Comments

  • 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).
  • Politics fuels hatred. We can do better.
    ↪Vera Mont
    :pray: :lol:

    Unfortunately, this act is a sine qua non of collectivist politics. — NOS4A2
    The culprit here is the autocratic mindset, usually, though not exclusively, the predominant attribute of conservative & reactionary ideologies. :mask:
  • Component Entities, Acts, Ultimate Ground of Existence, and God
    The idea of an excitation brings us to the concept of act. — Art48
    'Field excitations' are events, I think, not "acts" (i.e. intentional agency).

    God which is not a person and which underlies the entire universe, of which the universe is a manifestation.
    Brahman. Dao. Democritus' "void". Plotinus' "the one". Ein Sof. Spinoza's "substance" Schopenhauer's "the will" ... Meillassoux's "hyperchaos" ...

    So, we have multiple concepts which, thought dissimilar, seem to point to a monist view of the universe. — Art48
    :up:

    (My immanentist idea, similiar to monist ontology, I describe as 'plural-aspect (dialectical) holism'.)
  • What is Conservatism?
    I never was a revolutionary, but a staunch believer in subversion, if democratic process fails and gradual improvement proves impossible. I have always believed in conserving nature and culture and heritage — Vera Mont
    Same here. Since my late teens I've opposed all forms of autocracy (e.g. theocracy, plutocracy, mobocracy) and especially laissez-faire (democracy-in-name-only (DINO)) republicanism. Four decades on, I have lived through enough American history to harden my 'green economic democratism' into a dogmatic progressive ideology (both anti-authoritarian and anti-utopian). My chief regret is that my activism has fallen off considerably since the mid-90s due to fatalistic pique (depressive realism?), I suspect, more than due to bourgeois cooption or regressive conditions of aging. Almost sixty, I'm still a culturally conservative, socio-economic progressive anti-fascist.

    I think: class and war and inequality are naturalized in conservatism, and particular social formations dehistoricized.

    Someone mentioned Roger Scruton. He was one of the most prominent conservative philosophers until he died recently, following on from Michael Oakeshott and going back ultimately to Edmund Burke. I see this as the main conservative tradition and the modern use of the term as hopelessly confused.     — Jamal
    :100:
  • Fear of Death
    ↪Janus
    Flowers wilt, life declines. A day in the sun is the joy, no? Memento mori et memento vivere. :fire:
  • Dilemma
    ↪Paul
    Hello, Paul. :cool:

    "Mom."

    The 20 year old has more of a chance, no matter how minute, outside the shelter than an 80 year old woman. I can live easier with the consequences of the 'young person for my old mother' trade off than I can with the alternative – the existentially decisive factor for me since 'sacrificing one life in order to save another life' is never, I think, ethically justifiable (thus, the dilemma).
  • Plato’s allegory of the cave
    More to the point: what is outside of reality?
  • What is Conservatism?
    ↪Vera Mont
    :up:
  • What is Conservatism?
    IME, conservatism seeks to conserve (i.e. propagandize, police) the social-political-economic status quo ante, and thereby, in practice, rationalizes illiberality with terms like "traditional" & "patriotic", "family values" & "human nature", "essence" & "ideal", "faith" & "duty", "law" & "order"... Policy prescriptions such as e.g. deregulation, lowering / eliminating taxes, smaller government (austerity), border controls, [insert country here] first / isolationism, etc are just campaign slogans and partisan window-dressing (i.e. fundraising talking points) which distract from the illiberal ideology.

    'Conservatives' themselves seem to bifurcate the world by tribe / sect such that they tend to be very pessimistic about "Them" (i.e. much less cosmopolitan, urban & prospective) and yet not quite optimistic about "Us" (i.e. much more parochial, rural & retrospecttive); therefore, as history of the modern era amply shows, 'conservatives' are just as, or more, comfortable with autocracy (i.e. centralized minority rule – 'political Right' (i.e. "Us & Them" trumps Right & Wrong / True & False)) than they are with democracy (i.e. agonistic majority rule – 'political Center').
  • Evidence of Consciousness Surviving the Body
    Your logic and philosophy is really bad Sam! — Nickolasgaspar
    :up:

    ↪Sam26
    :eyes: Well, sir, "alien abduction" videos are more my jam; "haunted house" "astral projection" "reincarnation" or "perpetual motion machine" Youtubes not so much.

