S seems to be treating himself as a stranger here. But he's not. He's part of the universe. He is as strange and likely as problematic as the rest of it. — Coben

I don't get this. Is one part of the universe, no matter how you do the division into parts, and how large or small, how complex or simplex, or how fat or how hungry, that part is compared to another, different part, they are equally problematic and strange?

How so? Different things are different, and their problematicness and strangety should file rank as well in the diffferentness.

I am what I am regardless of what I think. And I can't be more than what I am.

I did not say I can't be more than what I think I am.

You asked me two incongruent questions in two different parts of this thread:
1.

But seriously, are you really yourself in the world? — Punshhh

2.

So you are what you think or know yourself to be and that's all? — Punshhh

To 1. the answer is yes. The answer to 2. is not sure.

Please notice precisely what you asked.

And enough of this already.

Anyone can read words in a book — I like sushi

Not quite. I can't.

I can read a 10 page article, if.

Most books are padded to the max, and i have no patience of waddling through the chaff to get to the pearl.

I found Plato's Republic refreshingly modern, readable, and lively, and yet that was too much, too long, for me as well. I guess for most students of philosophy in first year classes that is the norm. But the book, listen to the prof, not read the book, and write a C- essay for a term paper. Except mine were A+. (At the risk of sounding boastful.)

I haven't claimed that the idea that knowing the origin of negative emotions helps you let go of them is my own original idea, so your comment still seems pointless. — Janus

Please note that I hadn't made a claim to attribute a claim to you which you deny claiming as your claim. I put in a CONDITIONAL phrase that saves my skin. For you to make a claim that I made a pointless claim seems pointless as my claim had been made with a condition, the outcome of which was known to you, but not to me.

(I wonder how long this is going to go on...)

Some social work student I witnessed get his degree 40 years ago (we co-habited during school year in a rooming house) said the same thing about sociology as what you just said about philosophy.

To me philosophy is solid. People can talk about anything; then it's their job to defend their stances. It's like defending a thesis every day on the forums. It's my entertainment, as much as an ego trip... sometimes I mix the two up. I did not get far in the education system, due to a huge deficit in ability to pay attention on an ongoing basis. It takes too much out of me. That's why philosophy is my cup of tea: it takes very little input to generate a lot of output.

Which is precisely, like you said, talking out of one's ass.

So what? What's your point? — Janus

The point is that you guys, namely @Janus and @MarthaNussbaum think of great ideas the same way as world-class scientists of the past have. If I assume you never became familiar with Freud and his teachings, then you came upon the same great idea by yourself. That's grand.

It's not at all clear what the point of this poll is. — Janus

Same as life's.

Understanding the origin of negative emotions does seem to help with gaining some control over and/or quickly letting go of them. — Janus

I have to disparage you, too, @Janus, :-P, but this is the mechanism that Freud employed extensively to treat his so-called neurotic patients.

@uncanni: I have issues too, and mine is the short memory of humankind, which takes an internet ninni such as Martha Nussbaum as source of an idea which is well over a hundred years old.

Maybe. Human nature, definitely. Human failings as causes of philosophical error seems like an unproductive irrelevance to me. — bert1

Human error is part of human nature, you're right. But @Swan was talking about a feature of human nature that we must observe, not imitate.

Errors by humans are part of human nature, and so are subjective human experiences. We can discuss both under the auspices of philosophy. You forcefully expressed that you are opposed to have them as topics of discussion. Twice you expressed that. Why?

You say that some errors lead to unporductive irrelevances to you. To me it appears very much like you only declare them irrelevant because you are uncomfortable with the fear that they may be true. So you attempt to throw them out. But that's not very philosophical of you... it is a psychological effect you are displaying.

So much for human nature at this point.

But what if you're with more than one person and they have conflicting needs? — bert1

Ask Tolstoy.

Fortunately this is a philosophy forum, so this psychological issue will never arise. — bert1

I think @Swan's observation pertains to the realm of "human nature", which is indeed very much a topic discussed in philosophy.

Well, truth is more of a stranger in this story than fiction, so Nobody was well on his way to the early days of oblivion…

“How’s it going,” asked Rascal of Nobody.

“It’s raining,” answered Nobody.

