Comments

  • What are you listening to right now?
    Happy Xmas! :sparkle: :party:


    "All That Meat And No Potatoes" (5:14)
    Satch Plays Fats, 1955
    writers Fats Waller & Ed Kirkeby, 1941
    performers Louis Armstrong with Velma Middleton and his All Stars
  • Multialiusism
    A corollary of fallibilism we can be certain of 'anything' for which we lack grounds to doubt (Witty).
  • Stoicism is an underappreciated philosophical treasure
    ↪Athena
    I'm not aware of any writings by Greek Stoics. I'm mostly familiar with Seneca, Epictetus & Marcus Aurelius as well as those stoic influences on early Christianity, medieval Jewish philosophy, Spinoza et al. Please recommend any primary sources of Greek Stoicism you've read (I'm familiar with some extant tertiary summaries).
  • Atheism Equals Cosmic Solipsism
    ↪ucarr
    I don't see any "blanks" in what I wrote that need to be filled. Context matters.

    Metaphysical Claim - a declaration of truth ...
    As I understand philosophy, "metaphysics" does not consist of factual truth-claims; it's not theoretical and its expressions are not propositional – like poetry – but rather, metaphysics consists of categorical inquiries into reality, insofar as reality both constitutes and encompasses all of our hypothetical inquiries (e.g. formal natural & historical sciences and arts), in order to rationally make sense of – make whole – 'human existence'. The resulting categories, paradigms, criteria, methods, interpretations constitute reflective ways of 'being in the world' (or world-making) but are not themselves demonstrable truth-claims about the world. Thus, for me at least, ucarr, "metaphysical claims", as Witty says, is nonsense.

    NB: Atheism is a 2nd order statement about theism which is a 1st order statement about "god"; the latter is metaphysics (i.e. onto-theology) and the former epistemology / logic.
  • Atheism Equals Cosmic Solipsism
    It seems to me that if your religion requires exclusion, you heard the sermon, but maybe missed the message. — Hanover
    :fire:
  • Stoicism is an underappreciated philosophical treasure
    Stoicism originated in Athens as part of Athens's thinking about virtues and ethics. — Athena
    Yes, I know, Zeno of Citium et al. However, I recommended Roman Stoics because their writings I've found best epitomize classical stoicism.
  • Atheism Equals Cosmic Solipsism
    Atheism is, I would have to agree, (cosmic) solipsism. — Agent Smith
    Wtf :roll:
  • Atheism Equals Cosmic Solipsism
    ↪ucarr
    I suppose you need to reformulate what I've written because it's easier for you to knock down strawmen rather than substantively engage my stated positions. :yawn:

    ↪Tom Storm
    :100:
  • Problems with Assisted suicide
    How is that valuing human life? — Andrew4Handel
    I was referring to specifically myself and how I think defeasibly about the issue at hand and not second-hand guessing about the valuations of "others" or "society".

    Assisted suicide had never just been used on people right at the end of life in severe pain ... it has been used to shorten viable lives.
    Says who? And If true, so what? The ethical problem only arises in circumstances where lives are shortened unsafely and / or coercively.

    ... undiagnosed cognitive conditions that I received no help for and nearly ended my own life ...
    I hope you've gotten some help since then. And if you're against assistant suicide, Andrew, then don't you use an assistant or kill yourself. That said, it's incoherent and biased of you to advocate denying – criminalizing – others for making those choices for themselves.
  • Problems with Assisted suicide
    ↪Andrew4Handel
    Read the rest of the sentence like you want to comprehend it.
  • Problems with Assisted suicide
    ↪Andrew4Handel
    I value "human life"; even more, however, I value human integrity and dignity: namely, doing everything we can collectively to support uncoerced individual choices to live as one wishes and to die when one no longer can endure life. It violates human dignity both to legally coerce a female to give birth to an unwanted baby and to legally prohibt an uncoerced patient medically safe euthanasia.
  • Hobbies
    "Hobbies" downsized to this short list by the pandemic:
    - listening to music
    - mostly re-reading
    - urban hiking
    - designing tRPGs
    - discussing philosophy (on & offline)     — 180 Proof
    Update: downsized further mostly due health issues (slowly on the mend) ...

