On a second thought, maybe it was not in the Republic, but the teacher was reading it up, and giving us on-the-go commentary.

This is how I remember it (your text helped): PH: happiness, joy, pleasure, is the only thing worth anything in life. SO: You mean, not thought, morals, the love of gods, the noble and uplifting thoughts, the love of wisdom? PH: not the least bit. SO: so you would be happy and satisfied living your life as a sea urchin. PH: (recoils) no, that's not right. Of course I would not want to live my life as a sea-urchin.

There was an hominem attack here. PH already made his case. He was forced to give it up not because of the LOGIC of the counter-argument, but because of the inconsistency of PH's thought. He already settled on joy, pleasure, etc. Why give up his stance? Because, and SO properly had psyched out this human feature in PH, humans don't like to give up their humanity. They don't even want to become god. No Christian aspires to that, when they easily could. What would be the reason not to? simple: giving up humanity is impossible for humans. So by stripping PH of his humanity, SO created an Ad Hominem fallacy, which sank PH hook, line and sinker.

for me it is a big deal, but totally ignorable, as I am bad at researching texts that I read decades ago, and are not machine-searchable.

Actually, depending on the group or movement we're talking about, most seekers are said to attain enlightenment after many lives, the lucky ones after two or three and very rarely in this lifetime. — Apollodorus

How can you determine the lifetimes, and how can you declare categorically "not in this lifetime", when you have no way of discerning with any amount of certainty, how many lifetimes a person have lived through?

Thanks, this is great, can you cite just one example in which Buddha or Buddhism relied on supernatural thingies to accomplish something? We know they are not supernatural beings exclusive to Buddhism, but can you cite just one example I can check that these gods and others helped Buddha or anyone attain anything which is typically and exclusively a Buddhist thing, and without which help by Hindu gods the Buddha could not have done an exclusively Buddhist thing?

This is what I would seek to find if I made the utterance that (some) sort of Buddhism involves a belief in supernatural beings.

If this did not happen, then one could insist that Buddhism is not a religion, but Buddha and Buddhists were religious, in a form of religion which is separate from Buddhist teachings.

This is important. It's like considering Einstein's theory of relativity and saying it is a religion because Einstein believed in a god.

People brought up with the Western mentality of materialistic consumer society often fail to understand what it all involves. — Apollodorus

But not everyone fails, right? Just most of them, often, but some get to the enlightenment part, albeit seldom? Your wording is unambiguous, but I check for understanding, anyway.

BTW, you are almost invoking a fallacy (but you are not, since your statement is not an argument) that is called "No true Scottsmen".

As to Buddhism, at least in some forms of it, it does believe in supernatural beings, there is no doubt about it. — Apollodorus

What is the name of the Buddhist god, (not the name of a god concurrent to Buddhism), and what role does he play in the world of a Buddhist.

This may be too divergent a question, requiring too rich an answer. So discard it, and, instead, please consider this question and please consider writing the answer to me:

What is an exclusively Buddhist god, and name one instance of the God which is Buddha's alone, in which that god intervenes in the life of Buddha or other Buddhists.

The idea that the unelightened could lead others to enlightenment is absurd. — baker

The entire geshmeel is absurd to me, but nobody asked me. It takes a lot of belief to become a Buddhist, and I am very low-key and low-energy on belief. I can hardly muster up any to believe that there is a real word out there, and in here.

It is not that liberation happens without gaining any knowledge but that the goal of enlightenment is not to gain knowledge but to gain liberation. — Fooloso4

Check. Thanks. Collateral benefits.

That was meant as a joke. — Apollodorus

It was funny, but true.

However, the fact is that some historians and even socialists have described it as a form of messianic religion. — Apollodorus

Science depends on beliefs, too. To call it a messianic religion is a religious person's way of saying that he or she is not able to get out of his head that there are other world views, which do not contain any god or gods whatsoever.

My translation was totally different. It was in English I could comprehend without a getting a headache. I'll have to look up my version if I can find it. If Philebus is a book, then it's not from that; I only skimmed through the "Republic" and through no more of his books.

One needs to have trust or faith or a belief that enlightenment is possible. But the goal is liberation not knowledge. — Fooloso4

I can't see how liberation can happen without gaining any knowledge. Can you enlighten me and help me to see how I am wrong in this opinion?

There’s your problem right there. It’s a religion, and belief is involved. Either get over it, and get on with it, or walk away. — Wayfarer

Buddhism is not a religion. It employs no supernatural elements.

Belief is involved in everything. Marxist material atheists have a belief, too. (That the world is real, and there are no supernatural forces acting in it.)

