Comments

  • Atheism Equals Cosmic Solipsism
    ↪ucarr
    :eyes:
  • World/human population is 8 billion now. It keeps increasing. It doesn't even matter if I'm gone/die
    I thought your post was leading to the conclusion that all is vanity and all is pointless. Then in the very last sentence you spring the news that there is a grand scheme of things. But you leave us hanging in suspense about what the grand scheme is. Please tell more. What is the grand scheme of things and how did you find out about it? It might cheer us up. — Cuthbert
    :smirk: :up:

    ↪niki wonoto
    For most folks, 'what we can know' and 'what is real' are not enough for them (e.g. "Is this all there is?"); they need more – "god/s", "angels", "miracles", "heaven", "a divine plan", etc – in order to cope with intractable perplexities and their anxieties.The rest of us, however, seem to make due just fine without infantilizing ourselves with "magical thinking".
  • Problems with Assisted suicide
    Animal flesh is subject to the vagaries of nature; disease, injury, malfunction, debilitation and dementia. Being in this world is dangerous and ultimately fatal. All endings are inevitable; some are more gruesome and protracted than others. I just want to be allowed to make my ending no more awful than it has to be. — Vera Mont
    :death: :flower:

    You’re on earth. There’s no cure for that. — The Unnameable
  • Extreme Philosophy
    ... something for real men to get into, balls deep. — Banno
    :smirk:

    ↪Janus
    :up:
  • What is Creativity and How May it be Understood Philosophically?
    Creativity is problem-solving. — praxis
    :100:
  • Problems with Assisted suicide
    ↪Vera Mont
    :up:
    ↪Vera Mont
    :up:
  • Extreme Philosophy
    ↪god must be atheist
    :smirk:
  • Extreme Philosophy
    ↪NOS4A2
    :up: :up:
  • Extreme Philosophy
    I think certain philosophical positions are incoherent. I do not think they are 'extreme', just incoherent. — Tobias
    :up:

    Do you consider any philosophical position extreme and with disturbing or bizarre consequence?

    Some positions fitting this description might be. [ ... ]     — Andrew4Handel
    These are caricatures (as you express them) or coubterfactual thought-experiments, not "extremes".
  • Atheism Equals Cosmic Solipsism
    ↪ucarr
    Non sequitur.
  • What is Creativity and How May it be Understood Philosophically?
    ↪Agent Smith
    :up:
  • Modern books for getting into philosophy?
    I recommend

    • The Great Philosophers: An Introduction to Western Philosophy, Bryan Magee

    • The Philosopher's Toolkit: A Compendium of Philosophical Concepts and Methods (3rd Ed), Peter S. Fosl and Julian Baggini

    to get you startered. The bibliographies of both books are very much worth checking out too.
  • Atheism Equals Cosmic Solipsism
    Is QM's vector-cloud of probability and its collapse not part of the observer effect? — ucarr
    Wtf?

    Is Shroedinger's cat never super-positioned as a life/death ambiguity?
    IIRC, the "live/dead cat" is only a construct within a thought-experiment that makes explicit some of the ways measurements of quantum phenomena are epistemically inconsistent with classical physics; the "live/dead cat" is not itself an actual phenomenon.

    Is the [u[wave function[/u] not hard to establish and easy to collapse within the lab?
    "Wave functions" are only mathematical structures and not concrete, or real, things (i.e. misplaced concreteness fallacy). Also, there are more than a few interpretations of QM in which "the wave function" does not "collapse", so ...
  • Atheism Equals Cosmic Solipsism
    We know from ourselves that our universe is a consciousness-bearing universe. — ucarr
    Anthromorphizing compositional fallacy at the very least. And, without a clear conception of "consciousness" either in philosophy or science, the phrase "consciousness-bearing" is uninformative. The rest of your post, trafficking as it does in pseudo-science / misinterpreting QM's 'observer effect', doesn't make much sense either except maybe as wishful thinking (i.e. "theology"). Lastly, I don't recognize the theisms of Abrahamic, Vedic, or any other pagan faiths in your account, ucarr, so on that point, again, I don't know what you mean by "theism" or, for that matter, "atheism".
  • Currently Reading
    On the Problem of Empathy: The Collected Works of Edith Stein (vol. 3), Edith Stein
  • Do you feel like you're wasting your time being here?
    ↪Shawn
    No.
  • Do you feel like you're wasting your time being here?
    ↪Shawn
    How could I be "wasting my time here" (or anywhere else) when wherever I am time is already wasting me?
  • What is Creativity and How May it be Understood Philosophically?
    ↪Agent Smith
    ↪Jack Cummins
    Are yin-yang "opposites"? "a duality"? Heraclitean "flux:? I don't think so. Conflating complementarity (e.g. dialectics) and, say, coincidentia oppositorum (e.g. Jungian / gnostic 'syzygy'), it seems to me, loses the plot.
  • Objects of knowledge logical priority
    ↪jospehus
    You assume "God" learns; however, 'omniscience' precludes having to learn as there cannot be any unknowns for an 'omniscient being'. Your theological conclusion does not logically follow, jospehus, because "God" so conceived cannot be subject to 'epistemological' conditions or entailments.
  • But philosophy is fiction
    ↪T Clark
    :up:

    I think, for Kant, "embodied ways of relating to the world" include perception of time and space. — T Clark
    Kant says, in effect, the mind (somehow) 'generates' "time and space" in order to structure "preception" of "the world" which includes "embodied ways" (i.e. phenomena); we don't "perceive time and space" (which is he deems a mistake or transcendental illusion). In other words, IIRC, we "relate to the world" transcendentally, according to Kant, not corporeally, or primarily empirically.
  • Why are you here?
    ↪Tom Storm
    Nope. Just latter-day Socratics (e.g. Absurdists, CBTists, satirists).
  • Why are you here?
    What draws one to philosophy? — Benj96
    "Wonder" did it for the ancients, "faith" did it for medievals, but for us moderns I think despair – intractable, infinite, perplexity – is the draw. (NB: Zapffe-Camus name it the absurd.)

    What is yo[ur] motive to seek out and participate in this forum?
    I suppose this sums up why I'm (still) here:
    I'm a dialectical rodeo clown, but only when there's a lot of running bulls*** to corral; like Diogenes with his lantern, I loiter on these fora looking for a few well-informed folks to reason with and learn from ... — 180 Proof

    Why have you come? — Benj96
    Again, from old posts ...
    Instead of "philosopher" I call myself a

    freethinker (offline) &
    dialectical rodeo clown (online)     — 180 Proof
    ... thus, the mise-en-scene of TPF"s Commedia
    "What is your aim in philosophy? – To show the fly the way out of the fly bottle."
    — Witty, PI §309

    Against stupidity philosophers (i.e. sisyphusian 'meta-cognitive hygienists' and/or 'dialectical rodeo-clowns') struggle in vain.     — 180 Proof
    :smirk:

    My journey to this forum: atheism →→ logic →→ philosophy →→ TPF. — Agent Smith
    Succinct. :up:

    My path: stupidity?! —> absurdism —> freethought —> pragmatism-naturalism —> TPF ...
  • But philosophy is fiction
    Kant laid the groundwork for psychologists to begin paying attention to our ‘embodied’ ways of relating to the world. — Joshs
    I don't see how the "Copernican" centrality of Kant's disembodied – transcendental – categories of reason "pays attention to our embodied ways of relating to the world" (à la e.g. Nietzsche, Bataille, Jaspers, Merleau-Ponty, de Beauvoir, Lakoff, Dennett, Nussbaum, Metzinger ...) :chin:
  • "The wrong question"
    ↪punos
    :up:
  • What is Creativity and How May it be Understood Philosophically?
    ↪Philosophim
    :100:
  • But philosophy is fiction
    ↪Banno
    :up:
  • What are you listening to right now?

    "Happy Blues" Live at Ronnie's Scott's (6:00)
    Ella in London, 1974
    writer Ella Fitzgerald
    performers Ella Fitzgerald w/ theTommy Flanagan Quartet:
    - Tommy Flanagan - piano
    - Joe Pass - guitar
    - Keter Betts - double bass
    - Bobby Durham - drums

    *


    "Happy" (3:04)
    Exile on Main Street, 1972
    writers "The Glimmer Twins"
    lead vocal Keith Richards
    The Rolling Stones

    *


    "I'm Happy Just to Dance With You" (1:58)
    A Hard Day's Night, 1964
    writers Lennon-McCartney
    lead vocal George Harrison
    The Beatles

