But you're not really engaging with main thing i'm wondering. — ProtagoranSocratist

I said it depends on the audience with whom in mind you're writing.
If you're writing a children's book on some philosophical topic, the standards and expectations are going to be different than if you're writing a doctoral thesis, and so on.
Do you expect us to work out the details for each of those possible categories?

Lotuses that get drowned out in filth on account of the filth having far more connections. — javra

Lotuses grow in the filth, and they kill everything else in the bodies of water where they grow. Ever seen how lotus leaves cover the whole surface, so that nothing else can grow? Ever seen the underside of a lotus leaf?

The sophistic BS part was a separate issue to me: pivoting on the issue of ego and its desires for fame, fortune, power, etc. by mimicking (but not emulating) what good faith philosophers do — javra

Actually, those are references to standard Buddhist doctrine.
See the Index at Access To Insight, under "desire", for example.

1) Lower-status people = unemployed, homeless, First Nations, gig workers — ask tough questions of their bosses, or of police, or other authorities, local government workers, welfare workers, etc.

Insolent = rude — e.g., “Hey, you fuckin' pig, why don’t you do some real work instead of bothering us? You're a fuckin' dog!” (Food delivery guy on a bicycle to policeman.)

There you go: they harass.
— baker

I’m not sure why you write “there you go" as if you believe that you are indirectly 'proving soemthing. Say what you mean. — Tom Storm

Like I've been saying all along: Speaking up, when one is the wrong person, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, can have grave consequences for one. Like your food delivery guy above: he's very lucky if he didn't get arrested for saying what he said to a policeman.

care to discuss that? Or is that too hard? — Mikie

You just answered some of my above questions.

It's the basis for all social decisions we make. Why do we pass some laws and not others? Why do we build some buildings and not others? — Hanover

Because some rich and powerful people decided that way. Mostly because they wanted to be even more rich and powerful.

My point is that we decide whether to be religious

This is absurd! One cannot "decide" to be religious! This is the height of solipsistic, egotistical madness!
And not because of some issue of collectivism or whatever cheap Randian excuse you want to throw at me.

One cannot "choose" a religion. It would be like "choosing" one's grandparents and parents. It would be like "choosing" the country one was born in. It would be like "choosing" one's native language. It would be like "choosing" which company to work for. Or like "choosing" the weather.

One cannot choose such things because they 1. precede one, 2. contextualize one, 3. require the concurrent action of all parties involved, 4. are beyond one's control.

Choosing to live in a way that accepts a reduced significance for human value

My experience with religion has been that it is the most dehumanizing, demoralizing experience I've ever had.

Doing what is most consistent with scientific grounds is a choice and is not a requirement. That goes to my original statement. The value of religion is not rooted in the scientifically arrived at truth values of its claims.

I'm not coming from a position of valuing science over religion. To me, it makes no difference whether I go to church or whether I go to a science lecture. In both cases, I am supposed to be quiet, bow my head, give them money, and don't ask any real questions.

One thing I've consistently observed in religions, theistic and atheistic ones, and especially in the ones that aim to make adult converts, is that they operate by the motto, "Talk the talk and walk the walk", whereby the talk and the walk are usually two very different things.
— baker

I don't follow the relevance. There are some horrible religions, horrible governments, and horrible people.

I'm saying that I have observed in many religions that there is an unwritten, unspoken rule that the official religious tenets should not be taken all that seriously. I've seen too many times religious people ridiculing (and worse) other religious people from their same religion for taking religious tenets "too seriously". Like when the same religious people who preach abstinence from alcohol also ridicule those who actually abstain from alcohol and consider them "zealots".
And if anything, the whole point of religion seems to be precisely that: a smokescreen, dust thrown in the eyes of the opponent.

my position,
which is that the value of religion is based upon its outward manifestations.

I'm not disagreeing. It's just that religion is "good" in ways that make Machiavelli look like an amateur.

As in, does it lead to a happier more productive person and society.

While we're at it, for illustrative purposes, shall we discuss the Asian idea of "social harmony"? Or the Stepfordian ideal?

What this means is simply that if Joe Blow finds great meaning and value in his religion and he has a community and friends he has built around it, all to their mutual satisfaction and happiness, it would not be a valid basis to dismantle it due to the fact it's claims are false. That is, whether there is a god up high as Joe Blow preaches is wholly irrelevant to whether the religion is of value.

Don't forget that you, as a religious person, are helping to create the image of religion that other people have of religion. Being glib and absurdist like you're above really isn't helping your case. With what you're saying above, you're basically making a case for atheism!

Religion does delve obviously into origin stories, but those must be judged (again) on how well they provide for a meaningful life by their sanctification of humanity, not by their propositional truth value.

In that case, religion is no different from what some wannabe positive psychologist says on his blog.
Do you really want to argue this line of reasoning?

If you want to kill people in the name of God, then that God better be real.

And just because his books were banned doesn't mean anything. The RCC also opposed general literacy and reading the Bible for a long time because it thought that the ordinary people could not properly understand it without proper guidance.
— baker

His books were not generally banned due to concerns about limited literacy. They were officially and specifically banned for all readers because they were considered heretical. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_Librorum_Prohibitorum

Also, the Catholic Church never banned the Bible for anyone. They banned certain translations they thought inaccurate.

Descartes wasn't banned because Catholics just didn't like books generally. They chose him and others to ban, but still let people read other works. — Hanover

Interesting reading skills ...

My view is that there are many instances where belief in God offers greater meaning — Hanover

Sure, there are such instances. The problem with belief in God is, though, that one cannot actually choose to believe in God.

God is, by definition, a being that contextualizes one. As such, one cannot unilaterally declare anything in relation to God, without this necessarily being also a denial of God (unilaterally -- ie. without waiting for God for his take on the matter). And since God doesn't seem to be all that interested to communicate with us directly, personally, we're left to this solipsistic, unilateral, one-way "relationship" that is no different from talking to walls.

How time flies!

My definition of tedious research is busywork, made necessary not because it is an intrinsic component of creative thought, but because it is an interruption of creative thinking — Joshs

Robert Greene was once asked how he defines creativity. It’s a word that gets thrown around. It gets mythologized and romanticized. “People have all sorts of illusions around the word that aren’t the reality,” Robert said. “The reality is that creativity is a function of the previous work you put in. So if you put a lot of hours into thinking and researching and reading, hour after hour—a very tedious process—creativity will come to you…It comes to you, but only after tedious hours of work and process.” I like this definition because it means creativity is not some mysterious form of magic. It’s not something some people simply have and some people simply don’t. It’s something rewarded to those who put the work in.

https://billyoppenheimer.com/august-14-2022/

The rich countries should be helping the poorer ones electrify responsibly with renewables, but the rich countries (e.g., America) can't even fund food assistance programs for their own people. — RogueAI

Such is capitalist paradise.

This level of naval-gazing approaches satire.

“Before we turn on the air conditioner, certain fundamental questions must be addressed— like whether we all really want to not be sweltering, and if we want to even go on living.”

Good thing you’re not in charge of anything. — Mikie

And you wonder why people aren't eager to combat the deterioration of climate!

This is supposedly a philosophy forum ... not Twitter ... ...

But I shrink from saying ‘objectively true’, at the same time. That’s part of the dilemma. — Wayfarer

Then, clearly, you've still got some work to do.

Do you have any openness to (radically?) changing your views? It certainly doesn't seem that way. — Janus

@Wayfarer has the attitude of an old swami, that's what the problem is, as far as a philosophy forum goes. It's not that people resent the idea of some "higher truth" per se. It's that those who claim to know the "higher truth" are a dime a dozen, but they refuse to acknowledge this, what to speak of upping their game.

Do you think that full reflection is possible for a person who is inside a paradigm?
— Astorre

The same processes that embed individuals within social paradigms shape the nature and direction of ‘reflection’. The split between the purely private and inner (reflection) and the socially constructed (paradigm) is artificial. — Joshs

I think @Astorre is asking about something else, something along the lines of,
"If a person is fully committed to a particular worldview (or paradigm), can they critically examine said worldview/paradigm?"

Namely, a critical examination of a paradigm would require stepping out of that paradigm; but such stepping out would be in conflict with one's committment to said paradigm.

There's the saying that the difference between a philosopher and a religious man is that a philosopher deals in expendable theories, while the religious man puts his life on the line for his ideas.

I think it's strange to think about questions like, "How do I know what I think I know? How do I know what is real?", and then turn around and go about one's business as if one hadn't thought about those things.

In the spirit of taking one's reflections seriously, and taking seriously the act of reflecting, it seems rather natural to also wonder about things such as a justification for one's existence.

Although I have seen professional philosophers dismiss particular themes as being simply a matter of "poor self-esteem" or some such "psychological problem" that doesn't warrant a philosophical exploration.

are you saying this in a "leave that poor guy alone" way or in a "He has a point" way? — Dogbert

The latter.
Not to make this personally about you, though.

Speaking for myself, being bullied and told I should die wouldn't convince me I don't exist. — Ciceronianus

Indeed, but it just might push you into looking for a justification for your existence.

Not to say that this is what is happening for the OP. There is something fair-weather-ish about so much of philosophy. As if someone could spend one's days trying to figure out things like "Oh my, I don't know what's real!", and then close one's notebook, and then go and have a beer as if everything was totally fine.

Part of the issue is that the audience is much vague as someone without a university position or who isn't a student. — ProtagoranSocratist

Then such is the predicament of the would-be philosopher.

By the time China makes a meaningful reduction in fossil fuel use (say half), we'll be well into uncharted territory, and they'll still be pouring GHG's into the air. — RogueAI

Why blame China?

Why buy cheap Chinese stuff?

Stop buying cheap Chinese stuff, and China will have no reason to burn so much coal anymore, or even none at all, for that matter.

It's not the Chinese who need to change; it's the rest of the world, esp. Westerners, who are eager to look wealthier than they are and so they buy cheap Chinese stuff.

These and further related questions tend to be taboo when it comes to discussing climate change deterioration and how to counteract it. Climate activists are often displeased with people's aparent indolence, or they criticize people for not trusting science. It seems that for many climate activists, it should be taken for granted that climate change deterioration is something that should be combatted, not merely accepted as yet another fact of life over which we have no control.

I think that for successfully taking action against climate deterioration, the above questions, and then some, would need to be openly discussed.

Writing about philosophy: what are the basic standards and expectations?[/quote]
Who is your intended audience?

A habilitation committee at a university?
The editor of Philosophy Now?
The editor of Reader's Digest?
People who post a lot on Twitter?
People at an online philosophy forum?
Your family at a dinner table?
Who?

For what reason are you trying to present your philosophical thoughts to some particular audience?


If you skip these questions, you're implying some universalizing, generalizing, absolutizing theme to your argument that might actually run counter to the argument you're explicitly making.

Oh, the US is the biggest oil and gas producer? Let's look at coal instead. Why do we still have to waste time on this nonsense. We have to phase out all the fossil fuels, and the sooner we do it the less disruptive and catastrophic it will be.

And adaptation is what we also have to do anyway, and the slower we are at stopping making it worse by stopping burning fossil fuels, the more stringent our adaptation will have to be. And none of this is remotely controversial. — unenlightened

How many people actually want mankind to survive?
How many people actually want all the currently living people to die of natural causes?
Is mere survival even a universally desirable goal? Does everyone want it?
How many people are even willing to survive even if that meant a significant lowering of their quality of life?


Efforts to combat climate deterioration are doomed as long as people in general would rather die than merely survive.

There's something extraordinarily compromised about a view that seeks to demonstrate "existence". — Banno

It seems like a rather normal reaction of someone under strain.

Have you never been bullied? Have you never been told that you should do the world a favor and die?
What do you think are the metaphysical implications of having been bullied, or otherwise experiencing duress?

Describing Descartes as a shill for the Catholic Church isn't historically correct either.

He was at best guarded so as to not offend the Church — Hanover

That's awfully generous, and it's the general consensus among Western philosophers, yes.

But read his prefaces and introductions to his works. He wasn't a "shill", he was a Catholic, defending the Catholic faith. Stop looking at him as a philosopher first and as a Catholic as a distant second. It's very common to read Descartes as if he was a "seeker, just like we are". Instead, look at him as a Catholic first. In a patronizing manner, he sought to devise arguments that were supposed to convince non-Catholics.
Yes, he presents his case in a general manner -- taking for granted, just like Pascal, that there is only one true, right religion.


And just because his books were banned doesn't mean anything. The RCC also opposed general literacy and reading the Bible for a long time because it thought that the ordinary people could not properly understand it without proper guidance.

You can't acknowledge an exception and say "always." The best you can say is "mostly , " but then you'll have to start counting. Maybe we can say "sometimes." But a rabbi certainly believes he speaks absolute truth, so I don't see your distinction. I'll agree Jews and Christians prostelisze differently, but so do Baptists and modern Catholics. Jews do reach out to unaffiliated Jews, but only some (compare Chabad to Litvak). — Hanover

What I said is also in response to another thing you said:

The atheistic belief that belief is the primary reason for religion and not behavior leads you guys down interesting little paths. — Hanover

As if atheists invented the "rationalistic" approach to religion. No, it's from how theists preach!

But a rabbi certainly believes he speaks absolute truth, so I don't see your distinction.

The distinction refers to how Christianity and Islam are religions that aim to make adult converts, while Judaism does not.

When a Christian preaches to a non-Christian, it is with the aim to convert the other person; and the Christian makes claims that the other person is expected to accept as true.
(Also, with the implicit, "Believe as I say, do as I say, not as I do.)

Regardless, it misses my point. I described how religion is to be objectively judged for its value. That is, even if it fails a correspondence theory of truth, if it advances a positive lifestyle, then it can have positive value.

"Objectively judged"? What is that?
A "positive lifestyle"? What is that? It really depends on whom you ask. The various religions do not agree on what exactly a "positive lifestyle" is. Nor on what makes for "objective judgment".

You might say it fails in that regard as well, which also would miss my point, and it would be agreeing with me. It'd be agreeing that the way religion is judged is by use,

not upon its metaphysical correspondence.

What is "use"?

One thing I've consistently observed in religions, theistic and atheistic ones, and especially in the ones that aim to make adult converts, is that they operate by the motto, "Talk the talk and walk the walk", whereby the talk and the walk are usually two very different things. What is more, practicing such doubleness appears to be extremely evolutionarily advantageous. Notice that I'm not calling it duplicity; because it doesn't seem to be mere duplicity, but a conscious, deliberate saying one thing and doing another, while there is apparently some higher aim to doing so, a type of metaphysical street smarts.

Existence is a brute fact and does not require "justification". — 180 Proof

Except when life gets hard and one wonders why keep on going.

Does that mean that philosophy is a fool's enterprise? No, its an ideal that every human being struggles with. We all have a bit of ego, and we all fail at thinking at times. The point is to get back up. Yes, the pressures of the world and yourself may have won today, but there's always the next day. Never stop thinking and never stop questioning even basic assumptions and outlooks. That is what pushes us forward. That is the purpose of philosophy. — Philosophim

People who merely think a lot, to the point of thinking too much, tend to end up in institutions with white padded cells.

While I sympathize with you when it comes to noticing how limited the opportunities for open discussion are --


philosophy comes down to knowing the right time, the right place, and the right people with whom to bring up a particular topic (whether the topic is specifically "philosophical" or not).

You may very well come from an enlightened family where such questions are common. In many families such questions are off limits, yelled at, and discouraged. — Philosophim

Sometimes, the only appropriate place for a particular person to ask about the things that concern them is the privacy of their diary.

It's naive to think that one could talk about just anything with just anyone in just any situation. Even professional philosophers are not keen to discuss just anything with just anyone in just any situation.

Notice how in traditional culture, but also in many situations in modern culture, asking questions is the domain of the person who holds the higher status.
— baker

I’ve not noticed that. Certainly, in the cultures I know here, people of all status commonly ask difficult questions and are sometimes insolent while doing so. — Tom Storm

Ask questions of whom?
And yes, they are insolent: because being of lower status, one isn't supposed to ask questions, at all.

In Australian culture low status workers habitually question and sometimes harass the management and ruling classes.

There you go: they harass.

Of course one may very well be cognitively and physically able to ask a question. But whether it will be considered appropriate to do so, in any particular instance, is quite another matter.

It's an absolute disgrace, to say the least, that Rene Descartes has come to be known as "the father of modern philosophy"!

He and his followers are responsible for the quasi-rationalistic approach to questions of faith and God. This man who made a point of inventing arguments through which atheists and Protestants were supposed to be convinced that the RCC is the only true church and religion. And somehow, the history of philosophy ate it all up, this Trojan horse.

The best argument the atheist can mount against theism is claiming it’s irrational, which is true. — ucarr

Not at all. There are better arguments. For example, as summarized in the question,

"How is it, that God, in his infinite goodness and wisdom, granted some people the privilege to believe in God by making them be born and raised into a theistic religion, but withdrew this privilege from others?"

The best argument I can think of against theism is that God clearly cares about some people, but doesn't care about others. And I'm not talking about allowing babies to die from hunger and such. I'm talking about the extreme privilege of being born and raised into a religion; the privilege of having internalized fundamental religious beliefs before one is old enough to understand what they are about. The privilege of never having to choose one's religion.

Theism is to be judged as a form of life, not as a proposition with a true value. — Hanover

Yet when theism is preached, it is always preached as a proposition with a truth value.