You can't get away from belief no matter what system you choose to apply to build models of the world or to find guidance under.

However, that does not make all systems religions. Religions have a particular quality: they all share in having supernatural entitties called gods. (Plural or singular.) If a system is not a religion, then it has beliefs, but not in gods or in other supernatural things that play a direct role in the world view. If all the effects are accounted for in witnessed or explained repeated evidence, the belief is not religious.

Can you give us an example of language without grammar? — Fooloso4

Take any avant-garde abstract poem. They are mostly a jumble of words.

There is no sense in them; but it uses components of the language. And in a way, the creator will or can insist that it has just as much meaning as an abstract painting has expression for the artist and the viewer; the picture is formless, yet conveys something; the abstract poem is grammarless, yet it expresses something for the listener/reader and writer/reader.

That's my best shot at an example of grammarless language.

Kudos to Carlo Rovelli. Order is a human concept, and any configuration is up to being called "order" or "disorder" by humans, according to how "blurred" their discerning the orderization of the pile of things.

I propose furthermore, than Chaos does not exist in a deterministic universe, for the same reason.

However, I do support the idea of heat-death and I do suppor the idea of entropy of order. Here's one thought experiment to conisder why I support the entropy of order.

Take a bunch of nails. Throw them randomly, one-by-one, into a box. Their collective centre of gravity will be X units above the bottom of the box. Now shake the box. The nails will rearrange themselves, to lower the centre of their collective gravity. On other words, they will pack a bit down if you shake the box gently. If you keep shaking the box gently, the centre of gravity will never shift "up".

This has mechanical - static - dynamic explanation on the level of the individual nails, but looking at the big picture, this is one way entropy manifests, because there is no equilibrium, there is only a one-way route to a state of lower energy level.

But my own self-created theory about entropy is that matter can be reset to an earlier state of entropy without creating more entropy. Don't ask me how or where or why, but it can be done and I have a proof for it.

Yep, thereby transforming that new energy into waste and contributing to the net increase of entropy. Neat how we (the entire biosphere, in fact) is entangled in this (cosmic) dissipative process like dingleberries floating downstream. — 180 Proof

There is no alternative. Life, any life, depends on creating entropy. Faster than non-living physical processes in the same temperature-range generally do. The only remedy to this is to delete life, all life, to slow down the progress of entropy; but then you are left with a world which has no motivation, no needs, no joy, no suffering; no sensation and no awareness, a completely indifferent world, which can't enjoy its own slowed-down entropy.

Is that why they are trying to suppress discussion by attacking people and calling them names??? — Apollodorus

That in itself is a psychological reaction. So now all you have to is to statistically correlate it with voting habits, donation receipts, and riot-partaking, and bang, you can establish on this alone about 26 different kinds of political profiles that have predictive value and sharp delineation.

(Guess my country...) — Ansiktsburk

Burkina Faso? No... The French Polynesian Islands? no... Vatican City? no... Peru. That's it. It's got to be Peru.

I disagree with the equation "monarchy = total state control". Constitutional monarchies are no different from liberal democratic states. — Apollodorus

Right you are again. But I wrote "monarchies". NOT "constitutional monarchies". Strawman argument.

I disagree with the equation "monarchy = total state control". Constitutional monarchies are no different from liberal democratic states. In fact, most of them are liberal democracies for all intents and purposes. — Apollodorus

This is true. But my claim is that in monarchy, the state has total control. So who has the control? The people (if constitutional monarchy is indistinguishable from democracies.) Who is the state? The people. The people have total control. Therefore the state has total control.

"What would it be like if human beings shewed no outward signs of pain (did not groan, grimace, etc.)? Then it would be impossible to teach a child the use of the word 'tooth-ache'. — PI (Supposedly Wittgenstein)

He assumes something that is a falsehood to prove his point, Wittgenstein does. There ARE outward sings of pain, produced by the individual and produced by those the individual sees. This is not a matter that can be ignored, and W forces us to ignore it.

Please let me offer an analogy: "You must assume that straight-line segments don't exist. Therefore to build a square in two dimensions you could not do. SQUARES THEREFORE DON'T EXIST."

Wittgenstein proposes to drop off a feature of reality, and he can only prove his point this way. HE IS AN IDIOT, A FOOL FIT TO BE TIED. I am actually getting angry at how people are fooled by this nincompoop. He has convincing power, and he takes total philosophically invalid advantage of it.

Gees, I must stop here before I get another heart-attack due to anger I can't release from my system.

