Murdo[ch] shows how Plato also sees art as being focused on pleasures as opposed to enlightenment. — Jack Cummins

If you haven't already, read Iris Murdoch's short book The Sovereignty of Good wherein she discusses 'beauty (art) as a way of seeing – attention to – reality' and therefore (an unorthodox) Platonic approach to moral judgment.

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

previously discussed in 2022
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/705105

Also Murdoch's Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals collection further elaborates on her reading of Plato and Platonism.

A Jamaican Diogenes ...

"Sit Dung Pon De Wall" (1:27)
Check It!, 1983
Mutabaruka

Welcome to TPF.

Afaik, "god exists" only in one's mind "defined" subjectively; thus, there are as many "gods" as there are (ever were) egos. Otherwise, "god" is merely an empty name¹.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empty_name [1]

... if you take the angle of religious tradition, you have already skewed it to be in this tradition which is again, just history playing itself out in this particular culture at this particular time in history. — schopenhauer1

:up: :up:

:up:

Morality is simply about what 'ought to be' — Philosophim

No, that is art. 'What one ought to do' is morality.

Such as?

Okay. So what's your point?

Abstraction is the nature of "translation", so yes: necessarily something is lost (e.g. map =/= terrain).

To prevent life =/= to prevent suffering just as to destroy the village =/= to save the village. Your ANist cowardice and hypocrisy are pathetic, schop, but it's not yet too late to redeem yourself à la Mainländer. :smirk:

:up:

Simply put, they are out of their minds. And one must ask, one must ask, why exactly is it that they don’t trust women? — Kamala Harris, from DNC nomination acceptance speech

Pro-forced birth / anti-woman's autonomy aka "pro-life" will be the critical dealbreaker for the majority of women voters across the political spectrum this year like it was in 2022. :fire:

Roevember is coming! :mask:

What needs to be defined therefore is what precisely do we mean by existence? ... And what is morality?  — Ray Liikanen

Read on through the rest of this thread, particularly page 2 (re: my proposals for "existence" and "morality" in the context of (how I understand) Western philosophy).

Do you cause unnecessary harm? — schopenhauer1

This question addresses the subject of moral concern: actually living, present persons, n o t possible, future persons (which is AN's category mistake).

AN's "asymmetry argument" is based on a misconception of ethics ... which your trolling is too lazy to pick-up on or too disingenuous to acknowledge my references elsewhere in this thread (as well as on @schophenhauer1's other "AN" threads), so STFU, STFD and maybe you'll learn something, kid.

Explain what? Your "bad metaphysics" post speaks for itself.

... 'religious' has not been defined in a concrete, understandable, verifiable manner. — Ray Liikanen

Apparently, you've not read this thread from the beginning. A little more than semantic quibbles is going on here. Besides, definitions are not "verifiable" (unless they are tautologies). :roll:

...since classical-scale systems (e.g. brains-sensoriums) cannot directly interact with planck-scale systems (re: decoherence).
— 180 Proof

How do you characterize ontically and empirically the physicist and its experimental_inferential connection to planck-scale phenomena? — ucarr

My layman's best guess: only the interaction of the measuring-apparatus and "planck-scale phenomena" is manifestly ontic – quanta (e.g. photons) "perturbing" quanta – and the physicist's readings of her measurements (thereby making inferences) are empirical.

QM tells us the observer perturbs what s/he observes. — ucarr

If by "observer" you mean measurement and by "observes" you mean measures, then I think you're correct here about QM. Afaik, "sentience" itself cannot "perturb" quanta since classical-scale systems (e.g. brains-sensoriums) cannot directly interact with planck-scale systems. That way leads to the dark side (imo, p0m0 / Berkeleyan nonsense :sparkle:).

Yes, as e.g. Spinoza points out, human knowledge of unbounded (infinite) reality is necessarily perspectival and therefore bounded (finite). Basic epistemic mereology (re: maps < terrain), no? Also consider the ancient method of exhaustion. I think your "strategic incompleteness" overstates the case and incoherently conflates teleology with formalism with empiricism.

My core principle is that there is always a dialectical balance in anything that could matter. A trade-off. And trade-offs ought to be optimised in a win-win fashion. That is the answer that is worth seeking. My approach leads me to pragmatism. We do the best we can by reasoning. We should always expect a complementary balance to exist in nature. Complementary balances is after all how nature can even exist. — apokrisis

:100: :fire:

Who could care about AN concerns? They are ridiculous given that there is plenty enough of pragmatic importance to be getting on with in our already extant lives.

A fashion statement and not a philosophical conundrum. — apokrisis

:up: :up:

ANists hysterically confuse 'preventing possible lives' with 'preventing (and reducing) harm to / suffering of actual lives'.

As to false hopes: one needs to go into this: false hopes about what? — Constance

"Life after death.". "Resurrection." "Past lives." "Reincarnation." "Release from the Wheel of Rebirth." Etc

bad metaphysics. This is a straw person

Your accusation of "bad metaphysics" is clearly a projection and non sequitur.

27August24

The Criminal Clown is running like a raped ape but he still can't hide ...

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4850566-superseding-indictment-trump-election-subversion-case/

Roevember is coming! :victory: :cool:

Its overpromising and underdelivering is itself metaphysics, that is, beyond verification and falsification. — Constance

:roll:

Well, ime, metaphysics – making sense in the most general way of the whole of reality – is conceptual (i.e. presuppositional > descriptive), not theoretical (i.e. propositoonal > explanatory). Besides, metaphysics does not entail the 'false hopes' which are the basis and motivators of religion.

Christian metaphysics is not at all egoic ...