As a Jew, you don't relate to that, because Jews normally don't preach. But Christians and Muslims do preach. They make claims that they expect (demand!) that the people they are preaching to will accept as true.

They've done those experiments where the LLMs had access to emails stating that the LLM would be shut down, and then LLMs devised various survival strategies, including wanting to kill the engineer who would actually physically pull the plug (by trapping him in an elevator).
Based on this, some people concluded that the LLM has a sense of self, that it is somehow autonomous and such.

This is wrong; because if the LLM was trained on ordinary news texts, then this is also where it could learn about self-preservation.

How do you cope with injustice done to you when you don't have the means to revenge yourself?

For example: You get falsely accused of some wrongoing at work, you get fired, you are blamed for losing your job, so you're not eligible for unemployment benefits; you don't have the money to pursue the matter legally. How do you get peace of mind in such a situation (without doing something illegal)?

See, this seems patently unrealistic to me. The entire point of the American project is to promote diversity, you're right, and the intention is that this diversity is genuine — AmadeusD

Aren't you a daisy! The foundation of American culture isn't some profound humanist insight that "all men are created equal" or some such. It's just pragmatism: declare all the various factions to be equal under the law, so that they won't have legal grounds to fight for supremacy to the point of destruction (and so there will be no collateral damage from those fights that someone else would need to clean up).

What is this, if not evidence of an obsession with quantification, normativization, standardization?
— baker
What's the issue, sorry?

Then read again.

Enforce a policy which restricts that behaviour. Actually do something about it - exclude, remove, penalize etc... rather than just words. Eventually, it would become a criminal issue ideally (actually, it is. People just refuse to enforce these laws against certain groups for fear of being seen as the exact thing the laws are designed to stop you being).

So you didn't up the ante and you don't have an effective policy. Hm.

I'm unsure I understand the question properly. I agree, most people operate on that principle, but i disagree that it is genuine. Anyone who casts the first stone in this sort of context knows they are questionable and is getting out ahead of a fair assessment. I don't see any significant set of people who are doing what you suggest in good faith.

So what? It obviously works, even if it's done in bad faith.

This is, to my mind, utterly preposterous to the point that it feels redundant to address it, sorry that this is quite rude. The bolded is just bare-faced falsity that might have been true 40 years ago. Women hating themselves is one of the least helpful aspects of any society we have ever known about. It is ridiculous to suggest that this is encouraged in modern Western society

Well, a double daisy you are!

Does that mean that, for example, a religious preacher or a boss who are completely unaffected by what they say (even though what they say can have devastating consequences for their listeners), are not real, or that what they say isn't real?

Quite. But one might consider: how is it that one comes to the view that anything should be questioned at all? I suspect one needs a skeptical bent to begin with. — Tom Storm

Notice how in traditional culture, but also in many situations in modern culture, asking questions is the domain of the person who holds the higher status.

I think a better clarification is 'Some philosophical concepts are for people with niche contexts and/or interests". Philosophy is open for the poorest and most stressed among us. What is examined will be more pertinent to one's situation. "Why am I loyal to this job? Is job loyalty something I should hold over finding another job with a 2$ raise?" Not a complex question, but a re-examining of the situation that one is in and a questioning of the things taken for granted that got you there matter. Will such a person be interested in debating Hume? Almost certainly not. Does the person need to freely think despite the pressures around them not to? Yes. — Philosophim

Do you find that professional philosophers (people who have a formal degree in philosophy and who are payed for producing philosophical texts) are sympathetic to your view expressed above?

Because when it is real, what it says affects the speaker (the LLM) as much as the listener. — Fire Ologist

By that same principle, most people are not real, or what they say isn't real, because they are for a large part completely unaffected by what they themselves say.

You didn't answer my question.

Just checking - does this work the other way? Would it also be naive and idealistic to think a person of high status could correctly measure or evaluate the words and actions of a person of low status. — Tom Storm

This is moot, because the person of higher status is automatically correct by virtue of their higher status.

And I'm also interested in what you count as high status.

Someone with more socioeconomic power.


Look, I'm not an elitist. I'm interested in having a measure of peace of mind and not becoming cynical and jaded in the face of injustice.

If you look at popular religion/spirituality, as well as popular psychology, the advice usually goes in the direction that the ordinary person (who doesn't have the means to revenge themselves) should embrace a type of amoralist, anomic stance where they are quietly okay with whatever happens or is done to them (or others). Morality doesn't seem to be something everyone could afford.