No specific "atheistic ideology" was mentioned in your initial claim that atheistic ideologies are equally as dangerous as religious ideologies so I mentioned a few. — praxis

I did say this

Those who feel certain there is no God and those who feel certain there is a God and that they know the will of that God and who believe they are justified in force-feeding their beliefs to others are equally ideologues, and thus equally dangerous. — Janus

which I think clearly shows that what I had in mind were dogmatic ideologies, whether atheistic or theistic. It is the belief in absolute authority whether human or divine and the imposition of dogma on others which is the problem.

Another way to say this is that the “will” used as a noun does not exist until we are willing something. We are not free first - we free ourselves afterwards with our consent or our denial of the pre-determined circumstances always already in front of us.

Or if not, maybe there simply is no freedom. Which seems impossible, just as freedom is impossible to explain. — Fire Ologist

You seem to be saying that freedom only obtains conceptually after the fact. The way I see it the only freedom is freedom from oppression, repression, depression and any other forms of constraint you can think of.

I think Schopenhauer got it right when he said, "A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants," We are free to act according to our natures, our dispositions and desires, but we do not create our natures, our dispositions and desires.

So, I think it is clear that freedom in the sense of "freedom from" is real, but freedom in the libertarian sense is impossible to explain; on analysis the very idea seems incoherent.

As usual Janus posts are filled with scorn, anger and hatred towards others, — Corvus

I don't hate anyone on these forums. I just call out poor quality, and especially 'Dunning Krueger' type postings when I see them. Mww seems to know Kant better than anyone else on these forums, and it just seemed ridiculous that an obvious neophyte like Corvus would presume to know Kant better.

I never mentioned

humanism, secularism, rationalism, and existentialism — praxis

it's not that they are "tame" but that they are philosophical perspectives, not dogmatic ideologies.

So far, I have no reason to believe that you have actually read the Critique of Pure Reason. — Paine

Judging from the quality of his responses I doubt he has read it, or if he has read it, I doubt he has understood it. As usual more posturing than substance coming from Corvus.

Hitler used religious rhetoric so how can that be counted as atheistic?

Marxism is an economic and political ideology, and socialism isn’t incompatible with religious belief.

Funny you reject the actual atheistic ideologies as ideologies and pretend that Nazism and Marxism are necessarily atheistic. — praxis

Marxism is explicitly atheistic, even anti-theistic. Hitler's may have used quasi-religios rhetoric, but nazism is not explicitly or specifically theistic.

I don't "reject the actual atheistic ideologies as ideologies "—I have no idea what led you to think that—I don't know what it even means. My only point was that ideologies whether religious or not, being based on some dogma or other, are one of the main problems which plague humanity.

I remain unconvinced….
— Janus

My fault for not putting up a convincing argument; nevertheless…. — Mww

Or it may be that an argument strong enough to convince you may not work on me—or vice versa.

I don't count those as ideologies, they are just possible philosophical perspectives. Communism and Nazism—totalitarianisms of any colour—those I would count as ideologies.

There are few folk as dangerous as those who are certain there is no God. How many of those folks turned up on your survey of people who know the will of God?
— Fire Ologist
There are plenty of other, similar motivations for conducting horrors - nationalism/patriotism, for example. I'm aware that some religious people think that atheists are more likely to conduct horrors than religious people. But I don't know of empirical evidence that that's the case. — Ludwig V

Faith in God or some atheistic ideology—both equally dangerous. Those who feel certain there is no God and those who feel certain there is a God and that they know the will of that God and who believe they are justified in force-feeding their beliefs to others are equally ideologues, and thus equally dangerous.

Tesla est déclassé!

Fair enough...I remain unconvinced, but I acknowledge that a fact of the matter regarding the question cannot be established, so...it's going to come down to personal opinion or taste.

That seems to be a different issue. Not all, or even most, workers are gig workers. Also, if workers are paid, and not taxed below a very high threshold, then they are not serfs. Of course, I don't believe for a moment that Trump will do what he says.

Right, but not workable in today's world.

I came across this, claiming that Trump wants to eliminate taxes for those earning under $150,000 per annum, which I find surprising but hard to believe will ever be implemented:

It doesn’t take long to learn that counting to 7, then continuing the count by another 5, gets you to a total of 12. From there, you easily see those two counts can never ever get you to any other number but 12. — Mww

That's right. Counting begins with objects. Fingers and toes, grazing animals being hunted, heads of corn or whatever. Calculating was practices with an abacus. It's all based on experience of actual things,

. In other words, he did NOT need the experience of destroyed crops, nor, insofar as he was the first ever, did he need the experience of other existent enclosed spaces, to know with apodeictic certainty, not so much how many lines do enclose a space, but how many do not. — Mww

Enclosure I would say is a very simple idea that we learn for example by experiencing our own bodies. Opening and closing our eyes, our mouths and our hands.

I rather think reason is certainly not a thing, and I think reason as certainly being disembodied, insofar as there is no place in any possible body in which reason as such is to be found. Nor any other abstract theoretically-constructed intellectual faculty. — Mww

by 'thing' I meant 'process' not 'perceptible object'. Reasoning goes on in the brain and is felt in the body in my view, and in that sense it is perceptible. We know when we are reasoning about something even if only inwardly. We visualize what we are reasoning about or hear an inner voice, or at least I do.

Sorry mate, I don't know what you mean.

That makes sense. I've never thought that randomness will be any help for justifying belief in libertarian free will, because the tiny differences that might result from quantum randomness would not seem to be significant enough to lead to a different decision, Quantum indeterminism still seems to result statistically in macrophysical determinism.

And in any case even if those random quantum fluctuations were significant enough to lead to a different decision, we cannot be aware of much less control those fluctuations in vivo and hence cannot reasonably claim that our will deserves any credit for them.

Understanding may construct a priori cognitions concerning possible experience, true enough, re: motion is necessarily change in time but not necessarily change in space (think: rotation). But principles and mathematical axioms, on the other hand, are the transcendental constructs of reason alone, hence, while they may certainly condition possible experience, insofar as their proofs reside in the domain of empirical knowledge, they are not conditioned by it, contra Hume. — Mww

It seems that such understandings are based on thinking about and generalizing from experience. Thus, we are said to know a priori what characteristics anything which qualifies as experience must have, in accordance with the most general characteristics all our past experiences are revealed by analysis, to have had.

When you say that principles and mathematical axioms are the transcendental constructs of reason alone, I am not sure what you mean. Those principles, it seems to me, at their most basic are abstracted from reflecting on an analyzing our experiences, and then once established may be elaborated in accordance with the entailments implicit in them, entailments which are discovered progressively by doing (experience) as seems to be the case with mathematics.

So, I don't see reason as a disembodied thing that can stand alone.

Do you believe there are any "a priori cognitions in general" which do not have their genesis either in experience or in rules that are at their basis derived from experience and then elaborated to discover further entailments (as mathematics seems to be for example)?

That's merely empirical, not transcendental – in Kant's system (CPR); your statement doesn't make sense, Wayf. — 180 Proof

Exactly, ideas about the brain and whatever it is understood to do is part of an empirical understanding, not a transcendental.

I'd be interested if you could succinctly explain the difference between the two.

That knowledge-of is a construct of mind. — tim wood

Just as regarding knowledge-of in a Kantian way is true, but not-so-useful. — tim wood

Right, that knowledge is had only by minds is a vacuous truism, and hence "not so useful".

What about this rock question however: are there rocks in existence when they are never seen? — Gregory

Why wouldn't they be? As to Kant, he didn't question their existence, what he questioned was our ability to know what they are "in themselves". Kant acknowledged that they are something in themselves (that is they exist in themselves) but he said we could not know what that existence in itself is. But this is true by mere stipulation, is therefore true by definition, a mere tautology.

It's "not so useful".

you would have to be perfectly the same too. But I think you already factored that in.. — flannel jesus

Yes, that was what I had in mind: all conditions being exactly the same including oneself.

It's actually not so much about it being impossible, but rather that it doesn't seem to give us free will in any meaningful sense if it is possible — flannel jesus

What I meant with that is if in that 'rewind' scenario we could not make a different choice, then libertarian free will would seem to be ruled out by definition, since any consistent notion of libertarian free will requires that we could have made a different choice. The idea being that our will would not be determined by conditions but would be in some unfathomable sense causa sui.and sui generis.

For what it's worth, although I haven't read the article, I believe I get the argument, which seems very simple. If it were somehow possible to repeat a situation in which I made a certain choice and everything in that situation was exactly the same in every possible way, libertarian free will would entail that I could, this second time around, make a different choice.

If that is impossible, then libertarian free will cannot be the case, by definition. It follows that that free will means simply 'acting according to one's nature'. Since we don't create ourselves, this seems the most sensible notion of free will: that is a compatibilist notion.

For us God is a belief, positive or negative. Or a name for a kind of experience. So, what I said could be translated as "the belief in, or experience of, God may be sufficient for madness but is not necessary for madness".

Only if you relegate madness as a domain of God... — DifferentiatingEgg

To reverse the usual formulation: God may be sufficient, but not necessary, for madness.

:up:

Does that mean it was intended to be so. God fooling with our minds?

What's it matter? We're grasping pi... — DifferentiatingEgg

It probably doesn't matter because, as you say, and as @Banno said, we grasp the concept.

Interesting thing is that while we cannot know everything, there is (arguably) nothing in particular that we could not know. — Banno

True. Nothing that we know about anyway.

Do you mean Banno is alright just as he is now?

Memos? I thought it was @frank mentioned them.

You're right, we can perhaps know some things completely. But we cannot know everything. so 'everything' should have been there instead of "anything completely".

I shouldn't think you would need a memo.

Wasn't it already obvious that we could never know anything completely? Pi is not the lynchpin it seems, just another symptom of our limitations.

:up: Yep, seems on the money to me!

If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. — 180 Proof

:up:

Only that all this might be for real, and that at my age, it is a prospect that is beginning to gnaw at me. — Wayfarer

What difference to you would it actually make if it was "for real"?

OK, I get it now. My disposition on this is similar to yours—I don't find myself concerned about oblivion either. The concern about the quality of one's rebirth, given that in Buddhism at least, the reborn person is not you, seems completely incoherent. Why would I be more concerned about the quality of life my reborn person enjoys than I would be over the quality of life your reborn person enjoys, since neither of them have any conscious connection to me?

The Wetsern idea of the eternal life in heaven that awaits the good or the eternal life in Hell that awaits the evil is at least, if believed, rationally motivating. That said the Buddhist have their own hells to motivate the believers, but if it is not to be you who will suffer in them, it would seem far less rationally motivating.

But what that part is, and how to formulate that return, remains obscure. — Banno

Do you mean something like influences we might have had on others, or our works that survive us or our physical components reconfigured after dissolution? I take it you are not referring to consciousness.