It was or could be seen as an awfully strong insult what I wrote, Wallows. I did not mean to be insulting, not even cuttingly sardonic, only funny, but it came out this way, sorry, I apologize.

But then again, there is my criticism. What does anyone understand that we can only test with his or her self-reporting of his or her own understanding?

Anyone, actually everyone, understands everything, and they will even give you an explanation, right or wrong, except when they can't understand something.

what I am trying to say is that a self can't give a measure of the same self with how much or not he does or does not understand something. One can give a measure neither quantitatively, nor qualitatively how correct his own understanding of topic or subject is.

As to his incompleteness theories, I do not think you understand them - maybe at all.
— tim wood

No, I have a pretty good understanding of Gödel's incompleteness theorems. — Wallows

I used to have a dog that read the New York Times and the Montreal "Gazette" regularly. He was an expert of foreign affairs, and on thick mustaches and bad teeth on women.

But of course he read the papers silently, without saying out the words. That would be stupid... nobody reads the papers aloud.

That dog, my dog, never even moved his lips while reading.

Just for fun: — tim wood

I don't know. I imagined fun to look entirely different.

"Mommy, Mommy! Bett, Diog and Timmy are fighting again!"

What precisely do you find irrational in Greta's plea?
— ZzzoneiroCosm

Blaming the world for "stealing her childhood", for one. — Tzeentch

We blamed our parents for the Viet Nam war.

Our parents blamed Hitler for WWII.

Hitler blamed the Jews for everything wrong under the sun.

The blame is not with "them". The blame is with them them them them and them. And us, and me. Because "them" includes every last person on Earth. (And that includes Greta, too.)

I for one, refuse to play the blame game. I don't blame Greta; but I hate her for blaming me. Because she does not blame them; them is always we, and you and I. And god would be my witness, if he existed, that I am beyond blame.

Fuck Greta.

the general idea was to delete needlessly offensive remarks. — I like sushi

Much needed offensive remarks, however, ought never to be deleted. (-:

For instance,

Your **** ou*** to make m* d*e*m ***e true. -- should be deleted.

**** coat **ght ** **** *y *r*a* com* ****. -- should not be deleted.

By-the-by: How do you capitalize a * when its introducing a sentence or a proper noun?

I also love Hume, but then Socrates and Hobbes are great too. — softwhere

Socrates was an addict. He was addicted to winning arguments. Philosophical arguments. In that sense I feel akin with him (without his genius, but never mind).

He, however, was not shy to employ fallacious reasoning to win arguments, which I never do. I use fallacious arguments to create facetious humour, but not as an argument in philosophical debate.

Hobbes, however, was a mechanical thinker, who was bereft of human insight -- it seems Hume has got all the humanity in his mind that Hobbes lacked.

Hume! Hume! Humanity!!

God is not knot; not gnat; not nut.
God is everything you believe it to be
And he is the subject of belief
So therefore what he is not
Is a known entity.

You don't know god,
You can't know he exists
He can exists without anyone knowing
And the faithful believe in him.

Even if you defined in the OP what [Stoicism] means in exactitude in the context of that video and this thread, it does not match what [STOICISM] means to each person reading that word — Diagonal Diogenes

True. But there is such a thing as accepting an assumption, not because you believe it it's true, but for the sake of argument. It has a name, that process, which I forgot again, although just last week someone told me again what it was.

I defined Stoicism for the sake of the post, which was directed at Dr. Prof. Pigliucci in a question form.

Using the OP as a source of definitions, I will attempt to reply to your original question:

Stoicism can be taught, conditionally in the learning person already having a nature conducive to its contents. — Diagonal Diogenes

No, because only unknown things can be taught to a student. If the person (pupil) by nature is a Stoic, there is nothing you can teach him on Stoicism. This is also mentioned in the opening post. Grr-brr, hohem-hohem.

(-: I am sure the people you listed won't notice there are no women present in the or**. That would be gender categorization, anyway, which is SO not PC.

So let them be, close the door slowly and silently, and tip-toe away from the room.

I'd like to see what others on this forum have to say about Essentialism in general, and Gender Categories in particular. — Gnomon

I believe gender categorization is placed on similar FALSE platforms as race categorization.

