Um... those five items are of vital importance. — lambda

Then don't you think we should keep trying to figure them out?

If you don't know whether your cognitive faculties are reliable, whether you're dreaming, whether the people around you are conscious, whether you are truly morally responsible for your actions, or whether the walls of your room continue to exist when you're not experiencing them, then you are in a state of total intellectual paralysis. — lambda

False. Life is filled with assumptions. You will keep on living and breathing even if you don't know if anyone else exists. Much has been written about this.

You may say that philosophy is an absolute joke, but this is quite silly as your own statement is philosophical. So you have to constrain your view to a certain kind of philosophy, but you haven't.

Furthermore, the worthiness of some things is dependent upon what you personally find to be valuable. If you value finding something that can be implemented in the capitalistic society in which you live, then maybe philosophy isn't for you. But philosophy isn't itself constrained by capitalism and so those who study it don't really give a damn what anyone else thinks. That's called free-thinking.

Have you done any better? lmao

Some things can still be valuable even if you never actually finish it.

You provide, what, five examples (a big number, five! wow!), and apparently this "disproves" the value of philosophy?

Skepticism hasn't won by being right, it's won by those practicing it being lazy. If there was a better way of getting answers we'd being doing it already. Unfortunately, there isn't, but some of us still find value in thinking about these sorts of things anyway to the scoffing dismay of our capitalist overlords.

The absolute failure of philosophy is a great example of how unaided human reasoning leads to nothing but absurdity. — lambda

Quite ironic how you use human reasoning to come to an absurd conclusion...

Nor, however, have I ever known a made-by-women feminist list like yours, except the ones drawn up by antagonistic men who were trying to discredit a much subtler and more illuminating set of ideas. I don't think such lists ever make sense. There is an analysis of patriarchy, there are theories, there are ideas for action. There aren't simple bullet-points of anti-men statements to swallow before a radfem bedtime. Perhaps I'm naive, but overthrowing patriarchy always seemed to me a good idea. — mcdoodle

Dworkin I know was against the idea of female superiority, but my point was that some radical feminists continue to believe that men ought to be exterminated, and are highly sex-negative.

So you don't think that things can be predicated of formal and final causes? — apokrisis

No, I think they can, I just don't think causes "exist" as some kind of ephemeral entity of sorts. I'm more into dispositionalism. Causal nets based upon thresh-hold dispositional properties, not too dissimilar to Scholastic realist conceptions of causality.

"I myself always use exist in its strict philosophical sense of “react with the other like things in the environment.”

"I define the real as that which holds its characters on such a tenure that it makes not the slightest difference what any man or men may have thought them to be, or ever will have thought them to be, here using thought to include, imagining, opining, and willing (as long as forcible means are not used); but the real thing's characters will remain absolutely untouched." — apokrisis

So, noumenon?

What is the difference between "everyday feminism" and "radical feminism (radfem)"?

Just from what I have read so far in things like the SCUM manifesto and Cell 16, radfem is not really about egalitarianism but more about the superiority of the female sex.

What's interesting about the author of the SCUM manifesto is that although she thinks the female sex is superior, it seems like she thinks that this is only because the male sex is fucked up and the female sex is less-fucked up. Indeed she had antinatalist beliefs, where she essentially said that the male sex had to be exterminated, and then the female sex would only have female babies until a little later, when the female sex would also be exterminated.

And yes, I understand that the SCUM manifesto might have been satirical but it nevertheless spawned things like Cell 16.

Anyway some defining characteristics of radfem that I have seen and would like to discuss seem to be:

• PIV sex, or any sex for that matter, is outdated, crude, and oppressive towards women. "PIV = rape".
• Heterosexual relationships in general are outdated and crude.
• The Patriarchy is still a very real threat to the autonomy of females (male and female tend to be used more than men and women) and must be destroyed.
• Males only have relationships with females for their sexual appeal.
• Males are the number one reason why the world is so fucked up.
• Males are problematic members of society and should be phased out of existence.
• Females who have heterosexual relationships with males are brainwashed and simply allowing the problem of the Patriarchy to continue.
• Makeup, fashion, and body care are the product of a Patriarchal brainwashing. Heterosexuality might also be the result of brainwashing.
• Males and females should be separated and live in isolated communities away from each other.
• It is not possible to live in an egalitarian society that has mixed sexes.
• Transsexuals "rape" the opposite sex and have a brain disorder.
• Women are, all things considered, "superior".

I might be wrong about some/most/all of the things stated above, but please keep in mind that I'm only beginning to get a grasp of what radical feminism is.

More mainsteam feminism, in my opinion, should just be called egalitarianism. Anything that focuses on the rights of a single group should be labeled as such.

You believe that nothing is real unless it exists - i.e., that there are only material/efficient causes and brute facts? — aletheist

No, I think they exist but they have be predicate-able. To me, it doesn't even make any sense to talk of something that has no discernible nature but somehow is causally relevant.

Good job I don't say principles "exist". Or that they are "brute facts".

And saying that about properties would be inconsistent too. — apokrisis

Then I can safely disregard anything you say about principles, since they do not exist and are thus irrelevant.

Well, only the one. Apeiron. Or however we would best understand that appeal to material principle in our best physicalist theories. — apokrisis

A "monism" that is irreducibly complex in being a triadic process. — apokrisis

Which is it?

But the whole point - following triadic hylomorphism - is that whatever the material principle is, it can't be itself substantial in the kind of sense you have in mind. It can't already possess properties, as positive properties are the product of formal causes, or constraints. — apokrisis

Then what exactly is it?

Why can't we say that there are some properties that exist thanks to a history and some properties just are, brute fact? Saying that a "principle" exists and yet denying that abstract transcendental properties exist seems like word play.

A mystic. A pseudo philosopher. — apokrisis

You realize this is, as of now, an unjustified opinion?

So after the Big Bang, the bath of radiation cools enough and massive, slower than light, particles emerge. A lucky asymmetry means that nearly all of the negative anti-protons have gone, likewise nearll all of the positive anti-electrons. That lets you have some persistent basic ingredients - oppositely charged electrons and protons. From there, you can get stellar physics and planetary chemisty.

So the emergence of complex materiality - stuff with properties - is no big deal at all. What is a big deal is getting behind that to the story of how anything could emerge to start the story in the first place. — apokrisis

The problem I see with this is that it still doesn't prove anything about universals, because you use universals in the description. Or, to be precise, you use natural kinds like anti-protons, anti-electrons, radiation. Or you use descriptions without a subject, like "symmetry" or "asymmetry" but these must be predicated of something in order to be even coherent.

You said yourself that there are some persistent basic ingredients (these can endure but complex structures can't, I guess?), yet what makes these basic ingredients what they are? Properties. And we're back to square one: how do we see the property of negative charge of an electron as? A universal, a trope, what?

The nominalist is going to argue that the fact that we use universals in our scientific language descriptions doesn't prove jack shit about the actual reality of properties.

People call Whitehead a process philosopher. I don't. I am arguing pansemiotics, not panpsychism. — apokrisis

Then what would you consider him to be? He is basically univocally seen as a process philosopher. You can't just assert that he's not.

And you don't need a middle ground between substance and process as the argument is that substantial being is a process. — apokrisis

Yet this becomes a monism. You reduce substance to process, in the same way Aristotle would reduce process to substance.

The larger point is that religious thinking about science has a tendency to latch on to the uncertainties necessarily latent at the bleeding edge of science, rather than at any point where the scientific work is well established. In every case it's just low hanging, God-of-the-gaps bullshit, a kind of desperation to slot God in to any (rapidly diminishing) space available. A theology with a bit of dignity ought to probably find the divine at work in everything, but then again, the theological engagement with the sciences gave up it's dignity long ago. — StreetlightX

I mean, I don't necessarily disagree with this, but I would also say that scientists can also be blamed for making wild assertions based upon the very latest theories and not the history of theorizing and paradigm shifting. This is one of the reasons why I generally take appeals to contemporary science, like neuroscience or cosmology, with a grain of salt, because the theories are likely going to change in the future and that by itself gives very little, if any, solid foundation for a metaphysical claim.

Anyone who tries to 'prove God doesn't exist' has already conceded too much to theology - has taken God to be in any way a legitimate problem at all. — StreetlightX

I agree, this is also why I hesitate to call myself an atheist. Atheism is too strong of a position to hold.

Not God's 'existence' but his relevance ought to be perpetually put into question - which is why I much prefer 'naturalism' to 'atheism', insofar as the latter is still too oppositionally defined by a relation to the divine. I would prefer simply not to care about the very idea of God, let alone to argue 'against' it. — StreetlightX

Yeah, apatheism has been sort of my mode of operation for a while. Although I'm getting interested in it all as of late. A personal argument I have against theology though is sort of anti-theistic in nature: that there is suffering in the world, if God exists he should be condemned for not preventing this from happening, and because of this God does not deserve to be studied.

One can only face palm at a comment like this. Does this everyday concrete stuff exist, or is it simply how we construct our experience of it? — apokrisis

Umm, okay? I'm asking what the difference in "real-ness" you see to be between something like an asteroid and "symmetry" of "something" like vagueness of whatever.

If something exists, and if this something can be known to us, then it must be able to be predicated upon. The predicates latch on to properties, or at least describe a collection of simpler properties.

What do you mean? I'm saying substantial being is a process. And that is opposed to the view that substance has fundamental existence rather than pragmatic persistence. — apokrisis

Well cause I remember sometime in the past you thought people like Whitehead were too extreme in their metaphysics and that there had to be a middle ground between process and substance.

Great. — apokrisis

Fantastic.

There's a great big world filled with suffering, sadness, pain, and need, and you sit idly by connected to a cold machine pushing a Sisyphus button with fervor. — Hanover

Video games help with altruistic burnout. Playing old-school video games is inexpensive, recuperative and sublimative.

But generally the video game industry is one of excess, not only in money but also in (im)morality. Skimpy boob armor is not armor.

So it would be circular for a metaphysics to try to account for dynamical particulars in terms of "just more dynamics". A semiotic approach to metaphysics is different precisely because it accounts for universals in terms of sign relations. The realm of symbols - or informational constraints - gives the "universals" a real place to exist, much like Plato's realm of ideas. The difference is that this informational aspect of existence is thoroughly physicalist and doesn't need the mind or ideas to be a second kind of substantial being. — apokrisis

The part I get tripped up on is when you explain the existence of universals like redness or hardness of whatever by appealing to things like sign relations, symbols, constraints, information, etc. Are these things not universals in themselves? You said they were similar to Plato's realm of ideas - are they "less real" than the concrete stuff we experience everyday?

Whoosh. I hear the noise of words flying right over your head again. — apokrisis

:-}

Why must you be so arrogantly patronizing all the time?

But you can hardly claim to be saying anything interesting about metaphysics these days if you throw up your hands in horror when someone mentions holographic bounds and least action principles. — apokrisis

Well because holographic bounds and least action principles are incoherent, at least to me, without a proper context, and especially because they aren't anything at all unless they have certain qualities, or properties, which is exactly what we're talking about here.

So you can say that the properties of bread: its doughiness, flexibility, warmth, etc come from external constraints like the heat of the oven, the yeast, etc. But these things also have properties themselves.

So as it says on the bottle, this is process philosophy. And both the particular and the universal are things that only "exist" in the sense of being features of processes. — apokrisis

I thought you didn't like the binary between substance and process.

The best way to ontologise that view is then - as Peirce did - to divide reality into constraints and freedoms. Universals are the contextual reality. They are the general habits, the global tendencies. And particulars are the events that are regularly produced, the outcomes that may share family similarities but also express an irreducible spontaneity or indeterminism. — apokrisis

Right, okay. This is basically what I already said. Universals are general patterns and particulars are specifics.

Reality is the process of becoming real. And reality is characterised by its general stablity - its long-run, self-sustaining, dynamical equilibrium. To exist is really just to persist in a way where continuing change does not result in significant change. — apokrisis

Right, I agree. There are no such things as enduring objects.

Right, since nominalism rejects any and all abstracta.

That's right. That's why I am arguing against nominalism. — apokrisis

Right, okay, because before I thought you were conflating universalism with the thesis that particulars don't exist, which would indeed create an extreme binary.

But how do properties emerge into crisp being if vague being isn't what they are leaving behind? — apokrisis

So A changes to B, are you saying the time between the change is the vagueness?

The problem with your kind of ontology is that it can't explain existence as a causal development. Existence is just some dumb brute fact. Or maybe God invented it. — apokrisis

Well, I mean, I'm not trying to explain the existence of causal development. I'm trying to explain how universals have to exist in some way.

Shame that hypothesis doesn't fit the facts then. The evidence that the cosmos keeps spitting out the same entities, the same patterns, can be seen everywhere we look. (Have you heard of fractals or powerlaws?) — apokrisis

Yes, I know all about those, please stop antagonizing me. Once again, I'm out to show how nominalism is false and that it defends an indefensible monism.

So why the problem when I take something like universals to be real, and then offer a modern infodynamic account? — apokrisis

Because some of us have no formal training in whatever fields you are referring to and thus your words come across as esoteric gish gallops.

But also because you use a framework to explain the same framework. Universals exist, because symmetry is a universal. That's begging the question. Nominalists don't deny that symmetry exists, they deny that symmetry is a universal. You need to explain why universals have to exist without just ignoring the actual question; i.e. using "scientific" terminology to explain something that is usually empirically transparent.

One can be a speculative naturalist without, for all that, simply falling into the black hole of scientism. — StreetlightX

True, one simply has to make sure that what one is inquiring about is not part of the scientific enterprise.

It doesn't help either that the constant and brazenly fallacious appeal-to-ignorance that is the invocation of quantum theory is basically the last refuge of the theological scoundrel, having been driven from literally every single other explanatory level of existence other than where - surprise, surprise - the dark and fuzzy frontier of scientific knowledge lies. There's a reason you don't get religious kooks barking shrill over the divine properties of say, silicon chip engineering. At some point, apparently, the perpetual embarrassment tips over into shame. — StreetlightX

I'm not so sure if this is accurate, at least for all theologians. I'm only beginning my study of theology and philosophy of religion, but it seems to me that it is the atheist that commonly begs the question. The point of natural theology is to use empirical observations about the world to make an argument for something that cannot possibly be empirically tested but nevertheless is seen as necessary or important in some way. I don't think the cosmological argument has really been "refuted" by science. Teleology has been shoved aside as reductionist accounts of causality have emerged but it is precisely the latter that depends solely on the material and formal causes and continues to run into difficulties.

So I'm confused as to why you used quantum theory as an example of the "last refuge" of the theologian. Because it's not really the case that (serious) theologians (and not your neighborhood evangelical) are shoe-horning God into the picture. It's rather that atheistic (pop-) scientists are shoe-horning atheism into things like the Big Bang, evolution, and quantum mechanics in order to "prove" God does not exist and it's the theologians that have to fight back and explain why it's actually not so black and white. Theologians often get stuck in a kafkatrap.

If the less-than-century year old debate over this disqualifies naturalism as a viable position, then theology ought to be once and for all confined not simply to the trashcan of history but it's landfill. — StreetlightX

I'm not so sure. Theology and metaphysics generally don't try to be "sciences" although their practitioners sometimes like to play dress-up and pretend they're scientists of the divine or ontological scientists or what have you.

We expect results from science. When we don't get them, it's probably because we screwed up somewhere and need to re-assess the situation.

We don't necessarily expect results from theology or metaphysics. These two disciplines, in my opinion, are not deserving of the title "discipline" but are nevertheless important (at least the latter is, not sure about theology as I'm leaning towards atheism) as speculative attempts at understanding.

Freedom is a funny thing. — Wosret

Every time someone uses the word "freedom" I always have the urge to yell "OBJECTION" and demand they define what they actually mean by freedom.

Best definition of free will I can muster is the idea that one could have chosen otherwise. I don't really think it's coherent though since we have to ask why you chose what you did. In which case you basically just have to say "I dunno" since any appeals to anything else would be determinism.

If one believes so then they will be inclined to start believing in their superiority over other groups of people or their absolute beliefs about themselves. Dangerous stuff. — Question

But that wouldn't be very objective, would it? Nietzsche is calling for us to become poets of our own lives and try to understand who we are, like who we really are.

I think it's really lazy thinking and that there is a fundamental discontinuity that is reached at the point where humans are capable of abstract reasoning and language. It is at precisely that point, where the biological accounts loose their cogency and start to be missapplied to create an illusion of understanding something that really isn't at all well understood. These ideas - the nature of universals, logic, reason, and the like - aren't a highly refined version of bee-signalling or bird-calling. It is at this point where the 'rational animal' is able to see into a different ontological level than animals per se. — Wayfarer

Although I sort of agree with the sentiment I can't help but point out the irony of you claiming reason is not equivalent to bird-calling, yet also claim that this skewed view of reason is the product of something not-too-dissimilar to bird-calling. >:O

Materialism is a foolish position.

How does the fact that human beings can produce certain chemicals essential to life prove that these chemicals can be produced without life? That conclusion requires the unstated premise that anything a man can produce, can be produced without man. This implies that all the products manufactured by human beings could have come into existence without the existence of life, just because we build them out of naturally occurring elements. It's truly unbelievable to think that computers and airplanes could have come into existence on earth without the presence of life — Metaphysician Undercover

I suppose you are right that airplanes and shit don't just pop out of nowhere. They are built by humans, living creatures.

But the point of naturalism is to try to explain things without the use of other-worldy, "supernatural" forces. There is no supernaturalism required to explain the existence of planes - humans created them. All x must come from not-x. So far so good. So "LIFE" cannot come from life. It had to start somewhere. And so Life came from non-Life. And yet what is this non-Life?

The naturalist will say it came from inorganic matter. The supernaturalist will say it came from something else, like a god or something. But this is a clear case of simple ignorance. Naturalism doesn't have to know everything, it merely has to say "I don't know" and try its best to figure it out. Whereas alternatives are simply god-of-the-gaps arguments.

And in any case the fact that humans can create "vital" stuff like urea means that in different conditions, urea could potentially arise naturally. And in fact we see this a lot in science in general. Things are modelled in the lab or on a computer simulation or what have you and then lo and behold we see it in nature. We knew about lightning before we knew about electricity - does the mere ignorance of naturally-occurring urea legitimately give credence to vitalism?

Ego boundaries in a person with high self-esteem are well defined along with a deep understanding of one's natural talents and limitations, which brings me to my main point. The person with an ideal sense of self-worth is the stoic. A stoic knows that there are things within his/her control and makes sure that he does not feel inadequate or incompetent when trying to look after things out of his/her control. — Question

On the other hand, is was Nietzsche who argued that the overman would have an objective and realistic view of their own existence. Nietzsche was not a stoic.

Hard theological determinism (or 'predestination') seems to be a logical consequence of God's omnipotence. For how could anything fall outside the causal control of an omnipotent being? There's simply no room in reality for any other causal agents besides God. — lambda

Or perhaps God allows things to slip through his grasp? In the same way a parent is pretty much omnipotent to a child but allows the child to do things they want to do?

Whereas here, reason is simply an adaption - like a peacock's tail, it improves the odds of passing on your little bundle of protoplasm - and if, as a byproduct, you happen to be able to figure out the age of the universe, then so much the better, eh? — Wayfarer

At the same time, however, we aren't perfect reasoners and we aren't objective evaluators of the world. We're filled with biases and fallacious thinking.

So I think the more "reasonable" thing to believe, in which I mean "most likely", is that the universe has a structure of repetition, and that this structure can be gradually re-modelled within our own minds. Genuine perfect correspondence is bullshit expect for some of the most basic and commonly-encountered things. Yet through a process of counterfactual reasoning and tentative speculation we can come to know things outside of our basic experience. And we can know we're on the right track because it will work, just as we would expect from an evolutionary perspective. There's no inherent need for correspondence truth in the wild, you only need what works. And what works may or may not be correspondence. However now that we have evolved further, we can reflect and realize all this.

But then there's also theories of knowledge which see Knowledge as a natural kind in-itself. Thus when we have knowledge, we actually HAVE knowledge.

What is self-esteem? — Question

Self-esteem is a psychological power structure that motivates the organism by reassuring it as a significant and important symbol in the world. More often than not self-esteem is derived from external means, such as family, friends, co-workers, countries, and even metaphysical theories.

The number one job of the ego when it is not focused on immediate survival requirements is the constant reassurance of the validity and importance of itself, oftentimes in a vane attempt to escape death and live forever as an immortal hero archetype. Terror Management Theory.

Is it overrated? — Question

No, in fact it's a highly necessary and comforting thing to have and it's something I wish I had more of.

How does one build having a strong sense of self-esteem? — Question

By surrounding oneself with supportive external factors (which may or may not be authentic) or by attempting to come to grips with oneself and find motivation from the inside. In fact the trouble tends to arise when one realizes that one's support group is filled with idiots and idiotic ideas, as one's very identity is called into question.

Constants emerge as the rate limit on self-optimising flows. So they describe the regularities that a process of symmetry breaking creates. They don't cause the action. They are a measure of it. — apokrisis

Yet talk of rates, limits, self-optimization, flows, regularities, symmetries, all that stuff is still referring to something. A graph without numbers is not a graph. Language cannot exist without syntax. You reject abstract Platonic ideals but also seem to want "things" that are not concrete objects like tables and rhinos and whatnot. Are they virtual? Are they "semi-real"? Are they "vague"? In the beginning, there was nothing - but there technically was something, it just wasn't SOMETHING but a different sort of something entirely. Which, to the uninitiated, comes across either as bogus or esotericism.

I keep running into this problem when I read what you write: it seems to me that you attempt to explain things like universals in an ontic and intra-worldly, scientific manner, when it's that these very observations and theories hold the same regardless of what metaphysical position you hold. Nominalism won't change the Big Bang theory at all. Presentism is compatible with special relativity despite endurantism being a common trope. Idealism accounts for everything we know, just without an unknowable external world. Metaphysical theories of these types are empirically transparent.

Figuring out whether or not universals exist is not like finding a particle or uncovering the history of the cosmos. Science already uses properties all the time in its theorizing. What we want to know is that properties themselves are without a regress into vagueness. We want to know how we ought to see properties as. We already know that stability occurs and habits emerge, but nominalism doesn't deny this. It simply denies that these habits are actually repeatable entities that are multiply instantiated.

As it stands I do believe that there really shouldn't be a problem of universals, or at least a problem of similarity/difference. Universals are inevitable and I think should be fairly obvious especially when one sees just how clunky nominalist positions tend to be. The universalist is much more flexible as it recognizes the existence of both universals and particulars, while the nominalist strictly forbids the existence of universals. The problem shouldn't be on the existence of universals but the nature of universals themselves, i.e. abstract transcendentals vs immanents or something else.

If so, then the question of universals is the wrong question. It's not why things are similar, it's why they're different that needs explaining.

Is that convincing? How would a proponent of universals respond? — Marchesk

Yes, well I had brought this point up a long while back, how nominalism not only struggles to explain why things are similar but why they are different as well. i.e. why can we discriminate between things if they are not "actually" similar to each other in virtue of sharing a property.

However I think similarity is a more pressing issue anyway. The nominalist could simply say that two things are different because they have different particular properties. Fine, the universalist would say the same thing except they would be universals not particulars.

It's in no way saying anything like that. Be serious if you want to understand this stuff rather than responding like you're in a political forum and you want to polemically exaggerate your opponent with the aim of gaining votes/followers. It's not saying that anything is amorphous, "deserted," etc. — Terrapin Station

I'm not being polemical, Quine was a hardcore nominalist and called his own system an amorphous desert.

ALL that it's denying is that there are universals that exist extramentally as abstract existents that particulars then somehow partake of so that the universals are identically instantiated in at least two different particulars. — Terrapin Station

Right, so like I said, without universals the extramental world is a mish-mash of wholly unique particulars with no actual "sharing" relation at all. The world is overflowing with unique particulars everywhere you look.

Creating conceptual abstractions, where we ignore details of difference and instead lump things together as common kinds, allows us to act and react quickly so that we can survive to procreate. Those conceptual abstractions into common kinds are what universals are. — Terrapin Station

That is plausible, but what I do not find to be plausible is that, in a world utterly void of universals, the mind pops up with universals. It would require a sort of dualism in which the mind is actually not part of the rest of the world at all but separated from it.

And I still don't understand how nominalism gets around the problem of why we even clump things together in the first place. If universals do not exist extra-mentally, then how do we even begin to clump things together? Why see Blue1 similar to Blue2 but not similar to Red3? What differentiates the Blues from the Reds?

Says who exactly?

If you are thinking that universals are ghostly forms or epiphenomenal ideas, then your claim is that they definitely don't exist. So they are not vaguely existent. They are sharply inexistent.

But if you are taking my approach, then universals and particulars are as real (or ideational) as each other. — apokrisis

I am saying that without universals, particulars wouldn't exist. Particulars are made of universals. In the same way you might boot up MS Paint and use a few geometric templates to make a design.

So they don't both talk about the world and our place in it? What are you on about? — apokrisis

Science talks about the world. Theology talks about the divine and how it relates to the world and its residents.

I would also say that what you know how to do is the most important thing to know. It means you can be a reliable and productive member of a society. This includes, of course, rational thinking.

A gas is vague possibility. Particles are not in interaction. A liquid is a collection of events. Some kind of organisation arises as every particle has some individual interaction with other passing particles. Then a solid is the emergence of a global rigid order that puts every particle into a final entropy-minimising state of organisation. — apokrisis

I would then put universals prior to particulars. Universals are more vague than particulars. They are what particulars are made up through the instantiation relation or what have you.

No, it means that whatever exists is an expression, or instantiation, of universals. — John

Yet is this not what universalists believe? That particulars instantiate universals? Properties are just ways things are, and these ways are universals. Repetitive patterns.

I would agree that they are real apart from their instantiations, but I would not agree that they "have Being", because I think 'to be' is coterminous with 'to exist'. Any alternative to this seems incoherent to me. Consider this; a thought, an imagining, or a feeling is real but it does not exist and is not a be-ing. — John

I would have said that thoughts exist but are not real, as realism typically is about an external reality beyond the mind.

At any rate, we're denying that there's somehow literally one (real) thing that is identically, multiply instantiated in two different entites. — Terrapin Station

Right, so all the processing power of similarity gets re-located to the mind. The external world is just some amorphous deserted blob and it's cut up and structured by the power of the mind.

The problem with this that I see is that it is difficult to understand how and why the mind "separated" itself from the rest of reality.

It is also impossible for me to understand why we have different concepts to begin with, if universals do not exist. The mind presumably originated from the rest of the world in some sense. It is causally connected to the world. What makes us recognize round from triangular is not the going-ons in our heads but the actual structure of the two objects in the world that we interact with.

So instead of the mind molding reality, it is the rest of reality that molds the mind. In fact this is basically the Aristotelian conception of the soul.

And better yet, it is not theistic mumbo-jumbo but testable hypothesis! — apokrisis

Theology doesn't try to be a science, because it's subject matter isn't scientific.

If your divine will could show itself more clearly, more consistently, then we might believe in it with more confidence. Until then, let's stick to what we are finding written into the fabric of nature everywhere. — apokrisis

Natural theology is all about attempting to show the necessity or probability of theism by general observations of the world at large.

If it is not conceivable then it's not able to be witnessed. It would be outside of our knowledge except perhaps by indirect inference. For example, we don't really know what dark matter is, but many scientists use it as an explanation for certain phenomenon. The theologian would use God as an explanation for the causal chain. Etc.

It certainly is interesting how metaphysics affects things outside of its own domain. I remember reading a while back on SEP how ancient Buddhist philosophers tried to distance themselves from the Hindu caste system by developing a thoroughly nominalist ontology of radical particularity. According to some Hindu philosophers, people belonged to their caste by having certain universals - they metaphysically belonged to that caste. And of course Buddhism rejected the caste system and some adherents ended up sacrificing what I see to be a reasonable position in order to try to distance themselves from an otherwise unreasonable view of nature (castes).

The general and the particular can only exist in relation to each other. And then that definite relation can only exist in relation to yet a third thing which is the same relation at its other limit - a state of maximal vagueness, a state where it can't meaningfully be said whether there is the general or the particular. — apokrisis

Yet if I remember correctly Peirce included second-ness and third-ness. So first-ness would be vagueness (which is a vague term itself - a placeholder for what is impossible to predicate?), second-ness would be universality and third-ness would be the "crisp" particularity. A crude image would be gas-liquid-solid.

Universality comes before particularity simply because we particulars cannot exist without universals, i.e. constraints and repetition. The very class of particulars is a universal. So indeed you are correct that we never come across universals "by themselves", but this is well-accepted as the instantiation relation objects have with their properties.

Universals do not exist, they inhere in existents. — John

What is the difference between existing and sort-of existing?

The existence of an existent, in other words, is a symbolic expression of universals. — John

Does this mean that whatever exists depends upon an expression of universals?

The empirical is a symbolic representation of the spiritual. — John

I don't know what this means.

So the universal (the spirit) is prior to the particular (empirical nature), but it does not follow that the universal exists prior to the particular. — John

If the universal is prior to the particular, then the universal is prior to the particular.

Now, now...

There are some nihilists who claim that life has no (objective) meaning, but what does a world look like where life does have (objective) meaning? They describe the absence of something that is not clear to me. — Emptyheady

I think when people ask what the meaning of life is, they are asking what general purpose or goal does life fulfill that makes it "important", and that aligns well with our own evolutionary narcissism.

But there is no ultimate cosmic purpose for life that isn't simultaneously nauseating (a la Nietzsche). God is not our friend.

So we have two different perspectives at work here: we need meaning, and we need this meaning to make sense and reassure us. If we have no meaning, then there's nothing to reassure us. And if we have meaning but it's a gross and horrifying meaning, this also doesn't reassure us. So it all comes down to finding some way of reassuring ourselves of our place in the world.

And the fact is that, although morality likely evolved out of social conventions thousands of years ago, the compassion-based morality that we are all so familiar with is in direct conflict with the whims of the cosmos at large. Human projects are almost always about finding a way to oppose the oppressive drive of entropy in some way or another. We live in an indifferent world, and can know this by an honest empirical evaluation of the relationship between organisms and their environment, which is characterized by agent-less violence and destruction.

The search for meaning, then, is a consequence of living in an inadequate and insufficient environment.

I conclude that the simplest coherent belief is that no others, capable and knowing, exist, that are as good as the neighbor on the right (or otherwise benevolent/loving). — jorndoe

One of the biggest issues people tend to have with consequentialist ethics is that they apparently ask too much of us. This is false. Consequentialist ethics, in fact, ask only for what we are able to do.

The problem isn't that we are given much too responsibility, but rather an unequal amount of responsibility is placed on those who subscribe to consequentialist ethics. Instead of the entire world attempting to eradicate hunger, for example, we have only certain countries and organizations doing so. Way too much responsibility is placed on the shoulders of these groups, and it actually affects their overall productivity.

Those vanguards who pave the way for future productivity in welfare will always have an unequal burden placed upon their shoulders, at least until everyone else gets off their asses and starts helping as well. Those who stand idly by and are legitimately capable of helping out are not simply bystanders but are actively contributing to the overall poor state of the world (the bystander effect).