Evidence – how facts (signals) are distinguished from fantasies (noise) – of im-material (i.e. dis-embodied) "Mind" is profoundly lacking. And my Democritean "woo", Mr. Enformer, is far more evident (i.e. much less of an arbitrary / transcendent(al) gap-filler) than your pseudo-scientific "intelligent designer", or Aristotlean-Thomistic, "Woo". :smirk:180's own "woo-of-the-gaps" is the metaphysical belief that Matter (clay) can create Mind (idea) by rubbing atoms together. — Gnomon
↪180 Proof seems to think that Whitehead and Gnomon are disguising primitive Animism and Spiritualism under the more sciency label of Process[ghost in the machine] — Gnomon
i.e. Woo-of-the-gaps :sparkle: :smirk:[Energy] its insubstantial substance
Not professionally.... you ever teach before? — DifferentiatingEgg
Suggest a topic.... some book recommendations?
That's a tautology, nothing implicit is made explicit (i.e. new information is not learned / concluded after the "therefore").e.g. "Water is wet and wobbly. Therefore water is wet." — bert1
is, of course, a physical theory. :smirk:Eternity or Block-Time — Gnomon
... both real X and Not Real X (i.e. self-contradictory, or necessarily false). Good job! :clap:My worldview is both immanent and Transcendent ...
I would prefer not to, but ...Enjoy it while you can. — Tobias
And thus spoke the little old woman: You go to women? Do not forget the whip! — Thus Spoke Zarathustra
It delights me to note from year to year how long it takes for much that happens to one to become inner experience. It is only in old age that this process is completed, and for this reason it is right and proper to grow truly old, despite the less pleasant reverse side in the shape of infirmity. It seems to be that this is true even in matters of the intellect, not only in the emotional life. — Letter to Freud
:cool: :up:Read Stenger andDawkings[Hawking] and 180 Proof and Poetic Universe! — PoeticUniverse
:smirk:'Nothing' cannot even be meant.
False (again). :roll:All philosophies & religions have postulated some First Cause or Prime Mover ... — Gnomon
Planck scale pre-spacetime (vacuum) consists of random – a-causal – fluctuations (events), ergo no "first cause"; spacetimes (nonrandom event-patterns (e.g. universes)) do emerge rarely as it's reasonable to expect (re: law of very large numbers ... of random events), etc. A god-fairytale (e.g. "prime mover", "enformer / programmer", etc) is not needed and does not explain anything – even in principle; it just begs the question as a woo-of-the-gaps appeal to ignorance. Physical cosmogeny only circumstantially suggests stages of spacetime development not "the ultimate origin of" anything. As many others besides myself have pointed out for years, your scientistic reduction of metaphysics, Gnomon, amounts to a risibly dogmatic pseudo-theology (on par with astrology & alchemy). Do yourself (us) a favor and read God: The Failed Hypothesis by physicist and philosopher Victor Stenger.But the God Hypothesis is aCausalexplanation — Gnomon
Re: legacy of absentee / abusive fathers reinforced by pervasive religious-cultural misogyny — 180 Proof
Yes, especially among the urban (& suburban) poor, working & lower middle classes in post-1950s America, where most (black brown & white) children are raised in homes without both parents (usually unwed single mothers).Is there such a legacy really? — Tobias
Too many fathers were raised without fathers in the home by unwed single mothers, etc. Simplistically, my guess is that boys tend to grow-up more feminized (submissive, lower self-esteem) whereas girls grow-up de-feminized (dominant, lower self-esteem) by the 'genders imbalanced' example of their husbandless mothers and women teachers primarily in authority throughout primary school.The pervasive religious and cultural misogyny I understand, but what happened to the fathers in your opinion?
IME, there is clearly "a link" – strong correlation – in the United States at least since the 1970s and 'gender antagonisms' have been ratcheted-up by ubiquitous, incessant social media since the 2000s. In sum: collapse / delay of marriage and explosion of intentional single motherhood by unwed young women and adolescent girls. Generational vicious cycle (re: social pathologies).There may well be a link. Before the second world war fathers were regularly absent, drinking in the bars. I do not know what happened in the 1960s or 1970s. There might well be something there, but how have the sins of the father [& the mother] influenced our current state as men and women?
(cue apt Freddie quote)Why would someone [@Gregory] that studies philosophy go off into such an odd absolutist reading of femininity and masculinity?
