Comments

  • Speculations about being
    ↪apokrisis
    I'm describing an intentionality of cosmological phenomenology.
  • Was the universe created by purpose or by chance?
    ↪Janus
    That is an interesting issue. I have ambivalent feelings about the Abrahamic God. I suspect the philosophical God of Aristotle and Plato was wrongly abducted by the apologists in order to paint the desert war god yahweh in a gentler tone.

    Yahweh ... Yahweh ... what a funny-sounding name. No wonder it's so popular as a mockery.
  • Was the universe created by purpose or by chance?
    Something I have noticed is the tendency for those skeptical of theism to reduce God to a "thing" or "being" which is swiftly "dealt with" as a mafia crime boss might deal with a target. There is swagger, there is bravado, there is a sense of triumphant victory over the invisible illusion as if it were a curse.

    If you are skeptical of theism and this describes your disposition, then I sincerely encourage you to reconsider what, precisely, you believe theism to entail. It is a historical fact that "atheism" did not appear on the European continent as an explicit denial of all divinity until this same divinity had been transformed into what we now call "personalism" - i.e. a God that is a thing-among-things, distinguishable only by quantitative properties.

    It is interesting, I think, that those who parade science as overcoming theology seem to be unaware of the relatively recent advancements in the social sciences, particularly anthropology, ethnology, and sociology. This austere naturalism seems more fit in the days of Feuerbach, Marx, Freud, Frazer and Tyler and not in the more contemporary scene, where empirical facts are more valued than armchair speculation and modern mentalities are not artificially transposed onto ancient minds.
  • Why be rational?
    ↪mrnormal5150
    I suppose "having reasons" can have multiple interpretations. In the coherence sense, one is rational if one acts according to reasons that, regardless of their reality, cohere with the rest of a person's beliefs and desires. But they still do have reasons, they still act upon a hypothetical imperative. The goal is set, the rules are placed and the act is set in motion.

    Of course this leads to a general issue facing coherentism, that a matrix of beliefs may cohere well but have no basis in reality, i.e. the logic is valid but the premises are false. To ground the normativity of rationality seems to require that the premises be true - otherwise the rationality is arbitrary. The rules are set up, and the agent follows them correctly, but they don't really mean anything. Kant seems to bring this point up when he discusses the rationality of morality, and how it chills us to the bone to see twisted, evil people act with cold "rationality". They have rationality in terms of hypothetical imperatives because they act upon maxims, but in terms of categorical imperatives they have an absence of rationality. Immoral acts are thus always irrational acts.

    Nietzsche, I believe, critiques this sort of rationalism; there cannot be any reasons to be moral, since we can always push the question back further. Why should you not lie? Because that is immoral. But why should you be moral? Because that's what morality asks. But why should we follow morality? The meta-normative question exceeds the bounds of morality. Later certain British intuitionists tried to avoid this problem by denying the regress and affirming that there is no meta-normative question, that morality just is binding and to ask "why be moral?" is to ask a malformed question. Anyway I think this may be relevant to the current discussion. If morality is aligned with rationality, so that what is rational is also what is moral, then the question "why be moral" is eclipsed by the question "why be rational?"

    The question "why be rational?", though, is a meta-rational question, no? Is it not asking for reasons to be rational?
  • Why be rational?
    ↪mrnormal5150
    What other definition of rationality is there apart from having reasons?
  • Why be rational?
    Do we have reasons to satisfy requirements of rationality? In other words, is rationality normative, i.e. to do with reasons? — mrnormal5150

    Are you asking for a rational justification for being rational? Isn't that circular?
  • What are you listening to right now?
  • The Existence of God
    ↪GodlessGirl
    LOL!

    I don't debate trolls, sorry.
  • The Existence of God
    ↪GodlessGirl


    The omnipotence paradox is a straw man, since it requires that God have a logically incoherent power. God could only be omnipotent if he lacked the power to do something that was logically possible. Demanding God do the logically impossible is like demanding he design a square circle.

    The omniscience paradox is once again a straw man. For one, if God is omnipotent and omniscient, then the capacity for God to change his mind would be logically impossible. But for classical theists, God is eternal and outside of time, so it is inappropriate to speak of God "making choices".