    - listening to music
    - discussing philosophy (online)
  • Atheism Equals Cosmic Solipsism
    Atheism excludes God as creator of the material universe. — ucarr
    Only a "theistic" origin of the universe is "excluded". Atheism does not reject other possibilities (e.g. pandeism, acosmism, eternal inflation, etc).

    Does that not make atheism a theory of what the origin of the universe is not?
    No.

    [Atheism]'s a metaphysical claim says, “God did not create the material universe.”
    One more time for the slow ones way in the back: atheism is disbelief in theistic deities (& stories) If the material universe was "created", then an atheist only states "I disbelieve stories of 'the universe created by a theistic deity'". This is an epistemological commitment and not a "metaphysical claim" (whatever that means).

    [ ... ] Thus atheism as to the why and how of existence is no less an article of faith than is theism.
    Nonsense. That's like saying 'celibacy is no less a sex position than sodomy'. :roll: :confused: :sweat:
  • Problems with Assisted suicide
    ↪Agent Smith
    :up: :up:
  • Higher or other dimensions.
    ↪Agent Smith
    I don't care how you interpret @Gnomon's "ideas" when s/he can't substantively address my questions. There's nothing s/he has presented yet worthy of deep discussion and, so long as s/he refuses to clarify points of contention or falsity in "Enformationism" etc, that's our impasse. For my part, I've not countered his "position" with another (post history is my witness!); I've only called into question a number of the conceptual flaws and factual errors which confuse his/her presentation; and so I won't waste anymore time responding to you, Smith, about Gnomon's "ideas" which s/he cannot critically defend on a site dedicated to philosophy.
  • Problems with Assisted suicide
    ↪Andrew4Handel
    :up: Makes my point. Thanks!
  • Problems with Assisted suicide
    ↪Andrew4Handel
    I've made my point clearly enough. Deny it to your heart's content. And while you're at it, Andrew, cite a single religious scripture of any major world religion that explicitly prohibts or condemns slavery ... or rape .. or homophobia ... or misogyny ... or poverty ...
  • Problems with Assisted suicide
    Amen, Brother! Isn't it staggering that the Bible wants to micromanage human behaviour to the point where you can't eat shellfish or wear mixed fabrics, but owning another human being? No problem. — Tom Storm
    :100: :shade:
  • Problems with Assisted suicide
    How many slavery abolitionist were irreligious? — Andrew4Handel
    That's irrelevant. Anyway, search wiki & google.
  • Problems with Assisted suicide
    ↪Andrew4Handel
    Religion was used to justify slavery and absolve slaveholders. Read the Bible. "Thou Shalt Not Enslave Others" is not one of "God's commandments". No prophet has ever preached "Free all slaves!" or "Slave masters are damned to Hell!" Religious beliefs (which "faith" tradition? which sect of that tradition?) have no place in deliberating public policies like physician-assisted suicide. :shade:
  • Problems with Assisted suicide
    ↪Andrew4Handel
    Not very "pragmatic or rational grounds", as you've insisted on, to think about this issue. "Faith", in this case, very much blocks defeasible, practical and public reasoning.
  • Higher or other dimensions.
    You like Star Wars, I know you do. — Agent Smith
    Dude, stop ... :snicker:
    In the summer '77 I was probably the only 13 y.o. in the Northern Hemisphere, at least, who wasn't WOW'd by Star Wars and grew to dislike it, even hate it, for being a flashy noisy live-action cartoon which insulted my already well-honed scifi nerdy intelligence ... — 180 Proof
    :nerd: LLAP

    The Enformer is an organizing energy/principle (opposed to entropy according to Gnomon) that's behind the order we see in the universe. This is likely not scientifically valid, but quite clever, wouldn't you agree? — Agent Smith
    No, it's not "clever"; as you suggest, it's just a stand-in for "The Force" from 70s era kiddie s/fx porn masquerading as "quantum" "information" "non-physical energy" blah blah blah. You're advocacy, btw, isn't doing Gnomon's "ideas" any favors, Smith. :sweat:

    Also, Enformationism, especially its BothAnd concept, a derivative of Chinese Taoist yin-yang does a good job of explaining reality - pairs in opposition ...
    Complementarity is not "pairs in opposition", Smith. The latter negates the former. "BothAnd" is more coincidentia oppositorum (occult alchemy) than yinyang (nondual harmony). And I've asked @Gnomon more than a few times what exactly does "Enformationism", etc "explain" and s/he's yet to respond to my query or express clearly (in sum) that so-called "explanation". :yawn:

