Comments

  • Ennea
    ... transcendent ground does not precipitate infinite regress.Dogbert
    Explain why it doesn't.
  • Cosmos Created Mind
    But, how do neurons & electrons create meaningful ideas? ... immaterial radio signals (mathematical waves ... immaterial stuff like metaphysical Minds & Cosmic signals ... the possibility that some cosmic intentional (teleological) Mind created ... all we know about the world is subjective ideas in a Mind.Gnomon
    :yikes: :lol: :rofl:
  • Ennea
    justification for existenceDogbert
    Existence is a brute fact and does not require "justification". Besides, even a "transcendent" why begs its own question / precipitates an infinite regress (i.e. every "transcendent" terminus e.g. "god" is arbitrary and unwarranted).
  • The purpose of philosophy
    What are male and female is science, but cultural associations with sex, aka gender, is a goldmine of philosophical discussion.Philosophim
    Imo, "trans issues" are psychosociological or anthropological much more so than "philosophical".
  • Idealism Simplified
    In modern days, "the interaction problem" is brought up as a hoax.Metaphysician Undercover
    :lol:

    Idealism is monistic ...bert1
    Tell that to neo/Kantians ... :roll:

    :up:
  • Idealism Simplified
    Therefore there is no reason to assume an interaction problem.Metaphysician Undercover
    Clearly, you're in denial ...
    . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%E2%80%93body_dualism#Arguments_against_dualism

    ... the validity of the intuition of IdealismPantagruel
    I.e. folk psychology (akin to superstition). Smells of a fallacious appeal to popularity / tradition, 'gruel – there are no 'immaterialsis' in foxholes. :mask:
  • Math Faces God
    You believe your behavior, being personal, operates freely [in] spite of deterministic events that control your life?ucarr
    Once more: I'm a compatibilist – my conscious volition (i.e. decision-making, choosing) is a function of, or constrained by, prior unconscious involuntary processes (i.e. one brain-body out of many other brain-bodies ecologically-situated in the cosmos structured by invariant regularities and constants). In other words, "free will" (free action) is not un-conditional much as chaotic systems as such (e.g. weather, radioactive decay, disease vectors) are not in-deterministic.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism

    I also hold that my experience of the world does not have need for most metanarratives; I am a fan of uncertainty. I am also a fan of minimalism and think that people overcook things and want certainty and dominion where knowledge is absent and where they have no expertise.Tom Storm
    :up: :up:
  • Idealism Simplified
    By the inference of the interaction problem drawn from the intuitions of the material you mean?Pantagruel
    I've no more idea of what you mean than you do, 'gruel.
  • Math Faces God
    Since you argue for human determinism ...ucarr
    No I don't. I'm a compatibilist.

    How do you explain deterministic atheism being valid whereas deterministic theism is invalid?
    I'm not at all familiar with these terms.
  • Math Faces God
    [T]o preclude cosmic consciousness, must embrace cosmic randomness.ucarr
    Not at all. Unconscious-deterministic speculations e.g. Spinoza's substance, Epicurus' atomic void, Laozi's dao, etc
  • Idealism Simplified
    The culmination of the Cartesian ego cogito.Pantagruel
    The conceptual incoherence of which is made explicit by "the interaction problem" (as well as violation of physical conservation laws) entailed by Descartes' mind-body (substance) duality, thus rendering idealism (re: mind as ontologically separate from / logically prior to body) a much less parsimonious – less cogent – philosophical paradigm than naturalism.
  • Math Faces God
    Regarding magical_wishful_group thinking, why do you think there's a logical skein extending from you to a scale of consciousness larger than you?ucarr
    I don't grok you.
  • Cosmos Created Mind
    Spinoza's philosophy is both pantheistic and panpsychist ...Gnomon
    :lol:

    Only silly blinkers like you, sir, who have not themselves closely read (and comprehended) the Ethics, so conspicuously misunderstand Spinoza's philosophy. To wit

    – not "pantheistic" (2020)
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/528116

    – not "panpsychist" (2020)
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/509905
  • Math Faces God
    E.g. celibacy is not a sexual position or preference. Sad Socrates thrives (reason) whereas a Satisfied Swine merely survives (faith).

