...a Darwinist perspective (mainly in the sense of "life is a struggle for survival" and "might makes right")
— baker

This is a very narrow understanding of Darwinism. — Banno

Oh, and I obviously mean Social Darwinism. When your buddies talk of this or that being "Darwinist" or "Darwin" this, "Darwin" that, you correctly understand it in terms of Social Darwinism.

we can't make any comment about God at all (good or bad) since it transcends human experience and understanding. We can't know anything about it and it would be better to remain silent about the subject. — Tom Storm

No, such a claim of the total incapacity of humans to comment on God could be overreaching. Perhaps some humans in fact do have the proper knowledge of God, perhaps God did reveal himself to them, so they can speak with certainty.

I'm pointing toward an option that is repugnant to humanists: namely, the possibility that God is pretty much like major monotheistic religions describe him, and that the state of the world (with all its strife and suffering) is an argument precisely in favor of God's existence.

If they want the truth, they should care but, — TheMadFool

While all along, you get to be the arbiter of truth, eh?

doesn't explain why god is not culpable. — Banno

God cannot be held accountable to us.
Because God, by definition, precedes us, contextualizes us, and makes us possible in the first place.

My point is that judging God by human standards is in conflict with the basic definition of God. One cannot hold, even if just for the purposes of argument, that God is omnimax, and then judge God, and still think one is being consistent. Either one ditches the standard definition of God, or one abstains from judgment of God. But one cannot retain both, and still be consistent.

IOW, atheists and other critics of God operate with their own idiosyncratic definitions of God, thus making their criticism of God a strawman.

Right, Jains. People who make a point of eventually slowly dying of starvation.
— baker

Any hard evidence for this? — TheMadFool

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sallekhana#:~:text=It%20is%20the%20religious%20practice,all%20physical%20and%20mental%20activities.

Your reason for taking up arms might then be gone, indeed, but not your enemy's.
— baker

That's because they haven't looked at our differences from all sides - anekantavada failure. — TheMadFool

Why should they?? They are your enemies. Why should they care about seeing things the way you see them?

Boredom is terrible, isn't it. People should be sent to manually work in crop fields again, manually digging and pulling weeds.

Right, Jains. People who make a point of eventually slowly dying of starvation.

Once you realize that disagreements, the seedbed of all violence, including wars, arise from looking at issues from only one side and not from all sides, including your enemy's your reason to take up arms will be gone. — TheMadFool

Your reason for taking up arms might then be gone, indeed, but not your enemy's.

In everyday use, I notice that many people operate poorly with if clauses; ie. they tend to omit the if altogether. So that to the above question, they reply, "Tom must buy new socks."
It's not clear that this is what the OP has in mind.

What do you think the relationships between "if statements" and human intentions are? Most who have some basic understanding of logic know that if conditionals can be stated as if x then y. How can we utilize that logic when relating it to agency or human intentions? — Josh Alfred

You'll need to say more.


If Tom has holes in all his socks, he needs to buy new socks.
What must Tom do now?

But the truth is that Afghan tribalism and factionalism have always attracted foreign meddling. — Olivier5

But why?

Why not just leave them to their own devices?

The point to all this being contradictions (square circles like atheism vs theism, physicalism vs nonphysicalism, etc.) are actually not contradictions. They're just different sides (anekantavada, many-sidedness, Jainism) of the same greater truth that resides in a world the next level up so to speak. — TheMadFool

Sure. But what is the use of this? It's not as if understanding that things look differently from different perspectives is going to bring about world peace.

It's understandable that many people are exhausted from the pandemic and feel a desperate need for a solution. But exhaustion and despair, no matter how painfully they are felt, are still not means for arriving at an effective solution.

Seen this by me, as a foreigner, I also interpret it as a real open minded and free thinker country. It is not only about power due to votes. It is also about criticism and debating.
You all can criticize Joe Biden if you want due to their administration or whatever. — javi2541997

And what power does that criticism have? None. It's not going to change anything. It's an idle freedom.

I'd say this is far stranger. Firstly what could being autonomous in how one knows/ believes one knows things even mean? — Janus

Believing one is epistemically independent of other people.

You seem to have been disagreeing with my arguments that the enlightened person cannot rationally know that she knows whatever she thinks she knows, no matter how convinced she may be that she does, and yet here you say that epistemic autonomy is questionable. So, I can only guess you must mean something else.

Ethical and Epistemic Egoism and the Ideal of Autonomy

Epistemic Dependence

As I said before in my view thinking for yourself is just thinking what seems to be in best accordance with and evidenced by your own experience, understanding and rational assessment

Okay for now.

rather than thinking something because some authority told you it was so without providing any empirical evidence or rational argument to back up their assertion.

