pure reason and morality — Carolyn Young

Piaget's claim: at the highest level we do what's good for humanity. There seems adequate room for immorality there, in at the lowest level. Since there seems to be hierarchy I suppose Piaget has left ample space for thugs and ruffians to maneuver in. What does Piaget mean when he speaks of highest level? Is it universally present as in does everyone operate in accord to it or is it exclusive to a few who have a moral bent to their character?

Pascal's wager: it's better to believe in god than not for if he exists and you're an atheist, hell is waiting for you. On the other hand if you're a theist and he doesn't exist, religion is, according to the great Pascal, a "minor" inconvenience.

One might think, as you have, that one can't force my reasoning to believe something and there seems to be an issue with Pascal's wager that is somewhat odd. The usual process of belief formation is to prove a proposition but in Pascal's wager, instead of proving a proposition on god's existence, it attempts to prove that belief in god is a wiser choice than to be an atheist. It's like a mathematician who proves it's wiser to believe in a theorem on pain or death without actually proving the theorem itself. I guess one could say Pacal's wager is a veiled threat, an argument ad baculum.

Should we yield to threats? Is it wise to defy an omnipotent being? The choice boils down to these two I'm afraid and answering "no" to both questions is wise, don't you think? If we let threats guide our decisions then bad consequences surely follow and if we reject someone, here god, who threatens eternal torture for not believing, then it would be most unwise.

Anyway, crucially, if one were to use any criterion other than actual proof of a proposition to invest belief in it, something Pascal's wager suggests, then it won't be long before inconsistencies start popping up everywhere in your belief system. In the mathematician example I gave above, if a theorem is taken as true without actually proving it but just because it's dangerous to deny it, contradictions will almost certainly follow because the only method by which we could've avoided contradictions, proof of the theorem, has been bypassed.

If our fate already exists out there, waiting for us, then does everything exist at once? And if so does that mean no time?
Can the past affect the present, can individuals be affected by those from what we regard as the past, can the present have an affect on the past? Or is there nothing? — Brett

Well, there is a sense in which fate is real; after all the universe seems to obey rules, aptly named "the laws of nature". Whether everything in the universe is subject to laws is an open question but it is quite odd to think that a subset would be exempt from the laws the rest of the universe operates under. Ergo, it wouldn't be totally inaccurate to say, given the universe has laws, that fate is real.

If fate is real then every possible point in the future is nascent in the present just as the past held the seeds of the present. What relation, if any, does time have to fate? For ease of discussion let's take a seed of an oak in the present. The fate of the seed is to grow into an oak in the future. The process of growing from a seed into a mature oak requires the passage of time, doesn't it? Fate to be realized requires the existence of time, which could be taken, for this example, as a gap in the temporal dimension which the seed must traverse for it to become an adult oak tree. Ergo, time must exist for fate to be real.

Also, notice that fate is a combination of determinism and time: determinism is true AND determinism explains why something happened at a particular time (past/present) or why and when something will happen (future). Time is an essential aspect of fate.

As for Socrates, he seems to be talking about truths and the general impression is that truths are timeless, eternal as it were and all it takes for a person to discover it within himself is a question. Does fate claim eternal truths? Indeed if what fate decrees must occur then it does for it is about a fact and even if it has yet to become actualized, it'll inevitably happen.

Notice however, that truths are time-independent i.e. it doesn't change with it. For instance 2 + 2 = 4 was/is/will always be true irrespective of time.

Fate, however, differs in that though the pronouncements of fate may have an eternal tinge to it that which is fated requires the passage of time. So, if a person were to look back into his past, assess his actions, and realize that his present circumstance is inevitable then he has knowledge of his fate but then time passed between whatever pivotal moments occured in his past and his present condition.

But that doesn't engage with the thought experiment. Am I obliged radically to alter my diet - and to deprive myself of things I want to eat (for a lifetime) if not doing so will result in Mat's death? — Bartricks

Yes, in my opinion for the simple reason that the only reason to be non-vegetarian and to allow Mat to die would have to involve your own death. Think of how people accept killing in self-defense a weaker version of which would be condoning predatory animals from killing other animals for food.

Your thought experiment in re eating meat comes nowhere close to any of the two possible scenarios I mentioned above wherein killing is permissible.

Computers can handle self-reference as long as the self-reference eventually terminates.

The Curry sentence is not well-defined due to the non-terminating self-reference. Treating it as if it were well-defined (and thus evaluable as either true or false) is what leads to paradox. — Andrew M

Kindly explain the difference between terminating and non-terminating self-reference in re to Curry's paradox.

The Curry sentence is this P1 := P1 > P2. How is it not well-defined. There are no syntactical or semantic errors as far as I can see.

I'm not quite sure what the := means. Is it just equals? — ep3265

:= means definition

x := y means x is defined to be another name for y

In the context of the tale, it is implied that since the horseshoe was lost it is the loss of the nail the necessary cause — Jacob-B

I think the poem, (is it one? no idea) is specific about its meaning and that's it deals with sufficient causes and not necessary causes. However, it's not that necessary causes are irrelevant. They actually set things up for the sufficient cause to do its thing and as defined, without necessary causes no other cause could set off the chain reaction. This raises the question of whether paying attention only to sufficient causes to the exclusion of necessary causes could be a mistake? It all depends, it seems, on what one's objective is. If one is to prevent something, it may be more helpful to identify necessary causes which may be more numerous than sufficient causes. And if one wants to cause something, it's better to look for sufficient causes.

Saying something's equal to me would be considered nesting right? — ep3265

Not really. If I remember correctly, for something to be nested every previous step must occur, wholly, in the step that follows.

This is nesting:
(a) = b
((a) = b) = c
(((a) = b) = c) = d


How can we do the above to P1 := (P1 > P2)?

It has been said that the only good Christian is a Gnostic Christian. It is a truth, IMO. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

:ok:

The problem is that theCurrySentence() function can't be evaluated until the antecedent is evaluated. But the antecedent can't be evaluated until theCurrySentence() function that it calls is evaluated. So nothing gets evaluated and no truth value is — Andrew M

Well, the paradox rests on self-reference and I don't have a clue why computers can't handle self-reference. However, humans fare better at it, hence the paradox.

Doesn't the equality cause for an infinite regress in variables or am I not understanding? — ep3265

No. It doesn't P1 := (P1 > P2)

There's no infinite regress which would require some kind of nesting which I don't see.

We have a free will that is limited to physics and nature. I may wish to fly but physics says no.

A free will within the bounds I set is demonstrable and can even be tested to prove.

Scriptures though say that god hardens hearts, or not, against or for individuals as he chooses who he will grace with faith or belief and who he has chosen for hell and disbelief.

That goers to show how stupid on this the ancients were. They wrote that we are the dreaded robots. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

This view of the world is very grim. It provides no room for change, a criminal can't turn a new leaf and is condemned to not only act as he was forced to act and then to suffer punishment for that. It is unfair. What faith do you profess?

We are omnivores by nature. Oddly, we lack the equipment like fangs, claws, brute strength but our appendix is a vestigial organ. The only explanation for our meat diet is that the brain made up for the absence of predatory features and we became apex predators, outcompeting even lions and tigers. I think omnivores have a better deal at surviving because variety means a larger food source and ergo, our success, if we could call it such, is probably due to the mixed diet of plants and meat.

Paradoxically, it's this same brain that wants to take us off a meat diet. It's very strange that the most powerful predatory tool, the brain, also holds the seed of compassion that recoils now at the killing of animals, an art it perfected.

I see a dissonance now between the brain and the rest of the body. The brain has realized that killing animals is not something to be engaged in but our digestive system has, over thousands of years, forgotten how to digest plants efficiently. Perhaps if we all, collectively, turn a new leaf in our recipe books we can change to an exclusviely vegetarian diet in a couple of millennia. Until that happens, we'll have to stick to a diet that has some meat content to prevent disease and death. I wish this isn't true.

As concerns the purely psychological aspect of the problem there's the meat paradox which claims that people do care about animal welfare but have a preference for meat. Perhaps biology, the fact that our plant digesting capabilities have regressed, can explain the desire for meat and our love of animals is due to our brains acquiring a moral compass.

What is interesting though is that, despite our biology, meat-eating has been linked to a variety of diseases from worm infestations to cancer; this suggests we control our meat intake. In addition, all nutrients that we derive from meat can be substituted, with some cleverness, by plants. In effect the limitations of our biology, specifically the digestive system, can be overcome with intelligent diet plans.

It seems our brain has, in some ways, come to its senses about the issue at the right time, a time when it has figured out ways to keep the body well-nourished without causing harm to other animals.

For the scenario you present, you should stop eating meat and become a vegetarian because the changing your diet is, if you believe me, a trivial affair compared to the untimely death of a cow reared under suspicious circumstances.

Sure, but that doesn't mean that they are 'true'. — A Seagull

Using truth tables we can evaluate any logical statement, including the Curry statement.

It doesn't prove every P2 simultaneously — Pfhorrest

What do you mean by "simultaneously"? Some propositions are time-independent e.g. mathematical propositions which don't change with time.

I don't know how you can say that a logical statement that can prove anything is trivial. That's like saying that ex falso quodlibet which is spoken of in very dramatic and threatening terms as the principle of explosion which does exactly the same thing- prove anything.

if (germanyBordersChina() is true) — Andrew M

There shouldn't be "if" in the above statement.

The step 6 doesn't make sense. — BlueBanana

Unfortunately I have no expertise in that area. I know of the basic inference rules of natural deduction and there's no valid step among those rules. The wikipedia article claims the step is a substitution which is intuitive enough to pass any evaluation. After all, if P1 := (P1 > P2) then I can substitute one for the other.

I'm not certain whether we have free will or not but if god is, as the religious claim, about morality then it seems necessary that he grant it to us. Heaven and hell would become meaningless since the deal is good folks go to heaven and bad people go to hell and deciding who is good or bad depends on what choices a person makes on his own accord i.e. free will is necessary.

If you still say that we don't have free will then we're nothing more than toys in the hands of an all-powerful being - just following orders but under the illusion that we're doing it voluntarily.

Is this the kind of picture you want to paint of the world? If the answer is "yes" then it's a very melancholy view of the world: a god who's apparently capable of evil and we being automatons. Not a world anyone would like to live in unless, of course, you're among the group chosen to visit paradise.

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.” — Heraclitus’ primary claim, as it’s generally expressed in the manner above, of absolute change or impermanence (of either things, or the self) is inherently flawed.

His assertion as such can be rebutted in multiple ways; for now, though, I’ll respectfully choose to only express one way that specifically pertains to the self: (1) by exposing the contradiction of being able to demonstrate or know for a fact that no “man” ever steps in the same river twice (emphasis on the word ‘twice’).

1.) If one claims to know or have demonstrated that, “No man ever steps in the same river twice,” then, in some respect, one has already presupposed the permanence of their self, since one cannot know or demonstrate that a given “man” didn’t continue to be the same person after they stepped in a given river once, without their own self having had endured this very transition of that given “man“ not remaining the same person after they stepped in a given river. — aRealidealist

Firstly, there definitely is a requirement that something stay constant to serve as a record-keeper to monitor change and thus allow us to recognize it. Memory seems to be a critical faculty here. Events get recorded in memory and when memory is accessed in the present change is perceived as the past and present are different. However, considering the relationship between a memory and personhood I think it's the same as a book in a library. The record (memory) doesn't change but the reader (person) can. Effectively this implies that no person can step into the same river twice but the present person shares the memory of the past person and thus change becomes noticeable. Is it at all surprising that libraries, through books, record the changes the world has undergone and that the readers themselves have been replaced with each generation?

The question is, is memory really constant? What would define change in memory? There is memory like a library that doesn't change and then the contents of the library which are individual memories. The library (memory as a vessel) doesn't seem to change but the books (individual memories) do. So it seems, in a sense, memory as a receptacle of our memories stays constant. However, this is simply an illusion brought about different rates of change. Memory, even as a receptacle for our changing memories, isn't constant and changeless. It just changes at a slower rate than the contents of our memory. A good piece of evidence is that memory malfunctions occur at advanced ages and there's Alzheimers disease.

So, it's not that there's some kind of permanence that Heraclitus overlooked when he said what he said of people being unable to step into the same river twice. A fast change can be recorded by a slower change. The person certainly changes but such changes are slower than the relevant changes in the river and so gives rise to the illusion that something had to be constant.

Well trimmed, sure. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

Thanks. Anyway, to get back to where I digressed, I don't think there are such things as defective souls. Are you suggesting that some are just born bad or good? Where does that leave responsibility for one's own actions? Would you say you're responsible for your looks, something totally beyond your control? No. Similarly, if souls could be defective or flawless then there really is no point in differentiating the good from the bad in any non-trivial sense.

Christianity preaches that using a scapegoat is moral and ok. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

Don't get me started on scapegoats. I'm not surprised that the only facial hair that suits me is a goatee.

Burn Yahweh. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

I wouldn't do that. Poor guy. He's taking a lot of flak in this day and age and if he does exist I admire his self-control. No global flood seems to be on the cards.

Speaking for myself, I'm going to take care of my goatee and contemplate on the nature of scapegoatism, probably until I die in some horrible way. Do you think a goatee would look good on a corpse?

0 = -x + x

This means two things, and it is actually not quite “something comes out of nothing”. It really means superposition of everything is equal to nothing, not identical and not because it is actually nothing, but because it is effectively nothing.

Totally chaotic arrangement of everything cancels out itself, it is there but without an effect or defined form in any direction or dimension. It means nothing actually implies everything, it can not exist without it like there is no black without white.

No yang without yin. So nothing is not simply nothing, it is also everything. And another duality is that what comes out of that “nothing” can not be just any old something, it must be paired into two opposite some-things. It’s undeniable! — Zelebg

First, duality. Why is it that the concept of duality has emerged in both Eastern and Western thought? Daoism has yin-yang, Buddhism has the middle-path and Heraclitus too spoke of opposites and don't forget Aristotle's golden mean. If this means anything then it must be that the dualistic model is more than just a culturally idiosyncratic point of view and that it's a good representation of reality.

We can only guess the origins of dualistic thinking but one thing is clear: duality is about extremes. Look at dualistic pairs e.g. hot-cold, large-small, create-destroy, etc. Each pair expresses extremes of a particular property a thing may possess: hot-cold are extremes of temperature, large-small are extremes of size, create-destroy are extremes of existence, etc. Given this is so, what do we make of the in-between stuff e.g. between hot and cold is warm, between large and small is medium, between create and destroy is preserve, etc.

The existence of words that capture the stuff between dualistic pairs betrays the fact that dualistic thinking doesn't quite give us the correct or, if you prefer, the complete picture of reality. Nevertheless, dualistic pairs do provide a useful guide to where we should place ourselves in the universe - right in the middle where things are comfortable and exciting because all phenomena seems to occur between lower and upper extremis points. Life, as we know it, must avoid extremes to survive. In a sense then, all the dualistic philosophers I mentioned were deliberately or unwittingly affirming the Goldilocks zone for life. This also means, quite oddly, that dualistic thinking is an implicit claim of not a duality but a trinity, the positive, the neutral and the negative; it is best conveyed by the Hindu trinity of Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver and Shiva the destroyer.

One more thing I want to mention is the concept of negation; it has the ability to split the universe into two, a thing that is affirmed and the rest that is negated. Is this duality? Yes, because an entity and its negation are definitely opposites and no, because these opposites aren't always extremes. The negation of cold is not-cold and that, despite referring to the dualistic opposite hot, also refers to warm. This isn't useful since it fails to point to the other extreme. Imagine if the words "hot" didn't exist and someone were to claim that a cup of coffee is not-cold. Is that enough information for you to take a sip of the coffee? No, the coffee could be hot and could burn your mouth. Negation, though technically dualistic in nature, isn't adequate; we need a separate dualistic worldview based on explicit consideration of extremes.

Secondly, the matter of nothing, something and everything. You made an amazing argument and I really liked the -x + x = 0; expressing duality mathematically makes the whole issue clearer. I'd like you to imagine a world made of 6 things: a, -a, b, -b, and c, -c. Everything would be {a, -a, b, -b, c, -c}, and something would be a combination of these but not all of them. Nothing would be again {a, -a, b, -b, c, -c} because every object and its opposite would cancel each other. So, everything is nothing.

Duality would impose the condition that everything have an opposite and that includes everything itself and also nothing. What is the opposite of everything and also the opposite of nothing? If one is to be dualistic then we have to talk in terms of extremes; if we take everything as one extremis what would be the other extremis? Wouldn't it be nothing? Your mathematical treatment of the matter produces a beautiful answer to the question.

Everything (e) = nothing (0)

Opposite of everything = -e

1. e = 0
2. -e = -0 = 0 = e
3. -e + e = 0
4. e + e = 0 + 0 = 0 = e

The opposite of everything is nothing and that too because everything is nothing.

My concern is whether a mathematical representation of the issue is apt or not. Can I speak of duality in terms of positive and negative numbers?

Well, nothing, something and everything appear quantitative and we can express it mathematically as follows: nothing (0) < something (at least 1 but not all) < everything (the entire universe). This is an accurate mathematical translation as far as I can see but it lacks the positive-negative feature of numbers your argument has. Notice that in my mathematical model, dualistic thinking assigns the opposite of everything as nothing since they're extremis points. However it doesn't allow me to conclude that nothing is everything as your model with positive and negative numbers does.

Anyway, if there's any problem with the -x + x = 0 model of reality, it's the reliance on negation to "take care of" the stuff in between -x and +x since, generally speaking, there are no opposites for the in-between: for instance hot and cold are opposites but there is no such thing is an opposite for warm unless you say not-warm but that creates 2 possibilities, hot or cold, raising the count of states that can be obtained to 3 which is not a duality but a trinity. Perhaps it's a trivial truth.

What else?

0 = -x + x.

So nothing is not simply nothing, it is also everything. — Zelebg

Dualistic thinking. Delete nonsense (mine, not yours)

The problem is that there is no well-defined or logical process for determining whether a statement is 'true' or 'false'. — A Seagull

Truth tables can be used to explore all possibilities.

So yeah, you can use this to "prove" any P2, but that's just because you're transparently baking P2, whatever it is, into the single premise of the argument. — Pfhorrest

Ok

This isn't a paradox, it's just a really useless trivially valid argument — Pfhorrest

:chin:

If we can prove any P2 then it has to be a paradox, right?

You're just plugging in values to see what happens. That's not the same as evaluating the sentence — Andrew M

How would you evaluate a conditional sentence in a way different to the way I did the Curry's sentence?

The religious ignore that God chose Jesus to die even before the earth was created. That's scripture.

When they want some other scenario, they are too stupid to recognize that to change things would derail their god's master plan. That paradox is present in Adam's sin. Christians call it our fall, yet sing that Adam's sin was a happy fault and necessary to god's plan.

Seems god planned our fall yet Christians blame man for it. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

It's a very convenient setup (for god). All the good there is in the world is part of god's plan and all the bad that there is is our fault inspite of the fact that everything must be god's doing.

The problem with the Curry sentence is that it's not evaluable and thus not truth-apt. The truth value of the antecedent depends on the truth value of the sentence. But the truth value of the sentence depends on the truth value of the antecedent (and consequent). So the sentence has a circular dependency. — Andrew M

The sentence can be either true or false.

If it's false then it's antecedent is false and that means the entire sentence evaluates to true.

If it is true, well, then it's true.

I think we need to really consider the matter of prophecies, especially their fulfillment, very seriously. If a given prophecy, be it christianity or any other belief system, is ever fulfilled down to every last detail, then people will immediately jump to the conclusion that the source of the prophecy is legitimate and that, to me, has dire consequences. Imagine if a Bible prophecy comes true. It would immediately result in the vindication of homophobia, misogyny, etc. which I can only guess originate in scripture.

Combine the above real danger and the fact that the probability of even the wildest of prophecies coming true is NOT zero and we have the makings of a grand disaster for humanity. The problem is further compounded by the infinite nature of future-time. If beings like humans could evolve from inanimate stuff, I'm quite confident, given the time since prophecies were fashionable, a few of them are already due.

It is nonsense for the reasons cited above — A Seagull

:up: :ok:

I would prefer you to admit that you can't answer my questions nor respond sensibly to my comments. — A Seagull

Perhaps you'd like to hear it straight from the horse's mouth...Curry's paradox

I haven't read many books so you might want to take this with a pinch of salt. All books on human history has one word that is, for certain, common among them and will occupy a considerable portion of their pages and that word is "religion". I respect religion for despite all the evils that have been done in its name it is primarily about goodness. However, religious morality is intimately tied to some kind of after life and that, in my humble opinion, is symptomatic of an inability to handle truth - the truth of meaninglessness and its ultimate form, death. Despite the hype surrounding truth, whether it be a parent admonishing his child for lying or philosophers thinking deeply about the fundamental nature of it, we've all been in the business of either concealing the truth or turning away from it as if it's a ghastly wound for well over 2000 years. I'm not accusing anyone of a wrong here but I am concerned about the ill effects of creating imaginary worlds to hide truths just because they're hard to deal with. Could the cure be worse than the disease?

