The Forms too, images on the cave wall. — Fooloso4

Really? :chin:

It's bad enough ignoring the cause to treat only the symptoms; it's worse to aggravate the cause and use the symptoms as a justification for further aggravation — Baden

:shade: :up:

I don't accept "ends justify means" arguments in ethics. Means and ends must be adjusted to one another so that the latter is not undermined or invalidated by the former while the former is calibrated to enact the latter. A version of reflective equilibrium. — 180 Proof

:smirk: :up:

180's contrary interpretation may indeed undermine the authority of Physics for philosophical questions, because -- on the quantum level -- it's not describing Reality, but Ideality (human ideas about reality, not reality itself). Which is what Meta-Physics is all about. — Gnomon

Incorrigible incomprehension! Typical idealist (antirealist) conflation of epistemology (mapmaking) and ontology (territory). What's to be done with this uninformed "Enformer", amigos? :eyes: :lol:

As one of the founders of quantum computing David Deutsch says (I paraphrase), 'The laws of physics enable our brains to generate ideas about the laws of physics such as quantum theory.' In other words, reality enables and constrains ideality (i.e. idealizations of reality), and not Gnomon's ass-backwards other way around. :fire:

crankery — Agent Smith

I said "chalatanry", mi amigo ...

bookish charlatanry that's so desperate to be taken seriously even though he won't take his own "ideas" seriously enough to submit them to cross-examination — 180 Proof

As for boasting that his quackery is

inspired by scientific Quantum & Information theories — Gnomon

– consider this video summary on 'quantum information' and, since increasing disorder (entropy) increases information (emergence), point out to me what Gnomon gets right or the presentation here gets wrong. :sweat:

My views on atheism are derived from atheists. — Andrew4Handel

:roll:

For very strong, sound arguments in favor of atheism, read (contemporary) philosophical atheists like e.g.

André Comte-Sponville 
Theodore Drange
Paul Draper
Michael Martin
Kai Nielson
Michel Onfray
J. L. Schellenberg
Victor Stenger
Rebecca Goldstein

and avoid the merely irreligious polemics of "New Atheist" like R. Dawkins, S. Harris, C. Hitchens et al which traffic in much weaker, or less thoughtful, arguments.

Also, you may find it helps to dispel your disregard of atheism, Andrew, to watch the three-part BBC series A Rough History of Disbelief (by Jonathan Miller from the early oughts) that illustrates my (Nietzsche's) point that religious belief, not principled atheism, is manifest – an expression of – nihilism.

My guess, Andrew, is that losing your religion, yet oblivious to the nihilation – philosophical suicide – of religious belief, left you with nothing to hold on to but the feeling of naked nihil itself. If being agnostic (ignostic, apatheistic or whatever) works for you, then good for you – stick with it; likewise, atheism works for many who live principled ethical lives as best they can, and just because it didn't work for you, doesn't mean atheism can't work for those who understand their disbelief apparently better than did (do).

Your presumption is nonsense.

That's not remotely a new insight ... and, IMO, irrelevant to the manifest functions of both institutions. :roll:

False trichotomy. :meh:

Nonsense, comrade. :brow:

Police officers have always been the dogs of prey for the state and government. — javi2541997

:100:

Atheism is second-order negation of first-order theism. Apple to orange, not apple to apple, comparison.

:up:

I agree. Never thought of Witty as a 'positivist' from my first reading of the Tractatus ... which (along with learning how Einstein used the 'gedankenexperiment' (à la speculative reasoning)) broke that 'verificationist' spell, so to speak, back in my undergrad engineering days.

:up: In other words, like e.g. nihilism & relativism, positivism is self-refuting.

A quick read of the wiki below provides a nontechnical but 'accurate' synopsis of the nature and etiology of hallucinations. Your video begins with cherry-picked premises which invalidate your conclusion, sir.

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

:up:

Contra the OP (yeah, I know s/he was booted), I've found metaphysics indispensible to my understanding of philosophy (thanks again, @Tobias), however, in a mode that breaks from tradition (e.g. ideality, onto-theology, transcendentals, etc) without eliminating speculative reasoning (e.g. Spinoza, Peirce, Rosset, Meillassoux, et al).

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/627625

I am quite ignorant of the "doctrines" of modern philosophers (since 17th century) — Gnomon

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/628146 :smirk:

As part of yin-yang duality, they're mutually annihilatory, not complementary. — Agent Smith

Yin contains yang and yang contains yin, so in what way are they "mutually annihilatory"?

'Policing culture' in America has very deep roots in the 18th century establishment of Slave Patrols, followed later on by appending the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution and the subsequent over two centuries fetishizing of the gun – racial animous – in American popular culture. American 'police culture' is inherently White Supremacist as well as Classist; as I read and experience this historical moment, Smith, we've been living through an ascendant wave of White Supremacist-Classist repression and violence since the 1980s.

↪180 Proof's ... fails to see the essential point of my thesis. — Gnomon

From one of our earliest exchanges three years ago, a confession ...

FWIW : Enformationism has some similarities to New Age worldviews ...
— Gnomon — 180 Proof

E.g. "panpsychism?" "panendeism?" "pancomputationalism?" Uh huh. :roll:

Maybe @universeness or @Agent Smith can tell me this "essential point" is camouflaged by your esoteric "thesis", O Sage Enformer. :sparkle: :eyes: :sweat:

update:

Old exchances with Gnomon (just my side replying to quotes from his posts). The crux of our contentiousness, I guess, is in the mind's eye of the beholder ...

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/628681 (my substance contra your rhetoric)

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/629398 (an alternative proposal – my 'negative metaphysics')

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/629682 (explicitly calling bs on "Meta-physics")

Both issues are a direct result of neoliberalism.
— Mikie

This is not philosophy, this is propaganda politics. — Philosophim

:up: Yes, at most "neoliberalism" is only an metastasizing symptom ...

Cheers! :yum:

I don't care whether or not @Gnomon and I directly engage with one another again as much as I'm interested in ideas and discussing them without sophistry and evasions. I think the only way to respect an idea is to question it when there are grounds to do so, and in most of the nearly three hundred posts we've exchanged, Gnomon has given ample grounds to question his "Enformationism", etc. By refusing to address those questions and doubling down on his demonstrable errors and poor reasoning, Gnomon makes ridiculing – his bookish charlatanry that's so desperate to be taken seriously even though he won't take his own "ideas" seriously enough to submit them to cross-examination – too damn easy. In this way, universeness, we take Gnomon's "ideas" more seriously than he does.

:up:

Andrew seems to me to be saying 'being an agnostic hasn't morally worked out for him ... and somehow that's atheism's fault.' :shade:

:fire:

My earliest interaction with @Gnomon was three years ago, not ten. TPF has been around barely eight years, not ten. I joined in 2015, made a dozen posts and then logged-off until late 2019. Gnomon's just making shit up about his history with me just as he does when proselytizing his "personal philosophical worldview". :yawn:

Philosophy opposes proselytizing, and, unless I'm mistaken, sophists / cranks are fair game on TPF until they show themselves to be otherwise. I've laid my own dodgy speculative cards down on the table in at least several hundred posts the last few years, exposing myself to the same sort of critical engagement with which I've offered Gnomon et al. Isn't that this site's raison d'etre: critical engagement via giving and taking reasons, enriching understanding via dialectical reasoning? Gnomon doesn't seem to believe so. :eyes:

Addendum to .

:up:

The problem is not with the mathematical physics of quarks but with the licentious use of exist and know which should not be allowed to seep into physics. — magritte

:up: :up:

"Flow chart"? No, this is philosophy, not project managenent. Instead of taking snippets out of context, man, read the post they come from in its entirety for my meaning. Anyway, as Spinoza might say: metaphysics consists in polishing conceptual lenses.

Yeah, well, until @Gnomon explicitly addresses the questions I've put to him – directly or indirectly – I'll consider him nonresponsive to the offer to defeat or disqualify my objections (& without further rebuttal from me). This isn't really about me; Gnomon should do a public service by showing that his "personal philosophical worldview" is worth its critics' time to reconsider its merits.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/709894

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/718369

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/742056 — 180 Proof

Failing that, however, Gnomon could enlist a proxy – @Agent Smith @Wayfarer @punos or you – to address these questions. Given the "revolutionary" claims he's made for his "personal philosophical worldview", at the very least it should be easy to show that the premises of my questions are invalid or irrelevant. Gnomon's disdain for 'aggressive criticism' is apparently an excuse to continue to evade rather than engage a dialectical challenge.

... to infer a truth claim about how the world works ... — ucarr

For me, that's physics, not metaphysics.

"I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of established religion."
~Benedictus de Spinoza

I believe that philosophy, at least in the form we know it evolved from the ground of religion. — punos

I agree philosophy began with questioning – calling-into-question – (otherwise unquestioned) religious beliefs & practices (e.g. myths, idols, rites, superstitions, creeds, taboos, castes, testimonies, scriptures, etc), seeking to substitute naturalistic explanations for supernatural fairytales.

I don't follow any of this.

Thanks. I know Rebecca Goldstein's works on Gödel & Spinoza, respectively, and her speculative novels. I'm in the brute contingency camp, presuming that 'the laws of nature' are emergent, or self-organizing (pace Spinoza & Einstein), through the developmental expansion of the universe.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/775689

I guess I'd say metaphysics is the road you take to reach the truth or whatever philosophical goal you are searching for. There's not just one road, but some are better than others. One road isn't right and another wrong, but some roads are easier to travel than others. — T Clark

:up: :up:

If metaphysics sets out the rules, and if rules can be construed as signposts pointing ... — ucarr

What's basis for the second conditional?

I don't think humans have access to reality as it is in itself - the best we do is generate provisional narratives that, to a greater or lesser extent, help us to make interventions in the world These stories tend to be subject to revision and never arrive at absolute truth. 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

:clap: :fire:

Not bad for some who doesn't take philosophy too seriously. If I could, I'd drink two double whiskeys to that, mate! :cool:

:sweat:

Tyre Nichols 1993?-2023

I can't remember the last time when police officers anywhere in the US were both fired and indicted in less than a month for killing an unarmed black man on camera. Especially down in Dixie. :brow:

https://www.ajc.com/news/nation-world/da-5-memphis-cops-all-responsible-for-tyre-nichols-death/JHDAGHQ2ANH2FJ7426GOH7FYUU/

There you go again chatting with a ghost. :smirk:

Fish in the sea, you know how I feel
River running free, you know how I feel
Blossom on the tree, you know how I feel
It's a new dawn
It's a new day
It's a new life for me
And I'm feeling good.
— Nina Simone — unenlightened

:death: :flower:

Are you committed to the notion that all harm is bad? ...  We should prevent all harm? — Andrew4Handel

I've referred many times to 'preventing / reducing NET harm' in my formulations of an ethics. Your strawmanning only leads to non sequiturs, thus your confusions persist.