We are one race. The entire humankind.

We are one gender. The entire humankind.

Period.

(WTF...)

Well if all you mean to say that all knowledge must be true... — creativesoul

Hehe... that was below the belt. But you're right.

With all due respect to Donald Trump, I imagine that when he's in Germany, he would be reaching for Immanuel, thinking he is one of those he likes to grab.

I may meet Turing in the future, possibly 1939 — Wittgenstein

Please look out for those Nazi stards when you meet. They are a mean bunch, and getting meaner and meaner. They may not like that to you, very sensibly, the dasein is not conceptual ambient defractionism, but rather a postmodernistically mapped contradiction in Darwinian speedtime. They are touchy about that.

I never knew you were so smart, @Wittgenstein. You are absolutely amazing.

But this other member of this site, @turing, is elusive, I can't see any posts by him.

When did you two have this conversation? And on what forum platform?

I was not aware that this "classic" definition exists. — Diagonal Diogenes

I said it over and over again, that my response was to the mentions in the video made by Dr. Prof. Pigliucci and posted on this philosophy site. I have no other knowledge of Stoicism than what he said in the video. I explained it in the opening post, and then later again in this thread.

The question in my Opening Post was addressed to Dr. Prof. Pigliucci, and therefore it was unnecessary to go outside his presentation in the video and bring in stuff from outside. He would have probably stood behind the video's content, I would imagine. So for my argument, I needed nothing else but his words in the video presentation.

Disclaimer:
I freely admit I am not an expert on Stoicism, and I am only responsible to what I said in the opening post and later about Stoicism, as it pertains to the question I posed to Dr. Prof. Pigliucci.

Do you get flashes on your screen with the image of Bill Gates grinning diabolically? I do. Or maybe not, maybe it's just my imagination playing tricks on me.

Well, that's demanding perfection and/or omniscience. — creativesoul

Demanding knowledge.

I've been noticing, too, that @Praxis got this backwards. Somehow along the line a switch happened in his comprehension of the posts. I am abandoning the conversation with him on this topic for a while. I will consider conversing with him on other topics, I think he is a good man, but here he got fatally confused, and there seems to be no way to reverse his confusion.

My point was that he claims you differentiate between the religious right and the religious left, while you never once did that in this thead.

yet we know to some extent how it works — creativesoul

"To some extent" leaves a huge margin of error, or a small margin of error, or no margin of error, or an unknown margin of error.

When I said "to know our minds" I meant no margin of error. That's all. Because to some extent, we already know our minds.

But thanks for noticing my previous post, and paying due respect by acknowledging its presence. I am actually grateful to you for that. Because earlier I had thought it would go down in history as a never-noticed post.

Sometimes the time is not the time
To think of good times, bad times;
Time is sometimes the time to see
How time differs from sea to sea.

Maybe the computer clock of one
Sends a signal to the other one
And the two duke it out in ciber
Space, who's better, who's ace.

I don't spend much time on time
I would rather make it rhyme
Than fret, and kick and punch and bite
The topic of time, all the time.

From a purely philosophical point of view: Power is elevated social status, which comes with 1. better mate selection, 2. More plentiful mate selection 3. increased chances to bring offspring to dominant or elevated position 4. which ensures the survival of the individual's DNA.

All animals that live in societies build hierarchical structures. I don't mean bees and ants; I mean lions, sea lions, gorillas, gazelles, deer, etc etc. I don't know much about fish and their schools, or some sea creatures and their colonies, such as sponges and coralls.

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

This said, I must also state that the difference of an offspring success is negligible these days between the oligarchical families of these times, and the average income- and power-stance families.

Furthermore, power is distributed unevenly. A pauper can topple a CEO, and a musician or a basket-ball player can mate more abundantly with more numerous partners than the President of the United States of America.

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

Looking at the thread, the other participants are involving their thoughts on social injustice, on efficiency of societal institutions, on psychological effects on the powerful and the powerless, etc. Those observations are mostly valid, maybe even all of them. My point is not to criticize the observations of others in this thread, but simply to point out how and why being powerful had been historically advantageous, and how it is no longer that, if you consider only the advantages that had been considered in pre-historic times.

Where do you see an effect of the religious left not trying to win new members for their congregations? — god must be atheist

Where did I claim that was the case? — praxis

You did not claim this, @Praxis. You said that the correspondent @PfHorrest did not claim this. And you claimed that Here:

Your meaning isn’t clear, but you seem to be suggesting that the religious left doesn’t care about “winning.” Why should they care any less about winning than the right? I can assure you that the left cares a great deal about not losing in political issues like abortion, etc. — praxis

I am now asked by you to explain the most obvious. Do you want to continue in this vein, @Praxis? If you do, please state it now, because I refuse to give minute baby step-by-step reiterations of what has gone down only because you pretend to not follow the flow of discussion.

We can however, through 1 and 2, influence A, B and even C in some circumstances. Influence, but never control. — Diagonal Diogenes

This makes sense, @Diagonal Diogenes, but classic Stoicism denies this. You either control something or you don't; there is no in-between like "influencing".

According to your adjustment, if someone tortures me, I have the ability, through control of my motivation (to stop torture) and of my action, to get up and stop the torture by escaping, by fighting back, etc, as long as these are options available at the situation.

But the TRUE Stoic will endure the torture, as he states, "I have no control over others' actions".

This is where I chime in. Assuming the TRUE Stoic version, the torturer does have control over my feelings. I feel bad when he tortures me. His torturing me is a direct result of his motivation to cause me pain. Therefore he has control over how I feel! This is where Stoicism becomes self-contradictory; while with your adjustment, @Diagonal Diogenes, the discrepancy disappears.

And what does it matter if no one controls externals? — Diagonal Diogenes

It matters and I explained its significance clearly and unambiguously.

Excuse me, but it seems you are strawmanning what it means to be Stoic. — Diagonal Diogenes

I am not strawmanning anyone. I AM GOING BY THE VIDEO PREPARED WITH OR BY DR. PROFESSOR PIGLIACCI, AND THAT IS THE ONLY SOURCE I USE.

I use that source with strict adherence to it. If there are discrepancies between what I claim and others' utterances about Stoicism, then please complain to Dr. Prof. Pigliacci, and please don't accuse me with strawmanning.

I got your message the first time.

You are switching to other arguments but you are still using your arguments to speak up against meat eating.

Are you... a cow? A very intelligent one? (-:

Very good points, @softwhere.

What causes a collection of completely unpredictable particles to exhibit highly predictable behavior? — GeorgeTheThird

What are the bases that you say that the universe is made of a collection of completely unpredictable particles?

On the contrary, the complete failure to comprehend individual particle behavior means that we have no understanding at all of why the macro world behaves as it does. — GeorgeTheThird

This is not a valid proposition to say that because we don't understand individual particle behaviour, we have no way of understanding why the macro wrold behaves as it does.

We can observe the macro world and draw conclusions how it behaves. WHY it behaves that way? There are two kinds of "why" questions: 1. explain the purpose. 2. Explain the mechanism.
Explaining the mechanism of why the macro world behaves as it does, is well explained by various theories. Explaining the purpose of why the macro world behaves, or why it behaves the way it does, is not possible.

Your argument involving little tiny particles and their unpredictability ("complete unpredictability") has nothing to do with the answers to the proposition "we have no understanding at all of why the macro world behaves as it does." We have understanding of why the macro world behaves as it does, in terms of the interactions effecting other interactions in the macro world. We have no understanding of why, as in what is the reason, the purpose, for the macro world to behave as it does.

Your arugment involving little tiny particles and their unpredidtability was a smoke screen you applied to convolute the "why" question, and it worked for a while, but it has been debunked.

Sorry.

it does if the things happening beyond out control are the result of someone's decision, like torture for the pleasure of the torturer. — Diagonal Diogenes

In Stoicism, all externals are externals to all people. Nobody controls externals in the Stoic philosophy.

This is the logic that places the death sentence on Stoic philosophy. If nobody controls externals, then why do they happen, and why do they happen as if they were controlled by some person or persons?