    Anyway.

    Resuscitation is not resurrection. "NDE" presupposes resurrection and yet none of the claimants, in fact, have been resurrected. Brain-death has not occurred until it is irreversible; ergo the "D" in "NDE" is nothing but an ad hoc ex post facto confabulation (à la false memory) of some non-ordinary mental state(s) of an unresurrected, still-living brain. "See the light," blind man. :yawn:
  • Politics fuels hatred. We can do better.
    Poltical hatred – autocracy vs democracy? There's nothing new in this at least since Magna Carta began rolling back monarchy in 1215. Apparently roiling the electoral politics of developed nations in recent decades is a significant and committed plurality of hateful, grievance voters who openly prefer ethnic-sectarian autocracy to pluralist secular democracy. The decade of the 1930s was a tragedy; might the 2030s be rhe centennial farce? The rhyme of hate's history ... TBD. :mask:
  • Thoughts on the Meaning of Life
    Two thoughts:

    Perhaps 'the purpose of existence' is for existents to recognize that existence itself cannot provide existents with "purpose" thereby engendering in existents a "metaphysical need" that also cannot be satisfied (i.e. "a useless passion") and yet persists as a meta-"metaphysical need" to deny – via idealism (e.g. fideism) or nihilism – the "metaphysical need" itself. :eyes:

    Besides, "purpose" is a map and the only map which can describe, or apply to, the whole is, of course, the whole itself; thus, the "purpose of existence" is existence itself, and the "meaning of life" is life itself.

    :sweat:
  • Politics fuels hatred. We can do better.
    The central problem is not hate, but fear. Fear and stupidity*.

    (*This is a brand of stupidity that has existed since the beginning of civilization, but has now grown to pandemic proportions.)     — Vera Mont
    :clap: :100:
  • Fear of Death
    For me the challenge would be to find joy in decline ... — Janus
    :death: :flower:
  • Reasons to call Jesus God
    ↪schopenhauer1
    :up:
  • Reasons to call Jesus God
    ↪schopenhauer1
    No doubt they were.
  • Reasons to call Jesus God
    ↪schopenhauer1
    The issue l addressed is the questionable merits of Christ's preachings and not "his tendencies" (whatever they were) or "the oppressive ... status quo".
  • Reasons to call Jesus God
    ↪Art48
    Well, for my shekels, I prefer the Nazarene's contemporary Seneca's good teachings for how to live as superior in every way to the "Sermon on the Mount" & "Kingdom of God" preachings of the crucified, rabble-rousing, street rabbi.
  • Does Consequentialism give us any Practical Guidance?
    ↪RolandTyme
    Maybe these links make my position a little clearer:
    ↪180 Proof
    (&
    ↪180 Proof
    ).
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    ↪NOS4A2
    :eyes: Putin's Bitch was engaged in a cover-up of 2016 crimes while squatting in the Oval Office by signing reimbursement checks to his fixer in 2017. MAGA is as MAGA does. :shade:
  • What is a good life?
    ↪Vera Mont
    ↪Vera Mont
    :fire:
  • Reasons to call Jesus God
    I'd say that science + goals can give us oughts. Think of science as a map... — Art48
    :... experience-based goals (i.e. hypothetical imperatives). :up:

    Some "goals" are moral and some are not; how do we tell the difference?
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Remember when Republicans complained bitterly that Obama had the audacity to appear at a press conference wearing a tan suit? — Wayfarer
    Because of his brown face – yeah I do. Everyday, still. :mask:
  • Pop Philosophy and Its Usefulness
    Why examine oneself if not to improve oneself? — Noble Dust
    As I see it, though the former implies the latter, the latter neither presupposes nor implies the former.
  • Fear of Death
    Too irrelevant would be my pick. — Janus
    :smirk:
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    ↪Wayfarer
    Yup. :up: 'Superceding indictments' for felonies related to State Campaign Finance Fraud and State Tax Fraud (and maybe Grand Jury Witness Tampering (e.g. M. Cohen, A. Weisselberg, et al) are coming.
  • Pop Philosophy and Its Usefulness
    Pop philosophy is about self-improvement. Real philosophy is about self-examination. — T Clark
    This. :up: A pithy distinction (à la sophistry / dialectics) that better illuminates for me a seemingly intractable family dispute.
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