I seriously doubt anyone ever believes things the way you describe here. That's a caricature.

I think that when people believe experts and authorities, this has more to do with social dynamics and, to some extent, belief economy, rather than some "blind trust" or "not thinking for yourself".

So, if the purportedly enlightened sage tells you that there is an afterlife, and you say how do you know that and they say 'I just know', or 'I remember my past lives', you would be warranted in being skeptical about such a claim. That would be thinking for yourself. If you accepted the claim, and henceforth believed it yourself because you believed the person was enlightened and must know the truth, that would not be thinking for yourself.

Except that I would not ask the sage "How do you know?" anymore. There was a time in the past when I would, but not anymore. And no, this doesn't mean that I now accept their claims. It's that I contextualize the whole matter entirely differently. Namely, I don't see the declarations of a "sage" as being some kind of opening for a discussion and dialogue.

But their sublime confidence and perfect conviction is no good rational reason for anyone else to believe what they are so perfectly convinced of. — Janus

Nobody said it was. Why would/should it be?

How could you possibly know that consciousness survives death before you have died?

Because you have attained some higher knowledge that allows you to know such things.

I don't know whether consciousness survives death or not. My issue is with the form of your argument: you're making definitive claims about things you admit not to know.

You wouldn't make claims about the number of red socks in Tom's sock drawer before looking into Tom's sock drawer. But why make claims about, in this case, consciousness after death, as if you would fully understand the matter, even though you haven't died yet and even though you don't have some higher knowledge that allows you to know such things.

We are discussing a particular context here; beliefs about the nature of life and death. What other alternative could there be apart from thinking about it carefully, weighing all the evidence, such as it can be, and deciding for yourself versus believing what someone else tells you because you believe they are enlightened or whatever?

It's not like there is an actual need to decide about such things! Nobody is putting a gun to your head or a knife to your throat forcing you to decide one way or another.
Whence this need to decide about whether there is consciousness after death??

that there is no possibility of absolute rational certainly, or certainty of any truth, even if certainty of personal conviction is possible

What a strange thing to say, your very claim undermines itself.
— baker

It's one thing to say that what I said "undermines itself" and another to fail to explain why you think that. That complete rational certainty is not possible does not entail that people cannot be absolutely convinced of anything, if they are blind, willfully or otherwise, to the fact that complete rational certainty is not possible.

You're saying, with complete rational certainty, that complete rational certainty is not possible. And you don't see a problem with that?

We blabber on about our love for democracy. Yet what can be less democratic than a capitalist corporation? Why is that acceptable? — Xtrix

The American idea of democracy, as far as I understand it, is about obtaining a position of power through the majority of votes. This is how a capitalist corporation can be democratic.

The American idea of democracy appears to be essentially about the juxtaposition of obtaining a position of power through the majority of votes vs. obtaining a position of power through usurpation/brute force.

Yet the idea of corruption is what keeps the hope alive that there is something more, something true to all this.
How can you classify something as "corruption", when you don't know the original?

Why are such things considered as being a problem of logic, rather than a problem of the particular premises that are being used?

It's not clear how something can be a problem of logic itself, when it can more easily be explained by certain concepts being internally incoherent.

There's your problem: "out there" vs "in here".
— Banno

How so? — Constance

The BIV scenario takes for granted that there is an outside and an inside.

You don't even know what my stance is, and you don't bother to know it. You just judge. Authoritarianism at its best.

Yes, I'm aware of this.
One of the things that is happening is that efforts to capitalize the pandemic are being masked by emphasizing to place the blame on the currently unvaccinated.

There is also a dangerous simplificationism going on where the experimental covid vaccines are being advertised and praised as if they'd be in the category of classical effective and relatively safe vaccines, trying to borrow the glory of those classical vaccines.

Of course, I agree with that, and there’s plenty of commentary on it, but what I’m resisting is the utilitarian tendency to treat everything as a means to an end. — Wayfarer

Oh, like the idea of doing yoga in order to "improve" one's "sex life" or "business negotiation skills".
The horror, the horror!

At least back then people took vaccines because they didn't convince themselves the polio vaccine was a tool of the government to control the people, or whatever the argument is today. — Hanover

Whatever. There you go. You don't even bother to inform yourself what the arguments for hesistancy about vaccination are. You just spew your contempt and hatred. It's just so enjoyable to do so, isn't it? Righteous indignation feels so good!