“Hardly?” inquired Puff, the better side of the plurality of he and himself.

“It’s hardly raining hardly,” answered Nobody.

“What does that mean exactly?” asked Rascal, along with many others.

“Never mind,” said Nobody. “I have an umbrella!”

Austin piped in that the English language was becoming slightly affected, via the interruptions in past, but encouraged that the journey go on, and so it continued as it progressed and went on.

“By the way, what’s the antecedent of ‘it’ in “It’s raining?” posted WiseGuy, thinking he had posed quite a tough question.

“Nothing,” said Nobody, “in the form of reverse gravity and forward light, the ultimate antecedent, of our time dilation called reality. I’m getting damp.”

Rascal added that “A little rain never hurt Nobody,” a new and original saying that suddenly appeared in the book of the 2501 greatest sayings ever.

“I hope the rain keeps up,” said Nobody.

“Why?” inquired Profpat.

“So then it won’t come down!”

“How’s it going, Nobody?” asked Rascal again, figuring that Nobody’s watch was fast from relativity and that some hours had passed.

Nobody replied, “I heard that the universe was a free lunch, so I’m having it in a restaurant on an asteroid.”

“How is it?”

“The food is great, but there’s no atmosphere.”

Now, there’s always someone who interrupts threads with off the wall stuff, so ChickenMan tried to catch Rascal unawares with “Why did the chicken fly across the road?” and “Did the egg cross into God’s universe before the chicken?”

Rascal, taking all this in stride during a lull, replied, “As allowed by Einstein’s relativity, the road moved to the other side of the chicken, then, the chicken didn’t land so much as the road rose to meet the chicken, as it extended in 4D, much like the baseball field rises to meet the pop up, since All is expanding. Furthermore, chickens can’t fly! Also, the chicken came first, for I can’t really picture ‘God’ sitting on an egg to hatch it. Now, we’re trying to better tune in the universal DNA here, so no more chicken shit posts please!”

“Hold it,” warned Graybeard. “Some critical atoms must have been disturbed by Nobody’s journey. Now the “Ace”, a new name for the formerly bottommost playing card, the lowly “one”, is now higher than the King in many kinds of card games; this is a sacrilege and a travesty! Wait until London hears about this.”

Mkirkpatrick somehow got into the conference call and said, “Just heard, but relax. The All is the One; the “A” on the card really stands for “All”, for this is what gave rise to the monarchy. And of course the one is the One.”

“It’s okay,” Fredrick said calmly, being an expert on numbers and on playing them, “the play and strategy of all affected card games has not been altered in any way. Keep on going, Nobody.”

While some old times passed, Graybeard stood around looking at the man in the moon and watching the grass grow. Fredrick checked his watch to see if he was wearing it and then counted to five on his left hand. Fine. On the other hand, he still had five fingers, so, all was still going well in the good old days. Profpat sharpened his pencil until it got down to the eraser.

Rascal interjected, “Some sort of high stakes poker mania called “Texas Hold ‘em” has broken out in some countries. Googling now. It’s even replacing baseball on many TV channels!”

“It’s okay,” reassured Fredrick, “No harm done. We’ll pass it off as another fad.”

Nobody was heading billions of years into the past, having left the asteroid before he got a polaroid from sitting on it too long, and was passing many frolicking Dodo birds, along with the beginnings of such ancient notions as alchemy and astrology. (Hey, why are hemorrhoids not called asteroids?)



A rickety old rope bridge of rotting planks finally led Nobody past many antiquities such as one-cent stamps and on to the control panel of the ancient broadcasting station of CBS—the Cosmic Broadcast Station.

“Be careful,” advised Profpat. “Be so very delicate with any adjustments. Remember, on Earth, how the tiniest minute adjustment of a shower knob of even a millionth of an inch causes the shower water to become totally steaming hot! No plumber in the universe has ever been able to resolve this problem. It has something to do with quarks, quicks, and quacks.”

“Don’t worry,” answered Nobody. “I’ll be gentle; I’ll just breathe on it slightly. We want clarity in the universe’s DNA and ours, as in improving the reception of a TV set, not unproving it back into the stone age of three channels, all of them baseball games, and the weather, with snow and static on the others. I’ll do my best, come hell or hot water.”