    Furthermore, if you insist that God have the ability to bring about logical incoherency, then you have done a major disservice to your own atheism, because God can now bring it about that he exists, despite your arguments that attempts to prove that he doesn't. If God can make contradictions true, then he can make it true that he exists regardless of whatever argument you have.
  • The Existence of God
    If you think you have a refutation to either of these I will be happy to crush you. — GodlessGirl

    :snicker:
  • The Existence of God
    A god with the 4 omnis is a logically incoherent concept. — GodlessGirl

    Why?
  • Have you ever been suspended in dread?
    I suppose everyone has unless they're brain dead maybe.
  • About mind altering drugs
    Psilocybin is quite an interesting drug too due to its potential utility for treating depression, OCD, and phobias. — Posty McPostface

    I have considered trying mushrooms for this reason and also obviously curiosity. Though I'm a little iffy about the loss of "control" in a psychoactive experience. I think I might be more sensitive to "drugs" than normal, so even weed can give me a bad time if I have too much or am in the wrong situation. No big deal though. I smoke weed occasionally and I do it because it's a (probably, hopefully?) harmless recreation that makes me laugh and relax.

    My epistemological views have shifted to being more skeptical - it is not false to say that everyone is technically "on drugs" when "drugs" are any chemical that influences cognitive function. I'm not really entertaining the notion of absolute relativity. Just a little more flexibility in what counts as veridical perception, or what is justification for belief. When experience is conditioned by things like neurotransmitters, you have to wonder why one experience-chemical correlate is favored over another experience-chemical correlate. In general, though, I see drugs as potentially helpful in a cognitive sense but probably misleading in a spiritual sense.

    My opinion on drugs is that while they all have the potential to be abused, they can also be very positive. I think this is a moderate view that is held by most people on the political left. It seems ridiculous to me that marijuana possession is a felony while alcohol isn't. The drug policy of the United States is anti-intellectual and based on fear and racism and is counter-productive to the understanding of drugs. If we had more research on the effects drugs have on people, I think people would be able to make smarter decisions on what they put in their bodies. But dumb programs like DARE just make drugs into a taboo which only makes people, especially adolescents, more tempted to try them.
  • Poll: Does consciousness admit of degrees?
    To be sure, there is a difference between being non-conscious and being conscious. But between things that are conscious, what would make something "more" conscious than another thing?

    As far as I can tell the only difference would be in amount of consciousness, that is to say, the size of the set of things that one is aware of. "Transcending to a higher degree of consciousness" can only mean a change in the contents of consciousness.
  • TPF Quote Cabinet
    There is no disgust with life, no despair, no sense of the nothingness of things, of the worthlessness of remedies, of the loneliness of man; no hatred of the world and of oneself; that can last so long: although these attitudes of mind are completely reasonable, and their opposites unreasonable. But despite all this, after a little while; with a gentle change in the temper of the body; little by little; and often in a flash, for minuscule reasons scarcely possible to notice; the taste for life revives, and this or that fresh hope springs up, and human things take on their former visage, and show they are not unworthy of some care; not so much to the intellect, as indeed, so to speak, to the senses of the spirit. And that is enough to make a person, aware and convinced as he may be of the truth, as well as in spite of reason, both persevere in life, and go along with it as others do: for those very senses (one might say), and not the intellect, are what rules over us . . . . And life is a thing of such small consequence, that man, as regards himself, ought not to be very anxious either to keep it or to discard it. Therefore, without pondering the matter too deeply; with each trivial reason that presents itself, for grasping the former alternative rather than the latter, he ought not to refuse to do so. — Giacomo Leopardi
  • To See Everything Just As It Is
    Yes, I think God is a helpful concept to have, even if you are not theistic. The classical God sees things in their entirety. Objects do not transcend the perspective of God as they do in finite creatures like humans. There is no mediation, no conceptual apparatus, no "filtering". God knows all because he sees all.
  • Suicide and Death
    ↪Vinson
    :up:

    Culture is most certainly a sublimation of death anxiety. Suicide is a tabu subject because the strength to face another day often comes from a group-think "everyone else is doing it." There is inertia to living, and it's put in check when someone kills themselves. The unspeakable option reveals itself as "there", as always being "there". Death is always a tragedy, but a suicide's death is marred with controversy.

