that particular world is often a patchwork quilt of words and emotions. — Tom Storm

As are they all.

I used to ask this question. I think the answer is complex and hard for literal minded people like me to comprehend. The gospels are not 'disposable' - this is a reaction to, not an understanding of what is meant - the books suggest a truth above narrative and provide examples and teachings in a form for humans to engage with at their level of understanding. — Tom Storm

This in response to your reference to "literal minded people."

I'm not a Christian, but my wife is Catholic so I've spent some time around the church. I was at a dinner party sitting next to my 30 year old son, a 20 year old Jewish woman, and another 35ish year old man. Somehow the subject turned to religion in general and transubstantiation specifically. I told them that Catholics believe that the wafer is the actual body of Christ and the wine is his actual blood. They said, "You mean symbolically." I said, no, literally. We talked about it for 10 minutes and I couldn't convince them not that the Catholics were correct, but that they actually believed it. Finally my wife came over and gave them the official word. Even then they kept arguing.

If you want to understand what other people understand about the world, you need to make sure you are in the same world they are.

Well, I wouldn't call them atrocities. — Ciceronianus

Well, yes. There was some irony in my response.

Does it work? I don't think so. But it may make these theologians Jesus Freaks of a different kind, worshiping an abnormal, unusual, unexpected Jesus. Or perhaps they make a freak of Jesus. — Ciceronianus

Atheists like to complain about how religionists have hurt the world - they start wars, they torture disbelievers, they subjugate women. You have added to that list of atrocities doing handstands in church and pestering people in the streets. Oh, the horror, the horror.

That is interesting. But we know there are causes. Bridges collapse - engineers investigate - causes are identified and reported. — Cuthbert

Saying that causes exist is not the same as saying everything is caused.

The concept of cause is very troublesome to explain in general terms in the philosophy schoolroom. But jettisoning it seems premature. — Cuthbert

Bertrand Russell did in 1912, and he was not the first. To say that causes don't exist is open to question, but that doesn't mean it's premature.

We can banish 'cause' from the schoolroom for being awkward. We still need it in order to live our lives every day. It is a phenomenon that should be preserved in philosophy even when it gives us a headache. — Cuthbert

I use the word "because" all the time. If someone hits my car with theirs, I say "He caused the accident." As I said previously, I have no problem with the idea of cause in many situations. I also have no problem with dispensing with it when it gets in the way, as it always does when we talk about the first cause.

I don't think the purpose of this thread is to discuss whether causation is a good way of understanding things. I don't want to send it off on a tangent. It's an interesting question, but I it would take some homework on my part before I'm ready to have that discussion. As I noted, my purpose in responding to the OP was just to point out that it is not a foregone conclusion that everything has a cause.

I think I have a long way to go before I can be compared to you, when it comes to insulting those who you don't agree with. Please keep trying to build your evidence. I will let the other members of the forum judge between us. — universeness

I will continue to point out the difference between your professed desire that people be treated with respect and your disrespectful actions. I think the other members of the forum have better things to do than "judge between us." Perhaps you should tattle to the moderators again.

I'm not alone in exposing the flaws in our universe — Agent Smith

A fact is a fact! If people had never complained about the awful heat/cold, no one would've ever thought of inventing the AC/heater! — Agent Smith

Again, delusions of grandeur. Complaining never solved any problem. It takes work to do that.

I always find it sad (OK, and a bit funny) to see atheists contort themselves in an effort to deny the reality of the Creator. Atheism is an irrational worldview.
— Photios
I don't find theists sad, they are just scared and they need a superhero who cares about them to comfort them when it gets dark. They don't question the existence of god because they need it to exist. — universeness

I was struck by your response to Photios. It reminded me, with perhaps some irony, of things you wrote a week or so ago:

you need to be less provocative in the phrases you have used against others on this forum and arrogant text example you have just responded to me with ('hows that') — universeness

My only complaint with you, is you can be very insulting towards others. You come across as petulant at times. — universeness

T Clark has been very disrespectful towards others. — universeness

I wonder what successful science he had in mind, in which causal laws have been replaced? "What caused X?" seems to be a common form of research question in all the sciences. I'm struggling to think of an exception. — Cuthbert

I put the quote in just to show that the necessity of causation is not a foregone conclusion. Many philosophers and scientists dispute the need for it. I have my own reasons for thinking that causation is not a very useful concept in many situations, but I thought hearing that from Russell would be more convincing.

