How does a Last Supper differer from a coat of off-white? — Banno

If a coat of off-white is presented on a surface as an artwork, then the only difference is that the former is clearly a representational work. I say both are pictures in that they are both designed to depict something. I suppose you could say they are both representational in that one represents a gathering of people at a meal and the other represents an idea, but I think that would be stretching it.

...unless it was painted using Microsoft paint. — Banno

Sure but I don't think Microsoft paint is really paint, but is rather "paint", just as Microsoft pencil, charcoal or pastel is not pencil, charcoal or pastel. Digitally produced works do not count as one or the other, but as prints (if they are printed out that is).

↪Janus The story we tell about the painting is different to the story we tell about the wall, even if the medium is the same. The Sistine Chapel ceiling might have had a couple of coats of nice duck-egg blue...

Further, not all paintings are pictures... — Banno

I'm not seeing the relevance of your comment about the painting and the wall.

All paintings and drawings are pictures on my definition (which is not to say all paintings are representational in case that was how you read it).

In any case I was answering the questions "What is a painting as opposed to a drawing?". Both are applications of some medium or other on some surface or other, and I was pointing out that generally 'painting' refers to works which use predominately wet mediums and 'drawing' refers to works which use predominately dry mediums.

A picture? Tell this to surrealist artists such as Salvador Dalí. — javi2541997

Why would you say that is not a picture?

Isn't painting the way we express our dreams and hallucinations, while drawing is a simple technique? — javi2541997

'Painting' as a verb signifies the act, and as a noun the product of the act. Same with 'drawing'.

A painting is a picture whose predominant medium is paint. A drawing is a picture whose predominant medium is pencil, charcoal, pastel, chalk etc.. There is no hard and fast distinction...it's basically a somewhat loose distinction between wet and dry mediums.

However, the SEP article seems to want to say that a proposition is what is in common between a number of sentences or statements. That's what I don't get.
— Ludwig V

That's exactly the standard analysis. The bolded part that follows the word, "that" is a proposition.
— frank
You're offering an ostensive definition, and your problem is that when you point to a proposition "the bolded part", I see a sentence. If you think about it, it isn't possible to "bold" a proposition - it's like trying to italicize an apple. Wrong category.
Not sure whether mine is the standard analysis, but it may be. It's a work in progress, anyway. — Ludwig V

I can't see a problem with the idea that propositions are the conceptual content of assertive statements or sentences, or in other words propositions are what is being asserted (proposed). Sentences and statements obviously may take many different forms, even in the one language, not to mention different languages, while conveying the same ideas. So the propositional content is simply the idea or ideas which are conveyed. Where's the problem?

It merely depends on what we mean by "subjective." If we mean by it "subject-relative," then such things are subjective. — Leontiskos

The most common usage of "subjective/ objective" means "matter of opinion/ not matter of opinion" and that was, of course the usage I had in mind. So whether one feels cold or not is not a matter of opinion, and hence there is an objective fact of the matter.

Is it hot or cold? Or is it undecidable? Or is it just shit we made up?

None of these quite work. — Banno

:up: She feels cold, you feel hot. Not merely subjective, but a fact of the matter about how different bodies feel. So, not undecidable or "made up shit" either. But also not metaphysical speculation, which was what I was talking about with "undecidable".

As always, trying to shy away from universalization. — Moliere

Good policy!

Is it possible to offer an aesthetic justification, rather than a causal-historical-preference justification, for what we read and say in philosophy? — Moliere

What if the aesthetic justifications we offer are such as they are on account of our culturally/ historically conditioned intuitions and preferences? I suppose genetics may also be in play. Anything else?

Certainly they made sense to them. But they don't make sense to us. Now, are we going to worry about whether they made sense simpiciter or in a non-relative sense of making sense. I hope not.

It's easy to dismiss their theories. But some of their questions survive to this day, in the form of logical paradoxes. (It's just that we don't draw the same conclusions from them.) They weren't idiots. — Ludwig V

They make sense to us insofar as we can see why they would have made sense to them, and that's about it, I'd say. The point was only that, absent empirical evidence or logical necessity, the plausibility of metaphysical speculations can only be assessed according to the degree to which they may or may not make intuitive sense, and of course that will vary somewhat from individual to individual.

Thus in saying that there can be no certainty regarding the truth of metaphysical speculations, I am not claiming that people cannot feel certain about them, but that whatever certainty they might feel is underdetermined.