    "He always seemed so full of life" is quite simply a means for people to reassure themselves they are not to blame, that there's "nothing they could do", that it's the suicide's own fault for being suicidal. Same goes with referring suicides to suicide hotlines - "Here! Call this number so I don't have to deal with you anymore!" The failure to use suicide hotlines is construed as a failure of the suicidal person. The worst case of misunderstanding seems to be with the insistence that by simply throwing pleasures at someone, their problems will magically disappear. Telling someone "but your life is so gooooood!" or "look at all you haaaaaave!" or "you have so much to look forward tooooooooo!" insults the authority a person has over their life.

    There are few things I staunchly believe in; one of these things is the unalienable right of any person to end their life when they see fit. The subjective, personal life of an individual is magnitudes greater in depth and complexity than anything else and it deserves absolute respect.
  • On persuasion in theory
    ↪MindForged
    Thank you for responding.

    Flamboyance can be attempted by academics to their fellows, but assuming it's in a relatively formal setting it's not likely to function as a way of passing off nonsense. — MindForged

    By "flamboyance", I was not meaning anything outrageous. I meant very simply common wording, as well as general organization of ideas. A theory with little evidence that is organized and worded in a pleasing manner may very well get more attention than a theory with better evidence but poor organization. A theory that sparks the imagination, makes people really wonder, can be completely false yet nevertheless garner significant support. There are many aspects of the presentation that subtly influence how you view the theory: is it a man, or a woman who is speaking? What ethnicity are they? That metaphor used three paragraphs back was quite astute: but what about the theory as a whole? Sometimes it seems like these things are peppered around, like icing on the cake, to make the theory look more appetizing than it would without.

    Consider: the two sentences mean the same thing:

    "In 1492 Columbus sailed across the Atlantic Ocean."

    "In the year 1492, Columbus braved the vast, blue expanse: the Atlantic Ocean."

    Both mean the same thing, but the second one is more vibrant, alive, poetic.

    Similarly, we can say the following:

    "Bed bugs reproduce via traumatic insemination."

    or

    "Male bed bugs pin a female bed bug down and forcibly jab a sharp syringe into the female's abdomen in order to reproduce."

    Once again, they mean the same thing, but the presentation is different. The first one is seen as preferable because the second one harbors uncomfortable notions of rape. Supposedly, the natural world is amoral and so the further away we keep scientific inquiry from morality, the better (or so it goes).

    I think you're confusing accepting a theory because it's most rational theory with the unilateral assertion of its truth. Much of the time when pressed, it's the former that's being communicated. The latter is generally reserved for very well evidenced theories. — MindForged

    Right. But "most rational" theory may still be give too much credence to the theory. This can happen, I think, in historical fields (but also any field, conceivably). The evidence for things can be sparse. As a kid growing up I loved history (and still do). As I started to read more academic literature, I started to realize just how tentative historical theories can be. Often theories are taken as true because they cohere well to other theories, and ultimately cohere with a naturalistic picture of the world. But the evidence going for it is still not very strong. One almost thinks that sometimes researchers are motivated to create a theory in order to fill the gap of its absence. It doesn't matter how poorly supported it actually is - as long as it's the "most rational" theory (i.e. the best-of-the-worst).

    Theorists are doing the best they can, though. We've come a long way even in the past 200 years or so, the standards are much higher and rigorous than before. Which is good.

    Whereas the possibility you're representing is both unevidenced and extremely unlikely. Reality could be all sorts of ways, but what you're basically saying is this. "Oh yeah, those beliefs are useful and allow you to,.by believing them, correctly predict and plan for reality to be such and such a way. However, in fact it just seems like it." You might as well have said "No" for all you gave us to chew on for that view. If Newtonian dynamics tells me some object will move in some way in certain conditions, and it does under continued testing, it's just useful. It's (the theory) is either true or near enough that anything else is probably irrelevant to most tasks. — MindForged

    In Outlines of Skepticism, Sextus Empiricus describes the skeptical attitude as one of an ongoing inquiry. It is, in contemporary terms, agnosticism about anything but impressions. Neither dogmatic statement for or against a proposition is taken to be true, because there exists always the possibility that a proposition in the future will contradict the accepted belief. For Sextus, then, belief is akin to a disease of sorts - the less beliefs you have, the better off you are. The more you can navigate the world based on impressions alone, the better.

    This skepticism (and other forms of global skepticism) are not popular because they get in the way of "progress" and the achievement of projects. To my eyes, pragmatism never was and never will be an ideal solution to this epistemic dilemma. If we could get around skepticism Descartes-style, we would, but we can't. And we're too impatient and affirmative to be skeptical. This is not an argument against skepticism though. It just goes to show how little the real world actually matters, I think.

