Yes, I realized that the first is conviction that someone else knows and the second is conviction that oneself knows. Still both just amount to conviction. — Janus

And if one uses this conviction as a starting point, and then practices accordingly, then -- so the official theory -- one attains the fruits of the Path.

If you believe that is possible, then fine, but you should be intellectually honest enough to acknowledge that believing that cannot ever be anything more than a matter of faith, — Janus

How can you possibly know that?
The world of spirituality is a world of hierarchy and exceptionalism. Some people are said to be capable of things that others cannot even dream of.

This is a philosophy forum and if you want to claim that extraordinary knowledge is possible then it is incumbent on you to explain how that extraordinary knowledge could constitute knowledge in any sense that could be justified by logic, reason or empirical evidence.

Actually, he doesn't have to. If he did it, he'd be playing by your rules.

Are we here to find a guru?

Are you? The world of spirituality operates by its own principles. And if you choose to enter it, you need to bear this in mind, or you'll waste a lot of time.

“Human wisdom is of little or no value.” (23a)

“This one of you, O human beings, is wisest, who, like Socrates, recognizes that he is in truth of no account in respect to wisdom.” (23b)

/.../ — Fooloso4

Oh come on. These are just exaggerations in the name of humility, not statements of factuality.

Plato went to enormous lengths NOT to preach. To see him as a preacher is an injustice to his memory. His dialogues are models of reasoned persuasion. — Wayfarer

When there is a power differential between two people, we cannot talk of reasoned persuasion anymore, then it's preaching.
I don't find preaching irksome, I just want things to be called by their name. Yes, that's plebeian, but so am I.

They sometimes contain exhortations and obviously have a religious aspect to them, but characterising him as a preacher looses the very real distinction between philosophy and religion. I think we tend to characterise it like that, because we tar anything religious with the same brush. — Wayfarer

Not I. I have my own reasons. I think philosophers are generally given way too much credit and assumed to be more different than religious preachers. It seems that in a mad rush to create a world and society of their own, secularists have adopted some old thinkers for their secular purposes, while downplaying the actual religious agendas of those thinkers. Like Descartes, for example, that Trojan horse.

Don't you find it odd that people who supposedly were so skeptical about their own abilities to obtain proper knowledge, nevertheless had so much to say, with utter certainty, about gods and ideas and a number of other things?
— baker

If by 'people', you mean those who speak through the Platonic dialogues,

No, I mean people like Socrates who goes on saying how little he knows -- and yet he's so sure about so many things!

many of their utterances were not at all marked by 'absolute certainty'. There is much weighing up, arguments for and against, doubts raised and not always dispelled.

It's more likely that this is just for show, the Socratic method. Not real doubt or uncertainty.

Plato himself is very diffident in respect of his arguments about philosophical ultimates. He's no tub-thumper. Of course for subsequent generations Platonism became absorbed into the Christian corpus, and then it began to assume a dogmatic character that it originally didn't have.

I think you're painting the ancients as more rosy, egalitarian, skeptical, humble then they really were.

Nor can these states be transmitted or even described to others. If nothing else, this suggests that we should not dismiss things just because science cannot find them and put them under the microscope. — Apollodorus

But why should we accept them?

I think "religious preachers" is a bit exaggerated. Plato, in any case, is working with religious ideas that were already current at the time. Like other Greek philosophers, he is simply trying to make those ideas acceptable to thinking people by supporting them with rational arguments. — Apollodorus

But did he arrive at his certainty about those religious ideas by those same rational arguments with which he's trying to persuade thinking people?

Plato's idea of the Forms was already present in latent form in Greek culture, religion, and language. Plato's theory is a logical development of existing elements.

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.

Similarly, Socrates does not reject religious beliefs, he merely wants thinking men to examine their beliefs and only accept those that can be supported by reason.

So he was doing something similar as Descartes in his Meditations?

You don't have Asperger's and you know damn well what I'm talking about.

Nothing wrong with being loud if they are being themselves, is there? Even Spaniards and Italians can be loud but, again, because they are being themselves. — Apollodorus

So this is not an aggressive dog, he's just "being himself"?

You are easily outraged! The quote is with regard to his ignorance. His knowing how to live in the face of his ignorance is what the examined life is all about. — Fooloso4

That's bizarre. Nothing in what he says suggests he had such ignorance. Rather, that like a good boy scout, he was dead sure of right and wrong, good and bad.

I don't think I quite agree with that. Louder than other English-speaking women, e.g., English, Irish, maybe. But definitely NOT aggressive, they are just being themselves. — Apollodorus

By my dinosaur standards, they _are_ aggressive, and this isn't mutually exclusive with "being themselves".

I would say Japanese and Chinese women can sound aggressive. And, above all, Arabs. But none of them sound as aggressive as the men.

I find that generally, it's the women who are more aggressive.

So why read those old books?
— baker

As I said before, I posted the link for those interested. There's no penalty for not being interested. — Wayfarer

No, I want to know what use is there in reading those old books. Don't just brush this off idly, it's not an idle question.

Is there anything more to it than nostalgia?

They talk, I listen. — 180 Proof

IOW, a hierarchical one-way relationship in which you are the underdog.
IRL, you'd get tired of such an arrangement quickly.

Unlike some here who would do most of the talking. — Fooloso4

Thank heavens that false humility makes for false pride!

Unfortunately, self-interest tends to come first and this happens at individual, national, and international level. — Apollodorus

I don't think self-interest is the culprit. Rather, it's contempt, hostility. The normalization and preference of contempt and hostility.
The oppsoite of caring for others isn't selfishness, it's contempt/hostility.

I will say, though, that the OP was not discussing sexuality in particular, but allure: the quality of being powerfully and mysteriously attractive or fascinating. — Possibility

Did anyone bother to read the Buddhist text I posted earlier?

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/574131

The agreeableness of women and the lack of interest, desire and intimidation to compete with the robust social dominance of men - even down to the very fact that men have more powerful and louder vocal cords, is largely absent in women — Cobra

Are you American? I find that American women in general have much louder voices, speak in a lower tone register with less tonal and dynamic variation than women elsewhere. So that gives them the effect of being dominant, aggressive, intimidating.

You really find male voices overpowering and intimidating? I am asking because when I eat out in a busy restaurant, for example, what I tend to hear is female voices. Or perhaps men are instinctively more receptive to female voices and vice versa. — Apollodorus

There is a physiological difference, e.g.

According to several studies, two hearing assessment tools—auditory evoked potential and oto-acoustic emissions tests—show differences between men and women. These tools are objective tests, meaning that the variations suggest an innate physiological difference in the male and female auditory systems. Neuroanatomic studies have also found that speech perception tends to be treated bilaterally in female brains and unilaterally in male brains. In other words, speech generally activates neurons in both hemispheres for women, but predominantly in one hemisphere for men. Finally, some studies suggest that women make greater use of visual cues in understanding speech, especially as they age. These studies all suggest that the auditory system and speech perception are different in men and women.
https://www.lobe.ca/en/blog/adulte-hearing/Do-Men-and-Women-Hear-Differently

Is it really hard to understand that extreme povetry, that you really don't have anything, is different from relative poverty, that you have less than your wealthy counterparts? — ssu

In a first world country, a poor person has to have many things just to be able to live up to the demands of earning a living. One doesn't have them for one's own luxury. For example, having a car and a smart phone is a must, or one could be unemployable.

Keep on bitching about despair of people in the wealthiest country where people don't starve to death, where institutions work, where poor do get assistance, unlike in other parts of this World and then insist that it doesn't matter at all just where we draw the line when we talk about poverty.

The simple truth: in which country you are poor does matter. No way to refute it.

Perhaps there are first world countries where what you say happens, but I'm not living in one. If I don't manage to take care of myself, it's death in the gutter for me.

So you have a whole range of X, Y, Z, etc. options. You cannot select the option for no option. Is this just? Does imposing on someone the need to pick from a range of options negate the fact that the imposition leaves out never having the option to not play the game of options in the first place? — schopenhauer1

Apart from the above-mentioned digital fill-out forms, one can choose to conceive of the situation in a different way. Ie. not as a matter of picking options as presented by others, but instead take charge and conceptualize the situation on one's own terms. The salient point is that everything comes at a cost, and so one cannot live without the consequences of one's actions.

One cannot have the choice not to choose, it just doesn't make sense. — Isaac

Actually, this scenario can appear in digital fill-out forms, for example, where the program won't allow you to go to the next step unless you complete the previous one. You have to tick one of the options given, or the program won't let you move on.

then how do you establish communication in any meaningful way, in the first place? — Apollodorus

Rather, the question is, do people even want to communicate?

So you go for beers with Laozi & Lucretius?

The problem that leaves me with, is whether anyone knows anything at all. If all anyone has is opinions, then where is the lodestar?

I also had the idea that opinion, doxa, concerned mainly the sensible realm whereas knowledge, noesis, concerned the realm of the ideas. Am I mistaken in so thinking? — Wayfarer

Don't you find it odd that people who supposedly were so skeptical about their own abilities to obtain proper knowledge, nevertheless had so much to say, with utter certainty, about gods and ideas and a number of other things?

Is it not more likely that their apparent skepticism about themselves was just a rhetorical device, a didactic device, or an exaggeration for the sake of humility, or some combination thereof?

The same pattern can be seen in religious preachers who love to point out how flawed and faulty man is, how flawed and faulty they are. And yet, somehow, despite all those flaws and faults, they were able to choose the right religion and figure out what The Truth is??

Socrates' knowledge of ignorance is not simply a matter of knowing that he is ignorant, it is knowledge of how to live without knowledge of what is "noble and good".(Apology 21d) — Fooloso4

This is outrageous, and the section you refer to does not support it.

Plato's dialogues provide plenty of pointers as to what an examined life may amount to in practice. The problem seems to stem from some people's insistence that everything is worthless or at least questionable opinion, and that "Socrates knows nothing" and "Plato says nothing". — Apollodorus

I think the problem stems from seeing Plato and company through modern secular eyes, as skeptics, giving them more skeptical credit than they're due, when in fact it would be more appropriate to see them as religious preachers.

Those who have not known, seen, penetrated, realized, or attained it by means of discernment would have to take it on conviction in others that the faculty of conviction... persistence... mindfulness... concentration... discernment, when developed & pursued, gains a footing in the Deathless, has the Deathless as its goal & consummation, whereas those who have known, seen, penetrated, realized, & attained it by means of discernment would have no doubt or uncertainty
— Pubbakotthaka Sutta

This passage shows the author chasing a mirage, "a 'difference' that makes no difference". What could having no doubt or uncertainty be other than conviction? — Janus

Note the bolded part.

The difference is between knowing things for oneself, or taking for granted that someone else knows.

I wonder if some of the immorality we perceive is subjective impressions while other matters are actually immoral. — Cheshire

But then we're still left with the problem of distinguishing which is which.

It's not possible to justify moral realism while being a consequent moral realist.
— baker

Enigmatic thing to say. — Constance

No. Moral realism, for it to be consequent moral realism, needs to be held a priori, in an axiomatic manner. The moment one ventures into finding justifications, one has left the zone of certainty.

Internal experience and witness testimony. — Wayfarer

Experience or realization?

A series from Princeton Press. Details here https://press.princeton.edu/series/ancient-wisdom-for-modern-readers — Wayfarer

I don't mean to be contrarian.
But what is the use of this ancient wisdom? How can it be used nowadays?

Unless one has already internalized the worldview that has produced that wisdom, that wisdom can, at most, serve as self-helpy "tips and tricks" that a person will possibly employ in ways not originally intended (because the person cannot understand that wisdom, due to not having internalized the worldview that produced it).

And even if one were to somehow internalize that ancient worldview, it would put one at a disadvantage in the modern world which doesn't function by that ancient worldview.

So why read those old books?

Laozi & Lucretius, I imagine, would take me in their stride easy enough. Can't say that about the others though, or see why that matters one way or the other. — 180 Proof

It matters because by studying and appreciating those ancient authors, one is basically putting oneself in a fantasy social relationship that is only one-way, one-sided. It's a type of parasocial interaction. One is trying to be part of a community, even if just in an abstract sense, from which one has no feedback as to whether that community would accept one or not. One is living in the delusion that one has found a community of like-minded people, even if just through books, when in fact one is just as alone and isolated as before, except that one is spending real time and energy on people who don't reciprocate, thus missing real world opportunities for reciprocal interactions.

↪baker :roll: — 180 Proof

If you were to meet those ancient authors, philosophers, wise men, what would they think of you?

Are you sure they wouldn't scorn you, reject you as a worthless man? Would they consider you a potential friend?

It's pretty outrageous to even consider that being poor in a rich western country is the same as being poor in Third World country. — ssu

An actual person can only look at and experience things from their own perspective, from their own experience, from their own life as it is, right on the spot.

To an actual person, the abstract perspective of a government statistical institution is irrelevant.

Is this really so hard to understand? What does it help you if you are rich by the standards of some banana republic, when you live in a first world country and struggle to make ends meet, constantly living on the edge of exhaustion?

might be that they ask more interesting questions than most adults a lot of the time — PulsarDK

And then they become those "most adults". What a pity, what a waste.

Please name your top five "ancient wisdom" reads for modern (beginner) philosophers. The Mad Fool and I both could probably use the encouragement. — 180 Proof

Encouragement for what? "Loving life"? Work?

he thought that this plans would lead to a greater good — Tom Storm

It would be strange for a person to pursue what they genuinely believe is bad. It's not clear it's even humanly possible to deliberately pursue the bad for the sake of the bad (to be differentiated from doing some bad things in the pursuit of the greater good).

Unfortunately, I don't know anything about Hitler's methods of self-examination. Assuming that he did spent quite a bit of time in self-examination as you say, it may perhaps be concluded that his self-examination was either insufficient or otherwise in some ways deficient. I would be unable to say more at this point without additional info, and I don't want to make things up. — Apollodorus

I picked Hitler as an extreme example of someone who, by popular opinion, went horribly astray, but who, at the same time, cannot be said to be someone who was merely a robot without any self-awareness. For example, he carefully prepared his speeches and public appearances, and we can infer from that that he examined his life.

So, the case may be that his life was not unexamined per se but only not rightly examined. That's the whole point of dikaiosyne or righteousness in Plato, to do things, including self-examination, rightly and in tune with the Just and the Good.

But the Nazis did believe that what they were doing was good, just, and noble.

At any rate, the statement, "each case, each particular, must be examined as to whether it should be regarded as good, and just, and noble, and this cannot be done without also questioning what the good, and just, and noble are", sounds pretty nonsensical to me.

If you were to start questioning what the good and the just are every single time you had to think, say, or do anything, you would probably run the risk of developing a severe case of schizoaffective disorder or something of that nature.

Socrates' philosophy may not be formulaic, but when you spend all your life "inquiring about the good, the just, and the noble", then I think you must come to some conclusions, however provisional, and you must develop some principles and guidelines of proper conduct. Otherwise the whole enterprise would be a total waste of time if not worse.

Exactly. In the examination of one's life, there must be constants and variables, there can't be only variables. And the constants must not be mere meta things or generalities, in order to serve as a meaningful basis for self-examination.

The relevant type of poverty is the relative poverty. It does not help the poor in first world countries that they would be rich in some banana republic. Because they don't live there. No, they have to make do where they are, in the first world country.

You call this an "excuse"??

Oh dear.

Sadly, I'm pretty sure it's easier for the avergae Afghan to earn a living and to know how to behave in order to escape calumny than it is for a Westerner.

The problems in the US or West are not in any way in the same ballpark as in non-democratic Third World countries. One should remember that. — ssu

For the poor in first world countries, it's not much different.

But, moral relativism would hold that there was a time or place these acts were permissible. Moral objectivism would argue they were never permissible. — Cheshire

Note that here with your notion of moral objectivism, you're already taking for granted that certain acts are moral, while others are immoral.

What you have is double moral objectivism:
1. by taking for granted that certain acts are moral, while others are immoral,
2. by taking for granted that the above distinction applies at all times.

But on the grounds of what did you establish that a certain act is moral to begin with? Your gut feeling?