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

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54889e73e4b0a2c1f9891289/t/564b61a4e4b04eca59c4d232/1447780772744/Ludwig.Wittgenstein.-.Philosophical.Investigations.pdf — j0e

Okay. So I take that the quotes are from W. Please correct me if I am wrong. Now I'll read them, and reply in kind.

Yours too. — j0e

:up:

He doesn't make grand statements for the most part. He gives us fragments and we put them together. — j0e

... and someone along the way came and decided arbitrarily and because of his style that he is a genius.

Much like due to my style I come across as contrarian.

Style is everything.

No offense taken. Just pointing it out. — j0e

Thanks for your magnanimity.

Honestly I think you are projecting here. While I agree that young men tend to take such thinkers as heroes and gurus, I ain't so young anymore. Like you, I have often wanted to dismiss difficult thinkers as over-rated charlatans, to save me the trouble of the cognitive dissonance in assimilating and criticizing their work. — j0e

I may be projecting, or I may be creating theories to explain what I see. I have to explain to myself how and with what means does Wittgenstein create the effect he does. Because to this point, you have not convinced me that I am wrong. I asked for a quote that links your opinion to W's world view as expressed by him; there is (supposedly) none. So your biggest defense to shield W from my criticism is non-existent (maybe). I asked myself: how can this be? I had to explain it somehow.

It came out as a projecting. Yes. But what would you have done in my position?

. Lots of smart people find him worth talking about and weaving in their worldviews/philosophies. — j0e

Sorry... this is an ad hominem fallacy. I make specific points about the quotes; you can challenge me by showing how my points are irrelevant or wrong or illogical, but you can't say I'm wrong because some smart people said so totally elsewhere without reading my points.

Your view seems to imply that all of these smart people are duped while you are not. — j0e

That, J0e, is PRECISELY what my point is. I am shouting about the emperor's new clothes. You rely on valuing the genius of Wittgenstein on the opinion of a lot of smart people. I rely on disvaluing the genius Wittgenstein by analyzing of what he says.

In your shows, I'd be wary of how self-flattering such a view is. — j0e

If that is a value point in undertaking the understanding of my opinion, that is a big mistake. And I can see all over this forum and the posts and comments, that that's how most people see me. They IMMEDIATELY dismiss my opinions due to this effect.

In fact, I do take pride in my opinions, but I do have (someone told me a long time ago, in a different setting) this provocative attitude in my style. It destroys the effect. I come across as an egotist, not as a thinker. My ego, it seems, overshadows the value of the statements I make.

I wish I could change my style, because it really hurts my cause. My cause is to state my opinions and to defend them. But people dismiss my opinions not on their inherent worth, but because how they are stated.

"What would it be like if human beings shewed no outward signs of pain (did not groan, grimace, etc.)? Then it would be impossible to teach a child the use of the word 'tooth-ache'." — PI

The passage above my immediately prevous post, would be an excellent one to tackle, and I am glad you provided it. However, it is attributed to PI. Not to Wittgenstein. Please clarify before I would proceed to respond to it.

Yeah I think Witt is a strong philosopher, one among many others. At this point I'm trying to draw all of their insights together. — j0e

Thanks, that's great.

From my POV, you are completely missing the point that Wittgenstein is pointing out how mistaken that admittedly intuitive-automatic view is. — j0e

This is your point of view. However, I don't see it justified by only reading the quote by Wittgenstein (W). He makes no allusion whatsoever to what you call your point of view here. Your interpretation is not spelled out, and not alluded to by W, in the quote. Either the quote is truncated, or else your POV is not a part of it; your POV may not be a part of any of the writings of W. I must ask you to please supply the reference that makes your POV valid, and that reference what I am looking for is essentially W stating the same as you have here.

I think your interpretation, or POV, is fantasy. I say that because I LACK in seeing any supportive evidence of it. I somehow sense that your POV is a validation of your opinion of W's views; there may be evidence of it, and I wish to see it if it exists, but until then I consider your POV a rationale, a rationalization of a cognitive dissonance between an opinion that W is an idiot, and that he can't be an idiot, due to emotional devotion to his imagined genius.

Once you can supply the evidence that your POV is valid, I will consider it.

I think Wittgenstein is offensive to common sense, because he challenges it. — j0e

I beg to differ, but that's already known, so why keep stating the obvious over and over again, eh? If I say "Humans are all atomic bombs shaped like a six-sided dice", that also challenges common sense, and is stupid. Your and my opinions about Wittgenstein's utterances has only one difference from mine, which is an interpretive difference: I see them as stupid, worthless and useless, and you see the same thing as works of a genius, valuable and making sense.