    To this day I do not think ideas like solipsism, relativism, or even "nihilism" have ever been "refuted". Most theorists have moved on - literally. They have "better things to do", since they assume to be true that which skepticism puts into doubt. Similar to how gung-ho moralists are so often vehemently against "relativism" to the point of using it as a derogatory term. Why are they like this? Because relativism threatens the moral project. Under relativism, they can't argue for absolute moral truths. Why do religious fundamentalists hate atheists? Because atheism threatens the central pillar of Judeo-Christian-Islamic religious belief. As such theory in general is threatened by skepticism. Yet skepticism is ignored, treated as "childish". Why?
  • Currently Reading
    ↪Maw
    Just finished reading At the Mountains of Madness. I love his ability to create suspense through omission of detail. It's the unknown, the lack of description, that lets the imagination run wild. I am also impressed by his scientific spirit and understanding of the disciplines. The creatures in his stories are still ultimately material beings that conceivably could be studied by science - or at least, we think we could study them, but they are so terrible and too powerful to be studied. Thus human reason is subordinated to raw, primordial horror. I found it particularly interesting how, in At the Mountains of Madness, the protagonist (a man of science) is actively and earnestly trying to prevent a scientific expedition into the Antarctic mountains. We so often associate science and scientists with a triumphant spirit of curious exploration - yet here is a man who wants to limit it. Perhaps some things are not worth knowing - or better left unknown.
  • Currently Reading
    Eight Theories of Religion by Daniel L. Pals. I wanted the third edition - Nine Theories - but someone else had checked it out.

    Still reading:

    The Meaning and End of Religion by Wilfred Cantwell Smith

    On Suicide by Jean-Luc Amery

    and lots of Lovecraft's supernatural horror stories. Everything else has been put on hold.
  • Can not existing be bad for you?
    Once I no longer exist, so too do my interests. Other people who continue to exist after me may look at my passing with thoughts about how much potential was possibly lost, but to me that won't matter anymore. But that does not mean that ceasing to exist didn't harm me--death harmed the once-existing creature. — NKBJ

    I can agree that the process of dying can be harmful, but to suddenly pop out of existence without any discomfort, fear or anything does not seem to me to be harmful. The point, in general, was that it doesn't really matter whether you exist in the next instant or not. If you do, your desire to exist has been satisfied. If you don't, then you no longer have a desire to exist that can be frustrated. Furthermore, does the desire to exist make sense? In some sense we are already dying; each one of us is descending, some of us faster than others. Some descend slowly enough that they forget they are descending.

    Each one of us senses the world to revolve around us. The world and what we do in it is significant and has cosmic importance. My argument is that this significance is an illusion. Anything we see as allegedly important and justifying of existence, anything that gives existence a "point" or "purpose", is illusory. Someone can say, "I want to live because I want to do XYZ" but if they die before then, nothing will have been lost. When you die, you don't so much lose something important so much as you lose the sense of something being important. Something important is not ripped away from you - rather, you lose the sense of importance so that nothing is important anymore. Things that were "important" before are no longer important. In fact they never were important, they only seemed to be. This all comes about from a misunderstanding of what non-existence is, seeing it as an evil to be avoided when it is but the dissolution of importance, good and evil, any value whatsoever.

    I've often considered what it would be like to suddenly and thoughtlessly kill myself. No planning, no shifting tides, no slow descent, no last words, no final goodbye. Just an immediate ceasing of my life. It might hurt a bit, but soon after none of that would matter. It would be like breaking out, destroying the chains that keep me anchored in being. Letting go of the ropes, falling away into nothingness. Is such an immediate negating of experience possible?

    Entities which have not yet existed likewise neither care nor not care about existing. It can't be better or worse for them to exist, because, in this context, "they" is just an abstract word waving in the direction of non-entities/hypotheticals. — NKBJ

    I think we can say that someone is better off never existing without implying they literally are better off. They have "interests", at least insofar as there are people who do exist and have the power to bring others into existence.

    ↪csalisbury
    I'm glad you shared your thoughts on the "there is". I have had this feeling as well, and I cannot argue for it either. Theologians like Origen argued for the pre-existence of the souls, so that who "we" are in a transcendental sense is immortal. Our material existence is but a mode of being, and to go a gnostic route, it is a prison built by Satan and perpetuated by procreation. God is trying to save us from being reincarnated into the material world. We are souls trapped in fleshy bodies and salvation comes from freeing ourselves from this cycle of rebirth. In a very real sense, people are literally better off never being born and existing in union with God instead of in separation, in the material world.