The squeaky wheel gets the grease! — Agent Smith

And you are the forums resident squeaky wheel.

The situation is relatively better now than in the past precisely because people like antinatalists have been kvetching about the problems with life... We're the ones who stimulate positive change in the world! — Agent Smith

Talk about delusions of grandeur.

making it possible for people like you to denounce, in degrading terms, people like us who complain! — Agent Smith

You; in your self-righteous, self-serving, self-satisfied smugness; say that having children is evil. You deserve to be denounced in degrading terms.

I'm glad I seemed to have managed to express this well enough to make sense (for a change!).

It is probably one of the most common misconceptions of Kant's work I come across and some people just cannot see it likely because it is so blindingly obvious and they don't see the importance of stating something so obvious. Others are just atheists or theists trying to force views upon others by taking his words and terms out of context to justify some silly political view. — I like sushi

I don't know if you saw my previous emails about the similarities between Kant's noumena and the Tao as described in the Tao Te Ching. I think my familiarity with Lao Tzu makes me open to your way of seeing things.

Antarctica is a continent on a planet that's already organically occupied by humans. — L'éléphant

I think Antarctica might a good model for how it could work in space.

Space exploration, to put it bluntly. — L'éléphant

If there is nothing to be gained in space other than knowledge, I don't see why anyone will care what happens there. If there is no economical way of bringing resources available in space back here to earth, the only value of space will be military.

Okay, so this is your answer. — L'éléphant

It wasn't an answer.

As there has never been a time in history that humans occupied a non-owned entity such as other planets, — L'éléphant

Antarctica.

We know that the US, Russia, China have galactic ambition — L'éléphant

I'm not sure what this means. Meaningful galactic ambition depends on the ability to travel faster than light. Current science says that's not possible.

But what if we could actually create human habitat on Mars? Should territories be created and laws established on Mars similar to Earth? What about ownership? Economy? — L'éléphant

Questions -

• Is there anything in space worth going after. Probably. Raw materials. Scientific knowledge.
• If yes, where is it? Is it on a large celestial object - planet or moon - or on a smaller one - asteroid?
• Is it economical to go after the materials?
• Is the best way of getting the materials by using fixed bases?

If it turns out space is worth going after, rules could be decided by 1) International treaty or 2) First come/best military first served. Method 2 is how it worked on Earth.

Should we outlaw wars, terrorism, overpopulation, and pollution? — L'éléphant

If we could have, we probably would have already.

Of course, on the Internet nobody knows for sure how much of what somebody says reflects their actual life and how much of it is public relations copy. — Bitter Crank

With me, what you read is absolutely, completely, exactly, precisely, indubitably what I am really like. But you knew that.

I am actually a cloistered monk with an overheated imagination in an isolated monastery and lots of time on my hands. — Bitter Crank

I always assumed it was something like that, although I was leaning more toward a dungeon than a monastery.

I have found great pleasure in music written by people who have been dead for hundreds of years, whether that was sitting in a plush orchestra hall seat or listening to it through earphones on a bus. — Bitter Crank

I don't question the value of music played by orchestras in beautiful, acoustically designed halls. I only question @baker's smug arrogance in feeling contempt for those who don't share his level of involvement.

You have found your level. — Bartricks

You spelled "you," "have," "found," "your," and "level" correctly

The reason for everything is a thing that came before it. — Ree Zen

For the purpose of this discussion, I'm going to say that reason is the same thing as cause. The idea that every phenomenon has a cause has been questioned many times, and not just recently. This is a summary of Bertrand Russell's position in 1912:

Writing in 1912, Bertrand Russell declared talk of causes and of causality to be obsolete, noting its elimination from scientific theory as he saw it: "in advanced sciences such as gravitational astronomy, the word 'cause' never occurs.. The law of causality, I believe, like much that passes muster among philosophers is a relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because it is erroneously supposed to do no harm." Causal laws, he claimed, "tend to be replaced by quite different laws as soon as a science is successful." Not only did Russell consider causal talk to be obsolete, he thought remnants of causal talk outside science to be harmful: "the word 'cause' is so inexorably bound up with misleading associations as to make its complete extrusion from the philosophical vocabulary desirable." There is, he maintained, no clear, philosophically defensible notion of causation.

What's wrong with "naive, ad hoc, unsystematic, uneducated" listening to music? How many know how to play an electronic guitar? How many know the history of pop-music or rock?

How are those people who don't know all that about pop or rock music so different in their liking of the music from those who do?
— ssu

To name just a few:
They get bored more easily by the music.
They miss out on important artistic elements.
They contribute to the culture of shallowness and the general decline of civilization into mere consumerism.
They don't meaningfully contribute to the artists who produced the art work. — baker

Seems likely that music evolved as a participatory activity. People didn't just listen to it, they danced to it and sang with it. People going to a dance club are probably using music in a more natural, human way than you and the others sitting in a concert hall listening to the music of guys who have been dead for two or three hundred years.

I looked Aickman up on Wikipedia. He sounds like an interesting writer.

We (antinatalists) are only working with facts as they stand — Agent Smith

Your argument is based on value judgements, not facts. Whiney, cowardly value judgements.

No you didn't. You seem incapable of foccusing on the argument in the op — Bartricks

You spelled focusing wrong.

it is about the harmfulness of death an antinatalism. Focus. — Bartricks

Which is exactly what I said. Focus.

Natalists are saying that the world is a safe place for children. Is it? — Agent Smith

Anti-natalists are saying that bringing people into the world is ok only if there is no risk. That's a silly standard. The whole basis of the anti-natalist argument presented in this thread is that death is; in an of itself; terrible, horrible, no good, very bad enough to make the rest of life not worth living. As we've shown, most people don't feel that way. You guys are wrong. And you're whiny cowards.

We cannot talk of, or about, a 'thing' that we're at base level incapable of experiencing. It is not an it, it has no 'thinghood'.

Our world, our entire world, is phenomenon. Noumenon in a positive sense isn't anything we have any relation to and as we are here talking about 'noumenon' it is only in the negative sense as a marker for the limitation of our sensible experience (sensible in the terms of how Kant uses the term 'sensible' ... experienced).

If there was noumenon then we wouldn't be able to refer to it or articulate it in any form. Think about it a little. The thing-in-itself cannot be referred to on those terms in any way that makes any sense. It is only our habit of inferring that leads to the belief in some 'otherness' that is beyond our realms of comprehension ... but if some said item is beyond our realm of comprehension then our merely stating the possibility of some item is referring to some item and that is contrary to the said item being 'beyond comprehension'. — I like sushi

I missed this until Possibility referenced it. I like the way you've expressed it. I agree, noumena, as described by Kant, are not things at all.

Two thoughts 1) This is the wrong forum. 2) Because you have provided no background information or scientific reference, this appears to be pseudo-science. It would be taken down immediately on a real science forum.

You benefit from the fact that the moderators have a soft spot for fake scientific claptrap. Or, I guess it would be more accurate to say real scientific claptrap. Or real unscientific claptrap. Just claptrap I guess.

As in, you'll look at the book, but not necessarily read it. Instead of saying, "I didn't read the book, I saw the movie," you're saying, "I saw the book, not the movie." — Hanover

I've been studying speed reading, so I already got the books and read them. It took me ten minutes. They involve philosophy.

The difference is that Kant is also bound by the pre-Darwinian Western notion that humanity is in a sense ‘super-natural’, so while Laozi strives to include humanity within both his schema and the Tao, Kant cannot but position humanity outside of the noumena, as an entity in relation to it, and to his schema. I think this is evident in a reliance on the ‘object’ in his third critique. — Possibility

This seems to me to be a good description of the main difference between western and eastern philosophies. Eastern works from the inside and western from the outside.

Since you favor "short books on aesthetics" and self-identify, IIRC, as a pragmatist, I recommend John Dewey's Art as Experience. An even shorter read, at the intersection of aesthetics & metaphysics, is Language and Myth by Ernst Cassirer. Both are more or less Collingwood's peers though they significantly differ in emphases from one another. — 180 Proof

Thanks. I'll take a look.

The book you're referencing is 350 pages, so it's not exactly short. There is a book on Amazon claiming to be Collingwood's "The Principles of Art," but it's actually a 20 or so page abridged version.

You've still got 330 pages to go. — Hanover

There you go. I was feeling all virtuous and wise and you ruin everything. The long version is not available electronically. Part of my Taoist faith is that books that can't be read in electronic versions do not exist. "The text that's not on Kindle is not the etermal Text." That's what Lao Tzu would have said.

Just finished Collingwood's "The Principles of Art." I've been thinking about aesthetics a lot recently. I think I finally wore out metaphysics. The book was interesting and helpful. Maybe I'll put together a new discussion about it.

Besides being insightful, by which I mean he see's things in a way similar to me, the book also fulfills my primary requirement for a philosophical work - it's short.

IknowIknowIknow.....hold the details, please (grin). — Mww

No. Don't worry about holding the details. I might not understand it, but being exposed is a good thing.

As for antinatalism, I still think it's the most reasonable policy — Agent Smith

I have no problem with that, although I disagree.

you want the annihilation of the human race in the most horrible way possible: — Agent Smith

This - smug, self-righteous, self-serving, unsupported - is what makes me want to kick you and Bartricks down the street. Let's leave it at that.

But why are you skeptical about that? — Dijkgraf

I don't understand your question.

But I'm happy to keep looking into it. Is there a specific reference in the Tao you can point to that resonates with any aspect of Kant, or are you talking more in terms of tone of the work itself? — Tom Storm

I was specifically talking about a comparison between the Tao and noumena.

I've been thinking I should reread some of Alan Watts stuff on Taoism, which is more prosaic, less poetic, than the Tao Te Ching. You're a pretty prosaic guy. I see that as a good thing here on the forum where flights of fancy are constantly taking off. Rather than provide you with any quotes from the TTC, if I find something in Watts, I'll pass it along.

Kant’s crucial insight here is to argue that experience of a world as we have it is only possible if the mind provides a systematic structuring of its representations. This structuring is below the level of, or logically prior to, the mental representations that the Empiricists and Rationalists analyzed. ' — Wayfarer

That makes sense to me. I need to spend more time with the science.

Baby's are born with a priori knowledge. If born blank knowledge gathering can't even start. — Dijkgraf

Which is what I said.

One of Kant's key insights is that we're not the passive recipients of sensations but knowledge is in part constituted by a priori or transcendental factors (contributed by the mind itself) imposed upon the data of experience — Wayfarer

When I started the "My favorite verses of the Tao Te Ching" thread about a year ago, I found myself dealing with the question of what my relationship with the Tao could be, given that I can't talk about it or understand it. Your thoughts about meditation feel like an insight into how that might work.

As for a priori factors, I am of two minds. First, I am skeptical of claims to a priori status. It is too often used to avoid having to justify beliefs. On the other hand, it's clear our minds are not blank slates. Human capacities for dealing with language, numbers, and even moral judgements have been shown to have a basis that is not dependent, or at least not only dependent, on experience. Not just our minds, but our eyes, ears, tongues, noses, and skin appear to have sensitivities consistent with categorization and classification of the oneness of the world into all the abundance we experience.

So, once again, turn the old meat walnut on and try and come up with a cogent criticism of the argument in the OP. — Bartricks

Been there, done that, although you're unwilling to acknowledge it. When your ideas get knocked down, you do one of two things 1) just keep repeating your argument as if saying it over and over again makes it right or 2) change your argument and pretend that you didn't. Oh, wait, there's a third 3) Insult people.

So, what actually is that? It looks like it could be a galaxy.

Note as well, that accusing procreators of being evil is not to focus on the arguer rather than the argument. It is rather what the antinatalist conclusion implies about them. — Bartricks

evilly self-absorbed inconsiderate person — Bartricks