We, you and I, are trying to iron out the differences between these two interpretive opinions.

This can only be done by studying in detail the utterances of Wittgenstein.

I can only devote a finite amount of time to this, I am sorry.

Dear @J0e, I totally agree with you in interpreting what a language is, and what it does. It is said that language is purely a product of society, not of the individual; language would be impossible to create without sentient individuals living in a social setting.

I totally agree.

I am adamant, however, that Wittgenstein has ever had the insight of seeing how symbolic language relates to reality. He is stuck in the representation of language, and he makes a bridge between representation of language and language, but he fails to see the bridge between language (or its representation) and meaning.

In fact, all his quotes I've ever seen by him deal with this issue.

He is focussed on one single solitary insight, a false and limping one, and he expounds on it ad infinitum.

------------------

More quotes by Wittgenstein that you can supply to me on this forum, about the same length each that you already have, will be a nice challenge for me to show you that what I say here actually sticks.

As a part of the system of language, one may say, the sentence has life. But one is tempted to imagine that which gives the sentence life as something in an occult sphere, accompanying the sentence. But whatever accompanied it would for us just be another sign. — W

W simply can't get over the hurdle that language is a symbolic representation of thought, which is a complex system of experiences linked to symbolic expressions of the experience. To W it is a an "occult" or supernatural, and at any rate miraculous could one say? event that words have meanings. He again expresses his pet theory in the passage you quoted, that he sees scribbles, and he can't understand how scribbles can mean anything to anyone without the scribbles given special meaning. He then proceeds that meaning to scribbles is given by adding other scribbles. HE COMPLETELY MISSES that there is a bridge there somewhere, that connects scribbles, in one form of another, to experience of a sentient being. He is stuck in the mud with his scribbles, scratching his head, how they can have meaning. And he massages his own un-understanding in such formative detail, in such refined language and bringing up such sophisticated associations, that his basic message, stupidity, does not get through to most readers. His basic stupidity lies, as mentioned, in the inadequacy to see that language is symbolic, human language is, and there has to be some sort of primary association between expressions of the symbolic language, and experience.

You will find it in any of his writings, this naivite, this bewildered incredulity of his not understanding how a symbolic language can have meaning. In fact, I yet have to see a lecture segment, or else any topic of discussion by W, that deals with a different subject.

...if you don’t know English, and want to know what a cow is, you would have to look up “cow” in the dictionary. But under the entry “cow,” instead of finding a meaning that would satisfy your search for a meaning, since you don’t know English, you would only find a bunch of other sounds: Cow, The mature female of domestic cattle, or of other animals, as the whale, elephant, etc.

But in order to know the meaning of the sounds “cattle”, “whale”, and “elephant”, you would have to look up their meanings, their signifieds, but you would find only more lists of signifiers, more sounds! A whale is a large mammal that lives in the sea, but then what is a mammal, what is a sea….? ... Because every potential meaning turns out to be just another sound, searching for yet another potential meaning, one never reaches meaning — link

I hope this is a quote by Wittgenstein. (W.)

1. He uses the obvious concept that words are part of a language.
2. He uses the obvious concept that meaning can be explained.
3. He uses the obvious concept that meaning can't be explained to a person in a language which the particular person has no knowledge in, whatsoever -- not even knowledge of the meaning of just one wrod.
4. He concludes that knowledge of a language can't be obtained by a person who has no knowledge of meaning of any words in the language.
5. He introduces the concept and names it "signifieds" to empower his worthless discovery be able to make people to swoon over W's intellect and "insight".
6. He finishes by another blindingly obvious (and wrong) conclusion that meaning is just a different sound.

This argument and its conclusion is based on a number of incredibly obvious details, such as discovering that each word that is different from others, is different from others. He fails to realize that there is a primary understanding one needs to apply to language, and which language applies to the person who understands it, and that is that a direct relationship exists between, say, a camel and and the word "camel". He ignores this fact very conveniently, and because of this, he sounds like a genius. He sounds as if he made a proof that language in and by itself is meaningless, because if you don't know the meaning ab ovo of the components of a language, it can't be made to make sense. That is true if and only if entry or bridging between the components of the language and associated meaning is denied. Which is not denied. Hence, he is an idiot, by claiming the obvious as an insight, that lacking the connection of meaning to words and/or to other components of a language makes the language meaningless.

As I see it, most people don't find Wittgenstein's points obvious. — j0e

I am reeling in the bewilderment how they can miss that in any and all of W's utterances.