Once you forget about striving for greatness in favor of some social cause, you lose your momentum. — Leghorn

There is a general plebeification of mankind going on.

There was a time, and some people still think so, that living without honor is futile.

Humanism is the view that morality is found in what humans choose, and so is not found in divine commendation nor in evolutionary necessity.

Do you agree?

That is, the key ingredient in humanism is the capacity of people to become better. — Banno

Sure. I'm saying there are different ideas about what counts as moral.

Morality, as understood from a Darwinist perspective (mainly in the sense of "life is a struggle for survival" and "might makes right"), is how we can make sense of monotheism; it is in this perspective that monotheism is internally consistent morally. A Darwinist monotheist has no qualms with there being suffering, unlike the humanist.

I expect a higher level of wariness from those responsible for public health. If even a single expert (well-recognised, in the correct field) says there's a problem, then the course of action is uncertain. Hesitancy at least, certainly not legally mandating the chosen course and banning discussion of the alternative as has been mooted in this case. — Isaac

Yes. If the governments are so damn sure of the safety and efficacy of the vaccine, then why didn't they push the makers of the vaccines early on to produce sufficient amounts for everyone?

Why did the governments let the private pharmaceutical companies dictate the pace of the pandemic early on, at that crucial time when the pandemic could have been reigned in with an effective vaccine (even if not a particularly safe one)?

Matters of public health should not be left to individual citizens to decide, simply because they are too complex for an ordinary citizen to have the proper grasp of them, and too important to be left to lay public discourse and individual decision.

The government should make a decision and make it mandatory for people to comply. If it doesn't, this can mean several things:
-- The matter of public health is not as severe as originally thought or as popularily presented.
-- The matter of public health is worse than originally thought or as popularily presented.
-- The government doesn't have a solution, but refuses to admit so.
-- The government has a solution, but refuses to enact it, because it would possibly lead to public disapproval, and the government doesn't want to deal with that (it's either too weak, or too concerned about being reelected).

Not moral by humanist standards. But by Darwinist ones -- sure.

What do you consider a classical education and at what age? — Tom Storm

A thorough awareness of European cultural history from primary education on and upwards.
Literature used to be taught in a temporal linear manner starting with the ancient Greeks. By college, one is supposed to understand various references to Homer, Ovidius, etc. Also, being at least fluent in Latin and some Greek.

This is made easier when one lives in a place where it takes a short drive and one arrives at an ancient archeological site. I myself live in a town where I have a 5' drive to the remains of an ancient Roman settlement. The locals perform dress-ups and do reenactments of ancient living. Granted, this now is more of a tourist attraction aimed at making money; still, it's built on a tradition of knowing things about the past that took place on this territory.

Nope, Apollodorus does not say that "acknowledgement of doubt and uncertainty can lead to schizoaffective disorder". It is not the acknowledgment but giving in to doubt and uncertainty, especially when coupled with Straussian esotericism, that can open the trapdoor leading to schizoaffective or delusional disorder. Two totally different things IMO. — Apollodorus

Thank you for the correction.

The problem is that those external points of reference are often hostile to us, and we have to find a way to rely on and trust people who, at the very least, don't care if we live or die.
— baker

Sure. This is what we have intelligence, wisdom, and discernment for.

That's just it: In order to become religious/spiritual, one has to kick one's intelligence, wisdom, and discernment to the curb, on account that they are inferior, not suitable for religion/spirituality.

I think I understand what you are trying to say. However, personally, I have zero experience of aggressive American women. Loud, compared to some Europeans, yes. But definitely not aggressive. On the contrary, the ones I know are polite, well-mannered, and very friendly. — Apollodorus

Toward you, perhaps, because you're male.
There's a saying: Nobody can hate a woman as much as another woman.

In fact, as a general rule, I find that if you are courteous, respectful, and friendly to people, they tend to be nice in return.

As long as you make the first step, right?

I am not aware of Americans invading more countries than other nations. If I am not mistaken, Slavic people invaded the European territories they occupy at present. The same is true of Germanic peoples. They invaded most of Europe and founded great nations like Germany, England, and France. There were Germanic kingdoms in Italy and Spain, not to speak of Scandinavian countries. And don't forget the Romans.

But Americans are doing it now, when we are supposedly civilized. Most other nations stopped invading other countries long ago.

Age specific hearing loss? Well, I think I'll have to wait a long time for that to happen. And when it does happen, I can always get a hear aid, can't I?

And women as they age tend to lose the lower frequencies, ie. their hearing for male voices deteriorates.
A match made in heaven!

You choose the idea and opinions out of the suite of those culturally available to you that seem to fit best with your lived experience. — Janus

What a strange idea of "thinking for yourself".

I think "thinking for yourself" is about epistemic autonomy, ie. being autonomous in how one knows/believes one knows things. Like I said already, it's epistemic autonomy that is questionable.

Relative novelty of one's ideas isn't the measure of "thinking for yourself" (although this is how it is often understood in popular discourse).

However, it is important to understand that Plato did not blindly adopt the religious beliefs of Athenian society. On the contrary, he introduced a new theology with the cosmic Gods ranking above the Gods of mainstream religion, and a supreme non-personal God above the cosmic Gods. — Apollodorus

So he did something similar as, for example, Christian theologians did and do: Adopt a religious foundation and build on it. I see nothing special about this.

Plato's introduction of the Forms and, above all, the Form of the Good clearly elevates religion above personal Gods. In fact, contemplating the Forms requires no religious beliefs whatsoever. Even atheists can do that.

But can atheists do it in a way that will have the same positive, life-affirming results as when religious people contemplate the Forms?
My personal experience is, they can't. Without that religious foundation that had to be internalized before one's critical thinking abilities developed, contemplation of "metaphysical realities" doesn't amount to anything.

And, of course, there is a strong probability that Socrates did practice some form of contemplation or meditation. It would seem strange for someone to advocate the contemplation of metaphysical realities and not practice it themselves.

But what is meant by "contemplation of metaphysical realities"?

I meditate on your precepts
and consider your ways.
Psalm 119:15 (NIV)

Does it not simply mean 'to obey religious decrees' and all the "contemplation" and "reflection" are really just about bearing in mind the extent and the details of the religious decrees?
I don't think it includes contemplating the possibility that the "metaphysical realities" might not be real at all.

The Symposium (220d-e) certainly relates how Socrates one morning remained standing motionless and absorbed in thoughts until next morning when he prayed to the Sun after which he went on his way, and that this was a habit of his. It is not difficult to imagine him in that state of contemplation or inner vision in which the soul has ascended to and entered the realm of the pure, the everlasting, the immortal and changeless where it dwells in communion with the realities that are like itself (see also Phaedo).

But the method, the method of this absorption is not known to us! And this method is crucial for understanding what exactly it was that he was doing when "standing motionless". I can "stand motionaless" but I will have ascended to the realm of the pure as much as a mole hill. Because I don't have the method.

When I said that personally I tend to hear female voices over male ones I meant this only in the sense that my brain notices or registers them NOT that I find them "aggressive" or in any way "annoying". — Apollodorus

Sure.
Wait till you get age specific hearing loss. If you're the typical male, you'll lose the high frequencies first, so that you won't hear female voices so well anymore. heh.

In any event, I put Americans in the same category as Europeans. They may be louder than some Europeans, but I fail to see how this translates as "aggressive".

Being loud does not mean that they are going to start a fight or attack you, does it?

It could mean that. A trajectory is loudness -- verbal aggression -- physical aggression. In fact, many people here already class loudness as verbal aggression.

Unless you do something to upset them, in which case you can't really complain that they are aggressive toward you ....

Americans tend to be upset by the very fact that other nations exist at all. That's why they feel justified to invade other countries and teach them to submit to 'murica.

Explain why we still exist after two hundred-odd millennia if, as a species, h. sapiens in the aggregate isn't "just reflexively breeding". — 180 Proof

Perhaps the people who choose to have children have some damn good reasons for doing so that the rest of us just isn't privy to.
Perhaps there is some deep wisdom in "going with the flow" that those who are outside the flow just cannot comprehend.

Right, and that's exactly all I've been saying; that such knowledge is not demonstrable, even to oneself.. no matter how sublimely confident and perfectly convinced one might be that one possess such knowledge. — Janus

If one is "sublimely confident and perfectly convinced", then no further demonstration is necessary.

It might turn out, at death, that one was correct, if consciousness survives death,

but no one could know it in advance, and you could never know it was anything more than a lucky intuition in any case.

How can you possibly know that?? To rightly say what you're saying requires omniscience!!!!

At least if you turned out to be wrong you'd never know, could never be proven to be wrong. I have no argument with anyone who feels so convinced they know something as to not entertain even the shadow of a doubt, provide they don't seek to impose their beliefs on others, or expect others to be convinced by their personal conviction and profession of certainty.

So the real issue is about feeling offended by other people's pride, confidence, and certainty?