Nobody sprayed a few atoms toward the antenna and waited. His data/video link soon improved but then overloaded from the high transfer speed and burned out. Nobody’s cell phone soon rang, but it was only a solicitor trying to sell him some time-share condos; however, Graybeard finally got through and said “Great, the stars are becoming clearer and I can even see some galaxies with the naked eye, but take it slow; we don’t want to upset the balance of nature by making it too bright at night. It’s good to tighten a screw, but if we tighten it too much and we’re screwed.

“Wait, hold it! I can see Venus, the goddess of love and passion all too well. Yikes, I didn’t know she was that old! Plus, I now have x-ray vision and can see into all the apartments, but the worst thing is that I can hear everything they are saying. Some things should be obscene and not heard! Also, I’m getting something called ‘cartoons’ on my TV set, and they’re really weird, very unreal looking and everyone in them is doing silly things.”

Nobody took out a hand held ‘vacuum’ cleaner and brought a few atoms back in as a fine adjustment.

“Good,” cheered Graybeard, “that’s a good balance. Try something a little higher up and let’s see what happens. I am reading some fluctuations out of kilter around there.”

Notions of up and down were useless in space, so Nobody picked a direction at random.

“No,” said Graybeard. “Not that way; use your other ‘up’.”

“Okay, I’m switching. Back in kilter?”

Graybeard answered, “I don’t know; I’m seeing another goddess.”

Suddenly, the Chicago Cubs, which had finally made it to the World Series of baseball, were swept in four straight games, while the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, and other unbelievables in attendance looked on in horror.

Then Michael Jordan gave up basketball for baseball and then switched back to basketball again. Global warming picked up and then an ice age began. Jesus, born a Christian, became Jewish, then converted back again. Hell froze over and then thawed out. The same with the River of Forgetfulness; everyone was walking on water for a while and running like Hell from Hades.

Profpat warned “Watch that shower knob, Nobody; the River Styx just boiled away and a bunch of dead people drowned after many more escaped!”

“Where are they going?” inquired Nobody.

Profpat replied, “They don’t know; they say they have CRS disease.”

“What’s CRS stand for?”

“Can’t Remember Shit.”

“OK guys. A little upper, Nobody” requested Graybeard. “That other direction was a downer.”

Nobody reached up and out, but the bridge creaked and groaned, causing Nobody to slip a bit as a rope frayed, and all the TOE researchers feared that his adjustment time was now quite limited.

Meanwhile, Barry Bonds had broken the home run record, but, of course, steroids would be blamed for it. Mount Rushmore had briefly turned into Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan, but just as soon returned back. However, the Boston Red Sox still won a World Series for the first time in 100 years.

Also, it turned out that someone named Yogi Berra had said many sayings that seemed to make sense, but really didn’t, like “That restaurant is so crowded that no one goes there anymore”, “It gets dark early out here”, “If people don’t want to come out to the ball park, nobody’s going to stop them”, “It’s deja vu all over again”, “I didn’t really say all of the things I said”, and many more unsayings.

Silly signs appeared on highways, like “Road Works” (it doesn’t work well during construction), and “Speed Zone” (meaning slow down). Something called rap music had become ever-present, as well as a new word, “oxymoron”, which was probably a related event. A funny thing happened to President Clinton, but he wasn’t impeached for it. He neither inhales nor does he have sex.

“This one may be hard to explain,” lamented Fredrick, “but we’ll chalk it up to human nature.”

Nobody did some fiddling of some knobs that he wasn’t supposed to touch, twiddling “More of This-ness”, and, as a result some people on Krypton started to make every shot in basketball games, even from 50 miles away, being really IN THE ZONE, plus doing many other superhuman things. All the TOE viewers from Earth were cheering this, but Fredrick warned them that total perfection might take all the fun out of life.

“Better hold off,” Graybeard suggested.

Nobody dialed the knobs back a little.

RascalPuff interjected, “Some people are now reporting that they can fly like superman in some new event called ‘sleeping hallucinations’ or ‘night dreams’.”