That said, truth is indestructible and so the only thing we can do, if we dislike its implications, is to conceal it or invent an alternative that is more, let's say, palatable.

Truth isn't dead. Truthfulness has been coughing up blood for some time now, though — Ciceronianus the White

:100: Amazing :up:

Jesus was a Jew.

Why do some Christians and Muslims hate Jews? — Gnostic Christian Bishop

There's a paradox here. Set aside all the politics that has now suffused the middle-east with people dying on both sides of the dividing line and consider only the religious aspect of the issue. The only reason I can think of for jew-hating is that the jews killed the son of god or a prophet, your pick. However, quite oddly, these same jew-haters also believe that Jesus died for our sins, as if to say that Jesus was destined for death and only by dying could he redeem the sins of humanity. Ergo, all of us should actually appreciate the jews for offing Jesus for they did so by the will of god. Wouldn't you love a person who would take up the infinitely horrible task of killing by torture no less a person than the son of god and that too so that you may be redeemed for your sins?

I don't think anyone is saying that the proof is invalid, just that it's conclusion is trivial. All conclusions of valid arguments are baked into their premises, that's how truth preservation works, but the conclusion of this argument is so transparently baked into the premise that it's not really surprising or a paradox that it can be proven. Or that "anything can be proven this way", because consider for comparison an argument that "From 'If TRUE then P' we can prove P, for any P". That's correct, but it's hardly surprising, because 'if TRUE then P" is pretty much just asserting P. — Pfhorrest

Well, I humbly beg to disagree. Paradoxes usually aren't trivial since they indicate something unsolvable or unexpected; paradoxes reveal either errors in our intuition or major issues with the system that generates them. Curry's paradox is comparable in effect to contradictions in making everything provable, a proposition and its negation. That is a problem, a big one, isn't it?

Only in classical logic, thanks to the law of excluded middle. Not in intuitionistic logic. — aletheist

That's wonderful. Negating the double negation. I tell you, there's something very liberating about negation.

P1 is equivalent to “this sentence is false or P2”, so I think assuming P1 is to assume P2, not to prove it. — Michael

Agreed, using the implication equivalence. However this doesn't refute the argument because...

~P1 v P2 := P1. Assuming P1 means ~~P1. and so we get P2.

The idea is to prove the conditional P1 > P2 and this is achieved by assuming P1 := ~P1 v P2 := P1 > P2 which basically is roughly speaking a compound proposition since it contains both P1 and P1 > P2. It oddly reminds me of the loaded question fallacy an example of which is "have you stopped stealing?"

Anyway, once the conditional P1 > P2 is proven we can use modus ponens since P1 > P2 is logically equivalent to P1.

No contradiction I'm afraid.

P1 > P2 := ~P1 v P2

1. P1 > P1 := P1 > (~P1 v P2)
2. ~P1 v (~P1 v P2)......1 imp
3. (~P1 v ~P1) v P2.....2 assoc
4. ~P1 v P2...............3 taut

No contradiction.

This is what happens when you play with words without meaning or logic...you end up with nonsense. — A Seagull

Would you like to read the above replies.

Maybe it had something to do with the ability to temporarily suspect automatic functions like breathing being like our ability to not simply react to things but to pause and consider our options before acting — Pfhorrest

Sound advice if you ask me.

BTW I just realized the image you posted is double negation - rejecting or negating all the nos on ths sign - which comes down to affirmation. Was that intentional? Anyway, this is one of the cool features of negation - allowing us to affirm by twice negating. This isn't possible with affirmation; then again Morgenbesser did say "yeah yeah".

:smile:

I don't think we derive glory, or infamy, from being in that condition — Ciceronianus the White

I agree. Got carried away a bit there. Yet, there must be something truly special about being able to negate, reject, deny, say "no" to something as powerful as logic which is as essential to life as the very air we breathe. The mind's ability to negate logic is like having the body having the ability to stop breathing and physiology says we can't do the latter.