    What sayest thou?
    I say to "think holistically" is to think dialectically in Adorno's sense – not Hegel's sense – without "the telos", by which I mean 'knowns containing unknowns', such that the whole is infinite (unbounded) and not totalized (bounded) like this "Enformer"-of-the-gaps (aka "The Force" :lol:).
  • Higher or other dimensions.
    ↪Agent Smith
    No, s/he does not dare test those "ideas" against me. @Gnomon is afraid to answer my questions which arise out of the inconsistencies, invalid inferences & factual errors I find throughout the presentation of his/her "ideas". If "trying to find a middle ground between" e.g. 'astronomy & astrology' or 'defeasible reasoning & magical thinking' is what s/he is after, then Gnomon is, at best, merely tilting at windmills and, since s/he won't engage in even semi-rigorous dialectic, it's reasonable to assume that there's no there there for Gnomon to soundly demonstrate or defend.
  • Higher or other dimensions.
    I keep an open mind - Enformationism isn't such a bad theory. I've seen worse (word salads of PoMo) and surely 180 Proof agrees. — Agent Smith
    I don't agree. "Enformationism" is pseudo-science like "Intelligent Design" & "cold fusion" which, in my book, is worse than bad philosophy (i.e. sophistry) like p0m0.
  • Higher or other dimensions.
    My worldview is indeed BothAnd, which includes both empirical science and theoretical philosophy as overlapping magisteria. — Gnomon
    :ok: Proves my point once again:
    Folks just make shit up, especially when they don't know that they don't know what they're talking about. — 180 Proof
    :sweat:

    Apparently, his view is Either/Or (Black or White -- no overlap) ... From his Physical vs Anti-physical perspective... — Gnomon
    "Bark bark" at another strawman's shadow. :roll:
  • Atheism Equals Cosmic Solipsism
    ↪Tom Storm
    :up:
  • Atheism Equals Cosmic Solipsism
    ↪Tom Storm
    I've repeated this point for decades and still have no idea why folks don't get it (except, I suspect, many of them would rather take issue with disingenous caricatures of atheism).
  • Atheism Equals Cosmic Solipsism
    ↪busycuttingcrap
    :up:
  • Atheism Equals Cosmic Solipsism
    ... atheism doesn't dictate any particular position on how (or whether) the universe began... only that whatever it is, God had nothing to do with it.

    ... the one thing atheism necessarily excludes: i.e. anything involving the existence of God/gods     — busycuttingcrap
    This is true only of theistic God/gods (of which deism, I think, is a subset).
  • Problems with Assisted suicide
    I think assisted suicide should be argued about on pragmatic or rational grounds but not based ones own personal beliefs. — Andrew4Handel
    Agreed. Euthanasia, like abortion, happens with or without lawful assistance so on "pragmatic or rational grounds", assisted suicide should adequately regulated in order to minimize abuses or hazards but not criminalized.

    Some people believe in an afterlife some don't.
    I don't see how this is relevant to deliberating on the issue (except maybe to the one in need of assisted suicide).
  • Atheism Equals Cosmic Solipsism
    Atheism, the ideology of only nature, no God* immerses itself within rational practice with axioms included. — ucarr
    I do not understand atheism as an "ideology" or as derived from "axioms". One who claims, as I do, that theism is demonstrably not true and, therefore, disbelieves in every theistic deity, is an atheist. However, most nonbelievers merely say 'I do not believe in God or gods', usually not for specified reasons, but from (lazy) incredulity or lack of the emotional need for a god. In my own case, philosophical naturalism (e.g. Democritean atomism in particular) made sense to me only after I'd recognized at 16 that I, despite 11 years of Catholic indoctrination and observance, disbelieved in the "God of Abraham" for similiar reasons I'd disbelieved in the gods of "pagan" myths, comic book superheroes & magic. In no way I'm aware of, ucarr, does atheism entail anything about existence as such (e.g. "the origin of the universe").

