Comments

  • Aesthetic reasons to believe
    Humans are able to reduce human suffering, so the antinatalist remains a boring defeatist imo. — universeness
    :up:
  • What is a good definition of libertarian free will?
    A good definition of libertarian free will?
    Ex post facto confabulating rationalization aka wishful thinking (e.g. "I could have made another choice that I didn't make" ... without also changing the prior unknown conditions which had constrained whatever had caused you to have made the actual choice :roll: ).
  • Ontological arguments for idealism
    ↪HarryHarry
    Your 'argument' equivocates the word "view", thereby conflating/confusing conception and perception.
  • Martin Heidegger
    It depends on what you want to count as philosophy, I guess. — plaque flag
    :roll:
  • Are sensations mind dependent?
    ↪jgill
    :smirk:
  • Martin Heidegger
    ↪plaque flag
    And what do Heidi's "tool ... transparency" and "explicit worldhood" insights clarify philosophically? Maybe these insights are anthropologically or psycho-cognitively interesting ... but I think they are philosophically trivial (i.e. redundant with respect to e.g. (early) pragmatism).
  • Heidegger’s Downfall
    ↪Fooloso4
    :up:
  • Martin Heidegger
    1 The world is everything that is the case.

    1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things.

    1.11 The world is determined by the facts, and by these being all the facts.

    1.12 For the totality of facts determines both what is the case, and also all that is not the case.

    1.13 The facts in logical space are the world.

    1.2 The world divides into facts.

    1.21 Any one can either be the case or not be the case, and everything else remain the same.     — Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 1921 (completed 1918)
    I think 'Witty's facts' (sinpliciter) are synonymous with actual relations. Anti-cartesian/platonic ontology (à la Spinoza ... Epicurus ... Laozi ...)

    So what additional, clarifying insight does the cryptic "In-der-Welt-sein" offer? :chin:




    https://www.wittgensteinproject.org/w/index.php?title=Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus_(English)
  • Heidegger’s Downfall
    ↪Ciceronianus
    :100:

    There is a direct connection between his concept of time and his acceptance of Nazism and its atrocities. He called it "hearkening to Being". — Fooloso4
    :fire:

    Being and Time should be read by all serious students of philosophy and is worthy of being course subject matter. — Arne
    Agreed, as I advocated on an old thread ...
    I've been grateful to Heidegger, nonetheless, since my earliest philosophical studies in the late '70s for his monumental oeuvre as a/the paragon of how NOT to philosophize - or think-live philosophically (as Arendt points out) - as manifest by the generations of heideggerian obscurant sophists (i.e. p0m0s e.g. Derrida, Baudrillard, Lyotard, Rorty et al) who've come and gone in and out of academic & litcrit fashion since the 1950s ... — 180 Proof
    Certainly in Freddy Zarathustra's sense, "serious students of philosophy" ought to study intellectual diseases (e.g. Heidi, p0m0, woo-woo, etc) in order to learn how to, like surgeons (Rosset), incisively diagnose and excise cultural illness (e.g. decadence, resentment, nationalism, antisemitism, historicism / utopianism / eschatology, etc). :mask:
  • Thinking different
    There are different kinds of knowing. — EnPassant
    Such as??? :chin:

    (Please, no equivocating uses of "knowing". Thanks)
  • Aesthetic reasons to believe
    What motivates you to 'reason' something, surely you must have been 'inspired' to? — universeness
    No. It's an efficacious habit acquired through learning and experience. What "motivates" reasoning? Survival. No doubt though, creative (non-instrumental) uses of reason are "inspired".