All Christian sects preach that every person has an "eternal soul" (i.e. "I AM" = EGO sum (re: "imago dei")) that will be either "saved" or "damned", no? Iirc from my Jesuitical education, each follower of Christ seeks only the "eternal salvation" of his "eternal soul" ... in the world to come". Augustinian / Kierkeegardian subjectivity (i.e. "leap of faith") metaphysically screams "ME ME ME". :pray: :eyes:

what is essentially religious about our existence

Humans' denial of death via myths / symbols of 'immortality' (e.g. scapegoating, redemption / propitiation sacrifice, martyrdom, "teleological suspension of the ethical", etc) as I've pointed out on this thread ...

(page 1)
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/904100

(re: religion – more broadly from another thread)
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/676697

Today in Trumpenfreude ...

NASDAQ (DJT :rofl:)

16August24 – $23.06 per share
(NASDAQ 17,631.72)

Loser The Clown's pump-n-dump scam is down 40% in five months. Not bad for an OG grifter who even 3x BANKRUPTED A CASINO. — 180 Proof

26August24 – $21.72 per share :down:
(NASDAQ 17,725.77) :up:

:up: :up:

Religion's answer: know that your ego is nothing. There is a Reality that is/does without your ego. And that's your salvation from su[ff]ering. — ENOAH

This story (myth) is not "salvation" because, in fact, one's "suffering" (i.e. frustrations, fears, pains, losses, traumas, dysfunctions) ceases only with one's death. The world's oldest confidence game ritually over-promises and under-delivers: false hope. Besides, most historical religions preach that every person has an 'eternal soul' – imo, there isn't any notion that's more of an ego-fetish than this.

In general, idealism may be about a realm beyond the physical. — Jack Cummins

I think "in general, idealism" asserts that "the physical" is only an idea and not real (i.e. mind-independent). Maybe you mean platonism or cartesian dualism? :chin:

???

You would have a point if natalism and antinatalism were symmetrical- but they’re not. — schopenhauer1

They are not because "natalism" is not an ideology or doctrine or dogma –"unlike antinatalism. Natality is a biological function that animals can prevent or terminate. Having been born does not in any way entail procreating. Thus, "antinatalism". (i.e. natality : antinatalism :: mortality : denialism¹)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denialism [1]

Plato and Kant basically say that "all is maya" too by arguing "appearances are not reals" and "phenomena and not things-in-themselves", respectively, so I think in this context the specific dichotomy you draw, Jack, between Western and Eastern metaphysics is exaggerated. Also, the doctrine of "maya" is self-refuting insofar as it is "maya" as well like (existential? ontological? moral?) nihilism.

RFK is just another gaping hole in DJT's 'stay-out-of-jail' boat imo. :smirk:

Here's the crux:

Testimonial evidence only explains a subjective interpretation of a situation. And people's subjective interpretation of things is no indication of its truth as an objective reality, only the truth in that is what people feel. There are plenty of people who feel there is a God, but is that objectively true? No. — Philosophim

:100: :up:

@Jack Cummins

And, besides, what existential-pragmatic-ethical difference does it make, Jack, if metaphysically (according to some ancient tradition) "all is maya" — 180 Proof

Really? — Baden

Just a speculation, more hope than worry.

24August24

Orangeutan-see, Orangeutan-do: batshit RFK, Jr replaces fake-redneck JD Vance as VP canditate in MAGA-GOP bait-n-switch (instigated by Kelly Ann Conway) in the days or weeks to come. Will this trumpster fire blow up into a flaming hellscape by Kamala's September 10th debate beatdown? TBD.

Roevember is coming! :victory: :cool:

:lol:

:rofl: Oh Dunning-Kruger ...

So we agree: in sum, your "panENdeistic G*d" is an empty name (cipher) for mysterium tremendum (i.e. "Enformer"-of-the-gaps) that does not testably explain anything. :smirk:

We now understand the "How" of Nature much better, but not the "Why".

This is because (A) "why" (i.e. goal, purpose) only pertains to intentional agency – an unwarranted, anthropomorphic assumption – and therefore does not pertain to "Nature" itself (re: teleological / transcendental illusion (i.e. a metacognitive bias aka "pure reason")); and (B) the only answer to the foundational/ultimate "why of Nature" that does not beg the question (i.e. infinitely regress) is There Is No Why of Nature. :fire:

Well, Spinozists like me don't "believe in Spinoza's God" or that "everything is God" either because (A) only natura naturans (e.g. laws of nature) are real and (B) everything else, or natura naturata, is not real (i.e. merely exists transiently ... like breath on a mirror or footprints in beach sand at low tide or the shapes of clouds). The characters (& plot devices) in the Bible/Quran also are not divine – do not "reveal God"; they are just superstitious fictions (according to Spinoza).

"Real courage", as you say, would be to quit your "maliciously useless" life asap instead of cowardly whining on and on that you (we) "should never have been born". A coward's "coping mechanism" is living by the resentful hypocrisy of this kind of defeatist pessimism. Like daoists & epicureans, pyrrhonians & spinozists, pragmatists & absurdists..., otoh, my coping mechanism for 'radical indifference' begins and ends with defiance – memento mori :death:, memento vivere :flower:.

So, for all us dead men & women walking, to each his or her own: your cowardice (i.e. futility of preaching "nonexistence") OR our courage (i.e. agency despite existence), your defeatist pessimism (re: ideality) OR our defiant pessimism (re: reality): no doubt for many, maybe most, an involuntary – unreasonable – decision. :fire:

I don't see the relevance to the OP or to my reply to it. I didn't exoress a "belief" so much as a conceptual description / interpretation of [/i]your[/i] "what I believe about myself" in the context of the post from which its quoted.