    *

    and again this one by Pharrell ... https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/606102 :clap: :clap: :clap: :party:
  • Are You Happy?
  • But philosophy is fiction
    Is philosophy really fiction, or non-fiction? — god must be atheist
    Non-fiction consists of narratives about social and/or natural facts (e.g. reportage, histories, sciences). Philosophy, however, is a narrative about 'narrativity and other concepts' and so I don't consider it non-fiction even though philosophical texts frequently cite or interpret non-fictional texts. Unlike poetry, which expresses heightened feelings and ideas through rigorous play with ambiguities, philosophy strives for clarity and precision in non-fallacious expressions of aporia or ideas; and yet like poetry, philosophy is not propositional (i.e. does not make empirical or formal claims) but instead is, IME, reflectively performative – in sum, consisting of proposals (e.g. suppositions, norms, interpretations, distinctions, criteria, etc).
  • "The wrong question"
    As I see it, most of the disagreements and misunderstandings here on the forum arise from people mistaking metaphysical questions from questions of fact. When someone asks a question I regard as wrongheaded from that perspective, I often point it out. — T Clark
    :clap: :up:

    Loaded questions, double-barrelled questions, complex questions—all could be considered fallacious. — NOS4A2
    :up:

    ↪bert1
    So long as my interlocator proposes an alternative yet better question, I'm fine with it (re: poll).
  • But philosophy is fiction
  • Why are you here?
    I find most of the questions to be the wrong questions, so the answers tend to be pretty meaningless to me. Otherwise, I stick around for the company and the short stories... — Noble Dust
    :up:
  • Why are you here?
    From an old thread ...
    Apparently, foolosophers like us need a place - an agora - to conceptually chase (spin) our promiscuously speculative tails (tales). — 180 Proof
  • Why are you here?
    I like the people here. Including the wankers and cunts. — bert1
    :sweat: :up:
  • What is Creativity and How May it be Understood Philosophically?
    ↪Jack Cummins
    Good luck finding your own place, mate, especially during winter.
  • A self fulfilling short life expectancy
    In that case it is not so much a case that we neccesarily want to reign ourselves in but rather that we are forced to by the natural slowing down, the increasing inefficiency of the body.

    We are at the mercy of our gradually failing systems.

    Youth is well compensated. A large margin for error and a grand tolerance for abuse and neglect. Old age is no such thing. Even the slightest corporeal inconvenience has a lasting reprimand.

    A slow but inevitable reeling in of the unencumbered mind, until the corpus dictates the show.     — Benj96
    :100: Well said. In other words, kids: E-N-T-R-O-P-Y.

    The trick is to have a close encounter with the grim reaper and live to tell about it. — Bitter Crank
    :death: :flower:
  • What is Creativity and How May it be Understood Philosophically?
    ↪Jack Cummins
    Thanks for the concern, Jack. Yes, I'm going through some medical treatments lately that have made reading (or writing) fiction more difficult, even unpleasant, for me. I haven't read any of the stories yet and don't know when I will. As far as my own contributions, I have several scraps of tales, just sketches, from before Caldwell started posting these micro fictions which I haven't bothered to revise or polish well enough to submit. While I remain somewhat active posting to discussion threads, I can't say at this point whether or not I will write a micro fiction worth reading anytime soon.

    You mention "art and creativity" almost interchangeably when art is, in fact, only one type of creativity. Science, history, play, etc are also types of creativity. Philosophy too, as I've pointed out. If your concern is specifically art or aesthetics, then you may find the thread discussion in which this old post comes from interesting.
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/344963
  • What is Creativity and How May it be Understood Philosophically?
    I am raising this thread to ask where does creativity fit into the picture of philosophy? — Jack Cummins
    I think philosophy is – has in some sense always been – about 'conceptual and moral creativity' insofar as it problematizes – exposes and calls into question – how 'ways (habits) of living' and 'ways (habits) of thinking' incorrigibly fail to be creative (adaptive).

    How may the sources of the creative processes be understood in society and on a personal basis?
    IMO, this is too large and varied a topic for a post. Consider (if you haven't already, Jack) this article:
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creativity

    To what extent is creativity valued or undervalued in the twentieth first century?
    I suspect creativity is "valued" today mostly in forms of economic or monetizable 'innovations', quite "undervalued" throughout primary-secondary education (certainly in the US and other theo/neo-fascist countries) and devalued as threatening in classist, national & international 'politics' everywhere. The Frankfurt School's critiques of the culture industry and (it's knockoff) the Wachowskis sisters' The Matrix have some insightful things to say about this 'fetishistic-p0m0 use of creativity' to reify – ideologize – sociopolitical status quos.
  • Does theism ultimately explain anything?
    So the BBT is explanatory in precisely the way that theism is not. That's not even necessarily to say that theism (or divine creation) is untrue... — busycuttingcrap
    :up:
  • Atheism and Lack of belief
    ↪busycuttingcrap
    :100:
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