    Do you deny that God consciousness is a component of human psychology?ucarr
    Like magical / wishful / group thinking – no I don't "deny" it.

    Btw, ucarr, what do you mean by "God consciousness"? :sparkle:

    Do you have criteria establishing the falsifiability of ...?
    Yes, defeasible reasoning.

    If truth emerges from an identity correspondence - a=a[/u]
    Tautologies are empty expressions. Truth claims require truth makers.

    ... theistic narratives as ... real human psychology?
    I.e. delusions, fantasies, etc
  • Math Faces God
    The atheistic beliefHanover
    There's no such thing.

    Also, whereas theism is a belief (either noncognitive or cognitive), religion is an institutional practice; and 'false hope to pacify false fear' (e.g. E. Becker's terror management) seems, as far as I can tell, the primary motivation for most persons throughout recorded history comforming to either or both of these complementary forms of life (i.e. traditions).
  • Math Faces God
    The best argument the atheist can mount against theism is claiming it’s irrational, which is true.ucarr
    No. The most direct and effective counter-argument to theism concludes by claiming theism is not true.

    (2019)
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/391820

    (2020)
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/463672

    (2021)
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/563185

    Does the atheist, on principle, always shun the leap of faith?
    Yes. In evidence we trust. :chin:

    This is the simulation of God’s uncontainable presence.
    Well I prefer apophatic theology ...
  • The Old Testament Evil
    E.g., if I can only save a person from getting murdered by doing evil, then allowing the evil of that person getting murdered is morally permissible and, in this case, obligatory.Bob Ross
    Perhaps so, but only because you are not "God"; the "Almighty" otoh can "save a person" without "doing evil" or "allowing evil", thus every occurrance of "evil" in creation caused or allowed either by "Creator" or creature, the "Creator" is ultimately responsible for – "thy will be done!", or as scripture sayeth:
    I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things. — Isaiah 45:7

    (2020)
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/523586
  • What is right and what is wrong and how do we know?
    There are varieties of moral realism which suppose that moral facts are much the same as physical facts, found lying about the place.Banno
    Like e.g. suffering / vulnerable beings ...
  • What is right and what is wrong and how do we know?
    So perhaps my position could be described as dialogical naturalism: compassion as the empirical face of a metaphysical truth - the truth that relation precedes substance.Truth Seeker
    :fire: Again, well said, TS; our respective positions seem quite convergent. As an ecstatic naturalist (à la Spinoza's natura naturans sub specie durationis in metaphysic (e.g. Carlo Rovelli's RQM in physics)), for me ... 'relation is substance'.
  • Cosmos Created Mind
    ↪Gnomon
    Thanks for the information.
    Ciceronianus
    :smirk:
  • What is right and what is wrong and how do we know?
    In that sense, compassion isn’t an invented rule but an encountered reality - the felt structure of coexistence itself. When I harm another, I don’t merely break a social convention; I diminish the field of meaning that connects us. The “realness” of ethics lies in that experiential invariance: wherever sentient beings coexist, the possibilities of care and harm appear as objectively distinct modalities of relation.Truth Seeker
    :fire:

    This conception of compassion reminds me even more of Buber (dialogic I-Thou) than Levinas (infinition of the Other) and almost naturalistic instead of just existential (e.g. – in ethics I think it's reasonable to trust "intuitions" (pre-cognitive biases) only to the degree they align with concrete circumstances).
  • A debate on the demarcation problem
    [N]ature doesn't prescribe—it occurs. The term "Law (of Nature)" seems like a linguistic artifact. A more accurate expression would be "stable regularities of the physical world" or simply "physical invariants."Astorre
    :up: :up:
  • What is right and what is wrong and how do we know?
    Without compassion, the circle breaks into chaos.Truth Seeker
    True ... and yet, yinyang-like, "compassion" presupposes "chaos" (just as every ceasefire presupposes a war), no?
  • The purpose of philosophy
    So much of what we know and do is unstated and unconscious. For instance, we use language fluidly, and so clearly we all 'know' the rules of grammar, but when asked to explain them we are often at a loss. Words too: we 'know' what they mean, as we use them with ease, but we grope for definitions. The same goes for concepts, purposes, ideologies, worldviews.

    And so goes the majority of our lives, acting without knowing why, doing without quite knowing what we do. This is the unexamined life. Philosophy remedies this: it can make the implicit explicit, the unconscious conscious.

    As we bring the unconscious to light, more often then not, we realize that these implicit beliefs we've carried with us don't really make sense. Then we have the opportunity to replace the unconscious and irrational with the conscious and rational. This is growth, the transition to true adulthood that so many make all too late, or never at all. The conscious cultivation of a worldview which is consonant with the world, rather than an artifact of upbringing.

    This is the purpose of philosophy.
    hypericin
    :100: :fire:
  • Cosmos Created Mind
    I'm not being contrarian. I'm being irritated because your OP is so vague and inconsistent and you [@Gnomon] present half-baked ideas without support and without a willingness to take responsibility for them. It's not philosophy at all, it's a book report.T Clark
    :up: :up:

    The two implementations, or messengers, deliver the same message of being; it's like a music CD [eternal, nonlocal] versus a live band [present, local].PoeticUniverse
    Exactly.
  • What is right and what is wrong and how do we know?
    [O]ntology opens the space for encounter; ethics [even more than "love" pace Iris Murdoch/Plato] keeps that space from closing into self-sufficiency [solipsism, egoism, narcissism].Truth Seeker
    :fire:

    Yes, thanks for this insightful formulation.
  • What is right and what is wrong and how do we know?
    the ethical and the ontological are not two regions but two inflections of the same openingTruth Seeker
    What of Levinas' meontological notion of 'ethics as first philosophy' (from Totality and Infinity)?
  • The purpose of philosophy
    Perhaps (non-trivial) 'philosophical questions' are only those which cannot have empirical answers (i.e. first-order propositions about non-abstract states-of-affairs) and tend to be answered, without begging questions, by more probative questions (or paradoxes) and/or with speculative generalities (i.e. conceptual or methological proposals). :chin:
  • Cosmos Created Mind
    Pantheism and panpsychism are entirely different things.T Clark
    :100:
  • Are trans gender rights human rights?
    So, are trans gender rights human rights? Some of them are. Some of them are not.Philosophim
    ... a form of wishful thinking.

    A "right" which isn't a legal right (i.e. enforceable and subject to protection under the law, the violation of which is compensable) is nothing more than ...
    Ciceronianus
    :up: :up:
  • Cosmos Created Mind
    I agree that if there is something similar to pneuma it will be established [falsified] through science, not philosophy.Ciceronianus
    :up: Like a vacuum or atom or aether ...
  • Cosmos Created Mind
    :up: :up: Yeah, (@Gnomon's) pseudoscience —> ridicule.
  • The purpose of philosophy
    a type of rationalization of ones own prejudicesDifferentiatingEgg
    :chin: That's sophistry, not philosophy. (Plato)
  • The purpose of philosophy
    To be a lowly worm and ask a question of the divine is to understand the value and purpose of philosophy.Philosophim
    :fire:

    In Australian culture low status workers habitually question and sometimes harass the management and ruling classes.Tom Storm
    Here in America, we fuckin' precariats need to grow some Aussie balls.
  • The purpose of philosophy
    [Philosophy]'s about one thing, and one thing only: "Thinking in the face of the pressure not to."

    The reality is that there is often immense pressure to not think about things. For many, thinking about common ideas that hold society together is dangerous

    Never stop thinking and never stop questioning even basic assumptions and outlooks.
    Philosophim
    In so far as 'thinking' helps one to thrive over above one's mere survival, I agree.