Comments

  • Can the existence of God be proved?
    What is "providing nonsubjective truth-makers"?ssu
    Sufficiently corroborable evidence.
  • The term "metaphysics" still confuses me
    Probably best to think of [metaphysics] as fundamental elements.I like sushi
    Even more so, I think of metaphysics (ontology) as a synoptic, rational study (contemplation) of fundamental (a priori) questions (aporia) ... from which axiology (ethics, aesthetics) and epistemology (phronesis-praxis) can be derived within constraints (a posteriori) via philosophical discourses (e.g. poetics, dialectics, critiques, hermeneutics, experiments, etc).
  • Can the existence of God be proved?
    Are you saying the issue is undemonstrable or undecidable?ssu
    No. Again: I claim that it is demonstrable that theism is not true (see links in my previous posts).

    Negative, or apophatic, theology is undefeated. All deities are either idols or empty names. To wit: "The Dao that can be spoken is not the Eternal Dao." ~Laozi

    If God does exist, then that is not God.
    — Bishop Whalon

    This is such a nonsense claim
    Michael
    Thus: "Credo quia absurdum" ~Tertullian. :roll: :pray:
  • Cosmos Created Mind
    Physicalism is the [paradigm] that is most consistent with everything we do know through science about the mind-body relationship. More significantly: physicalism is consistent with everything else we know about the world - outside of minds.Relativist
    :100:
  • Can the existence of God be proved?
    And when you cannot demonstrate that theism is true, you cannot demonstrate it's false.ssu
    (1×1=2) "cannot be demonstrated to be true" because, in fact, it is demonstrably false.

    Besides, my claim is that 'theism is Not True is demonstrable' – "not true" is not necessarily equivalent to "false" (e.g. non-propositional statements are not true and not false).
  • The term "metaphysics" still confuses me
    The aim of philosophy [metaphysics], abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term. Under 'things in the broadest possible sense' I include such radically different items as not only 'cabbages and kings', but numbers and duties, possibilities and finger snaps, aesthetic experience and death.To achieve success in philosophy [metaphysics] would be, to use a contemporary turn of phrase, to 'know one's way around' with respect to all these things, ... — Wilfrid Sellars

    (2020)
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/526452
  • Can the existence of God be proved?
    Addendum to ...
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/913307

    When there's a proof [truth-makers], you don't need to have faith [make believe].ssu
    Agreed. Whatever is real can be known, even if only in principle, and therefore does not require "faith" (i.e. appealing to ignorance). Thus, I think it can be demonstrated that theism is not true¹ even though other conceptions of divinity (such as e.g. acosmism & pandeism) are completely undecidable (agnostic).

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/1023613 [1]

  • Cosmos Created Mind
    I argued that metaphysical materialism can be justifiably accepted as true. [@Wayfarer] responds by pointing to the explanatory gap, and he has raised some extreme counter possibilities (e.g. perhaps a thought is ontologically primitive). [Wayfarer] doesn't merely say, "here's why I don't accept materialism" (which would be perfectly fine by me); he insists materialism is demonstrably false. And yet, he has not demonstrated it. I conclude that [Wayfarer] can't, but won't admit it. — Relativist
    :up: :up:

    There needs to be a reason to pluck one from the infinite set of possibilities and see where it leads.
    :100:
  • Cosmos Created Mind
    If scientific method is unreliable, how much more so are those practices, such as religion, which are not based on impartiality at all?Janus
    :fire:
  • Cosmos Created Mind
    Saying they are “immanent”Wayfarer
    :roll: Instantiated, I wrote, not "immanent". Anyway, Wayf, your quarrel regarding the ontology of abstractions (e.g. concepts) begins with Kant(ians) ...
  • Cosmos Created Mind
    Concepts are real, but not material.Wayfarer
    Only to the extent "concepts" are instantiable in the material (contra Plato et al) are they "real" and useful for living (i.e. phronesis), otherwise non-instantiable concepts (aka "pure reason") are, at best, idle fictions.
  • Disproving solipsism
    Searle's tongue was in his cheek: whoever "disproves everybody else's solipsism" presupposes that s/he is not a solipsist. :smirk:
  • Cosmos Created Mind
    ... not denying an external reality.Wayfarer
    Good.

    It denies that we can meaningfully speak of a “mind-independent world” in the strong sense— i.e., a world that would exist in the way we understand it to exist even in the absence of any standpoint, any cognitive frame, any lived perspective.
    So explain what objective difference this subjective distinction makes.

    Philosophy can inquire into what lies beyond the limits of objectivity in a way science cannot.
    What does "limits of objectivity" mean? Of course "science cannot" investigate non-phenomena (e.g. metaphysical fiats).
  • Cosmos Created Mind
    ... the world-as-lived, the meaningful, structured world of experience, is constituted through the operations of cognition [ ... ] the world we inhabit is inseparable from [enables-constrains] the activity of consciousness [discursive practices] that renders it intelligible [explicable / computational].Wayfarer
    I.e. ecological-embodied metacognition ...