    I can't argue for this, like you said it's just a feeling. Maybe it's a defense mechanism, like a hope for something after death. I don't know, other than I'm weary. I recall Levinas' term "excendance", or the urge to escape Being with no destination mind. It's not transcendence to a higher plane of Being, it's excendance, just the impossible desire to escape it all.
  • Why, "You're not doing it right" is revealing
    Either you don't get it right, or you have to keep it right. The good never comes on its own, and the bad always does.

    That is how, phenomenologically, it is. First, there is deprivation of the good, presence of the bad. Then come our management efforts, the shifting-of-the-burden. The question is whether or not any future positive experiences gives sense to this negative structure. Does it make sense to give a burden to someone who does not have it, for future great pleasures they do not have the desire to experience?

    It seems to me that we are always-already immersed in suffering, and positive experiences typically are always "just up ahead". The grass is always greener on the other side. Of course, there is also the possibility that what we call "good" are shadows, or caricatures, of Goodness. It may be that I simply have not been given the opportunity to behold this ultimate good. Unfortunately, I see very little reason to believe this good is an actuality. It would have to be divine and I don't see why we should believe the divine exists. The way we approach existence, as creatures of a greater power, is by putting our trust in God and waiting for the final revelation that will make it all "make sense". It is a call for mercy - why do you do this to me, God? Why have you created me?

    Existence is furthermore absurd given the vast majority of people who never exist and to whom we do not shed a tear for. Existence is not "better than" not-existing, we do not pity the non-existent. This is because pity would be inappropriate: pity makes sense in the intra-worldly setting, where people already exist and have aims and are always-already suffering. Life is a drama, and it may be worth playing your part and trying to make a good production. But is it worth starting the drama?

    Now something I have thought about before is whether it is a contradiction to say it is never better to exist but once you exist it is now better to continue to exist. The desire to exist is a desire which cannot be frustrated. If you exist, it is satisfied. If you cease to exist, you cease to have the desire to exist and thus it cannot be frustrated. All reasons-for-existing come from existence within. Therefore there cannot be reasons to have reasons to exist. A reason to exist comes from existence, but it is existence that we are asking about so these reasons for existing must also be put into question.
  • Ethics of psychiatry
    f you ask me, I have never seen American society so full of delusion, paranoia, and mistrust. So, if you really think that's a good thing, then you're living in the golden age of insanity. — Posty McPostface

    No, I don't think living in crazy-land is a good thing. My point was that no matter how you frame it, excluding insane people from political discourse is a form of discrimination. Worldviews are silenced simply because they don't make "sense" to the "sane". The tyranny of sanity is the tyranny of a certain perspective that is more prevalent than others. It is aggressive and hypocritical. But that's just politics.
  • Ethics of psychiatry
    I had intended this thread, not as a discussion about the merits and failings of the orange clown, but as a discussion over the threat psychiatry is to a moral society. When "objectivity", "sanity" and "rationality" are socially conditioned, the idea of a truly free and equal society is conceivably a contradiction in terms. Disregarding the opinion of a "raving madman" because he is a raving madman dismisses this individual's perspective as irrelevant. "Sanity" is a way of (arbitrarily?) separating opinions that "matter" from those that don't.

    Yet if sanity is defined as an overwhelming majority consensus of what is "real", then the imposition of sanity upon society as a whole is tyrannical. The assumption of the "sane" with regards to the "insane" is that the latter must have something "broken" or deficient. This is dogmatic - what "sane" people describe as, say, paranoid schizophrenia, may actually be a more expansive form of awareness. The "broken mind of the schizophrenic" may actually let light in that is blocked by the normal "sane" mind. A so-called delusional person may actually be more acquainted with reality than the majority. It is not inconceivable that at least some people are mis-diagnosed as insane when they are, in reality, very much so sane. What people call "insanity" can actually be a surplus of sanity.

    All we are acquainted with are subjective phenomena. "Objectivity" is inter-subjectivity: the only contact we have with anything outside of ourselves is through mediated references and symbols. I cannot see what you see, you cannot see what I see. We can only partially represent what we see through language. This means that anyone not in broad agreement with general principles pertaining to the world at large is marginalized, and their political opinions ignored. This has a funny consequence: an "insane" person can be oppressed by the "sane" society, and this oppression is ignored as oppression by the sane society in virtue of it being a deficiency of sanity. The insane is silenced, ignored and sometimes locked away in a mental hospital.

    So a free and equal society is a contradiction in terms for many reasons, the tyranny of sanity being one. This tyranny is especially concerning when the state develops a strong ideology that incorporates certain mental states with privilege. Those who do not believe in the ideology of the state are deemed "insane". Sanity is political, it is but one way of organizing humans into those with opinions that matter and those that do not. It is discrimination, but it is not recognized as discrimination. Those who are "sane" are given more voice, time and recognition than those who are "insane".
  • Ethics of psychiatry
    To say Trump is paranoid, aggressive and mean, erratic, outrageous and concerning (morally) is not to make a diagnosis, merely to suggest that one might want to make one. — unenlightened

    I think this can be interpreted as saying it is fair to poison the well by suggesting a person is unqualified without any qualifications yourself.

    Have you read Alice Miller? — unenlightened

    Not very much.
  • What are you listening to right now?
  • Shouldn't religion be 'left'?
    Some scholars advocate abandoning the term "religion" altogether, but this just kicks the can down the road a bit further, as the proposed replacement terms are often even more vague than the word they are meant to replace.

    I think it can be recognized to have meaning with respect to pre-modern and non-Western societies, but not in the sense of a Hegelian reification of the term, which would be ahistorical.     — Thorongil

    I am reading Wilfred Cantwell Smith's The Meaning and End of Religion, for reference. The central thesis is that religion in its "corporate", either/or exclusivist form didn't "fully" manifest in the Western mind until after the Enlightenment. This is especially true for Oriental religions. These have been attempted to be classified by Westerns as "Hinduism" or "Confucianism", etc, when in reality this simplifies things and leaves out the reality of the situation; that nowhere in India was there a unified religious sect that can be seen as "Hinduism" - there are Hindus, but there is no Hinduism.

    What happened, according to Cantwell Smith, is that some Muslims invaded India and introduced the idea of an either/or religious mentality. This was also done during the Crusades, and later Western Christians in their atrocious colonial efforts steam-rolled over traditional religious belief and attempted to classify them in the way they classify religions back home in Europe.

    As long as the characteristics that you ascribed to the term were present during early Christianity, there's no need for the word "religion" to appear in any texts. If you wish to dispute that early Christianity had the characteristics that you talked about, say so and let's see if it did or not. — Πετροκότσυφας

    I already told you, I didn't want to derail the thread and that I would make a specific post about this topic later when I finish more readings. At any rate, in the early Christian texts never mention the term "religion" - the term "faith" is used primarily and is akin to the personal, inner faith of someone. Later, by the 16th century, "religion" was being used more, and then by around Kant we have the term "Christianity". Similarly, the trend went from Christian -> Christendom -> Christianity. Of course, the Roman persecution of the Christians helped with this progression, as did the Crusades.

    You can read ancient texts, but most are interpretations, translations. The word "religion" has no counterpart in China, or India, for example. Up until the ~16th century, Europe had no word for it either.
  • Nietzsche‘s Thus spoke Zarathustra
    Nietzsche's sister is responsible for altering his philosophy to make it amicable to the Nazi regime. Nietzsche would have hated this association.
  • If I were aware of the entire list of logical fallacies, would I be exempt from making wrong/bad...
    I admit I have only an introductory exposure to formal logic and know some things here and there. I'm no logician.
  • If I were aware of the entire list of logical fallacies, would I be exempt from making wrong/bad...
    1.) All winged horses are horses.
    2.) All winged horses have wings.
    3.) Therefore, some horses have wings.

    This is not quite valid since it is missing the premise that winged horses exist. Inserting this premise makes the syllogism valid but not sound, since the premise is false. But in order to know that this premise is false, one would have to be omniscient. But we are not omniscient.

    Isn't this all this amounts to? That humans are not omniscient?
  • If I were aware of the entire list of logical fallacies, would I be exempt from making wrong/bad...
    The first two premises seem clearly true, they're analytic statements. But the logic takes us from 2 obviously true premises to an obviously false conclusion: there are, in fact, no horses with wings. That's why the standard logical systems of our day treat arguments like the above as fallacious arguments, they commit the Existential fallacy. — MindForged

    Well,
    ↪Posty McPostface
    just confirmed we are not talking about epistemic content yet, but is this logically fallacious? Is the "existential fallacy" really a logical fallacy? The premises may be false, which makes the syllogism not-sound. But it is still valid. So what does fallacy mean here?

