• The “hard problem” of suffering
    IME, you / we are the kind of what which deludes itself that it's also a who in order to deny to itself that it's nothing but a (strange looping) what. :eyes: — 180 Proof

    We must do what we can to survive; it has to do with joy and suffering.
  • Free Will
    Are you still stuck with "free will"?
    Or you have reached a conclusion? I would like to hear about it ...     — Alkis Piskas

    We must comply, unwillingly! — Agent Smith
  • Q&A: What About It?
    ↪ucarr
    Partial information! :up:

    The point to Meno's paradox is a question is either a student's or a teacher's, one is impossible (unknown unknowns) and one is unnecessary (known knowns).
  • The “hard problem” of suffering
    ↪igjugarjuk
    The self then is an ethical entity. Nice!
  • Nagarjuna's Tetralemma
    Mahayana — baker

    :snicker:

    "expecting no reward for one's good thoughts/words/deeds." — baker

    On point! Bravo!

    What does Nagarjuna's tetralemma have to do with the Noble Eightfold Path? — baker

    That's exactly what I wanna know! Buddhism, it seems, is more complex than I imagined it to be. It suffers from internal paradoxes which if people notice is going to kickstart a mass exodus out of Buddhism.

    Who says they are?? — baker

    I feel they should be.
  • Q&A: What About It?
    Meno's paradox?

    If you know what you're inquiring about, inquiry is unnecessary.

    If you don't know what you're inquiring about, inquiry is impossible.

    Ergo,

    Inquiry is either unnecessary or impossible.

    1. Known unknowns (unanswered questions)
    2. Unknown unknowns (unasked questions)
    3. Unknown knowns (memory read failure)
  • The “hard problem” of suffering
    Why does the trophy say, "Agent Smith's Lower Expectations Award"? — Harry Hindu

    :snicker:
  • The “hard problem” of suffering
    You misjudge me. I'm not looking for an award. I'm looking for an answer. — Harry Hindu

    Shut up and accept the trophy! :smile:
  • The purpose of education
    The purpose of

    1. Primary education is to teach you how to read, write, listen and do basic math, prepping you to learn the knowns.

    2. Secondary education is to learn the knowns.

    3. Tertiary education is to improve on the knowns + probe the unknowns.
  • Nagarjuna's Tetralemma
    More like he has to appeal to their self-interest but it culminates with the realisation that there is no self whose interests need to be served. In Mahāyāna Buddhism, that is called ‘upaya’, ‘skilful means’ (sometimes paraphrased as ‘holy cunning’, i.e. ‘cunning as serpents, wise as doves’.) — Wayfarer

    Holy cunning! :lol: The truth then is not conducive to morality! Merci. Gennaion pseudos. At least the Buddha kept his lies to a minimum and and went the extra mile to make 'em believable. He cared, the bastard!
  • Nagarjuna's Tetralemma
    The 'parable of the burning house' is about the fact that the father (Buddha) has to entice the children (sentient beings) from the burning house (regular existence, sickness, old age and death) by enticing them with gifts ('attaining Nirvāṇa'). But when they have escaped from the burning house, then they realise that they had been in terrible danger. So the reward is not dying in the burning house - which is not really a reward at all, except in comparison to the alternative. — Wayfarer

    So you mean to say that the Buddha "deceives" people into being ethical by dangling the false gift of nirvana before their eyes? Most interesting! Nevertheless, there is a reward, even if only an illusion of one and that brings us back to what I referred to in my posts - ethics as a means to...happiness.
  • Nagarjuna's Tetralemma
    ↪Wayfarer
    The point? I'm sorry I don't follow.
  • Nagarjuna's Tetralemma
    We know better. — Wayfarer

    Please explain.
  • Does nothingness exist?
    The negation of existence is nonexistence. The best candidate for nonexistence is nothing.
  • Nagarjuna's Tetralemma
    Nah. That’s just what preachers do. Or have to do. — Wayfarer

    And...
  • What Was Deconstruction?
    If deconstruction is such a great idea, why isn't it a favorite in a philosopher's toolkit?
  • Nagarjuna's Tetralemma
    ↪Wayfarer
    ↪Cuthbert


    Yeah, I get that virtue is a reward in itself but all religions, without exception I'd say, peddle virtue as a means to paradise, attaining nirvana, achieving moksha and so on. On the flip side, the highest good, in these very same ideologies again, is to expect no reward for one's good thoughts/words/deeds. Gives me Taoism vibes.
  • Nagarjuna's Tetralemma
    ↪Wayfarer
    ↪Cuthbert


    Nagarjuna's tetralemma has to lead us to ethics (re Wayfarer's post). The question is how?