The only kind of criticism that seems worth taking seriously is serious criticism, engagement with the details. — j0e

This is absolutely agreeable. I ask you to give me any of Wittgenstein's quotes, and I show you how my GENERAL opinion of his utterances applies.

I admit I only know Wittgenstein's teachings in the scope of what is quoted and attributed to him ON THIS FORUM. I never read him. I can't read text, that is my folly. It is a developmental inadequacy and disaster that I can't read. I got my undergrad degree by listening to lectures in class, without ever opening a textbook. I never even took notes. I just listened. I did not get good grades, I think my grade point average amounted to a C+, whatever that is in numbers (I think 65-69 percent out of 100) over the four years of my course of study. But then again, if I were able to read, my life would be completely different from what it is now.

I thought they might be, but as you know there are all kinds of things being said on the forum — Fooloso4

:-)

As far as I know he makes no such argument. It is yours. — Fooloso4

It's in the "Republic". We discussed this argument in class at great length. I would be hard forced to quote it as my rote memory is not good. I'll try to find a machine-searchable text of the Republic and maybe I can find the passage.

How can one discuss happiness without regard to the person seeking it? — Fooloso4

I am sorry, but I am quite sure you are beyond and above the need to explain how Ad Hominem works, and what fallacious reasoning it evokes. Without quoting the passage, however, it is not possible to show the specific example. I beg your patience until such time as I find the particular quote. Thanks.

There is not all that much difference, but the differences are significant. — Fooloso4

I have no argument against this; I agree. However, you must admit that the method is the same that S uses, which the Sophists advocate, esp. in that argument that S uses against the sophists. "Here's looking at you kid, and this is why your method is wrong," while S uses the very same type of methodology in his argument. The intent may be different (both wanting to win an argument?? Where is the difference in intent there? But I shan't force this discussion), but the method is the same-- and S is proving in that argument that the method itself is wrong in and by itself.

I do not think it sufficient to say that justice is whatever is. In that case opposites would both be just as long as they occur somewhere. Harming your family and friends be no more or less just then helping them. — Fooloso4

Th...us' claim is immaterial whether it's mine or not mine. It is, however, a claim that reflects the status quo of what justice, the process and the enforcement of it, entailed at the time. That's what I meant by "IS", I did not mean that it is the absolute truth. I meant to say that that was its status quo. I am sorry this meaning I did not express unambivalently. You are right, inasmuch as "what justice IS" could be seen as an agreement by me that that's what just is in justice. Do I need to depict what I meant by S arguing what justice ought to be?

--------------------

So easy to misunderstand another, and to force explanations due to unclear writing. In this instance I bear the guilt of unclear writing... What I wrote by saying "what justice IS" completely covered the meaning I intended to cover, but I failed to see that it could be validly misapplied to mean things other than what I intended to say.

So far you have made only very general comments about Wittgenstein that could be aimed at pretty much anyone. — j0e

No. My opinion of Wittgenstein could not be aimed at pretty much anyone. This is a complete misrepresentation of what I am saying, and a complete misinformative dismissal of it.

What I am saying about Wittgenstein IS very pertinent, and it is very pointed aimed at Wittgenstein and at Wittgenstein only.

Total state control over society, that's what people object to. — Apollodorus

This puts socialism in the same category of political arrangement in society as Naziism, totalitarianism, Monarchy, military despotism, martial law, and -- I am sorry to say this -- American-type capitalist democracy. Each of these will vehemently not tolerate a (or any) political system that is different from it, each of these will have its own type of control that it relentlessly exercises. In my opinion the US society exercises control over its subjects by diffusing ignorance, by making the populace believe superstitious ideals so strongly, that their better judgement leaves them. The control involves the poor and downtrodden to think they are temporarily embarrassed billionaires. What else could they be? America is the land of limitless opportunities for ALL, so the reason they eat out of other people's garbage and the reason their bodies fester in hateful diseases untreated is not society's fault, not their own, but of but a stroke of bad luck.

In America, as well as it used to be in ex-communist countries, the media has complete grip over the population. There is one big difference: the lies that shape a nation was completely rejected in communist countries back then, but nobody dared to utter their skepticism out in the open; and in America, the lies are accepted and believed without any reservations. This is the ONLY difference in the public's response to the lies in the media that the ruling class forces the papers to print. In the Communist states nobody believed them, but acted as if they did; in the Western democracies everyone believes them, no matter how outrageous the lie is. "Saddam Hussein hides weapons of mass destruction under the sand of the vast deserts of his country."