Or you have failed to observe the evidence in the events comprising your own life due to your own attitude, or simply some inherent limitation of your cognitive makeup. — Pantagruel

:roll: Ad hominem, not an argument. Quite telling.

Addendum to

Do I have free will? — kindred

To the degree you (we) are not coerced by other agents or constrained by either internal and/or external conditions, you (we) "have" free actions.

Could you have done otherwise? Yes in principle, but only if the sum of all the enabling constraints on your past actions (outside of your awareness or control) had been otherwise than it was.

Can you choose to do A rather than B? Yes hypothetically, but only if the sum of all the enabling constraints on your present actions (outside of your awareness or control) do not, in effect, deselect some or all of the options presently available to you.

Existentially, that's how embodied volition (re: compatibilism) seems to cash out.

To deny the possibility of something that someone else has experienced because you have failed to experience — Pantagruel

We do not "deny" anyone's "experience" only observe that such "experience" does not correspond to anything outside of your head. The experiential difference between us, sir, is not that we 'have failed" but that you seem to emotionally need to take fantasies (of "possibility") literally and we do not.

The substance of any belief is the effect] that belief has upon the actions of the believer.

Yes indeed, consider (e.g.) cults, asylums, prisons, casinos, p0m0 seminars, MAGA/Klan rallies ... ye shall know "beliefs" by their fruits. :mask:

:smirk: :up:

... punching bags to us post modern sages. — Fire Ologist

:rofl:

All you’re doing here is saying god equals objectivity. But you can’t demonstrate a single belief any god holds regarding morality. Pretty sure you can’t point to a single objective truth about that god. And you certainly can’t demonstrate a god. — Tom Storm

:100: Amen!

How could it be an illusion though, seems to me I have an array of choices. — kindred

"An illusion" is that which is not what it seems to be. "An array of choices" is, in fact, only some predictions based on inertia, biases, assumptions, incomplete / incorrect information and do not determine (cause) actions or outcomes (effects).

:100:

:up: :up:

Yes, as in freethought: thinking (inquiry) free of "tradition" in such a way that we are free for recreating (reasonably extending, or modernizing) tradition.

... traditional tropes, such as the Biblical vision of God creating the world for the use of humanity have contributed to this looming crisis.

Our economic system is unsustainable, being predicated on endless growth, with collapse being the only alternative. Nothing to do with tradition, unless you count the tradition amongst economists of discounting ecological costs as a part of the economy. That greater disrupter of tradition, science, has been telling us how wrongheaded this economic thinking in terms of "externalities" is for more than half a century. — Janus

:100: :fire:

No matter who winds up the Democrat's presidential nominee, all that matters now it seems to me is this:

the degree to which the coalitions which make up the Dems coalesce again like they did in 2020 to make the election about opposition to The Neofascist Criminal Clown in Roevember. — 180 Proof

That isn't nonsensical though, is it 180? — AmadeusD

Of course it is, just like your question.

Yes, but I didn't say or imply anything about "proof". I remarked on a previous nonsensical statement that 'without god, there are no objective truths'.

What do you want and expect from philosophy? — Fooloso4

I hope philosophy helps me to live less foolishly ...

[The] purpose of philosophy, especially for those who recognize that they (we) are congenitally unwise, may be (YMMV) to strive to mitigate, to minimize, the frequency & scope of (our) unwise judgments, conduct, etc via patiently habitualizing various reflective exercises (e.g. dialectics, etc.) And in so far as 'wisdom' denotes mastery over folly & stupidity (i.e. misuses & abuses, respectively, of intelligence, knowledge, judgment, etc), I translate φίλος σοφία as striving against folly & stupidity.

No theist can identify objective truth either. — Tom Storm

:up: Exactly. For example, theists cannot demonstrate that their "god exists" is (except only in their minds) an objective truth.