    I can accept [without a shred of evidence] the notion of hands-off creator-programmer-observer [that doesn't explain anything] ...Gnomon
    :roll:
  • An Autopsy of the Enlightenment.
    Descartes desired certitude and usefulness vis-a-vis the material world. Sextus [Pyrrho] wanted ataraxia.Leontiskos
    :up: :up:
  • Cosmos Created Mind
    Neuroscience tells us how the brain behaves when we think; it cannot tell us what thinking isWayfarer
    – and neither can idealism, subjectivism, spiritualism nor any other woo.
  • Cosmos Created Mind
    Consider this article concerning findings on (in my words) 'the materiality of thinking' presented by a distinguished MIT researcher at a recent neuroscience conference:

    https://picower.mit.edu/news/brain-waves-analog-organization-cortex-enables-cognition-and-consciousness-mit-professor
  • Cosmos Created Mind
    ... "Ultimate reality (Brahman) is infinite, eternal, and beyond time, space, or change, has no shape or qualities, and is the source of everything" ...Gnomon
    ... this speculation is indistinguishable from ancient (Vedic, Greek) atomists' void¹ or quantum vacuum of contemporary fundamental physics (wherein "classical swirling-swerving atoms" are far more precisely described as virtual particles (i.e. planck events)) :wink:

    https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/atomism-ancient/ [1]

    Can you rebut the arguments that I provided from Gerson, Feser, Russell?Wayfarer
    Sure, mate, eezy peezy – (In addition to what @Janus says) their primary assumption, in effect, conflates, or equates, abstract (map-making) and concrete (territory) which is a reification fallacy (e.g. "Platonic Forms") and renders their arguments invalid. :clap:
  • What should we think about?
    There has been eight years of 'MAGA' America, and we see, loud and clear, where the hate, violence and vitriol is coming from. Not. MAGA.AmadeusD
    :mask: wtf ...
  • What should we think about?
    MAGA =|= conservatism.

    MAGA, it seems, consists of its bewildered and besotted followers. If that's Conservatism, it's mutated considerably.Ciceronianus
    :up: :up:
  • A new home for TPF
    ...upvotes...
    — Jamal
    @180 Proof will be very happy!
    Banno
    :up:
  • A quandary: How do we know there isn’t anything beyond our reality?
    So it’s Multiverses all the way down then?Punshhh
    Nope, afaik the quantum vacuum is the ground state of nature.
  • A quandary: How do we know there isn’t anything beyond our reality?
    ↪180 Proof So which one are you?Punshhh
    Physicalist (philosophical naturalist).
  • A quandary: How do we know there isn’t anything beyond our reality?
    There is a point though, only an idealist [immaterislist], of some kind, would restrict what is to what can be said, or known by a person. Surely by contrast, a physicalist [materialist] of some kind would allow any of an infinite number of other possibilities and the fact that we cannot observe them directly doesn’t preclude their existence.Punshhh
    :up: :up:
  • What should we think about?
    Define what you mean by "lefty wokeness"?
    — 180 Proof

    The left. The not-‘MAGA’.
    Fire Ologist
    Aka Antifa – opposition to pro-"fascist / authoritarian" white grievance paranoia. Yes, we're guilty as charged. :mask:

    [Is] maga the only evidence of the disease of not thinking post enlightenment?Fire Ologist
    I didn't claim or imply MAGA is "the only" symptom of not thinking, though at the moment MAGA is the most conspicuous symptom (re: "alternative facts" anti-intellectualism, anti-science ...)
  • Cosmos Created Mind
    It's not a "mind" and yet capable of illusions (just as LLMs can hallucinate).
  • Cosmos Created Mind
    And an illusion is something that only a mind can entertain.Wayfarer
    What about mindless facial recognition software that misrecognizes faces? Illusion =/= misrecognition, no?
  • What should we think about?
    Or, more to my point, is lefty wokeness a symptom of not thinking too, ...?Fire Ologist
    Define what you mean by "lefty wokeness"? AFAIK that pejorative expression invokes another vacuous, right-wing media boogeyman in order to "own the Libs". :mask:
  • Cosmos Created Mind
    [C]onsciousness ... appears inexplicable.

    That’s not a cognitive failing, it’s a conceptual one.
    Wayfarer
    :up: :up:

    Finally, you agree with us eliminativists and physicalists that, in effect, "consciousness" is not what it "appears" to be (e.g. a homuncular / user illusion).
  • A quandary: How do we know there isn’t anything beyond our reality?
    [R]eality is what there is. To posit something "beyond reality" is to posit more [than] what there is. "Beyond reality" is not a region; it is a grammatical error.Banno
    :fire:
  • What should we think about?
    I've no idea what your ramble means.
  • What should we think about?
    What should we[I/you] think about?
    Everything. Nothing. And why the chronic habit (nearly contagious/mimetic learned idiocy) of not-thinking persists even in this post-Enlightenment "Information Age" (e.g. in the US, "Trump/MAGA" are only an effing symptoms). :mask:
  • Why Not Nothing?_Answered
    Nothing within physics is distinct from philosophical [metaphysical] nothing.ucarr
    Yes, and we've been speculating in the context of physics (re: the universe). Btw, "philosophical nothing" is more precisely referred to as nothing-ness (i.e. total absence of possible worlds) as distinct from no-thing (e.g. quantum vacuum).
  • Why Not Nothing?_Answered
    If you think the universe was preceded by nothing, then you must explain how nothing transitioned into something.ucarr
    Perhaps 'quantum uncertainty' ... such that "nothing" necessarily fluctuates and (at some threshold) a density of fluctuations – (contingent) not-nothing aka "something" – happens. :nerd:

    addendum to
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/1024032
  • A quandary: How do we know there isn’t anything beyond our reality?
    Any one-sentence OP is basically click bait.Wayfarer
    :up: