Comments

  • What if cultural moral norms track cooperation strategies?
    ↪Mark S
    No. "Moral norms" are like dialects (or even distinct languages) – complementary, not oppositional. Besides, plurality is more adaptive than uniformity.
  • Emergence
    ultimate explanatory — Gnomon
    Speaking of semantics, what does this juxtaposition refer to, or mean (other than woo-of-the-gaps)?
  • Atheism and Lack of belief
    Why is it so hard to understand that those positions are not taken with regard to a god, but with regard to what men do in the name of that god? — Vera Mont
    :100:

    Maybe apologists are, in fact, idolators who cannot imagine that their critics are anything but idolators too.

    Belief in gods has been used to justify a lot of social norms including the family and the justice system and even the notion of physical laws. — Andrew4Handel
    :roll:

    We were "justifying social norms" many millennia before "belief in gods" was institutionalized (e.g. animism).
  • Kant and Work Culture
    Actually, it's more a simple solution and elegant. Don't create the burdens to overcome in the first place. Keep it simple. — schopenhauer1
    Yeah, but this antinatalist evasion is too simplistic, schop ...
    There is also the other side of the coin minted by Einstein: “Everything should be as simple as it can be, but not simpler” – a scientist’s defense of art and knowledge – of lightness, completeness and accuracy. — Louis Zukofsky, 1950

    ... which I've pointed out previously and you continue to (or can't help but) ignore.
  • What is your ontology?
    I think as long as we're here, we ought to minimize pain and maximize well-being for ourselves and the other organisms with which we interact. And clean up after ourselves: take nothing but memories; leave nothing but memories. — Vera Mont
    :fire:

    What is your explanation for existence? — Benj96
    "Existence" is fundamentally contingent: there cannot be anything external to existence that stops existence from coming-to-be, continuing-to-be or ceasing-to-be.

    Why it occurred, what purpose or meaning it may or may not have?
    The only answer to this "why" that does not beg the question is that there is not any answer. I think this is why 'there cannot be an ultimate why'.

    What are your ethical, epistemological or personal views related to existence?
    Usually, more than anything, I am an ethical naturalist (re: aretaic-negative consequentialism), scientific naturalist (re: model-dependent realism) and absurdist bluesman (i.e. creating (ephemeral) forms from (perpetual) formlessness).

    How long have you had these beliefs/understandings, are they subject to reform, change, or have they been relatively static and unchallenged for quite a time?
    My "understandings" began as very confused and unclear intuitions and I have strived to critically revise and refine my ideas (& conceptual vocabulary) through study, discussion, argument and lived experience over the last four decades. I believe I'm still learning and growing, though sometimes I do worry that my positions are hardening from confirmation bias and/or age-related stubborness.
  • Kant and Work Culture
    Antinatalism is paradoxical - it values life & joy and for that reason promotes a 0 child policy ... — Agent Smith
    Antinatalists like David Benatar and @schopenhauer1 value life over morality (not unlike Kierkegaard's 'teleological suspension of the ethical'), that is, they argue, in effect, it is better to prevent life than to struggle with both the personal and the public moral problem of preventing and/or reducing the suffering in individual lives as much as possible. "Destroying the village in order to save the village" does not save the village, only rationalizes an atrocity – in the case of antinatalism, it only rationalizes evading moral engagement with the problem of the suffering of the living by, in effect, proposing to eliminate sufferers themselves. Why not advocate total nuclear war (or unleashing the most virulent lethal pathogens from all biolabs) – engineering an extinction-event – in order to "prevent bringing any more offspring into the world"? :mask:
  • Emergence
    ↪universeness
    I don't think "megaengineering" projects (e.g. dyson spheres / swarms, orbitals (e.g. Stanford Torus, Bishop ring, "Niven's ringworld"), planetary terraforming (though building O'neill cylinders inside of asteroids seem more feasible), space elevators, mile-high arcologies, etc) will ever be needed or worthwhile. Besides, miniaturization of complexity is the inexorable direction of technological developments (e.g. solid-state electronics, nanotech, genengineering, neurotech, quantum computing, unmanned space probes, etc).
  • Atheism and Lack of belief
    Is atheism a belief? — god must be atheist
    I think atheism is disbelief in theism.

    Is there belief without faith?
    Yes. I believe there was a historical figure named Socrates, but I do not (need to) have "faith in Socrates".

    ↪Agent Smith
    We've already danced at this rodeo not long ago, amigo:
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/763662 :halo:
  • Atheism and Lack of belief
    ↪Agent Smith
    I can't suss out from the post what exactly you're inviting me to investigate, Smith. Care to elaborate?
  • What Are You Watching Right Now?
    'Freedom of choice' =/= freedom to change the (social) conditions of freedom :chin:

    Slavoj Žižek, 11Jan23
  • Emergence
    Transhumanism does have currently running science projects. Here is a top ten, based on a search for
    'transhuman projects'
    10. Cryonics
    9. Virtual Reality
    8. Gene Therapy/RNA Interference
    7. Space Colonization
    6. Cybernetics
    5. Autonomous Self-Replicating Robotics
    4. Molecular Manufacturing
    3. Megascale Engineering
    2. Mind Uploading
    1. Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)     — universeness
    Interesting. (I bolded the ones which seem more likely than not; however, the implausible ones, IMO, I've crossed-out.)
  • Getting to Center. Meditation. God.
    Contemplation is the yang to the yin of meditation. Thoughts prey on meditation but nurture contemplation. — punos
    :fire:

    I distill my experience of these 'practices' like this:
    meditation – attention without object (re: stillness). The aim: relaxation, peace of mind.

    contemplation – object without intention (re: unboundedness). The aim: reflection, understanding.

