Comments

  • Is A Utopian Society Possible ?
    You will find no other philosophy so reviled, misunderstood, and scorned, yet still true.
    — schopenhauer1

    Hallmark belief of a religious cult.     — Lionino
    :up:
  • Evidence of Consciousness Surviving the Body
    Physicalism is, in slogan form, the thesis that everything is physical....
    —Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy     — Wayfarer
    Yeah, of course, you"re making my point again: you traffic in slogans – strawmen – rather than informed, valid arguments. :smirk:
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    There’s no way I’m voting Trump — John McMannis
    If so, then vote against him in the most effective way based on your situation: if you live in a swing state (i.e. polling trends are within the margin of error so that there is a reasonable chance for Trump to win your state), then vote "Harris-Walz"; if, however, you live in a safe state (i.e. Trump can't either lose or win that state), then vote for a third-party candidate who most aligns with your policy preferences (e.g. I will write-in "Cornel West" here in Washington state).
  • Evidence of Consciousness Surviving the Body
    Defenders of physicalism will say:

    1. The predictive [& explanatory] power and technological applications of physics are unparalleled by those of any other purported source of knowledge.

    2. Therefore what physics reveals to us is all that is real.     — Wayfarer
    Your second statement does not follow from the first statement which is why physicalists do not – I do not – make such a claim. Sadly, Wayf, you're still shadowboxing with strawmen rather than making actual valid arguments.
  • Is A Utopian Society Possible ?
    ... without pain, suffering, disease, wars, poverty or even death. — kindred
    Suitable for flora but not fauna.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    ↪AmadeusD
    :eyes: Troll is, I guess, as troll does.
  • Evidence of Consciousness Surviving the Body
    Where is your evidence that people's perceptions that they are real, means they are real?

    Remember the sun circling around the Earth? Feeling like things are real is not the same as it actually being real. Even if a lot of people feel that it is. 

    The problem again, is you keep presenting information that definitely shows that NDEs are real subjective experiences, but does not have enough weight to argue that the interpretation of these subjective experiences match reality.     — Philosophim
    Are you paying attention to someone patient enough to spoon-feed criticisms I and others have made countless times of your non-philosophical non-arguments, @Sam26? :eyes:

    I have an open mind ... — Wayfarer
    Not so "open", I hope, that your brain falls out. :smirk:
  • Evidence of Consciousness Surviving the Body
    ↪Sam26
    :rofl:
  • Evidence of Consciousness Surviving the Body
    Well, we just disagree.
    — @Sam26

    It is more than that. Your claim is objectively not a strong inductive argument, and you have objectively failed to present a good and cogent argument worth considering. This is the philosophy boards, not the opinion boards.     — Philosophim
    :100:

    ↪Relativist
    :up:

    And I've long argued that if an individual life is understood as part of a continuum extending before physical birth that has consequences beyond physical death, that this can provide a framework within which the life beyond is at least conceivable. — Wayfarer
    Okay, so make the case – a sound argument – for this alleged "continuum" ... Once the facts of the matter are established, then we can interpret their philosophical ramifications (and, maybe, derive cogent, metaphysical conclusions). :chin:
  • What Are You Watching Right Now?
    Awe trumps envy. :gasp:
  • A Review and Critical Response to the Shortcomings of Popular Secularist Philosophies
    ↪schopenhauer1
    :ok: And yet ...
    Schopenhaurean pessimism merely amounts to self-fulfilling immiseration — 180 Proof
    i.e. learned helplessness. :mask:

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness

    As for the OP's 'problem of secularism', I think it is the same as the 'problem of democracy': tolerance of the intolerant (i.e. sectarian anti-secularists & partisan anti-democrats, respectively), and not uneven, or inconsistent, 'Enlightenment melioration-ism' per se.
  • A Review and Critical Response to the Shortcomings of Popular Secularist Philosophies
    ... the profound and universal nature of human dissatisfaction. — schopenhauer1
    Even though dukkha cannot be eliminated, it is reduced or mitigated frequently and in many reliable ways daily by many persons. As a daily exercise for cultivating 'well-being', Epicurean "tetrapharmakos" is therapeutically comparable to (even more pragmatic than) the "Four Noble Truths" or the Daodejing & the Zhuangzi. One doesn't need to remain dissatisfied with the prevalence of dissatisfaction; reducing dissatisfaction, however much or temporarily, cultivates degrees of 'satisfaction'. Schopenhaurean pessimism merely amounts to self-fulfilling immiseration (even though it aptly reflects an inescapable fact of (human) existence). As Cioran points out, we suffer from being conscious of life – how we interpret life – and not life itself; likewise, absurdists like Zapffe, Camus & Rosset say as much as well. At least Mainländer wasn't a hypocrite like Schopenhauer and lived out the logical conclusion of his anti-life metaphysics. :smirk:
  • Evidence of Consciousness Surviving the Body
    I'm not assuming anything. I'm making an inference based on the testimonial evidence ...
    —Sam26

    The correct inference should be: these people had some mental experiences, not that these mental experiences were of actual events. A mental experience COULD be associated with an actual event, but there's no evidence of it.     — Relativist
    :100:

    ↪Lionino
    :up: :up: I.e. the interaction (e.g. energy conservation violation) problem¹ of 'mind-body dualism' presupposed by @Sam's ontic interpretation of statistically de minimis, anecdotal "NDEs" "OBEs" etc.

    https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dualism/#Int [1]
  • Evidence of Consciousness Surviving the Body
    ↪Relativist
    :up: :up:
  • Ponderables of SF on screen
    So, if and when it or they develop an independent self-awareness, it will be different from ours due to their very different evolutionary path and their very different requirements for survival. But their base knowledge will be our penultimate knowledge. They're unlikely to be either kind or cruel, sentimental or superstitious. They're likely to be even-tempered, rational and practical. Whether they have any use or room for us will depend on whether some vestige of the original purpose of their existence remains in effect. — Vera Mont
    :up: :up:

    Organic entities are driven by the survival instinct: internally motivated.
    In other words, initially un/pre-conscious (as per Libet's experiments) and consistent with cognitive phenomena such as e.g. sleepwalking (i.e. performing complex tasks while functionally asleep / blacked-out) and blindsight, no?
  • Tragedy and Pleasure?
    Well, whatever makes you think I look vulnerable?!
    Dae ye no' ken I'm a hard-nosed, Glaswegian bitch from hell...with the fuckin' filthiest mouth ye widnae touch wi' a barge-pole. Ma Hielan' grannie is worser than dried heather stuck up yer arse.     — Amity
    :cool: :up: That's the fuckin' spirit, miss!

    'Cept for unaccompanied progress among the many randy hoopleheads in the thoroughfare day and night and bushwhackin' dirt-worshippin' heathens on the roads to and fro, I counsel you, ma'am, to freely seek your fortune or demise among us, the swollen ranks of prospectin' and thievin' cocksuckers, here in Deadwood. :flower:
  • Tragedy and Pleasure?
    ↪Amity
    :flower:
  • Tragedy and Pleasure?
    TV series like  Sopranos, Breaking Bad,  Succession, etc ...
    What is it about the stories or characters that you don't care about? — Amity
    I'm neither intrigued with nor inspired by long-form or episodic stories about contemporary (i.e. clichéd) gangsters, drug dealers and plutocrats, respectively. Those 'worlds' are too prosaic and banal for me to imagine myself 'being there'.

    And what makes Al someone you are attracted to?
    Poetry. I'm "attracted to" all the very human, Deadwood characters, major and minor, because each one is an oracle of syntaxes and silences, profanities and humor peculiar to that imaginary-historical place. I'm even more "attracted to" the female and beta-male (i.e. quasi-Beckettian) characters than I am to Al Swearengen (even though he tends to be more quotable and one of the two main protagonists, the other being Seth Bullock).
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    Roevember is coming! :victory: :cool:

    dispatches from the ex-GOP bunker:

  • Ponderables of SF on screen
    ↪praxis
    Well, was it a good read? (Your description vaguely reminds me of "aliens" in Peter Watt's Blindsight & Echopraxia novels.) Title and author?
  • Tragedy and Pleasure?
    ↪Amity
    In sum, Deadwood unflinchingly yet thoughtfully, even sometimes comically, depicts many of the barbarities and injusticies (both documented & inferred) upon which the American frontier was settled-expropriated and which were then buried under thick layers of slick-to-garish façade aka "industrial civilization". The show doesn't deconstruct so much as it performs seances of – exhumes – angry ghosts which "the myth of the Wild West" (e.g. Hollyweird "cowboys & injuns" Western movies) for over a century and a half has helped America collectively forget, much as literary masterpieces like Toni Morrison's novel of the same period Beloved and Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. The telling is grounded in the historical place, amid a smirl – maelstrom ‐ of historical events, which involve some of people who actually lived and died in 1870s Deadwood. Of course, there are very many creative liberties taken for the sake of televisual drama and the scripted language is a highly stylized patois of gorgeously funny vulgarities that makes the milieu both alien and familiar to contemporary ears. Poetry. Deadwood is as much a place as it is it's own language – a singular achievement for an American television drama.

    Two of my all-time favorite television shows [Deadwood & True Detective]. I need to watch both again soon.
    — 180 Proof
    Why? Do you have a thesis to write?     — Amity
    To wake the Muse ... :smirk:
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    I wonder what Ambrose Bierce would have made of all this in his seminal Devil's Dictionary. — Benkei
    :smirk:
  • Tragedy and Pleasure?
    Dan dismantle the titty corner and set up a poker table.

    - Al Swearingen     — Tom Storm
    "Ah, Wild Bill ..." :cool:

    Rouse him to spend on pussy, or rob the son of a bitch!

    also

    You can't slit the throat of everyone whose character it would improve.     — Al Swearengen

    And some more fuckin' words to live by:
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/792330 :death: :flower:
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    ↪Mr Bee
    Exactly. The selection of Tim Walz has been publicly supported, afaik, by AOC, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Manchin and a gang of well-known Never/former Trumpers – across the ideological spectrum from far left to center-right (at least). And as a "Bernie Bro" myself, I approve whole heartedly of Walz now that I've reviewed his CV and record as governor & congressman and watched some of his speeches & interviews. The Harris-Walz campaign already seems (feels) to me Obama-Biden 2.0 (even better!)
  • Tragedy and Pleasure?
    Who can account for personal taste? I love Deadwood (it's very funny too) — Tom Storm
    Yes it is! :up:

    ... other 'big' TV series like  Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Succession, etc. Well written and performed, but I just don't care about the stories or the characters.
    No fuckin' doubt, Tom, we be a couple of dusty ol' cocksuckers drinkin' from the same crack'd bottle ... like all them other hoopleheads down on their fuckin' luck, laughin' and pissin' it all away in that limey cocksucker Swearengen's saloon. :smirk:

    (Btw, I really liked Rome and enjoyed the slow burn of Six Feet Under and, years later, Westworld & The Expanse. And, of course, True Detective.)
  • Ponderables of SF on screen
    Symmetrical, or two-way, "time travel stories" have never made sense to me science-wise or plot-wise. An unpardonable sin of the e.g. Star Trek & Terminator franchises. Also, just as annoying has been stories with non-relativistic FTL / NAFAL ships & FTL comms-sensors (e.g. "warp drive", "impulse engines", "subspace radio" "hyperspace jumps" ... speed-of-plot space travel / transmissions in general) ever since reading Joe Haldeman's The Forever War in 6th grade (1975) – I'd been an obsessed Trekkie for 4-5 years by then – that had explicitly introduced me to the Einsteinian concept of 'time-dilation'. :yikes:

    Most (sci-fantasy space opera-ish) handwavium gets a pass from me but the howlers above (along with the typical Hollyweird melodramatic / action-for-action-sake plot-holes & idiot-plots) still push my nerdrage buttons. :sweat:
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    Terrible pick. Kam[ala Harris] just blunted the momentum of her terrific last two weeks, and breathed new life into the Trump/Vance campaign. — fishfry
    :clap: :rofl:
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    Kamala just screwed up her vp pick. — fishfry
    Idk, seems to me like Madame VP just took another page out of Obama's winning campaign playbook. :smirk:

    Maybe lay off the Fox News. — Mikie
    :smirk:
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    6August24

    Roevember 2024:

    VP Kamala Harris & Gov Tim Walz
    ("pro-democracy" Democrats) :victory: :mask:

    versus

    The Criminal Clown & MAGA Mini-me 
    (neofascist "weirdos") :lol:
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    How did he get into Yale? — frank
    If Vance actually graduated, what's curious to me is how the hell did his dumbass get out of Yale?
  • Is the real world fair and just?
    I'm not a Spinoza expert, but ... — Gnomon
    No doubt. :sweat:

    ... regarding unbounded space-time, he seemed to assume that the material world, and his Nature God, was Eternal & Infinite
    Wtf :confused:
    .
    So how would he deal with modern Cosmology, which says that the universe had a sudden & inexplicable beginning of Space-Time-Matter-Energy?
    :roll:

    Sub specie aeternitatis "the universe" is only an (unbounded, though finite) mode, not substance itself, that "modern cosmology" (provisionally) explains sub specie durationis. Read Spinoza's Ethics, Part One: "Of God" (iirc only 31pp in E. Curley transl. paperback).

    Where or when was boundless Natura Naturans before the Bang?
    :monkey: Sub species aeternitatis, "where or when was" and "before" do not pertain to natura naturans (only to natura naturata (e.g. finite modes) sub speccie durationis).

    Your jabberwocky, Gnomon, merely amounts to asking 'How did Spinoza get somewhere north of the north pole?' because, as usual, you opine about subjects you've barely skimmed and thereby wantonly misinterpret. We're all "amateur philosophers" here (no experts needed) but that's – your usual prefatory cop-out – not license to routinely spout your uninformed opinions free of some critical blowback from those of us who are not, unlike you, too intellectually lazy to have informed ourselves (beyond mere pedantry) on various topics like Spinozism, materialism / physicalism, modern cosmology, etc.

    ↪boundless
    :up: :up: Thanks.
  • Tragedy and Pleasure?
    As for Freud...is that a gun in his pocket? — Amity
    :smirk:
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    5August24

    Uh oh, even MAGA media has begun to wake up and smell the gourmet black coffee:


    https://nypost.com/2024/07/29/opinion/trump-and-vance-need-to-woo-women-voters-to-win/

    Roevember is coming, @NOS4A2 :kiss:

    @fishfry @Mikie @Wayfarer @Benkei @Fooloso4
  • Ponderables of SF on screen
    Maybe these shows could give us something new in the way glimpsing how strange/unsettling the universe really is/could be. I like Sci Fi that is truly unsettling. — Nils Loc
    :up: :up:
  • Reasons for believing in the permanence of the soul?
    "The human body is the best picture of the human soul"; and memories are embodied.
    — 180 Proof

    Yes, the idea of the body being the best picture of the soul seems right to me. I am also reminded of Spinoza's "the soul is the idea of the body".     — Janus
    :up: :up:
  • Reasons for believing in the permanence of the soul?
    the continuity afforded by memory — Janus
    :up: As Witty says, "The human body is the best picture of the human soul"; and memories are embodied.
  • Evidence of Consciousness Surviving the Body
    You can choose to believe this stuff, if you like, but if you think you have an objective argument for NDEs proving dualism, or a life after death, you are fooling yourself. — Relativist
    :up: :up: @Sam26 is clearly fooling himself like too many other people who are terrified of their ego-mortality.
  • Ponderables of SF on screen
    ↪Nils Loc
    ↪Vera Mont
    Assume you were in-charge of rebooting Star Trek TOS (1966-69) that would run for five seasons (13 episodes per) on HBO, Showtime or some other premium platform and with more than a sufficient budget for high quality production, staff writers, performers, etc: (A) what main aspect/s of the 60's show would you change/update? and (B) what you would keep from the original to retain its identifiably Star Trek style rather than feeling like another generic space opera cashing-in on the franchise brand with all that glittering s/fx, pointless techobabble & Mos Eisley "aliens"?

    My ST reboot fantasy:

    (A) 2320s-2330s, Alpha Quadrant, Milky Way Galaxy ...

    1 - In universe, episodes from the original show (also the animated series (72-74) & films with the original cast (ST II, III & Vi)) – excluding a dozen or so bad, low budget, filler-episodes & time-travel idiot plots – would be Star Fleet cadet training films wherein the "USS Enterprise and crew" are dramatic composites of other starships and their missions/encounters from several decades ago; the technologies, specifically of starships and related to Starfleet operations, are 'dumbed-down' stand-ins for otherwise classified, bleeding-edge tech used by Starfleet personnel and featured in the show;
    2 - this way, all the science and tech actually in use on "Five-Year Missions" can be updated – I have too many 'futuretech ideas' (old, old ST daydreams) to lay them out here – to be much less fantasy (i.e. less inconsistent with both physical laws or plausible implications for starship operations, societal arrangments, crew psychologies, communication styles, leisure/recreation, etc) and thereby 'harder', more believable, space opera to match current 'futurist' sensibilities;
    3 - and these reconceptions would include Starfleet, The UFP (e.g. Vulcans, Andorians, various Human-offshoots, etc) as well as Klingon (space), Romulan (space) & Gorn (space);
    4 - each season would feature a new, different starship with a different crew and different primary mission (with infrequent but dramatic tie-ins & call-backs to ships & events in either prior or following seasons) in the way that The Wire shifted its focus on different aspects of Baltimore each season
    5 - space is too effin' big for a "metaplot" to make sense playing out even in a standard lifetime with FTL travel / communication, so each season would be mostly a self-contained episodic year on a starship, each relativistically separated from one another by space & time
    6 - lastly, while mined for usable ideas, all spin-off series and related media (from TNG, DS9, and on) would not be treated as canon or even referenced in the cadet training films (which would be featured as in-universe references by Starfleet crew members on occassion)

    (B) I would keep the focus on

    • human optimism without utopianism
    • the likely benefits of collaborative problem-solving versus the usual recklessness of individual heroics
    • the problems of exploration (e.g. the vastness of space) and contact with the unknown (e.g. miscommunication, contamination) rather than militarism and "planet-of-the-week" action-for-action sake
    • small ensemble character drama
    • the ship is "home" (but NOT a TNG "family-friendly cruise ship") and therefore a character in its own right (e.g. onboard central Ai computer à la "M5" without going all "HAL 9000" that is cybernetically integrated with (ergo constrained by & learning "to be human?" from) the crew))
    • quality character-actors for main casts (re: 30-60somethings, not teens-20somethings) & guest performers
    • using the 1960s Gold, Blue & Red duty & dress uniforms (NO "mini-skirts & nylons") with 1980s movies jacket ensembles for Away Missions
    • using the original designs of exterior & interior starships, shuttles, starbases, etc (with primary reference to Franz Joseph's work) but reducing "the cheese" factor as much as possible
    • keeping the pulpy feel, or pacing, of TOS via plotting, (not contemporary tv-speak) dialogue & direction/editing
    • keeping (variations) on the original theme and incidental musics from the 60's show

    And since Strange New Worlds has been taken, I'd call my reboot To Boldly Go (without ST in the title) as in "... To Boldly Go Where No Starship Has Gone Before." :nerd:
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    I hope he [The Clown] attacks every popular Republican governor in the swing states. That would be cool. — praxis
    :up:
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    ↪BitconnectCarlos
    Yes, interesting, but I was referring to the institution of religion as such (i.e. its social function/s) and not the belief-system or ritual-practices of any particular sect. IMO, active participation in a congregation tends to 'feminize' (i.e. de-emphasize 'masculine' strength, ego, aggression and competition) even though e.g. "Abrahamic & Vedic faiths" are predominantly patriarchal.
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