I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, — Brett

Obviously the externals are under the control of somebody else. Otherwise they would not happen, or if they happened, they would not happen in an orderly fashion. But they do happen in an orderly fashion. So some person or persons control the externals.

But the externals are externals to everyone. So no person ought to have control over them.

This boils down to the externals controllable by people and not controllable by people at the same time and in the same respect. Reductio ad absurdum.

Stoicism is a false proposition of how things work. It is a priori impossible to live that way. That's the first reason why so many people are trying, trying and trying to live the Stoic way, and can't.

You seriously couldn’t tell that I was being facetious?

But there is also a clear motive for religions to oppose state-operated social services, so that religion is the only place to turn to for social services, and so more people turn to religion. That would be a motive more for people who are concerned about their religion "winning" over alternative worldviews and lifestyles, and less for people who see other religions and the state providing those same things as allies in a common cause. In other words, the right vs the left.
— Pfhorrest

Your meaning isn’t clear, but you seem to be suggesting that the religious left doesn’t care about “winning.” Why should they care any less about winning than the right? I can assure you that the left cares a great deal about not losing in political issues like abortion, etc.

So does the religious left use their psychological pressure on the needy to promote Pro-choice laws and policies, and effectively work against their Conservative religious brethren in the adjacent pew? — praxis

The meaning of Pfhorrest's post is clear. It does not suggest at all what you say it suggests, because it does not differentiate between religious left, and religious right.

Where do you see an effect of the religious left not trying to win new members for their congregations?

Sigh....

I think we should view all animals with a nervous system as having some kind of cognitive ability. The implications for ethics and practices are a related but different issue. — Enrique

Yes, we do view animals a having cognitive ability. That has nothing to do with massacring and eating them. Why do you insist on an ethics-based ban, when there is no indication of anything unethical there? I am asking you the third time, in different words: Why is it unethical to eat the flesh of animals that think and feel?

I am asserting again: yours is an individualistic view, much like mine is. We both share our respective views with many others. You should not try to force behaviour on others only because you have an individualistic view. I, for instance, don't mind that you only want to eat, an probably only eat, veggies. You should not mind that I eat animal flesh. Because there is no ethical principle that supports your individualistic view.

it would be great if society could transition to a fully agriculture-based diet and let all animals live their natural lives, which seem more worthy of respect the more you consider it — Enrique

I think yours is an individualistic view. It may be shared by many others, but I see no reasonable merit in the proposition you pose.

Sorry for the late reply, @Creativesoul, but I think two pages' worth of replies were generated very quickly, without my watching the thread.

A workable, acceptable, or even just merely descriptive theory of mind is beyond the human mind to construct. — god must be atheist

Do you have an argument and/or reasoning process... some intelligible coherent line of thought that has led you to such a conclusion? — creativesoul

1. No theory to explain the workings of the mind has been established.
2. Assuming the mind is a product of brain functions, we have no knowledge of how the brain works other than noticing blood flow and excited electron movement in some parts of the brain.

-------These first two points were empirically based. The next point is a priori based.

3. If we want to know how the mind works, we have to make a mental image of the mind. But to make a mental image of the mind, we need a storage capacity that equals the mental image, and then some more storage capacity to manipulate the thoughts that explain the mind. Therefore to explain the mind, we need a larger, better, more intelligent thing than our mind. Which is not achievable because you can't have something bigger than itself.

Regarding the two pillars, all I should say is that three disciplines are discussed in How to Be a Stoic, which are desire, action, and ascent. — praxis

I think there are two Stoic philosophies, if I can judge the differences between your description of it, and that of dr. Prof. Pigliucci. Maybe there was a Stoic philosopher, named Mr. Stoic, who established a Stoic philosophy, and then independently from this, there was another Stoic philospher, by the name of Mr. Stoic, who also established a Stoic philosophy.

Everything is possible.

I think a more interesting question might be whether or not Western culture and its particular value structure is fertile soil for Stoicism. — praxis

Why, oh why, haven't I asked this question? Why did I have to ask instead the question that I wanted to ask? Darn it.

I wish I could be you, @Praxis. If I were, then I could ask all the interesting questions that interest you and not me.