    Elsewhere I've discussed and referred to them as ecstatic techniques.
  • The inclusivity of collectivism and individualism.
    ↪Tzeentch
    The links provided in the post you quoted from provide a better answer than I can:
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/773328
  • Evolution and the universe
    Saying physical laws exist somehow out in the universe somewhere without people is just old fashioned idealism. That doesn't mean it's wrong, it means it's metaphysics, not science. — T Clark
    :100:

    Science is predominantly a method of acquiring knowledge but is not a worldview per se. In fact part of the implication of scientific scepticism is that it should not be taken as a worldview. — Wayfarer
    :100:

    @Agent Smith @Gnomon
  • Aristotelian logic: why do “first principles” not need to be proven?
    My impression is that Aristotle was not trying to provide the last word on these matters. — Paine
    No doubt. :up:
  • Evolution and the universe
    Life breeds eats and shits, then feeds and fertilizes more life. Local disorder increases because local order dissipates as it despoils its environment (e.g. soil erosion, resource depletion, pollution, climate change). Order is a phase of disorder. Evolution is a product of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. "Negentropy" merely describes thermodynamically-open systems (e.g. ecologies, biomes).
  • The inclusivity of collectivism and individualism.
    ↪NOS4A2
    Well, that true of every societal arrangenent ...
  • The inclusivity of collectivism and individualism.
    Yes, it seems like a false dichotomy to me. Like you must choose individualism or collectivism. I think you can use either or depending on what goals or paradigms each is best suited for. — DingoJones
    :up: :up:

    “What’s best” is what concerns me.

    “what’s best” in your eyes?     — NOS4A2
    Libertarian socialism¹ (s.g. economic democracy²).


    If you're interested ...
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism (1)

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_democracy (2)
  • Emergence
    I'm naive about this subject, I admit. It just feels better to circumvent the woo when possible. :cool: — jgill
    :up:
  • What should be done with the galaxy?
    ↪Leftist
    Answering your question is orders of magnitude above a primate's paygrade; you're probably going to have to wait like the rest of us for (terrestrial) ASI aka "post-Singularity" to find out. :smirk:
  • Antinatalism Arguments
    ↪Manuel
    ... or a some sort of Rx therapist. :up:
  • Evolution and the universe
    ↪T Clark
    Yes, if you have >1 tickets with different numbers for the same drawing, of course the odds increase to >1 / X. I misread(?) @Hanover's "the more I play" as iterative .. . the way folks repetitiously manhandle slot machine handles or craps dice to "warm them up".
  • Antinatalism Arguments
    ↪Shawn
    Life is getting better for whom? Whose pessimism is being overcome but at what cost and to whom? "Progress" – if there's such a thing – is just not evenly distributed yet (W. Gibson). The Epicureans and Stoics, Cynics and Pyrrhonians, as examples, strove against the tragedy of daily life as existentialists and absurdists have in our time. And yet dukkha remains despite the high-tech hedonic treadmill of modern mass consumerism and televangelism. "Sisyphus" is still our promethean avatar. Existential dread, my friend, of which pessimism is an expression, is the ineluctable condition to be endured and not a (technoscientific or psychiatric) problem to be solved (by "progress").
  • The God Beyond Fiction
    ... "Reason is for living in this world and faith is living for the world-to-come".
    — 180 Proof

    This summation by your priest seems incorrect, or at least overly simplified     — Hanover
    By chance, Hanover, I just came across the following statement which the eminently learned Padre no doubt had paraphrased:

    The Bible shows the way to go to heaven, not the way the heavens go. — Galileo Galilei
    :fire:
  • Evolution and the universe
    There's also a fair amount of latent hostility to anything that sounds vaguely religious on this forum. — Wayfarer
    Well, "vaguely religious" comments do tend to be more mystifying than anything else. Yet de-mystification and clarification have priority in philosophy, no? Dialectically giving and taking reasons rather than substituting "faiths" – dogmas – for dialectics, Wayf, seems to me the manifest purpose of this site. Says a famously "God-intoxicated" thinker:
    Philosophy has no end in view save truth; faith looks for nothing but obedience and piety.