:eyes:

8July24

Day seven of the American Monarchy (7 AM)

So who would you vote for (if you could / will vote in the 2024 election): (A) the old man who (usually) tells truths despite his stutter or (B) the old swine who only squeels (& farts) lies just to keep breathing?

Lots of evidence there is no such thing as free will. — Fire Ologist

I agree, that's why I said nothing about it.

If there are no rules, we can’t languish in the anxiety of breaking the rules.

This statement doesn't make any sense

The premise here is there is no god, no objective truth.

Well, that seems to me a "fairly adolescent" – unwarranted – "premise".

No God, no hope for anything more than nature drawing its breath. — Fire Ologist

Free thinking, free living.

Why be ethical at all?

For starters, in order to flourish more than languish...

Seems philosophy and ethics would be annoying and tiresome.

Perhaps they "seem" so to a child.

So maybe atheism is not only rational, but accurate, but if it is so, aren’t ethics and truth irrational?

No more "irrational" than an atheist reducing harm and correcting falsehoods.

It’s all bullshit we tell ourselves. — Fire Ologist

Yeah, that's how lazy cynics "bullshit" themselves.

Mind coming from matter ... — RogueAI

"Mind" is not a thing; it's merely what some very rare, complex material systems do.

There is no matter. It's all mental stuff.

Stuff is just stuff and very rare bits of stuff happen to be aware that they are just stuff like all the other unaware stuff.

Conspiracy thinking ain't my thing ...

As far as I know, there is no universal consensus that could legitimately be called the "sine qua non" of theism. i.e. you are making it up in order to then argue against it (as I have repeatedly pointed out). — Pantagruel

Based on Abrahamic, Hindi, pantheonic Greco-Roman-Egyptian-Babylonian-Persian-Mesoamerican-Aboriginal traditions, I understand theism as consisting of the following claims:

(1) at least one ultimate mystery
(2) created existence,
(3) intervenes in – causes changes (which cannot be accounted for otherwise) to – the universe
(4) and is morally worthy of worship.

Cite any deity-tradition, sir, that you consider 'theistic' and that does not conceptualize its (highest) deity with these attributes, or claims. :chin:

My sine qua non theistic claims are that there are greater-than-human conscious entities.

 Sounds to me like made up woo-stuff :sparkle: just like e.g. "Flying Spaghetti Monsters" ... "The Great Old Ones" ... "The Force" ... nothing to do with any religious expression of theism as such.

My guess is that, barring a debilitating health event or worse, if Biden doesn't step aside this week (or next at the latest), then he will be on the ballot again. I believe various state deadlines are coming up later this month for printing ballots, etc so the Democratic Party's "final" decision whether to unite behind Biden is imminent. That's critical – not whether or Biden steps aside – the degree to which the coalitions which make up the Dems coalesce again like they did in 2020 to make the election about opposition to The Neofascist Criminal Clown in Roevember.

DNC party rules and, because he is the incumbent president, Biden (team) controls the Dems convention nominating process. Besides, even if the Dems could "force him out" (they cannot), by law the money the Biden-Harris campaign has raised would still belong to his campaign and he could run for reelection as an independent guaranteeing that The Clown wins the election. So as a practical electoral matter it's a disaster if Biden doesn't voluntarily step aside and endorse his replacement.

No.

:up: :up:

I have been reading about Spinoza's philosophy and as far as I can see there is a lot of ambiguity over how his ideas are interpreted. — Jack Cummins

If I may – go to the source and read Ethics (Edwin Curley's translation); however, if you must read secondary literature, I recommend Spinoza by Stuart Hampshire. Careful reading of either book should clear up (most of) this "ambiguity" you're finding.

God was 'nothing other than the whole universe'.

Spinoza does not argue this. Regardless of the laziness of centuries of academic fashion, Spinoza is an acosmist¹, not a "pantheist" or "atheist".

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/528116 [1]

[ ... ] This is the God of pandeism.

I don't think so. "The playwrite" would have to transform himself into "the play itself" – (analogously) that's pandeism².