Yes, I was wrong. There are things other than God that can apply goals - humans and some higher animals. The examples @SophistiCat were the results of human planning. — T Clark

I don't think you were wrong but that you and @SophistiCat were thinking about different things―namely local purposes and global purpose.

Since, therefore, it does not befit the first mover to be diffused throughout an orbit, but rather to proceed from one certain principle, and as it were, point, no part of the world, and no star, accounts itself worthy of such a great honour; hence by the highest right we return to the sun, who alone appears, by virtue of his dignity and power, suited for this motive duty and worthy to become the home of God himself, not to say the first mover. — Johannes Kepler quoted by Burtt, E. A.. The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science

That seems a remarkably anthropomorphic "just so" kind of statement.

But that doesn't answer why we're attracted to what we're attracted to -- there are so many philosophical questions out there that you have to make choices about what to read or think about. I'm asking after philosophical justifications for this aesthetic choice. — Moliere

It doesn't seem to me there are that many philosophical questions. Or maybe it would be better to say that what appear to be many questions are all variations and/ or elaborations on a few basic questions. As Heidegger said, we are the beings whose very being is an issue for them.

The categories of philosophy seem to show the basic questions. Epistemology is concerned with the question what can we know and how can we know it. Semantics with the nature of meaning and reference. Logic with the nature of truth. Metaphysics and ontology with the nature of being―of what is. Aesthetics with the nature of beauty, harmony, unity and so on. Ethics and moral philosophy with how best to live. Phenomenology with the nature of experience.

We are probably each attracted to a different mix with different emphases on the main categories. I understand that there are people who want to believe this or that when it comes to metaphysics for example. As @Tom Storm noted some dislike science because they think it disenchants the world. Others like science because to them, on the contrary, understanding how things work makes the world more interesting and hence more not less enchanting.

I have always been constitutionally incapable of believing anything that does not seem sufficiently evidenced. I was once attracted to religious/ spiritual thought, and I tried hard to find various religious ideas believable, but I failed the task. So, you could say I would like to believe the world has some overarching meaning, but I just don't see the evidence. Probably a lot depends on what ideas and beliefs one is exposed to, perhaps inducted into, when growing up.

Well, yes. In a way. But in case like this, you may find that people will infer that metaphysical speculations are always uncertain. But that's misleading. Better to say that metaphysical speculations are neither certain nor uncertain. But that doesn't mean that it's an open house. Interpretations do have to meet standards before they are acceptable. You can't interpret the duck-rabbit as a picture of a lion. That's why one talks of interpretations as valid or invalid, (or plausible or not, etc.) rather than true or false. — Ludwig V

What you are saying seems to me to boil down to an assertion that metaphysical speculations must be coherent and make intuitive sense in order to be judged valid and plausible. If so, I agree.

So, it seems reasonable to me to think the Presocratic speculations about cosmic constitution made sense to them in terms of what were thought to be the basic elements and the everyday experience of finding things to be made of different materials.

I agree that it's not a question of new information. But that doesn't mean that new ways of thinking about the problem, especially new ways of interpreting what we already know, are ever entirely impossible. I tend to see what are labelled metaphysical questions as questions of interpretation. So the developments that started the analytic tradition bring a new perspective to old questions and enable debates to radically change. Questions of interpretation don't have closure in the way that questions of information or even rationality sometimes do. — Ludwig V

Right, not new information, but new perspectives based on new interpretations. I agree that metaphysical questions are questions of interpretation. Just as with poetry there can be no closure, and that is not a bug, but a feature. It is the impossibility of closure that leads me to say there can be no certainty in relation to metaphysical speculations.

Some shit we made up might even be true.

The question is, how do you decide which is which? — Banno

That does seem to be the problem. The even larger problem: many people don't wish to acknowledge that it is undecidable or even that their shit is made up, so some become victims of others' dictatorially deployed made up shit.

There's a difference between taking a bunch of straws and throwing them into the air to form novel and interesting patterns and then clutching at them with the vain hope of finding something substantive there.

:up:

And Picasso was regressive; he was no more than a variation on Cézanne. — Banno

And African art. "Good artists copy, great artists steal".

The situation after a world war would not seem to be the same as the major economic player defaulting on their debt. Can such a thing happen without consequence?

I agree with you that it is not possible to simply halt lending, just as it is not possible to suddenly eliminate 95-98% of the population to bring it down to a sustainable level.

Borrowing against increased future prosperity is okay provided future prosperity will indeed be greater, otherwise it would seem to be economic suicide.

...discourse and dissection. So I'll go back to the suggested demarcation criteria, that we stop just making shit up when we start dissecting, and that this is what marks the move form myth making to doing philosophy. — Banno

I agree with this, with the caveat that there is nothing wrong with "making shit up" provided we don't take it to be real, or to be the truth.

He explicitly situates himself within realism within the realism/antirealism debate within analytic philosophy. But the expectation is that he explicitly situate himself in Heidegger's history. — Banno

I see what you mean, and I tend to agree. My point was simply that he need not explicitly situate himself at all, unless such situating would be an integral part of his analysis and discourse. I say that because I take it as read that we, and all the thinkers of the past, present and future are always situated within a cultural and historical context.

Well, technological advances have kept up, so even if we already have experience Peak conventional Oil many years ago, we don't have a crisis of diminishing resources. What we have is a very problematic monetary system that is based on perpetually growing debt. — ssu

If there were real growth in prosperity, then why the need for growing debt? Debt seems to be nothing more than borrowing against the assumption of increased future prosperity. The problem with the oil that is being extracted today in comparison with the pre-peak oil extraction is that it is now much more costly to extract in terms of both money and energy.

In fact, I would dare to say that our modern society is far more able to deal with global crises than civilizations were earlier. — ssu

Earlier there were local, not global crises, and I think that is the significant difference. Previously there was always somewhere else to go if resources were no longer available, now there is nowhere else to go.

We face, not merely global warming, but extensive environmental pollution, habitat loss and species extinction, soil nutrient depletion and salination, ongoing decline of the fisheries. It seems to me like we are throwing a global party (to which, of course, not everyone is invited) without any thought for the coming hangover. I see that view as realistic, not pessimistic.

By some reckonings the current population level is simply not sustainable by some quite high order of magnitude―that is that the Earth can only sustain a population between 1 and 5% of the present.

And here we are worrying about a purported decline of creativity in philosophy. I don't think a return to traditional values and religion is going to help us―probably the effect would be quite the opposite, even if such a project were even possible.

If we see the LNC and the Law of Excluded Middle as both undermining the possibility of making an assertion, then the cogito will fit beside them, because it is validated in the act of asserting it. — Ludwig V

I think you meant to say the rejection of the LNC and the LEM? In a purely semantic or logical sense saying "I think" or "I do X" ( where "X" could be anything at all) means or entails that "I" exists, to be sure.

And there is the so-called "impersonal cogito," which considers whether it should more properly be phrased as "there is thinking going on" rather than "I think". (Williams analyzes this one at some length and believes it is an incoherent objection.) — J

The question, beyond the purely semantic or logical entailment of "I" in "I think" is as to in what sense the I exists, or in other words, just what is the I. Changing it to "there is thinking going on" seems reasonable, although it begs the question as to what thinking is, beyond the logical entailment that any assertion is an example of thought.

I am not well-read in Descartes, but I have the impression that he is looking for substantive or metaphysical proofs of existence, not merely stipulative semantic ones.

I say again that "amply demonstrated" and "impossible" are too strong. I'm agnostic, leaning toward skeptic, about metaphysical certainty, but the debate is hardly over. — J

Perhaps I am more skeptical than you in thinking that it is not possible that the debate could ever be over. I mean the situation seems quite different than in the sciences where new information can always come to light―in the context of purely rational thought, wherein it seems to be writ that empirical findings have no demonstrable metaphysical implications, where is any new information going to come from?

You have chosen just a couple examples. The idea that the measure of quality in painting and sculpture is accurate realistic representation is, I would say, aesthetically naive. For example, some of what is considered to be the greatest modern art more closely resembles the examples of medieval art you chose than it does The Last Supper or the Pieta.

We should stop gazing at our own navel and notice what huge transformation has happened in the World. Absolute poverty has decreased dramatically around the World. China is far more prosperous than it was fifty years ago as are many countries all over the World. — ssu

Well my comment was regarding Western countries. It looks to me like any appearance of increased average prosperity is on account of increased debt. It seems that, in a world of diminishing resources that are becoming ever more costly to extract, we are borrowing against the (illusory) promise of increasing future prosperity. But I acknowledge it is a complex issue, and as I already said, I am not an economist. That said, how many economists today include the environment in economic reckonings as anything other than a range of "externalities'"? (It's a genuine question; I acknowledge there may be more than there would appear to be at a superficial glance).

:up:

How do we move past this? — Banno

Acknowledge that there are different styles of philosophy with very different aims. It seems that the Postmodernists aimed to develop new conceptual lenses―novel ways of thinking. I see this as being a kind of literary philosophy―about as determinate as the aesthetic ideas of beauty or quality.

Is Williamson "blind to his philosophy's historical situatedness? Does he need to take that into account? If he tried to do that would not his accounts of our historical situatedness be themselves historically situated? Then we might need an account of the historical situatedness of the account of historical situatedness. Easy enough to see where this is headed. It seems we inevitably must begin from where we are and we cannot attain a "god's eye" view of our situatedness, and nor do we need to to begin to inquire into whatever it is we wish to inquire.

The demand to include historicist considerations seems like the idea we've encountered on these forums of a purported "blind spot of science".

Why should, for that matter how could, any investigatory discipline in the natural sciences take into account "the subject"? For example, how to include an account of the subject in geology. I've asked this question of the proponents of the "blind spot" and received no answer, or even an attempt at an answer.

It seems that when we speak of anything we are bound to generalize, so I see generalizations as necessary, but acknowledge that they can be misleading, because our experience is itself particular to each of us. I am not in favour of absolutist thinking, with the traditional idea that there are timeless truths, but at the same time I think there are some basic general cross-cultural truths about the human condition.

I agree with the critique of the human tendency to view nature and other humans as mere resources. I'm afraid I cannot understand just what the quoted passage is getting at. Would you care to unpack it according to your understanding?

Nicely put. I have no real sense what philosophy is for and as far as the average person is concerned, I think we inherit presuppositions, and even our reflections on these are based on sets of presuppositions. — Tom Storm

Thanks, I agree. Studying philosophy is obviously not for everyone. But there is a sense in which everyone practices philosophy, even if they unconsciously adopt presuppositions about how they ought to live. I favour the broadest sense of the term 'philosophy'.

Not sure if that helps. To a Marxist help is going to look very different than to a Randian. I'm not convinced we all inhabit the same world, see the same things, recognise the same barriers or enablers of good practice (for want of a better term). — Tom Storm

Again I agree―but for me both Marxists and Randians are ideologues like the dogmatic religionists just because they posit some old "one way for all". It seems to me we all inhabit the same world in the empirical sense of "world"―but on the other hand beyond that we each inhabit our own worlds, which are microcosms, along with our family, friends, acquaintances, colleagues and so on. We inhabit the world of the Philosophy Forum, for example.

I'm happy to listen to different people's philosophies, but I lose interest when people assert that such and such is so, and then try to back it up with walls of text cut and pasted from some other philosopher or source, as though they believe that constitutes an argument for why everyone should agree on whatever point they are labouring or bias they wish to confirm. On the other hand if they present well-considered arguments, then I'm happy to listen and consider, and then either agree or offer critique. Ideologues always seem to take umbrage at critique.

I think of philosophy as the pursuit of wisdom, and the pursuit of wisdom as the attempt to find ways to live better. So, the analytic pursuit of conceptual clarity might help some, and modeling one's life on, or simply gleaning insights from, the Stoics or the Epicureans or the existentialists or the postmodernist or following some religion or other might help others.

I don't think the right way can be determined, if by "right way" is meant " one way for all". Humans are diverse, which means we are left to find our own ways. I don't have much patience for authoritarian or traditionalist thinking, because those modes of thought and their ideologue adherents do inevitably posit one way for all.

So, it is not "philosophy" which we can rely on to determine what living better means but our own individual experience and practice of philosophy―philosophy as such cannot decide anything―it is individuals who must decide for themselves what living better means for them (and not for others) or else blindly follow others if they don't want to or can't make such decisions. The term 'help' may be ambiguous, but surely it is possible for individuals to come to know, even if only via trail and error, what helps, and what hinders, them? Can anyone else decide for you?

Perfect example is how Antiquity turned into Middle Ages and what we call the "Dark Ages". Talk about a collapse in trade and in globalization. That's all it takes. Once North Africa couldn't feed Rome (as Vandals conquered it), then Rome's population started to shrink rapidly. Once that happened, then professionals and artists that relied for income from an advance economy simply didn't have any demand for their work. And then simply things like drawing, sculpture, engineering etc. simply regressed. — ssu

I'm not convinced that the visual arts, at least, regressed in the so-called Dark Ages. Anyhgow thanks for the historical insight―I wasn't aware of the African connection with the fall of Rome.

My favorite example of this is when an university professor, perhaps teaching the language that is spoken in country, has to have a second job as perhaps a taxi driver. This is reality in many Third World countries as universities simply cannot afford to pay a reasonable salary to their teachers. It's not reality yet in the Western World, but it surely can be. — ssu

Thanks again, I wasn't aware of the kind of situation university professors can find themselves facing in the Third World. I agree with you that such a situation could be coming in the West. I'm not economist, but I think that any apparent general increase of prosperity in the West over the last twenty years or perhaps longer is largely "smoke and mirrors".

Thanks J...whenever you are ready. I think life is more important than philosophy. If philosophy cannot help us to live better, then what use can it be beyond being an interesting diversion?

History already shows with many examples that there isn't continuous progress and that basically we can have such collapses that knowledge is forgotten. Yet as I said to Skalidris above (on a comment he wrote pages earlier) that knowledge and new insights, be they scientific or philosophical, are created on the present knowledge. — ssu

I agree, we must always start from where we are. It seems to me that hankering for ancient, "lost" wisdom is a fool's errand, given that we may well be misunderstanding the contexts within which ancient literature found its meaning.

We have much greater knowledge today, and we might call that progress, but have we acquired the wisdom to deal with it? It seems not, and that failure cannot be rightly seen as progress in my view.

That's not crazy and reminds me that when talking about Plato I wanted to point out that changes in technology, and especially in expertise and "know how", are well known as social factors driving the dialogues.

These experts and artisans have a new sort of authority based on their specialized knowledge. Well, what sort of knowledge is that? What kinds of specialized knowledge are there? Can you have special knowledge of wisdom? Of goodness? Etc etc — Srap Tasmaner

I seem to remember that in Aristotle's' understanding phronesis or 'practical wisdom' acquired by artisans in their practices could assist them in understanding the arguments regarding goodness, beauty, justice and so on.

Is there an absolute, context-free wisdom? Most of us here are probably familiar with Socrates' notion of wisdom regarding virtue, goodness, justice etc. consisting in knowing that we do not know. Within some context we may know, in the sense of wisely judge, what is good, virtuous or just, but beyond that...?

Apologies, I somehow missed both of your replies.

Hmm. Is the cogito meant to be an example of metaphysical certainty? Many philosophers do disagree that the cogito does what Descartes wanted it to, but to say it's been "amply demonstrated" is an exaggeration, wouldn't you say? Or perhaps you have some other level of metaphysical certainty in mind. — J

I'm not sure what you are referring to. Perhaps I didn't articulate my thoughts well there―I meant to say that it has been amply demonstrated that metaphysical certainty in the traditional "absolutist" sense is impossible to attain. Would you not agree that Descartes was attempting to discover what he (and by extension, we) could be certain of vis à vis what necessarily exists?

I think you know from past discussions that I would be the last to indulge in human exceptionalism and conclude that we are somehow more than mere animals. We are only exceptional inasmuch as we are very unusual animals. That said, there are also many other very unusual animals.
— Janus
Sorry. That remark was intended in general, not in particular. I write quite quickly when I finally get to the keyboard. Sometimes I don't put things precisely enough. But I've found that if I write too slowly, I end up not writing at all. — Ludwig V

just in case there has been a misunderstanding I was not thinking you were accusing me of human exceptionalism, so no apology needed.

It seems to me to be a question of what we can logically doubt, and I think the answer is 'anything that can be imagined to be false without logical contradiction'. It seems we cannot doubt the LNC itself without falling into incoherence.
— Janus
There's a good point there. If Descartes does try to doubt the LNC, the project will fall apart. Same thing if he doubts his memory. He makes quite a fuss about that at the end of the first meditation.

As I think Ludwig is suggesting my point was that any discourse which purported to deny the LNC must necessarily be involved in an incoherent performative contradiction because to do so would undermine discourse itself.

The obverse is what we can absolutely certain of; and I think that would be only what is true by definition or according to some rule or set of rules we have accepted; i.e. tautologies and mathematics and they really tell us nothing outside of their contexts.
— Janus
Yes. That's a trap. The price of absolutely certainty is paralysis in the empirical world. But perhaps we don't live in the empirical world? If we want to return to normal life (a dubious prospect, but still..) we need to re-cast this conceptual space. That's what Wittgenstein is trying to do - and, in his way, Moore.

I don't see people as living wholly within the empirical world. As Sellars pointed out we live with both the scientific images and the manifest images of the world, or within the space of causes and the space of reasons. The latter cannot be understood (parsimoniously at least) solely in terms of causes.

Thanks, I seem to have hit my target! — Count Timothy von Icarus

That leaves me wondering what target you think you might have hit.

Well now it cannot be moralizing and 'holier than thou' and vacuous, so now I'm questioning your original compliment. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Sure it can―it can be moralizing and holier and thou in terms of attitude, while being vacuous in terms of content.

And as to post-modernism―I think it is simply the idea that we should drop the myth that history is necessarily a story of continuous progress or that there is a real underlying telos at work in history.

I think Heidegger is referring to his distinction between between vorhanden "present at hand" knowledge and zuhanden "ready to hand" wisdom. I see that distinction as being basically similar to the distinction between "knowing that" and "knowing how".

So if the vorhanden is that which merely exists in a contextless way (as for example a hammer is merely a configuration of material or materials), the zuhanden is the hammer as a useful tool that exists in a context of nails, timber, building design and construction and so on. The realm of "knowing that" can be seen as a realm of mere factoids, whereas "knowing how" can be seen as the realm of practical wisdom and creativity in general.

Can you take a stab at what you think it means?

I have no criticism of anyone finding anything funny (barring cruelty or real misfortune). Perhaps the funniest thing is that the diatribe was meant to be taken seriously. The attention sought there seemed to me to be an attention acquiescing to purportedly profound wisdom, not merely an attention finding amusement in some clever name-dropping and recondite allusions. Whatever wisdom is, I don't think it consists in such attention-seeking.

Ignores the simple fact that Plato and Socrates belong to a very different time.
On a different note...the burgeoning partisanship on this site is becoming nauseating.

Yes really, apart from the "entertaining" part...at least as it strikes me, but clever yes...like a monkey. As Wittgenstein said " It's more important to be good than to be clever". Attention-seeking is not good philosophy in my world. I’m not going to play politics..this sort of moralizing 'holier than thou' diatribe turns my stomach.

Seems more like vacuous self-indulgent name-dropping garbage to me.

Yes, indeed. Though, of course, the powerful, when they are not complacent, live in fear that the powerless will get themselves together - and then they are unstoppable. Cardinal Bellamine said it best - "The voice of the people is the voice of God". — Ludwig V

True, if the individually powerless could manage to coordinate and agree to act to secure their interests, the powerful would have no chance. It's just that, in the absence of egregious oppression and lack of quality of life, this never seems to happen.

Yes, symbolic language is very important. But I get worried when people try to deduce that we are not animals.
Reification is a major curse for any philosopher that has an ear (eye) for language. — Ludwig V

I think you know from past discussions that I would be the last to indulge in human exceptionalism and conclude that we are somehow more than mere animals. We are only exceptional inasmuch as we are very unusual animals. That said, there are also many other very unusual animals.

We're pushing doubt a level up, instead, and asking what is possible to doubt, not how we would go about settling an actual occasion of doubt. — J

It seems to me to be a question of what we can logically doubt, and I think the answer is 'anything that can be imagined to be false without logical contradiction'. It seems we cannot doubt the LNC itself without falling into incoherence.

The obverse is what we can absolutely certain of; and I think that would be only what is true by definition or according to some rule or set of rules we have accepted; i.e. tautologies and mathematics and they really tell us nothing outside of their contexts.

It seems to me that Descartes was pushing for metaphysical certainty, and I think it has been amply demonstrated that metaphysical certainty is impossible.

"You know me, sir!"

That's funny, but I choose not to drink regardless as I have not yet developed enough immunity.

Only an idiot such as yourself would agree with such nonsense — Leontiskos

Only a fool such as yourself would think that I was serious. (Don't imagine for a moment that I am being serious here or that I imagined you were being serious either, or your foolishness will be exponentially increased).

I can't understand 'true belief' in light of a bollocks set of evidence (for instance). — AmadeusD

Right, I get that―such "true beliefs" are just a matter of dumb luck. Let's not get into the gutter with the gettier mess as to whether they may be justified.