If you go by the lexical definition then art is intimately linked to beauty/aesthetics. There are many art forms but they must all be aesthetically endowed to qualify as such. Essentially it is a question about what beauty is. What is the nature of beauty?

Is beauty purely subjective or can we be objective about it? Such times are times I wish we had a well-crafted poll on what people take to be beautiful in order to gain an insight. Unfortunately I haven't come across any well-crafted study to gauge aesthetic sense. So, we must turn to simple, less-than-perfect measures of our aesthetic sense e.g. checking out what passes off as art in the internet. The internet is a "good source" because of it's global reach.

If one reflects, even perfunctorily, on the internet art scene, we see that there's such a mind-boggling diversity there that precludes any attempt to discover where art begins and where it ends. Nevertheless, in my humble opinion this diversity is explicable in a very easy way.

Art requires an artist; the artist's main goal is to take an object, not necessarily physical, and represent her view of that object to an audience who must then find beauty in that representation. You may have already noticed but there are two points in art where beauty can appear: either the object of art is itself beautiful or the way the artist represents the object is beautiful. A rough approximation of what I want to convey is to be found, linguistically speaking, in the object-verb structure: either the object itself is aesthetic or how the artist represents the object is beautiful. To repeat myself for clarification, we can kiss a beautiful woman but we can also kiss beautifully.

From personal experience and I'm only guessing it's the same for all of you, there isn't much of a disagreement on the beauty of objects. A simple proof would be that if people did disagree on the beauty of objects then the modeling industry would never have existed. However, the other kind of beauty I mentioned - the one that appears in the way an object is represented - gives artists unlimited access to all conceivable objects under the sun. It is this complete and unfettered freedom that makes demarcating the boundaries of art utterly meaningless. We can kiss a beautiful woman but we can also kiss an ugly girl beautifully. Both are art.

This sentence is false or I am a woman.

I think that assuming P1 to be true is to assume that I am a woman. Is that really a paradox? — Michael

Curry's paradox begins as an assumption of the equivalence between the sentence P1: if this sentence is true then P2 which in logic is the following: P1 = P1 > P2. The conditional P1 > P2 is proven first (see the OP). Proving P1 > P2 amounts to proving P1; after all they are equivalent. Then using modus ponens we can prove P2. The claim to the title of a paradox lies in such statements being capable of proving, literally, anything, even contradictions.

I'm sorry I do not think I understand what you mean. Are you saying that if Happiness is Eaudaimonia, everyone would be doing it fully? If so, I can think of many reasons they would not (the chief being ignorance, malice, and idolatry (being caught up in lesser fulfillment).) — Dranu

Please ignore my last post. I misspoke. Sorry for the trouble.

We all have the ability to oppose reason, in a manner of speaking, but it seems less than clear to me that exercising that ability is glorious, though it may sometimes be spectacular. One can choose to act stupidly or unreasonably, certainly, and spectacularly so if circumstances permit. Perhaps that's the most those who are deliberately stupid or unreasonable may aspire to in this world. — Ciceronianus the White

I did mention in a clear unambiguous way that negation taken as rejection involves a serious risk to life and limb if we ever reach a point where we reject rationality itself. However, freedom, to be real, requires the ability to reject i.e. negate all influences. I guess some might say I'm referring to radical/fanatical freedom.

Negation, in its broadest, most magnificent form, is simply the act of rejection. Negation is to reject, to disagree, to say "no", and given that to accept, to agree, to say "yes" is usually perforce logic or some other, usually sinister force, I must say, perforce logic, that negation stands for real, living, breathing freedom. The ability to not bow to the demands of anything, opposing reason itself, which is invariably a great risk and may involve losing more than an arm or leg, your head perhaps, is freedom in full glory.

Embrace negation in the morning and you may not live to the see the 5 o'clock shadow on your chin but it would be, in my humble opinion, living in absolute freedom. It definitely is not in your interest to adopt this stance nor does this negation benefit others for the glue that keeps society together and the reason why people prefer you alive is affirmation. The choice is quite obvious isn't it? Affirm and live or Negate and die. However we may expose what the choices really mean as that between affirmation, alive but enslaved or negation, free but dead. Reminds me of parasitic memes.