"Women seem wicked / When you're unwanted" :smirk:Well, people are strange, when you're a stranger...
:100:.. that doesn’t mean we have to tolerate dehumanizing statements. — DasGegenmittel
Case and point: :eyes:Here's all you have to know about men and women: women are crazy, men are stupid. And the main reason women are crazy is that men are stupid. — George Carlin
Be more discriminating (i.e. less reliant on random, context-free "ChatGPT quotes"): schools of thought such as e.g. Daoists (early), Pythagoreans, Platonists (the academy), Epicureans, Kynics, Spinozists, pragmatists, existentialists (20th century) ... advocated equality (not equivalence) of men and women. Imo, only "red pilled" incels (e.g. manosphere click-baits) blame feminists for the(ir) "trouble with women".Many great[MALE] thinkers thru history have warned men about females. — Gregory
:death:Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in the way in which our visual field has no limits. — Ludwig Wittgenstein
:100: :fire:There's no joy without suffering, no life without death. The entire reality we exist in is formed around this cyclical dual phasing. We are part of this reality, this nature as all beings, only we are aware of this cycle in a way no other animal is.
But that also gives us a responsibility to handle this knowledge; it is both a burden and a blessing to have it. Not to see the suffering of others, but to form a balance and harmony with the reality of it. We can't reject our existence in that sense, we need to harmonize with it. With all concepts of it. Life, death, the cycle; entropy perceiving itself. So... perceive it and don't waste this experience of being. We can fight for all to experience it as well, to gain the well being of experiencing reality; but we cannot disconnect anyone or ourselves from death itself, or their part in the cycle.
We are all food for nature, in some form or another. Like the bacteria in our guts slowly eating us through life only to fully consume us in death. They've cultivated us as their cattle, nurtured in symbiosis until the final feast of their lives. — Christoffer
I wish I never existed. — Truth Seeker
A latter-day Sisyphus – no doubt your struggle (i.e. love), my friend, is stronger than your suffering – let that be your peace. There are no solipsists in foxholes. :flower:I think about suicide every day and have done so for 37 years. The main reason I haven't killed myself is that it would cause suffering to my family and extended family. I would love to be happy. I would love to be cured of my CPTSD, Bipolar Disorder and Chronic Nerve Pain. — Truth Seeker
For us, then, that is nonexistence (i.e. fiction (e.g. ghosts)).I [am] assuming an existence that doesn't interact with the physical world in a way we can detect. — TiredThinker
'Cosmogenic speculations' change far more rapidly in response to more precise and more varied observations than our well-tested cosmological theories which are glacially updated. There are not "a lot of shifts" in our knowledge, just click-bait press buzz about the latest computer-assembled telescope images du jour. Imho, metaphysical reflection – "our thoughts on the origins of the universe" – is not impaired, or informed, by mere 'scientific speculations' alone.... if our thoughts on the origins of the universe shift a lot each time we get a new telescope resolution
I don't understand what you mean. Elaborate (or reformulate)..Without a clear purpose what can we know, and with our lifespans being virtually nothing compared to the duration of the universe how can we even determine themes and patterns.
:up: :up:What would you say that "physical space" is made out of? [ ... ] The ancient Greek atomists limited the capacity to divide physical substance by positing fundament particles, atoms. The atoms would be indivisible. — Metaphysician Undercover
Clearly, Aristotle did not understand that Democritus' atoms are physical and not just abstract (i.e. not formal/metaphysical – "platonic").But Aristotle demonstrated ... why the dualism of matter and form was required.
Physical space is not "infinitely" divisible like abstract space. Like most paradoxes, this one is merely apparent – it's derived from confusing the physical and abstract.To reach the finish line, the tortoise must first cross half the distance to it, then half the remaining distance, then half of the remaining distance again, and onward infinitely. — Metaphysician Undercover
How do we know that the universe (multiverse) is not "self existent"? :smirk:If you canprove[demonstrate] that the universe is self existent ... — Gnomon
:100:My only point was that ideologies whether religious or not, being based on some dogma or other, are one of the main problems which plague humanity. — Janus
In fact, we don't – cannot – know that anything "comes after this life". We do know, however, that we have to live this life together is inevitable; thus, Hillel the Elder's response to the request to say the whole meaning of the Torah while standing on one foot:Yet our perspective is not the full picture and it lacks finality. We do not know what comes after this life. — BitconnectCarlos
Notice the Rabbi did not say "have faith"...What is hateful (harmful) to you, do not do to anyone.
No.[A]ren't all universal moral systems inevitably going to be flawed in some way ... — Dorrian
No – this does not follow (i.e. hasty generalization fallacy).... and therefore rendered futile?
e.g. flourishing via preventing or, as much as practically possible, reducing harm to others, no?... the concept of "goodness."
:up:If its a true[ly] universal moral system, it will be objective. Not saying it can't be improved upon ... — Philosophim
:up: :up:They're not futile systems as much as incomplete, but necessary (in spite of their incompleteness!) ways of thinking. Or suggestions. — Moliere
Not so. There is far more physical evidence of, for example, cyclical cosmogenesis than for (your) "fiat lux" ... i.e. Aristotle's teleological physics is as philosophically useless as Ptolemy's geocentric epicycles or (e.g. Whitehead's) pseudoscientific 'intelligent design'.All postulated explanations refer to something antecedent or transcendent to the Bang itself. — Gnomon
:100: :up:My point is that faith is a poor way to arrive at truth because there is nothing it can't justify. Which is why I've generally said if you have good reasons for believing in something, you don't need faith. For me faith is best understood as the excuse people give for a belief when they don't have good reasons. — Tom Storm
And when I,
I wanna kiss you, yeah
All I gotta do
Is whisper in your ear
The words you long to hear
And I'll be
kissing you
And the same goes for me
Whenever
you want me at all
I'll be here,
yes I will
Whenever you call
i.e. self-availing, self-unfolding, self-emptying :zip:Spiritual, philosophical, mystical... — Gregory
i.e. make-believe (opiate) vs knowledge (surgery)faith or science
aka "religious faith"belief in the impossible — Fire Ologist
Yes; like when an orchestra disbands, their music stops.When the body dies and decays, everything about me, everything particular to “me”, is gone.
That's merely empirical, not transcendental – in Kant's system (CPR); your statement doesn't make sense, Wayf.The division between self and world is itself part of what the brain constructs. — Wayfarer
False.The most generally accepted scientific hypothesis for the beginning of space-time is the Big Bang theory — Gnomon
Some deduce that embodied self-continuity is fundamentally what "I am", and therefore if no embodied continuity (i.e. no substrate functionality), then no self-continuity (i.e no PSM or user/introspection-illusion) and no self-aware identity (i.e. no autobiographical subject). Re: Buddha, Epicurus, Spinoza, Hume ... :fire:And some believe that I am what I remember. Hence, no remembrance, no Self ...
I doubt this statement is true.Truth is always seen. — Gregory
No doubt.It's not always reco[gn]ized
For different reasons, e.g. Democritus (re: sensory conventions, limitless divisibility of things) and e.g. Parmenides/Plato (re: change/appearances aka "the many") proposed the idea of (subjective) "construct of mind" millennia ago. Kant just 'a prioritized' this with arbitrarily complex – convoluted – schema; of no use, as you acknowledge, pragmatically or in cognitive scientific terms.That knowledge-of is a construct of mind. — tim wood
However, we can approximately – defeasibly – "understand it" and sufficiently enough for us to adapt and thrive in the world (i.e. nature) with which a priori we are entangled (pace Descartes, pace Berkeley).[W]e experience the world but can't truly understand it. — Gregory
Yes, Kant's antimonies are (it seems to me) a modern reformulation of classical equipollence (re: Pyrrho / Sextus Empiricus ... no doubt inspired by, or derived from, Socrates' elenchus (esp. early Platonic dialogues)).Kant's use of the antinomies was to demonstrate that we do not know such things -- we can rationally argue for both the assertion and the negation, and both will appeal to reason, and they can be put side-by-side and end up in contradiction. For Kant this shows a limitation on reason's ability to answer some questions. — Moliere
:100: (re: LNC)I rather think contradiction is certainly a necessary part of logic. Or, maybe, if not a necessary part, then at least the fundamental ground for the validity of logical constructs [reason] . — Mww
Given that "subject" is also an "appearance", this so-called "great idea" amounts to a tautology. :smirk:Kant'sgreatidea: that science is the science of appearances, and that appearance always entails the subject for whom it is appearance. — Wayfarer
Such as? :chin:And while it is fashionably modern to be dismissive of many of his [Kant's] ideas, at close look, they still hold! — tim wood
