I'm not surprised. When the sickness is in the cellular level, no amount of positivity or fight would change that. — L'éléphant

Yep. I noticed that the website of the American Cancer Society has:

Studies have shown that keeping a positive attitude does not change the course of a person’s cancer. Trying to keep a positive attitude does not lead to a longer life and can cause some people to feel guilty when they can’t “stay positive.” This only adds to their burden.

I do think a positive attitude, if not forced, can help make cancer easier to deal with emotionally and it can make it easier for friends and relatives to cope. Whatever that's worth.

Nice work.

I guess what I’m asking is, do you think the difference between a philosophy that makes a place for the significance of life, and one that doesn’t, is significant? — Wayfarer

I doubt it and have asked this question for many years. Humans are meaning making creatures who love and collaborate peaceably, no matter how antisocial faith traditions, politics, capitalism or sundry outliers might conspire to make us. Belief in meta-narratives have never stopped the jails from filling, or prevented the bodycount from piling up on the battlefields or in the dungeons. So my guess is that what you do matters, not what you believe.

Something about it must interest you, otherwise why would you keep asking questions about it? — Wayfarer

I'm interested in a lot of things. Doesn't mean I have a clear use for them. And I am really fascinated by what others believe and why.

Got ya.

It's a reference to the idea that living beings are intrinsic to the Universe, and not simply the 'accidental outcome of the collocation of atoms' (Bertrand Russell's words.) — Wayfarer

Thanks. Sure, but I find it hard to see what difference this makes to a life lived. Speaking personally, it would make no difference to who I am and what I choose to do in life. Knowledge of this might change the values of a rapacious capitalist, but I doubt it. I've known a lot of tough criminals over time and visited a number of jails and it has always struck me as interesting how many people involved in criminal justice are robust theists. Didn't stop them committing egregious crimes, however.

Man is that part of reality in which and through which the cosmic process has become conscious and has begun to comprehend itself. His supreme task is to increase that conscious comprehension and to apply it as fully as possible to guide the course of events. In other words, his role is to discover his destiny as an agent of the evolutionary process, in order to fulfill it more adequately. — Julian Huxley

I guess I don't understand why he would say this. How does Huxley arrive at what seems to be an assumption that there is a path to follow and a purpose? Is this just him working to align evolution with perennialism

What do you take the last sentence to mean (destiny, role, agent)?

guess what I meant was that embedded values and ontological assumptions are two ways of talking about the same thing. Most of the world’s ethical dilemmas and history of violence results not from a disconnect between embedded values and ontological assumptions, but from their connectedness. It is not hypocrites but sincere zealots we need fear most. — Joshs

Yes. That was careless of me. I see this too.

I'm not familiar with Wayf's "blind spot" notion. — 180 Proof

As per this article on his profile page.

https://aeon.co/essays/the-blind-spot-of-science-is-the-neglect-of-lived-experience

I agree. It seems to me that idealism or not - people's embedded values tend to persist above and beyond their ontological assumptions.

Fair. "Living with yourself..." includes Sartre and Trump. Both of them lived with the decisions. And regardless of the facts, philosophically speaking we can see them both as paragons of how they wanted to be. — Moliere

For me this raises a notable question. When is someone actually living with the decisions they make? I know in practical terms, and from a panoptic overview, it appears that all people live with the decisions they make. But at another important level, they can only live with decisions if they are able to identify their own agency.

Does someone like Trump even have capacity to understand where he ends and the wider world begins? What is it to say that Trump lives with 'his choices' other than to say the real world is involved and/or reacts to him. Not everyone is able to see that they are even making choices and they may struggle to identify what their role is in how the world seems to treat them. For me this complicates the matter of choice and authenticity somewhat. Or maybe it means I need to reconsider what authenticity means.

Wheeler was as guilty as Bohr & co of committing the mind-projection fallacy — 180 Proof

Is the mind-projection fallacy similar to the 'blind spot' so often evoked by @Wayfarer?

In my experience, an optimal means of "doing philosophy" is Gnosis — Bret Bernhoft

How does one do Gnosis and can you provide an example of it in action?

Consider the widely-accepted paradigm, that life and mind are thrown up as a byproduct of essentially meaningless physical processes, or as emergent properties of those processes. — Wayfarer

I understand this point, but for me, 'meaningless scientism' or 'meaningful idealism' notwithstanding, it is still up to me to determine my values and actions and choose my path, wherever this might lead. All this might be illusory, or it might be connected to unknowable transcendence - but I don't think it makes any functional difference as I go about my business. :wink:

Any oncologist will tell you that the patients that beat cancer are the fighters, those who want to live, while some other patients seem to give up on life and die quickly. — Olivier5

1) Not so. My sister in-law currently has cancer - terminal - the oncologist has said a couple of times that mental attitude makes no difference to recovery. In fact there are studies that seem to argue for both views. What a positive attitude can do is make a bitter pill easier to swallow.