    As for reclaiming words, I take your point, universeness, however, I don't think epistemic concepts and bigoted slurs are comparable. I don't care that the religious claim "faith" – I prefer trust instead since that term doesn't connote 'worship' or 'make believe'. Also, as I discern it, science consists in 'belief that' statements methodologically in contrast to 'belief in' convictions (biases). Magical thinkers' vocabulary simply doesn't concrrn me to the degree many of their public-facing 'fairh-based practices' do. :mask:
  • Aesthetic reasons to believe
    ↪Janus
    'Neither true nor false', to my mind, also makes a purported truth-claim demonstrably untrue.
  • Does God exist?
    Why ask "why"? — Gnomon
    Indeed – the only ultimate answer to "Why?" which doesn't beg the question is that there is no ultimate answer. Philosophers are often 'bewitched by language', as Witty points out (& Freddy too), uttering words that only look like, but do not function as, questions.
  • Martin Heidegger
    ↪plaque flag
    I enjoyed Braver's book but disagree with his thesis for at least the reason (re: "average everydayness" @Mikie) I mention in this old thread about "the difference between Wittgenstein and Heidegger" ...
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/509613
  • Are sensations mind dependent?
    The common sense view also says the Earth is flat and stationary. — Art48
    :100:
  • Aesthetic reasons to believe
    So, if I make a statement like 'I give a high credence level to the basic premise of string theory,' PARTLY because I am attracted to it's aesthetic (or it's beauty). Would I, in your opinion, be as guilty of being 'romantic' about science, in the exact same way that I might accuse a theist of being irrational/romantic/unreasonable, about the credence level they assign to the existence of their god? — universeness
    No, not at all. The latter is about an underdetermined, or stop-gap, idea (i.e. cipher) and the former concerns a precise mathematical model of nature with, so far, an unknown truth-value. There are more grounds than just "aesthetic reasoning" to favor e.g. string theory.

    Do you agree that some equations are more aesthetically pleasing than others?
    Of course. Symmetry and parsimony, for example, are salient indictators of 'beauty', conceptual or otherwise.

    If an aesthetic, inspires a person to learn more about a topic, is that an 'aesthetic reasoning,' that we should always guard against?
    I don't equate "inspires" with reasoning in any sense. For instance, motives themselves are not beliefs or judgments.

    Hitchens saw value in the word numinous as well, whereas I have always associated that word with other rather woo woo words like transcendent.
    I prefer terms like sublime or, even better, ecstatic to more woo-like words "numinous" & "transcendent".

    Theists often claim a calling which is 'higher than any other calling,' including any call to human science, and I think we should NEVER forget to totally challenge that arrogant, unjustified claim.
    The only claim about theism I think is worthy of sustained, principled challenge is to the demonstrably untrue claim that 'theism is true'.
  • Are sensations mind dependent?
    ↪Manuel
    :smirk:
  • Thinking different
    So I don't "know" what we know, but it doesn't matter. — EnPassant
    An ode to blissful ignorance?
  • Are sensations mind dependent?
    ↪lorenzo sleakes
    :roll:
  • Misunderstanding Heidegger
    ↪Joshs
    Gadamer was certainly entitled to his (biased) opinion.

    ↪Arne
    :up:
  • Aesthetic reasons to believe
    Do you think reason and faith have nothing between them other than hostility? — universeness
    I don't understand the question.

    Is there any value in faith being the equivalent of a measured credence level, you assign to a particular proposal?
     
    It's not clear to me what you're asking here?
  • Aesthetic reasons to believe
    ↪Tom Storm
    I think "aesthetic reasoning" can be used, at best, to rationalize "morality and meaning". It's actually akin to fideism, no?

    ↪universeness
    :fire: :100:
  • Are sensations mind dependent?
    you are stating current dogma — lorenzo sleakes
    On the contrary, I've stated a demonstrable biological fact (re: cell biology). Feel free to refute it with more than mere speculation.
  • Neuroscience is of no relevance to the problem of consciousness
    ↪180 Proof
    Sir I appreciate your understanding, your education and admire your patience     — Nickolasgaspar
    Same here. Thanks!
  • Ontological arguments for idealism
    ↪Ø implies everything
    I compared naturalism to idealism, not "dualism". Also, I did not mention "common sense as a factor in theory creation".
  • Martin Heidegger
    I'm a bit surprised to see Hume on the list. — plaque flag
    I don't think Hume is a dualist (or Cartesian), do you?
  • Misunderstanding Heidegger
    And anyone interested in the nature of being would be a fool to ignore Heidegger, particularly Being and Time. — Arne
    This is true only of someone who, IME, hasn't already studied e.g. Laozi-Zhuangzi, Epicurus-Lucretius, Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Wittgenstein, Karl Jaspers or P.W. Zapffe ... thinkers who have much more cogent things to say about "the nature of being" than Herr Rektor-Führer. :eyes:
  • Are sensations mind dependent?
    Sensations are nervous system-dependent.
  • Definitions have no place in philosophy
    ↪Nickolasgaspar
    :up:
  • Martin Heidegger
    I think Heidegger's "being-in-the-world" as a unitary mode of being is revolutionary. — Arne
    Yes, but this concept is not new (except as a cryptic formulation by Heidegger). Read e.g. the Daoists, Confucians, Epicureans, Stoics ... Spinozists, Humeans, Kantians (e.g. Schopenhauer), Nietzscheans, and Heidegger's contemporarieqs: Peirceans-Deweyans, Jaspers & Wittgenstein.
  • Ontological arguments for idealism
    For the sake of this discussion, by nature I mean the universe.

    ↪Ø implies everything
    For consistency and coherence sakes, methodological naturalism (i.e. using aspects of nature in order to describe and explain aspects of nature) presupposes ontological naturalism (i.e. structural/causal relations immanent to nature).

    I wonder, why do you find idealism conceptually unparsimonious, and why do you find naturalism more cogent? — Ø implies everything
    I think naturalism is more cogent because, as a speculative paradigm, it is more consistent with common sense (i.e. practical, or embodied, participation in nature) than idealism. I find naturalism parsimonious because it does not additionally assume that 'ideas transcend (i.e. constitute) nature' as idealism (re: ideality) does. As ontologies, however, both naturalism & idealism are monistic (though, as I discern it, 'idealism conflates epistemology with ontology', implying fallaciously that 'all there is is what we (can) know').
  • What is a good life?
    I take a position that we ought to end or minimise suffering. Not being a cunt is a good first step. — Tom Storm
    :up: :up:

    What's my philosophy?" Don't be a fool (or an asshole) ... — 180 Proof
  • TPF Quote Cabinet
    I saw a t-shirt with a likeness of the Buddha on it. Underneath it said,'Try not to be a cunt: The Buddha.' — Tom Storm
    :smirk:
  • Reasons to call Jesus God
    We can define sin as doing something against the will of God. — Art48
    IME, stupidity, or maladaptive habits which incorrigibly undermine oneself, is the only "sin".
  • The hard problem of matter.
    ↪jgill
    Yeah, ok. FWIW. The paragraph in my previous post that follows your quote, however, clarifies my meaning and why I took issue with the premise of your question about my use of the term "empty space".
  • Politics fuels hatred. We can do better.
    Conservative, communist, socialist, fascist, progressive—all collectivist. Besides some variations in rhetoric, it’s hard to see any difference between them in practice. They want power and to tell people how to live their lives. — NOS4A2
    Don't forget laissez-faire libertarians (aka "neoliberals" & "Randroids") too.
  • The hard problem of matter.
    Would you consider it empty if permeated by particle fields? — jgill
    Atoms are particles. Neutrons protons, and electrons are also particles. So are quarks. As far as I know, their respective volumes do not consist of "particle fields".

    Is it really empty if sustaining a magnetic field?
    Empty of "matter". Maybe you missed by point: "matter" consists of fundamental events in void (re: Democritus), that is, consisting of more than just persistent, or tangibly discrete, "stuff". I think the next sentence (which you didn't include in your quote) makes this clear. I wasn't making a literal scientific claim and didn't mean absolute nothingness by using the term "empty space". The void is "really empty", just not absolutely, or completely, empty.
  • TPF Quote Cabinet
    The world is made for people who aren't cursed with self-awareness. — Annie Savoy (Bull Durham)
  • Reasons to call Jesus God
    Summer porn posthumously. — plaque flag
    :smirk: Mild Psychosis vs the Ossified!
  • The hard problem of matter.
    I’m doubtful matter is enough by itself. — Arne
    Don't forget that 99.999% of baryonic "matter" also consists of empty space. Classical atomism, after all, is grossly consistent with modern particle physics (& statistical mechanics).

    How can non-extension emerge from extension? Can something with only spatial properties give rise to non-space.
    X moves. This moving is not independent of X. No X, what moves?. 'X moves' describes X more exhaustively than just 'X'. Substitute brain for X and minding for moves. Minding describes what brain do (i.e. 'X moves'); don't fixate on the reifying noun – mind is a verb.

    I think the concept of mind (consciousness) makes more sense when used to refer to an activity instead of an entity. No mind-entity "emerges" because mind is not an entity. Of course, I could be mistaken – if you disagree, Arne, then by all means correct me (or not).
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