    Furthermore, there's nothing "axiomatic" about philosophical naturalism either because it's only a paradigm (i.e. a criterion for judgment, methodology or interpretation) and not an indefeasible system for deducing formal truths from "self-evident truths". The best available theories of the natural sciences, especially those in fundamental physics and cosmology, are properly used as testable approximate explanations of nature and not as "final" (metaphysical?) "truths". Thus, to the extent a natural science contains supernatural notions, its theories do not explain nature, begging more questions than they answer by introducing in their models untestable mysteries (e.g. "Goddidit" "First Cause" "Unmoved Mover" "teleology" "phlogiston" "demons" "horoscopes" etc). A naturalist, whether or not she is a believer, usually agrees with the great polymath scientist Pierre-Simon, marquis de Laplace ...
    Napoleon: M. Laplace, they tell me you have written this large book on the system of the universe, and have never even mentioned its creator.
    Laplace: Je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là.     — 180 Proof
    :fire:
  • The Future
    ↪busycuttingcrap
    :up:
  • Higher or other dimensions.
    ↪Agent Smith
    :sparkle:
  • The Future
    ↪busycuttingcrap
    Given the abundant distribution of organic compounds observed in this galaxy alone, I'm confident bio-signatures in the atmospheres of exo-planets will be detected within decades by space-based telescopes, etc Detecting extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI), on the other hand, I suspect is far less likely, if ever, to happen for reasons pointed out in the post excerpted below:
    ETIs probably went "dark and silent" many many millennia ago just like Earth is now gradually transitioning from broadcast radio to fiber optic transmission barely a century after Bell, Edison & Marconi. (Assuming they started with EM broadcasting and then improved their IT like we are doing now.) — 180 Proof
    Just my 2 bit(coin)s. :nerd:

    ↪Shawn
    The recent "news" about "a fusion breakthrough" is mostly hype spun for the benefit of continued government funding and private investing. Ignition was achieved briefly whereby the fusion reaction produced net energy (Q_plasma) but that's orders of magnitude less than the electricity that the entire fusion generator had used. Total output of electricity (Q_total) must exceed total input of electricity for fusion generation to be a viable, cost-effective energy source. We're not there yet, nor even close, given the latest "breakthrough" news; I think we'll get there in a decade or two, but even then fusion won't be a magic bullet, just one component in.an array of renewable energy (+ advanced materials) technologies needed to ween global civilization off of oil, gas & coal.
  • The Future
    I honestly don't see most us reaching the 22nd century.
    — Manuel
    Dark minds think alike ...

    In a century, civilizational collapse on a global scale – population crash to below 2 billion – due mostly to catastrophic climate instability and consisting mostly of failed states and "floating" transnational corporate enclaves.
    — 180 Proof

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/368715 (re: surplus people)

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/560633 (re: population crash)     — 180 Proof
    Maybe (above) I'm on to something ... An excerpt below from a recent book about elites prepping to escape the imminent catastrophes which in large part are caused by their accelerating concentrations of wealth which exacerbates global social inequality and its varies, "spontaneous", reactionary populist movements (i.e. geopolitical instability):

    https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prepper-bunkers-apocalypse-survival-richest-rushkoff

    edit:

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/751923 (re: sketch of my own, non-elite "rosy" forecast of our species-prospects)
  • Higher or other dimensions.
    ↪TiredThinker
    Whenever I hear someone equate "astral projection" or "afterlife" with "higher dimensions" what I hear them really saying is "otherworldly" (i.e. woo woo-of-the-gaps). Folks just make shit up, especially when they don't know that they don't know what they're talking about.
  • Stoicism is an underappreciated philosophical treasure
    I think I may be more of an Epicurean ... — Tom Storm
    :up:

    CBT is useful. — Tom Storm
    :100:
  • Stoicism is an underappreciated philosophical treasure
    ↪Bret Bernhoft
    I prefer primary sources on Stoic philosophy such as

    Letters from a Stoic: Seneca's Moral Letters to Lucilius by Lucius Annaeus Seneca (transl. R. Gummere)

    Discourses, Fragments, Handbook (Oxford World's Classics) by Epictetus

    which are saturated with the social and political contexts of the turbulent, early Roman Empire in which they were written.
  • Logical form and philosophical analysis?
    ↪Shawn
    I thought you were referring to the discipline of philosophy and not what mostly happens on TPF.
    The place is more a publishing house for fiction than a place for rational discussion. — Banno
    :up:
  • Logical form and philosophical analysis?
    ... why is there so little attention paid to the analysis of logical form? — Shawn
    https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/analysis/s6.html
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