    Meinong would have said this syllogism is not only valid but can also be sound. Winged horses are horses, even if winged horses don't "exist" in the concrete sense.

    Treating this as a logical fallacy seems to commit us to something similar to Descartes' cogito, method of doubt. The fault in the aforementioned syllogism isn't with the syllogism as a form but with its premises, which are reduced to a syllogism as well, which in term has premises that are reduced to even more simple syllogisms, until we get to something indubitable. Unfortunately, the "fact" that winged horses do not exist is by no means indubitable.
  • If I were aware of the entire list of logical fallacies, would I be exempt from making wrong/bad...
    Would I be any closer to the correct apprehension of reality/truth? — Posty McPostface

    No, I don't think so. There is a difference between logical validity and soundness. Having valid syllogisms doesn't make you any closer to reality, not unless these syllogisms are sound (by having true premises). And having true premises requires non-theoretical commitments, such as the commitment to explore, learn, adapt, etc. Logic is form, sense is data. A computer may be programmed to be completely logical with respect to some input, but if there is no input, the computer has nothing to do.
  • Shouldn't religion be 'left'?
    If "determinant "thing"" means having an either/or mentality, doctrines, being against heretics etc, then it was a "determinant thing" since Paul's time. If you don't trust my assertions, you can read Paul's Epistles, The Acts of the Apostles, Irenaeus' "Against Heresies" and the rest of the Church Fathers. — Πετροκότσυφας

    But that's exactly my point about interpretation, hermeneutics. You can't simply assume that what Paul meant by religion is what modern westerners mean. Looking at the textual evidence, you can actually see statistical patterns of word use. You can see how the meaning of a word develops. Assuming words have static meaning is a huge problem if you want to be historical. Based on what I have read in the field of "religious studies", the term "religion" by no means has a universal definition. Just like how "atheism" as the explicit rejection of any and all "divinity" has no textual references until around the French Revolution with Denis Diderot's temporary atheism.
  • Shouldn't religion be 'left'?
    ↪Πετροκότσυφας
    Well, both of us are just asserting things. I don't think Christianity as a determinant "thing" existed for as long as you do. This is partly an empirical question and partly a hermeneutical/philosophical question. How the term "religion" is interpreted (or projected) will of course wildly determine what the history of religion looks like.

    But to return to the OP, my general point was that leftist politics tends to lean on science as a crutch, often to the point of scientism. Of course "religion" will not be found here, especially when scientistic folks use "Religion" as a derogatory straw man. Though I also pointed out how Marxism is essentially a religion as well - there's the quip: "There is no God, and Karl Marx is his prophet." Religion is there, it's just not recognized as religion. Marxists, for example, proselytize about the coming eventuality of communism. People are free to join and leave, but fundamentally those outside of Marxist thought are very, very wrong, at least according to Marxism. Marxism shares many similarities to the other contemporary religions. The difference, for Marxists, between Marxism and other organized religions is that Marxism is right (and therefore not a religion... :chin: ).
  • Shouldn't religion be 'left'?
    ↪praxis
    ↪Πετροκότσυφας


    I don't want to derail this discussion, and I was going to make a separate thread related to this later anyway. But a major idea here is that the portrayal of ancient and even medieval religion as "Religion" in the same way we see, say, Baptists as a "Religion" and the accompanied either/or mentality is a gross misinterpretation, bad hermeneutics. There were hints and patterns of this happening before, with Mani and later Muhammad, but people like Jesus, Buddha or Zarathustra did not see themselves as founding a "religion", nor did the traditions they spawned (at least not initially). Islam here is an exception and that's an interesting case study - the birth of Islam came with a specific title for the religion that was not applied externally nor adopted later on down the road.

    This is a radical idea from a stringently modern, Western perspective, but it's this perspective that distorts the history and development of "religion". With the development of science came a new cosmopolitanism and imperialism. Christianity began to be compared to other religious traditions. It was no longer about following Christ, it was about belonging to the right set of doctrines. The "threat" of Islam and the crusades in the middle ages also accelerated this process, and helped introduce the idea of an organized, corporate religion to Europe (which Islam itself inherited from Mani). It was now about "Christendom", which slowly morphed into Christianity (as a Religion, and the Religion ... fast forward a few centuries and we have imperialists masking as priests).