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/718054 [2]

In ancient philosophy, the term "anagoge" (from the Greek "ἀναγωγή") refers to a process of spiritual or intellectual ascent. — Wayfarer

A modern expression of this process ...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wittgenstein%27s_ladder

Being is the world of the 10,000 things. Non-being is the Tao. — T Clark

Akin to atoms swirling swerving & recombing (in) void ...

[³M]aterialism's objective reality is not the only way of seeing things.

Yes, ³it's the least rational and pragmatic "way of seeing things" except for all the others tried so far.

[naturalism [physicalism [ materialism ]]] [3]

Atheists, by their [your] own declaration, are really only qualified to speak about what god is not. — Pantagruel

Well, this "atheist" certainly is "qualified to speak about what" theism "is not" – the sine qua non claims of theism¹ are demonstrably not true.

from 2019 ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/350947 [1]

@Jack Cummins

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/914581

... a social system that is on average fair and just? — apokrisis

A post-scarcity, demarchic social system is as "fair and just" as I can imagine.

:up:

:up:

:smirk:

Consciousness is not in need of explanation ... — bert1

I agree. :up:

For instance, Spinoza's double-aspect parallelism dissolves Descartes' "MBP – substance duality": mind describes (degrees of) voluntarily behaving and body describes involuntarily behaving. "Consciousness" (i.e. mind) is not an entity, but how we predicate a class of actions that we cannot account for mechanistically. Besides not explaining, or making sense of, anything, this is why I find "panpsychism" conceptually incoherent as psyche-of-the-gaps appeal to ignorance woo-woo. :sparkle:


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-aspect_theory

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

'How X becomes Y?' is a request for cause/s that can be answered by the inquirer herself by '(under specified conditions, we can observe that) Z causes X to become Y'. However, to ask 'why X becomes Y?' is a request by the inquirer of the motives of another who is the only one who can answer 'Z was the motive (for me) to cause X to become Y'. In clear, ordinary usage, how pertains to causes or correlations (re: bodies) and why pertains to motives, or justifications (re: minds).

There is ... One object of experience. — Fire Ologist

And, imo, this "object" conceals (its) absence. In broad strokes, I think religion (to worship) idolatrizes-fetishizes-mystifies '(the) absence' and mysticism (to meditate) denies – negates – 'whatever conceals absence' in order to "experience" absence as such whereas philosophy (to inferentially contemplate) describes – makes explicit – 'presence concealing absence' and science (to testably map-model) observes 'only fact-patterns (i.e. states-of-affairs concealing absence) in order to explain dynamics.

the applicability of logic to explain — Fire Ologist

AFAIK, "logic" doesn't "explain" anything; its "applicability" consists in providing formal consistency to arguments (re: valid inferences, sound conclusions).

But does every individual have to be fair and just or should we build a social system that is on average fair and just? — apokrisis

It seems to me that every (human) "individual" is a (eu/anti)social being first and foremost.

Is the real world fair and just? — Gnomon

Yes; however, we h. sapiens have not been "fair and just" enough – too often not at all – to one another for the last several (recorded) millennia at least.

Your mentions of him in the OP are simply contrary to Nietzche's moral philosophy.

The experiences of NDErs... — Sam26

:sparkle: :lol:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/912509

The mind-body problem is made so complicated by an apparent duality of mind and body, but a clear connection between [complementarity of] the two. — Jack Cummins

In light of Spinoza's dissolution of the "MBP" derived from the illusion – conceptual incoherence – of Descartes' substance duality (or Aristotle's substance plurality) which I've previously alluded to here , what actual "problem" remains to be discussed?

Maybe you should actually read Nietzsche's writings (especially e.g. BoT, GS, BGE, OtGoM, TotI & EH – preferably W. Kaufmann's translations), Bob, and not just secondary / tertiary derivative sources and polemics against his ideas.

:up: