Fooloso4

I don't know why you say this. This argument by Socrates is a school-case example of the clearest, most obvious case of Ad Hominem. A man was forced to change his opinion not by logic, but by force of an attack on his humanity. Seriously, what part of this argument fails in your mind to satisfy the criteria of Ad Hominem? I am curious, and I wish to read your precise analysis that proves this is not A.H. Without that analysis it stays merely your opinion, and not a proof. Clearly it is a matter of logic, so a proof may be possible.

---------

There are three ways we can go about this if you insist that Socrates could do no wrong.
1. You declare that I am not worthy of arguing against.
2. You declare that I am insane and my argument is so out of whack, that it is futile to try to treat it with logical counter-arguments.
3. You actually get down and prove me wrong.

--------
(Attacking the person): This fallacy occurs when, instead of addressing someone's argument or position, you irrelevantly attack the person or some aspect of the person who is making the argument. The fallacious attack can also be direct to membership in a group or institution.

I grant that it is not easy to see the Ad Hominem in this instance. But it is there, and can be seen if you extrapolate validly from the unuttered insinuations in Socrates' argument. To show what I mean, I transliterated the argument, and you can tell me where I went wrong in the transliteration. I guess one of the ways you you can do to tell me where I went wrong in the transliteration, is finding instances in it that make the two utterances (the two being Socrates' actual argument and my transliteration) contain corresponding parts that are incompatible with each other in scope and meaning. That is, when parts are compared, corresponding parts, and I claim comparative equality between the two, then a contradiction can be shown between the two.

Socrates argument can be transliterated as this:

"You value pleasure, gaiety, rapturous joy, etc., over thought and love of wisdom. This is what a sea urchin does, not a human. Therefore if you stick with this opinion, you yourself reduce your opinion to that worthy of a sea-urchin, not to that of a human. Do you want to be known in the community as a person whose opinions are worthy of no more than to be those of a sea urchin? And do you want to exist with the knowledge that your level of essence as a living being goes not to that of a human's, but can't get above the level of a sea-urchin's?"

I am willing to break down this transliteration and Socrates' actual argument, to point out the corresponding parts, should you ask for it.

Another point I wish to raise with regard to Socrates: In the "Republic" he argues that each entity or type of entity must have a unique and singular thing that gives it that quality. It's in the early part of the book, and he argues with a person, why the doctor can charge money for curing a disease with an herb, while at the same time if somehow the sick person gets hold of that herb, and eats it, and gets better (whether intentionally eating the herb to cure himself or not), the herb itself receives no honorarium.

The other person solves the problem quickly: "Because the doctor combines the herb with his own knowledge that the herb is curative. The money goes to the difference of knowledge between that of the doctor and that of the herb." (The quotes are not precise, exact or verbatim.)

The argument ends by Socrates' opponent needing to go home to his wife to eat dinner.

Socrates continues the arguments with his circle, and culminates it in the idea of the forms. The cumulative or multiplicative effect of disparate qualities to create a particular quality never comes up again.

This is not a fallacy, but a huge and fatal omission of defeating the opponent's view. Socrates acts as if he won the argument, but he never did.

If the person came back and insisted on the type of fact that the sum of a thing is greater than sum of its components, (My genius friend Paul S. said in this vein, "Is the sum of a woman better than her whole?") then the Forms, the Ideals, the entire superstructure of Socrates' philosophy would have crumbled. But Plato skillfully glided over this hurtle, and never allowed it to make it possible for it to destroy his own sweetheart's legacy.

Well, it's one thing to look at a scholar's interpretation of the text in the context of the entire book, and it's another thing to look at the concrete passage and read what the actual argument is, plain and simple.

I think much like Bible interpreters, scholarly interpreters of works give too much credit to the authors. Site unseen, I am skeptical of the genius of Plato to carefully select and assign arguments to different debate partners. Maybe? Yes. For sure? A lot of interpretation. I am not an expert, far from it, as you know, but I do believe in the adage, "I calls them as I sees them." Whether Socrates / Plato had a plan to use a type of argument on TH...US, is immaterial, because it is clear that the argument employed here was of an Ad Hominem fallacy. And that was the whole point I was trying to show. That Socrates did lower himself and his own standards to win arguments.

At the same time, I must say that fallacies in logic have been introduced over the ages, and in Socrates time the only way to prove a point was to reduce the opponent's stance into a self-contradiction. The notion of fallacies emerged later; Aristotle summarized them, and post-Aristotle very many new ones were discovered or invented.

So maybe Socrates found it reasonable to call an Ad Hominem, because A. he had no name for it, and B. though he may have had a concept of it, he may have used that instance not as a logical convincing power, but as a psychological one, and maybe, just maybe, in Plato's view that was a valid tool in argumentation.

If deities occur in Buddhist texts — Apollodorus

If? IF? I should have thought you would be familiar with Buddhist texts since you know much about Buddhism. So if you don't know of a particular feature, you can still be an expert, that is not my contention. My contention is that you don't say in the affirmative that deities appeared. It is at this point, so much for you as for me, an unknown. I say you can't say therefore that Buddhism is a religion, on the basis that there may be, but not for sure, some texts that treat Hindu gods in the tales of Buddhist legends.

It would indeed. Unfortunately, it isn't my measuring system. I'm just relating what I've heard from Buddhists and Hindus. But some texts do describe what might amount to "evidence" or "signs" of enlightenment. — Apollodorus

Oh, that is not my contention. My contention is that Buddhism is not a religion, whereas you said it is.

And I don't contest the ability to reach enlightenment.

I contest the allegation that it is known that it takes several lifetimes to attain it.

I'm not sure the majority of early Buddhists looked on the gods and other supernatural beings as "Hindu" or "non-Buddhist", they were just part of Indian culture. — Apollodorus

Right. So when we talk about Buddhists, then we say religion was part of their culture, but not part of their teachings.

As for enlightenment you can't declare anything in advance, you're just stating what normally happens, and in those cases where you can see that you yourself or some other practitioner has not attained that state in their lifetime. — Apollodorus

And yet you stated many things in advance re: enlightenment. Some of them were: "takes many lifetimes," "not in this life". How come you can declare these things, when you can't? You defend by saying you have witnessed them fail to attain enlightenment in this life. So they are dead. I admit that you are right and correct when you said of those, "Not in this life". On the other hand, the ones that have attained enlightenment: how do you know with certainty enough to say that this is not their first run at it?

Just curious. You must have some sort of measuring system, that would be interesting to know about.