If you don't want to think freely, but would rather have other's impose their thoughts on you then you are at least free to do that. It's up to you. At least be honest and admit to yourself at least if not to others,

Oh, come on, this is false dichotomy you're operating with. Either think for yourself, or have others impose their thoughts on you. This is so impoverished!
I myself am not much of an optimist, but even I don't believe that humans relate to eachother only in a competitive and adversary way.

To say nothing of how your view requires epistemic autonomy, which is highly problematic in and of itself.

that there is no possibility of absolute rational certainly, or certainty of any truth, even if certainty of personal conviction is possible

What a strange thing to say, your very claim undermines itself.

So God created mostly scrap?? In his infinite goodness and wisdom, he chose that most of his creation should go to waste??
— baker

1. God can do as he pleases. — Apollodorus

Then we shall pay him back in his own coin.

the West has modernized, westernized, commercialized, and "despiritualized" India. — Apollodorus

Well then India wasn't all that spiritual to begin with, eh.

What I mean to say is that the benefits of meditation don't have any utility beyond themselves. If you are practicing for some advantage or utilitarian reason, then 'you are doing it wrong'. — Wayfarer

One should meditate etc. for the purpose of the complete cessation of suffering. Granted, it is said that up until the point of stream entry, one cannot be certain whether one is on the right path or not. Still, even prior to that, one's practice should bear some results by which to judge whether one is heading in the right direction or not.

Sappadasa.

Which is all the more reason to suspect that he did not arrive at his certainty about those religious ideas by those same rational arguments with which he's trying to persuade thinking people.
— baker

Are you practicing your Buddhist sophistry, sorry, debating, skills on us? — Apollodorus

Eh?

Logic was just emerging and every system of rational thought is based on the elements available in the current culture of the time. Plato simply made use of what he had at his disposal. What would you have liked him to do, invent everything from scratch?

I'm saying that it is not at all likely that he arrived at his certainty about those religious ideas by those same rational arguments with which he's trying to persuade thinking people.

Instead, he was more like religious people usually are: born and raised into a religion, and then only later on developing justifications for their religious choice and knowledge.

The Forms are a type of universals. First, in Greek religion, the Gods were personifications of natural phenomena, states of mind, human occupations, moral values, etc., that served as a form of universals that enabled Greeks to organize and make sense of the world they lived in.

Second, the Greek word for Form, eidos, means “form”, “kind”, “species”. So, it makes sense to speak of a particular x as being a form or kind of a universal X.

Third, Plato follows the reductivist tendency already found in Greek philosophy, and in natural science in general, that sought to reduce the number of fundamental principles of explanation to the absolute minimum, hence the “first principle” or arche of the earliest Greek philosophers.

So, the Forms are consistent with Plato’s explanatory framework which is hierarchical.

Fourth, it is an undeniable fact that all experience, for example, visual perception, can be reduced to fundamental elements such as number, size, shape, color, distance, etc. that constitute a form of natural universals.

Fifth, it is a common feature of the Greek language as spoken at Plato’s time to form abstract nouns by adding the definite article to the neuter adjective. Thus the adjective “good”, agathos, which is agathon in the neuter, becomes the abstract noun “the good”, to agathon. This enables the Greek philosopher to speak of “the Good”, “the Beautiful”, or “the True”. Plato was making philosophy and logic for Greeks, not for non-Greek speaking people.

Sixth, eidos comes from the verb eido, “I see” and literally means “the seen”, “that which is seen”. This reflects the fact that for Greeks in general and for Plato in particular, to know was to see, thus knowledge or wisdom being a form of mental looking or seeing. Which is why in Plato, invisible realities are seen with the “eye of the soul”.

So, when Socrates talks to Meno or Simmias about Forms, it makes perfect sense to them.

Thank you for the summary! However,

No one says that we should. But if we are trying to reconstruct what Socrates meant by examined life, etc., we need to look into known states of consciousness that are in agreement with Socrates' statements in the Phaedo and elsewhere.

It seems unquestionable that certain concentration and meditation techniques lead to an experience of peace and calm followed by joy, clarity, and what has been described as something akin to “love”, as well as experiences of "light."

But just like ordinary religious people nowadays, Plato et al. didn't arrive at their certainties by doing concentration and meditation techniques, did they?

I find it more likely that they were born and raised into their religion, and then later on propped it up with fancy explanations and justifications. As is common for religious people.

Socrates relates that he had dreams in which he was ordered to write poems to his master Apollo (Phaedo 60d-e). People have precognitive dreams. How does science explain this?

And Beethoven said God inspired his music. I wouldn't make too much of such declarations; I see them primarily as culturally specific way of professing humility, gratitude, justification for making art.