Having watched a lot of people suffer in palliative care myself, I can say I haven't seen a correlation between positive attitude and endurance or recovery.

It is I believe a proven fact that some ailments are purely psychological, ie psychosomatic. — Olivier5

Maybe true, but even if so, it doesn't follow that mentation can provide recovery for non psychosomatic ailments.

we exist as classical beings within, or at the level of, nature constituted by classical constaints; what difference does Wheeler's speculation make to our lives – striving for 'the good life' – philosophically or practically? — 180 Proof

Been thinking about this comment since you posted it. Bloody good question. And if some variation of idealism is true, I don't think it makes any difference to what I'll do next....

I am creating the thread as a way of examining the nature of uncertainty and the implications for life. Any thoughts? — Jack Cummins

Certainty is a bit like truth - it operates in different ways in different contexts and is hard to define. There is no property that all cases of certainty have in common - to be certain about one's name is of a different nature to being certain that the Battle of Hastings happened in 1066. People base most of their life decisions on inferences founded on various notions of predictability - the sun will come up; tomorrow will be largely the same as today, etc. But life is also ceaseless change and difference and it has often struck me as amusing that nothing is as certain as uncertainty.

Plenty I would say. Oodles. Emotional pain and suffering elicit the very same stress response as physical pain and afflictions. A stressed mind sends the body into a cortisol flush which changes much of the bodies metabolism to one of “sequestering the bare essentials necessary for fight or flight at the expense of repair, regeneration and immunity. It is catabolic rather than anabolic. — Benj96

It's an interesting area and I know there are strong opinions on this subject, but do you have any studies you can cite? I know experiences of trauma, for instance, can influence behavior and the brain, but what is the evidence about how far can you push this into your original question about mind healing the body?

Being conservative seems to be more of a disposition than a coherent set of beliefs. Neoliberal or 'right wing' (whatever that means today) may be somewhat different.

Ian Dunt's How to Be a Liberal is a popular history of the development of Liberalism - came out last year. Andrew Kenny's Spectator (infamous) essay on The End of Left and Right is pretty fun.

Thank you.

Given the absurd nature of many Bible stories, I wonder why people find the Trinity so hard to understand. A God who sacrifices himself to himself to save us from himself for rules he made himself, seems much harder to understand than a god with three distinct identities.

What Pinter *doesn't* get into, in my opinion, is the sense in which h. sapiens transcends the biological, but as I said, that kind of subject is out of scope for the book. — Wayfarer

By transcends biological do you mean metacognitive capacities?

How does one know what an ordered mind is? Is it a way of thinking? Is it a set of beliefs? Is it some internal paradigm form which to interpret our bodies and our external environment. — Benj96

Well, a lot of folk have provided models for this (none of which I endorse) from Scientology to psychoanalysis. I think this line of thinking will always be a product of value systems and often subject to con artistry.

Can an orderly, well trained, self contemplated or meditated mind ever trickle down to a cellular level through several orders of control and influence the repair and regeneration of its body? — Benj96

The New Age movement has been exploring the idea of the mind influencing the body and its healing for many years. I don't think 'orderly' or 'well trained' necessarily come into play. This sounds like the stuff of value systems. Is there any good evidence that the mind heals the body?

My father lived to 98. He never read philosophy or cared about self-development ideas. He ate and drank whatever he wanted. He smoked until he was in his early 40's. He never took formal exercise. He gardened, kept active and read fiction. He was hardly ever sick in his life, was always content and well into his 90's, he looked to be around 70 - vigorous and physically active. I suspect that a long happy, healthy life is probably down to luck and there's fuck all we can do about it.

Nor does the theory say that matter isn't real. The theory is grounded in empiricism and we have plenty of observations of what we call matter. What it's doing is pivoting around the ontological baggage that is attached to the "idea of matter." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Good summary but I wonder about this last bit. Is Hoffman all that clear about what the reality is in itself, outside of our 'desktop icons'? I thought he was pretty much with Kastrup that all is pure mentation experienced as matter.

:wink: Problem solved.

I suggest to Christians concerned to be coherent that the trinity be understood either as one person occupying different roles - just as the founder of the company, the chairperson, and the majority shareholder can all be the same person — Bartricks

Nice work. So when Jesus says things such as - 'Father forgive them for they know not what they do...' is he reasoning with himself?

It wasn't meant as a jab at Janus at all. — Manuel

Who said it was a jab at Janus ? Although that does have a nice alliterative ring to it.

Now, now... Not sure how you get I am not interested in philosophy from this question - which grew naturally out of a conversation earlier. Several people I know who have studied philosophy at university have told me they consider it a pursuit of no significant benefit to daily life. Philosopher Stanley Fish has argue this. This notwithstanding, as someone interested in philosophy I trust that you recognize it is often about asking questions that may seem obvious, even superfluous. It can be about testing assumptions and returning to fundamentals. I think if we can keep raking over 'Is there a physical world?", we can explore the benefits (or lack thereof) of philosophy. Especially in a thread called "How to do philosophy".

So, it's not that simple. — Manuel

I don't think J suggested it was simple. I took it as an acerbic and amusing observation.

:gasp:

Describe three. — baker

Sally, Matthew, Mark, Rowena, Tony - there's five people I know well who live outside of a dog-eat-dog worldview. I know a few people who live in the nastier world you describe, but most do not. Unless you take any interaction with the contemporary world as an example of your point.

When one stops whining and being silly. — baker

Philosophy starts when people stop whining and being silly? This begs the questions, what is whining and being silly? Isn't that what Nietzsche does and he's a philosopher?

Is there evidence that philosophy is of benefit to individuals and how would that be demonstrated?

If all you've ever eaten is cold pizza and you're closed off to the possibility of eating hot pizza, then the benefits of eating hot pizza cannot be demonstrated to you. — baker

So my question isn't about evoking a variation of Plato's cave. My question is can you (or anyone) demonstrate that philosophy is of benefit? What would it even look like for philosophy to be of use - would we see equality/world peace/environmental healing?

Philosophically, it's hard to make a convincing case for why the old way of relating to people is better than the new one. — baker

I think this example is a good one and this happened to us in our once rural area too twenty years ago. The quality and experience of life changes for the worse, but it's largely an aesthetic experience.

In doing so , haven’t you swapped out intrinsic features of an external world for intrinsic features of an internal conceptual world? Why not go all the way and make both the natural world as we experience it and our mathematical concepts relational, contextual and contestable? Isn’t math a form of logic, and isnt logic a pragmatic construction? — Joshs

Wow. Nice reversal.

Having no qualities or characteristics such as time, mass, dimensions or other such characteristics that would define ‘something’. — Deus

Are there not philosophers (I think @joshs may be one) who argue that the universe has no intrinsic qualities or characteristics and it is us who find these and actively create what we know as reality? So perhaps something from nothing is the process which happens when humans have conscious experiences.

Thoughts ? — Deus

Why is there something rather than nothing is the common starting point of much Christian apologetics. Because for such folk this leads straight to theism being necessary. The great first cause, unmoved mover arguments which goes back to Aristotle. Personally I don't think 'Why something from nothing?' is a coherent question. Human brains seem to be structured to conceptualize 'things' and 'no things' but how intelligible is this construct when you get to metaphysics? Has 'nothing' ever being identified; can it be identified, or are we talking about a theoretical nothing? What exactly is nothing supposed to be (no irony intended)? Are we conditioned to stick the word 'why' in front of things because our brains also seem to structure our reality in terms of cause and effect?

Isn’t scientific understanding also provisional, limited, conditioned, imperfect and ofc not ultimate? — Benj96

Yes. Science is not in the truth proclamation business (unlike, say religion) it holds tentative models based on the best available evidence at the time.

My view is close to idealism but I don't understand that to mean that objects don't exist, but that they are lacking inherent or intrinsic reality.// — Wayfarer

Isn't this also close to indirect realism?

A problem philosophers sometimes face is that they cannot come up with a viable alternative to the ordinary, or at least cannot show that their alternative is better than the ordinary. — baker

Could be. 'The unexamined life is not worth living' resonates with some and doesn't with others. If you don't share that impulse and you are not exposed to examples of philosophy that pique your interest, why should you care? Is there evidence that philosophy is of benefit to individuals and how would that be demonstrated?

To be "ordinary", one needs to live in a very small world, have a small mind, have a dog-eat-dog heart. Many people live this way, and they seem to do just fine. — baker

From my experience, there are many variations of an 'ordinary life' that do not necessarily involve a dog-eat-dog value system.

Do you have a view on where the boundary between reflection and 'proper' philosophy might lie? What I mean is, there are many people who reflect on their lives and purpose and values, without ever reading or learning philosophy - when does a partially examined life become actual philosophy?

I think one of the reasons Kuhn is interesting to read is he was crossing the boundary between scientific and historical thought, and somehow managed to write a text that almost blended the two. (but failed, ultimately) — Moliere

Are there useful points of comparison in this between Kuhn and Feyerabend?

You say the sweetest things...

Water is H2O
George Washington is (fill in your description)
9 is 4 + 5
Hesperus is Phosphorus — Richard B

Interesting.

Water is H20 is Identity - same thing, different names

George Washington is - insert the value statement of your choice - not about identity

9 = 2 + 5 - the law of identify allows us to say that 5 + 4 equals 9.

Hesperus is Phosphorus - is a property of a thing - not identity

The fact that one can refer to properties of a thing does not make the property identical to the thing.


Identity - A is A - A thing is what it is

Non-contradiction - A is not not A - A thing isn't what it isn't

Excluded middle - A or not A - No thing is neither or both.

These axioms seem to allow us to have maths and reason. The questions people seem to ask - are these structures in the human mind, or are they are like Platonism?