    Ethics, is it an end unto itself or is it a means (buys you a ticket to jannat/nirvana/moksha/salvation)?
  • Nagarjuna's Tetralemma
    True, and I had drafted a reply along the lines of "Advice more often given than taken" but I thought it sounded more sour than the kindly Agent Smith deserved, who I don't think was cudgelling on this occasion..... — Cuthbert

    Wayfarer was being more playful than mean! That's what I think anyway.
  • Psychology - Public Relations: How Psychologists Have Betrayed Democracy
    The problem with democracy is it's built on, not trust, but mistrust. Being so, it immediately undermines itself. Nevertheless, it's orders of magnitude better to be candid about our own flaws than to conceal them under a pile of romantic, highfalutin, drivel. The truth will out.

    The role of psychologists is to edify the electorate of how their judgment is impaired due to the ever-expanding list of cognitive biases and other pyschological shortcomings we all suffer from; in that sense I disagree with the OP that psychology is anti-democratic.
  • Nagarjuna's Tetralemma
    I have no trouble distinguishing you ;-) — Wayfarer

    That's beside the point!
  • Nagarjuna's Tetralemma
    Silence can mean two things:

    1. Ignorance (Sariputra).

    2. Ineffable (Siddhartha).

    That explains the dismal performance of mysticism and others of its ilk in popularity ratings. Idiot/Sage, indistinguishable!
  • Cognitive bias: tool for critical thinking or ego trap?
    Are all cognitive biases pessimistic/optimistic/neither/both?

    Dunning-Kruger effect: Sacrifices knowledge for confidence!

    False positive error: Sacrifices truth for safety!

    Aesthetic argument*: Sacrifices truth for beauty.

    :chin:
  • A few strong words about Belief or Believing
    It looks like belief is not tied in any way to logic/rationality (re faith); we can believe whatever the hell we want (screw contradictions and ex falso quodlibet).

    Of course believing falsehoods (lies) is gonna hurt and hurt real bad, but sometimes it's sane to be insane.

    I suppose the idea of belief sans justification is baked into, is part and parcel of, rationality - to avoid an infinite regress we must decide on a starting point (postulates, axioms). True that there's an attempt to make postulates/axioms as obvious/self-evident as possible; nevertheless, we're not completely satisfied with the arrangment, we instinctively recoil against flat assertions of any kind.
  • Why is there something rather than nothing?
    Panta rhei (everything flows)/Change is the only constant. — Heraclitus

    Suppose there is nothing. It hasta change. The only thing nothing can change into is something. Hence, there is something rather than nothing. It's a cycle though and the something we experience now will become nothing at a future date and then that nothing will again become something, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. Creatio ex nihilo.
  • Does nothingness exist?
    Nothing has been equated with nonexistence! A dictionary ahould come in handy.
  • The Metaphysics of Materialism
    Argumentum ad taedium

    Materialism is boring.

    Ergo,

    Materialism is false.

    Let's keep things interesting!
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Donald Trump should have himself checked for a brain parasite! It's the only way he can let himself off the hook. It wasn't me that did all those horrible things, it was slow rabies or something like that!
  • Nagarjuna's Tetralemma
    ↪Cuthbert


    The Buddhist denial is negation + something else i.e. it rejects a claim but doesn't flip the sign of the claim, quite unlike Greek & much of Western thought. Quite a nifty move I'd say. As for silence,

    Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent. — Wittgenstein
  • What Was Deconstruction?
    — Cratylus
  • What Was Deconstruction?
    You're an idiot. — L'éléphant

    :snicker:
  • The “hard problem” of suffering
    Cotard's delusion (severe case: I don't exist!)
  • What Was Deconstruction?
    Hah! Good point. — L'éléphant

    Danke!
  • Shouldn't we speak of the reasonable effectiveness of math?
    Pseudomathematics, or mathematical crankery, is a mathematics-like activity that does not adhere to the framework of rigor of formal mathematical practice. Common areas of pseudomathematics are solutions of problems proved to be unsolvable or recognized as extremely hard by experts, as well as attempts to apply mathematics to non-quantifiable areas. — Wikipedia
  • The “hard problem” of suffering
    We say things like


    3rd person perspective.

    1. My soul
    2. My body
    3. My brain
    4. My mind
    5. My dog

    Compare 1, 2, 3, & 4 to 5

    I'm not my dog. Surely then

    1. I'm not my soul
    2. I'm not my body
    3. I'm not my brain
    4. I'm not my mind

    We also say

    1st person perspective

    1. I'm thinking
    2. I'm suffering

    Who/what am I?
  • What Was Deconstruction?
    Question: Do we have to read Derrida as a Paltonist to make sense of his decidedly anti-Platonist agenda?
  • Creation as a Rube Goldberg Machine
    @Art48

    Did you read up on predestination? What motivated it? Does it have anything to do with omniscience?
  • Cognitive bias: tool for critical thinking or ego trap?
    More objective truth helps with survival though... — Skalidris

    Bang on!
  • The “hard problem” of suffering
    I would say i psychoanalyzed us, we humans, I wouldn't know your psychology from Schrödinger's cat's. Or is that cats'. — Bylaw

    :lol:
  • Cognitive bias: tool for critical thinking or ego trap?
    ↪Bylaw
    :up:
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