    I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of established religion.     — Spinoza
    Critically challenging 'beliefs', while possibly disturbing, isn't "hostility" – welcome to the examined life! The alleged "latent hostility to anything ... vaguely religious" is only so in the eye of a true believer. :mask:
  • TPF Quote Cabinet
    The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he’s in prison. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

    *

    There is always a philosophy for lack of courage. — Albert Camus
  • Evolution and the universe
    There is now no safer occupation than talking bad science to philosophers, except talking bad philosophy to scientists.— Midgley

    ...sums up this thread. It is doing a disservice to the forums.     — Banno
    :100:
  • Was Socrates a martyr?
    ↪Fooloso4
    Insightful. Thanks. :cool:
  • Evolution and the universe
    The system involved in evolution is the individual organism ... — Andrew4Handel
    Populations or species evolve, not "individual organisms". Apparently, you do not understand evolution or the second law of thermodynamics. And you're incorrigible too. Well, Andrew, you've earned the last word here.
    I'm out. :yawn:
  • Atheism and Lack of belief
    ↪Bradskii
    Welcome to TPF's sandbox! :cool:
  • Was Socrates a martyr?
    I've been wondering how you and others read or would re-read any of Plato's Dialogues as literature.
    For example: How to Read 'The Symposium'.     — Amity
    Given his deep suspicion of poetry, I doubt Plato wrote his Dialogues, dramatic and stylized as they may be, to be read only or principally as 'literature' – for their literary qualities. I agree with (platonist) Iris Murdoch's differentiation of philosophical texts and literary texts, and the different implications for reading them (pardon if you're familiar with this video, I've posted it recently elsewhere):

    pt. 1 of 5 (differentiates them)
    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=m47A0AmqxQE

    What do you think?
  • Deep Songs
    ↪Amity
    :clap: :heart:


    "A Day in the Life" (6:40)
    Live at Ronnie Scott's, 2008
    Jeff Beck
  • Cavemen and Libertarians
    For the vast majority of h. sapiens existence (ctwo hundred millennia), people lived in small familial groups without strangers (until about five millennia ago) in which third-party arrangements like "governments" and "police" were not needed. I think libertarian (privatization-über-alles!) arguments are, at best, completely anachronistic in this densely populated, highly mobile, economically alienating and heavily armed historical era.
  • Evolution and the universe
    While it is true that If the odds of winning the lottery are 1 in 1 million, it doesn't matter how many others play, my odds remain fixed, but the more I play, the higher my odds of winning. — Hanover
    Gambler's fallacy. :roll:

    But if I've misunderstood probability theory, then correct me. — Hanover
    See link above.

    Does it matter whether or not you believe in evolution? — Andrew4Handel
    No. The theory demonstrably works better than any of the alternatives whether or not you believe it's true.

    I have not seen a satisfactory answer concerning the conflict between evolution and the second law of thermodynamics — Andrew4Handel
    Well, that's because there isn't any "conflict": evolution (i.e. variable descent of self-replicators (i.e. dissipative systems) via natural selection) is emergent along entropy gradients. Consider this summary on complex adaptive systems or, if you prefer to cut to the chase, dive into the deeper end with Why the argument that evolution is in conflict with increasing entropy is certainly False.
  • Evolution and the universe
    Reality is multidimensional and science/math is one dimensional. — Gregory
    :roll:

    This thread has little to do with philosophy. — Banno
    :up:
  • The "self" under materialism
    Religion & Politics are programs to control human behavior, ... — Gnomon
    :up:

    ... while Science is a method for controlling Nature.
    Technology controls nature whereas science explains nature. No doubt, the latter is the force-multiplier of the former.

    However, Gnomon may be aiming to bring Science & Philosophy back under one roof.
    This move is a regressive turn to pre-modernism akin to (e.g.) scholasticism or neo-platonism or (late) stoicism, etc. https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/772323
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/772379
  • Evolution and the universe
    ↪universeness
    :smirk: :up:

    ↪Gregory
    Spinoza's God is simply another name for Nature (i.e. natural laws). As I understand it, 'evolution' quallifies as a natural law even in Spinozist terms (pace Hegel).
  • The God Beyond Fiction
    That's the tragedy. We're capable, and have made some pretty good stabs at it, but we keep getting distracted, sidelined, deluded. It's like, every time we're on the right track, some megalomaniac jingles his car-keys and we follow him off a cliff. — Vera Mont
    :fire:

    As to the supernatural, no, I give it no credence at all.
    Why is magical thinking still a thing with some folks 'discussing philosophy' in the twenty-first century? :smirk:
  • Evolution and the universe
    But you didn't answer my arguments. — Gregory
    They are pseudo (à la "intelligent design"). :eyes:

    Because you are not my child to educate. — Vera Mont
    :up:

    As I noted, you have no understanding of the theory you are arguing against. Nuff said. — T Clark
    :clap:

    The OP strings together a series of misunderstandings,producing a view of evolution that has nothing to do with how things actually work. The supposed argument in the OP is from personal incredulity. It's just a bad OP. — Banno
    :100:
  • Was Socrates a martyr?
    ↪Shawn
    All that means is Socrates aggravated or embarrassed the wrong people. In my book, choosing to kill oneself over exile is suicide not martyrdom.

    ↪Christoffer

    So, perhaps in that sense 'Socrates' was a martyr to Plato's cause. — Amity
    Yes, so says – dramatizes – Plato. Myth-making PR. :up:
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