Also, zeroes began to look like the alphabetic letter ‘oh’, causing much confusion, along with ‘one’ looking like ‘el’, and some words began to have the same sound, as called a ‘homonym’ but not a ‘homonim’, and some with similar meanings; as called a ‘synonym’, although it had none itself, and some words now had multiple meanings. And how come ‘monosyllabic’ wasn’t? Nor was ‘phonetic’ spelled the way it sounded. And why was ‘abbreviation’ such a long word without any? Also, ‘love’ was reduced to having only the two good rhymes of ‘dove’ and ‘above’, which soon became overused and stale, frustrating many poets and their readers.

Austin reported that a part of Hawaii had sprung up in Wildwood, NJ, named ‘Sunset Bay’ and that it had had big fat singers, torches, palm trees, waterfalls, tropical flowers, a half-ship at the end of a pier that served as a bar, good food (ordering raw oysters well done), although it consisted of only waves and fields (lucky that his brain turned the noumena into phenomena), and sand all around as a floor. Also, he said that many more ‘o’s had appeared in the word ‘Goo…ooogle’.

Fredrick suggested that the sleeping visions were harmless and probably helped us in some way, that homonyms gave poets even more rhymes, that synonyms and words with multiple meanings would enrich the language, that zeroes could have a slash added through them for differentiation, that typewriters were obsolete, that we could get used to the odd words, perhaps some day getting even with them, that the word ‘of’ now rhymed with ‘love’, that ‘Hawaii in New Jersey’ would be seen as a planned tourist attraction, and that Google’s extra “o’s” would probably get used in a marketing ploy as denoting the internet page ranges of interest. — PoeticUniverse

Has anyone here other than @PoeticUniverse read the above post (quoted for verification of antecedent) end-to-end without even skipping parts?

if there is a God, you might be more than you think — Punshhh

It's like saying, "If there is a god, you will weigh five lbs more than you weigh", or "... you will run five miles an hour faster than you run," etc.

It actually does not matter what I think I am, in the determination of what I am. If I am X, then whether I think I am X+Y or else if I think I am less then X, say X-Z, then I am NOT what I think, but I am still precisely me.

if there is a God, you might be more than you think — Punshhh

That's just as much baloney as the idea of a holy trinity.

Let's assume that you're right.

I am now X. But if there is a god, then I am X+Y.

So I am X+Y. And I am not any more than X+Y, because the extra thing got added to me in the case of a god belief, so I continue to be, precisely no more and no less, than me, X+Y.

I wanna know who (here) claims to have a PhD in philosophy. :brow: — Artemis

I am sure it's @3017amen. The rest of us are pretty stupid so we act reasonably. That's what I'd say.

That was your teachers' goal! :wink: — Artemis

Silly me... I thought he and she and he and he (have taken two electives in my pursuing a degree in math, and after that, many years later, I audited two courses (audit means listen to the lectures, but not work toward a credit, not needing to give account of my progress via tests etc.)) did it for the money.

To be honest, I didn't even think. I literally had a REALLY random ass Idea that popped into my head and it sounded philosophical. — x11z6b3

Don't beat yourself to death. Albert Einstein started his theory of relativity with one single badass philosophical thought: "What if the speed of light is the fastest speed anything can travel at in this universe?" The particulars of the rest of the theory just fell into place from there.

My teachers only opened my eyes... I do all the thinking. To me philosophy is a way of exercising my freedom to develop my thinking. It is a similar experience for me in my life to writing fiction. And both pay about the same.

I made up a triparteid model of love in my silly, frivolous youth.
Love is a combination of three parts:
1. Fear of the loved one. Which we rather call respect.
2. Power over the loved one. Which we live out as protection.
3. Lust for the loved one. Which we enjoy.

1 is a fear that our love can destroy us at any moment, at a moment's notice, but we still don't fear him or her, because we trust him or her.
"Men fear women will laugh at them. Women fear men will kill them." -- Margaret Atwood, Nobel Prize laureate. I'd substitute "Men fear women will leave them / betray them / cheat on them / sell them out".

2. Men know women's fear, and they are egged on by it to protect them physically, and to provide for them. Women know men's fear of abanonment or betrayal, therefore they make sure they don't. It is a power that one does not exercise, because it balances out 1. for one, and because it feels good... getting without giving something of value is not fair, and we not only know that, we feel that. Therefore the higher the price we pay for something, the more precious it becomes to us. She is precious to him because he resists killing her when she says for the hundredth time to slow down at intersections, and she does not leave him despite his inability to understand what she wants, when it's so obviously even without telling or saying what it is.

3. Without lust it is hard to sustain a sexual relationship.

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

2. A man protects his love from physical / sexual danger. Bar fights, war. Women protect their men from blows to their egoes. Adoring looks, calling them "My giant Tiger" even when he is only 5'4".

Neither of these attitudes are fake. If you have to fake it, you are not in love.

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

1. A man will pay sacrifices to his woman to appease his fear of her abandoning him. Diamond bracelets, gold rings, houses, even effing kids. A woman will pay sacrifices to have her man not beat her to death: bjs, tons of make-up, tasty food, clean (literally) body. Laughing at his stupid jokes.

These can be faked, indeed, and they are. Even in the most loving relationship. But they become habits, then chores, so it's not a big deal even five years into the marriage. They go on automatic then, and nobody takes any notice of it.

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

3. I'm not going to go there in this forum.

I googled it and posted it, too... in this thread, for Cram. It turns out that the name "law of cause and effect" was first coined and in use by some spiritualists 200 years after Newton died.

Science assumes the uniformity of nature in order to [summarize how things work]. That's what Hume identified in the problem of induction and why science is flawed. — Hallucinogen

This is true. Sorta. What you said can be a valid corollary of Hume's claim, although Hume came at it from a different angle.

But Hume's rejection can be rejected, too... on a personal basis, not on a philosophical basis. A person may convince himself that it is seemingly advantageous to accept the assumption on which science is based, and he may convince himself that it is advantageous to suspend acting to the philosophical skepticism of Hume.

This does not negate the validity of Hume's point; it just ignores it, and lo and behold, life is easier to live ignoring Hume's point than to live with it.

But seriously, are you really yourself in the world? Or are you simply a culturally conditioned persona, believing a collection of pieces of information given you by imperfect people in your environment? — Punshhh

Whatever I am: conditioned by culture, beleiving in pieces of information that imperfect people gave me: I am still me. I am I, and I am not not I.

I can't not be me, however was I produced to be who I am.

This is the first time someone called me wise. I am being myself in the world.

You're babbling at bit here. — Punshhh

I quoted you VERBATIM.

Then you called me babbling.

What does that say about your opinion? To me it means, that you were babbling in the first place. And not only did you not realize it, but you seem to despise and condescend to those, who agree with what you say.

It is disturbing when you see yourself in the mirror and you realize only a bit later, maybe by someone explaining it to you, that it's your own reflection.

It requires deductive reasoning from available (conditional) evidence to logical conclusions. — Gnomon

So the fear factor is that you accept the unproven as proven, and as such, you accept it to be the premise on which an argument is built to lead you to your conclusion.

Well. This is contentious. What if my unproven and assumed-to-be-true premise is incongruent with yours?

Then we play chicken, who will leap first? Or just simply not engage in an argument?

@NilsArnold, please read the help files that describe the mechanics of the quoting system and other shortcuts on this site.

They make sense, and mastering them would help you avoid consternations like that experssed by @I like sushi when you hopelessly mixed up the quote with the intended to-respond-to person.

I am asking you to upgrade your TPF forum-specific skills as a gesture: with good will and good intentions.

God is not an atheist — NilsArnold

Yeah, that has been proven to me in another thread. But it is not possible to change monikers, apparently.

it's literally the hardest writing in the world to understand — NilsArnold

That is unfortunate. And it was avoidable.

it's literally the hardest writing in the world to understand — NilsArnold

Obviously you never seen my family physician's prescriptions.

it depends if you have a passion for truth or not — NilsArnold

I am not sure if it's "truth" that philosophy ever provides. It is more like "search for the truth", or "You must accept my views, and I can prove it to you that you must", or "you have no language comprehension", in the same progression in any debate.

But seriously speaking, I stick to my guns that no philosophy has ever even got near to the truth.

(And that stands also including trying to get at what the condept of truth is, in and by itself; truth being an affirmable relationship between two said things, one of which allegedly refers to reality.)

Sartre was much more complex than your questions implicate. His transphenomenal being of consciousness was the post-modernist denial by the dualists of the monoism of Hegelian materialism on one hand, and a transgressed hypophoid existentialist dasein connected via deontological supernaturalization of the self, on the other, which he calls, luckily, "self" for short.

There. That should clear up some things for you, I hope.

But occasionally, logic wins out. — Hallucinogen

This is worth some thought.

Can you give me an example of a common and not extraordinary logically chosen action by a person who follows ethical logic? I ask because my claim is that ethics has nothing to do with logic or reason in and by itself. Ethics is defined, created each instance that a rule of it is hung on it. Ethics / morals are not discovered or desdcribed as it is found in nature, other than "you have a feeling that some things are right, and some things are wrong". But since beyond this there is no universality of what right or wrong are, I claim logic is not part of ethical considerations.

Ever heard of a brain in a vat? — Echarmion

Yeah, it is the moniker for the moderator of another philosophy online club who is an absolute ruler of that forum. He tramples over other people, he tells everyone what to do, and by george everyone does what he commands, because he is a big BULLY. Consequently his forum is almost entirely dead, since everyone with just a bit of spine has left it, only those who are his lieblings and his vassals remain there.

Force is the product of mass and acceleration. Kinetic energy is, in contrast, half the square of the velocity, times the mass. — Banno

Energy (all kinds, not just kinetic) is equalivalent to potential to perform work. Therefore it can also be expressed as force acted over a distance, or the potential to carry out a force across a distance. Or the amount of heat produced or the potential to do so.

Not arguin', just sayin'.

So the definition of god is "mass delusions propagated by the elites in culture"? — Harry Hindu

Please understand: I am not your paid teacher.

Is there a difference between Zeus being a god and being fiction, or not? If there is, how do you show it? — Harry Hindu

So sorry, you have to answer these two questions for yourself. I am not going into an infinite regress of enlightening you.

Exactly. Now what does "fiction" mean? — Harry Hindu

I'm not going into a discussion of infinite regress of questions by you asking me to define things for you. Sorry; that's not my cup of tea.

Reasoning entails using reasons to support some claim. If there isn't a reason to claim something, why claim it? — Harry Hindu

There are tons of reasons. 1. To help you oppress a great number of people at once, without too much effort. 2. To help you make people behave in certain ways that you want them to. 3. To get their monies and to get them to serve you in other ways. 4. To help you explain unexplainable phenomena you encounter in your life (this is historical) 5. ETC.

Then how could a human even come to have the concept of "god" in their head if there is no reason (evidence) for them to have it? — Harry Hindu

For the same reason or mental process which enables humans to create fiction.

It only takes a leap of faith to take fiction for reality.

If you want to see the video yourself, please do the search term on Youtube, with this term: "ethics private and public 2019 09 22"

When it comes down to it the question I am asking is:
If you are faced with two options and option A is morally right (deemed so by whatever moral theory you subscribe to) and option B is morally wrong, why would you choose option A?

I am trying to understand what motivates people to behave morally.

Another different way to look at it:
Why would you choose to complete a difficult but morally right task over an easier but morally wrong one? — Seeking Wisdom

I saw a video on Youtube that answered your question for me to my satisfaction.

The guy was basically saying that there are two moralities, one carried by DNA structure and it is unavoidable to obey. You can't not obey it, and it involves such actions as saving your kids from a burning building.

This morality simply acts on an unavoidable basis. If you can't do it, you get marred by guilt for the rest of your life, if you fulfill it, you feel good about yourself.

So the reward-punishment comes from within. No matter how others judge you.

Societal movements used this reward-punishment system to impress people with societal morals, which people CHOOSE to accpet or not accept; but if they accept them, they will be punished the same way if they don't follow it (I.e. if your peers teach you not to steal, you feel guilty if you steal, and you will feel good when you return a lost wallet. The feelings present regardless of outside praise or condemnation by others).

The guy on the youtube video was basically saying, that morality is not one, but consists of two parts, and they have different attributes, which he describes, but similar reward/ punishment systems, both systems having rewards/ punishment coming from within, not from the outside world.