    I know what you thought I was arguing for, a return to "traditionalist" religious perspectives and a conservative, cranky disapproval of Science as ruining everything. That's not what I'm saying. "Science" did nothing wrong here, it's not to be "blamed". Though a stringent form of naturalism ought to be put in check, I think.
  • Shouldn't religion be 'left'?
    ↪Πετροκότσυφας
    These things don't just appear out of nowhere. They take time to develop, but as you are probably aware, the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution accelerated many things. That's why they're called "revolutions". Organized religion existed before but developed into something truly perverse during and after the Enlightenment.
  • Shouldn't religion be 'left'?
    ↪Πετροκότσυφας
    True, I should have said that it was at least partially a result, or was influenced dramatically by the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution. As I said, Mani was the first recorded person to make an "organized religion". This happened long before Descartes and Newton lived. A better way to say it would be that the Enlightenment accelerated and consolidated religion into the organized, corporate form the West is familiar with.
  • Shouldn't religion be 'left'?
    And like that, all the institutional structure, all the literature and the persecutions against the heretics are erased; until the dogmatic scientist comes to infect and force (!) the undogmatic and tolerant priest to change to his mirror image. Wow! — Πετροκότσυφας

    No, I'm not saying we should ignore the atrocities committed by organized religion. My point was that organized religion is at least in part a reaction to the scientific revolution. But it's been around since someone like Mani who was arguably the very first person to knowingly write scripture, organize a corporate religious structure and call themselves a prophet (he was later put to death by imitators of his vision).

    The point must have been missed, I wasn't arguing for a return to this dogmatic structure. I am well-aware of the risks and the history to substantiate these risks. Organized, corporate, "messianist" religion is mostly bad. But there are good parts of "religion". Just the same with science, much good, and some bad. Over the course of centuries, Western culture has differentiated science from religion, and philosophy from religion. But that's just not an accurate description of how these things operate, even in the West itself. Try applying those dichotomies to places like India or China and you'll never understand the culture, because it's inappropriate to project Western concepts like Religion onto other cultures. Same goes with Science, and Philosophy.
  • Shouldn't religion be 'left'?
    ↪Jacykow
    "Religion" is a term of abuse, more often than not applied externally by other people who wish to have a ready-made strawman to win a silly debate.

    Only religion can create unquestionable meaning. — Jacykow

    Scholars of religion often see things like Marxism as a religion (despite the whiney yells of protest by these Marxists). But the religious attitude need not have a capital-letter label. In fact, the idea of organized religion with an either/or mentality is a relatively recent phenomenon. I'm willing to argue that the concept of a religious organization, with a set of doctrines and heresies and that either/or mentality is a result of the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution. Religious people began to feel compelled to transform religion from a personal, communal tradition to a sectarian, dogmatic structure that models the scientific disciplines. Dogmatic naturalism has forced religion to transform into something unnatural, where its truths are banal propositions (illegitimately interpreted literally) rather than a surging, artistic, inner force.
  • Is objective morality imaginary?
    As long as illness and natural disasters happen to humans, carnivorous animals have to eat other animals or suffer and die themselves, we can not provide equal wellbeing to each sentient being. And if we can not that, then separateness of persons and equal distribution of well-being will be both required for objective morality to exist and impossible to achieve, which only leaves us with the option that it is imaginary!

    Is there a solution for this problem from moral realiists here?     — Atheer

    This is a non-sequitur, as this is only a problem for affirmative moral realism, i.e. a morality that never intersects life.

    If life is (objectively) immoral, then the contradictions inherent in any sophisticated moral system will be inevitable. Affirmative morality requires the strategic and partial application of these moral concepts, and thus will always be vulnerable to criticism. The next step taken by affirmative theorists is to then decide which criticisms are "more important" than others.

    Unless it is recognized that life intersects morality, moral realism will never make sense. There will always be contradictions, exceptions, ambiguity. Hence why something like moral particularism / pluralism is a suitable choice for the intra-worldly but does not satisfy the condition of being the "absolute" morality. The absolute morality contains no contradictions, but life contradicts absolute morality and so a particular morality (which is an amalgamation of different, often competing moral concepts) is constructed ad hoc.
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