It never rains but it pours!

As if we don't have enough problems already (we're just emerging, bruised and battered, out of a deadly case of Covid-19), an infernal Monkey Pox outbreak that has pandemic potential!

How do we handle this? We have to break the transmission chain before it goes global, oui? Who's looking into that?

Great post! The takeaway is then that the fourth estate has switched its profession from being guardians of democracy to being mere stooges of the rich & powerful, pushing their agenda.

I've heard this more times than I care to count and it maybe true - democracy is in decline (in the West). What keeps me up at night is this question: What is replacing democracy? What will take the place of demoracy, what kinda system will fill in for democracy, if it we stay on course, letting the chips fall where they may? A cross betwixt autocracy and plutarchy? These we already tried and rejected! Maybe we've forgotten the lessons we learned, it's hard to say, oui?

For morality to be meaingful, the following conditions need to be met:

1. Free will is necessary
2. Ought implies can

Neither of them are fulfilled in/by animals. Truth be told, doubts have been raised whether humans themselves possess free will and it's no secret that we're, many times in our lives, victims of circumstance.

And again in the 20th and 21st centuries philosophy takes a step in the right direction, problematizing concepts like rationality and knowledge. — Joshs

Life ain't easy! Everyone figures that out sooner or later.

Yes, I'm familiar with it. To a large extent I'm in agreement. Reminds me of Aikido philosophy which, from my readings, in part affirms that each of us are the center of our own world, so to speak (i.e., hold unique understandings of the world that surrounds). Yet I nevertheless find there's still a universal reality that binds, or else tethers, all these different cultures and languages and worldviews to a common set of truths. It's why science works so well when it comes to the empirical stuff. — javra

Science, as you already know, is the common denominator, not a 100% of the time though (re Creationism, ID).

If the first person from Myanmar you ever encounter happens to rob you at gunpoint, should you think all Myanmar-ites (?) are dangerous?

It's a hasty generalization for dogs and Myanmar-ites. But you don't have to judge either group to still behave prudently when you encounter another.

In general, your questions are very good. I'll need to think about them some more. — Relativist

As I said, sweeping generalizations have ugly consequences; I guess the matter boils down to aut neca aut necare logic.

Well it's a standard paradox, the sort that TonesInDeepFreeze showed how to deal with earlier. It posits a set and then asks if the set is a member of itself.

So you have a paradox. But your conclusion is that logic is broken. How do you move from the paradox to that conclusion? — Banno

You know this stuff. I already explained it in my previoud post.

The long and short of it: The LNC is incompatible with paradoxes; one has to go. I know your choice (you deny that there are true paradoxes).

:smile:

Clearly, philosophy was a step forward in the right direction; rationality was made the cornerstone of all knowledge.

The problem with philosophy is Agrippa's trilemma!

It is both, no? — Jackson

No, it'a booth! :snicker:

As an aside: In Romanian, which as a Latin language is heavily gendered, there is no equivalent to either "beautiful" or "handsome" - which are gendered terms - but instead all aspects of these attributes are described by one word: "frumusețe" which can take on either a masculine or feminine form. This tends to produce a different semantic understanding, imv. In English, because there's the dichotomy between "beautiful" and "handsome", there's a lot more ambiguities as to what "beauty" denotes. This even though, if you go by definition alone, all cases of "handsome" should be subsets of that which is "beautiful". But again, its not a good idea to say to a heterosexual guy that he looks beautiful. — javra

:up:

There's a brand of philosophy which has as a tenet the belief that language & culture produce distinctive worldviews. In a sense people with different languages inhabit different realms, literally.

The limits of my language are the limits of my world. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

It's a ruse to call a society governed by mass manipulation a democracy. — ZzzoneiroCosm

:fire:

And people ridicule, poke fun/laugh at, conspiracy theorists!

How deep does the rabbit hole go?

@universeness

Hope, yeah, we can hope! It's a recommended course of action.

I think it's mainly philosophical types who are drawn to them, some to slay them like dragons and some to peep through them like they're doors to somewhere else. — Tate

Don't you love a joke every now and then? Doesn't everybody? Laughter, they say, is the best medicine!

I gave you fulsome explanation that the paradoxes do not occur in the ordinary mathematical theories. — TonesInDeepFreeze

You just made me realize how powerful paradoxes are. Danke!

I don't fancy myself as anything. My posts will speak for themselves.

You've made plentiful accusations; some may be true, but I get the impression that, at other times, you don't know what you're talking about.

Yes, and Agent Smith ignores the most obvious choice. — TonesInDeepFreeze

:roll:

Agent Smith is ignorant of how it actually works in formal mathematics. — TonesInDeepFreeze

:snicker:

Eternally diggingdiggingdigging! (And diggin' the digging! Sublime depths dark enough to panic the kraken!)

If you have a more fleshed-out insight into the excavation at hand, I'll take it to heart. I'll take guidance where it arises: from the worms, the skies, the shit and the flowers - and even from an unidentified thoughtsmith. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Bon voyage!

Leibniz wanted to reduce all discourse to a mechanical calculus (logic). His objective? Pax Mundi i.e. if there's war and there is war, logic, by extension philosophy & argumentation, is an epic fail! Wouldn't you agree?

There's no right answer to the question "why meditate?" I suppose. Different strokes for different folks.

I merely presented an interpretation that makes the most sense to me. You should dig a little deeper into what you said, there's a lot to unearth there.

What is not for everybody? — Jackson

Never mind! Good day. How's your cat?

It's hard and rude to think for others. My point was to simply give you a real life example of someone who was happy because they were a little mad, "out of touch with reality" as some shrinks like to say.

Happiness, it looks like, is more important that reality/truth; out goes the window the so-called transcendentalia (verum, bonum, pulchrum). Epicurus, it seems, hit the nail on the head (everyone would, under the right circumstances, like to be plugged into the experience machine).

The LNC is the reason we're interested in paradoxes. If you do away with it, we'll just accept contradictions as normal.

Could I be alive and dead at the same time? Of course! The towering human intellect falls in a ditch.

It's better to leave paradoxes in the closets we keep them in. Leave the LNC alone — Tate

Well, you make complete sense to me: curiosity killed the cat (9 times in a row and now it's dead dead, deader than dead). However, if I'm correct, everyone is drawn to them like a moth to a flame. Consider it self-immolation if you like. I have no explanation for this behavior! It begs for one, wouldn't you say?

As a philosopher, demolition being your primary mission, I'd say paradoxes are right up your alley.

No; whatever "heart" is. — Jackson

It's not for everybody! :smile:

If you mean, you have no idea of what a Buddha knows, then I would certainly agree. Which brings up the question, why raise an OP about this topic? As I have tried to explain previously, Nāgārjuna's philosophy is not simply a matter for syllogistic logic. His concern is soteriological. (Feel free to google that word.) — Wayfarer

You're on target, as usual, but the logical features of the tetralemma may be the key to nirvana; as it is, it's the basis of the madhyamaka (the middle path).

There seems to be a link between Nagarjuna's tetralemma and Zen koans which appear to be (rather poor) attempts of Japanese monks, untrained in formal logic, at inventing paradoxes. Nevertheless, Zen koans, despite their dubious quality, do produce the intended effect - pressing the power button of our minds and shutting it down, causing a system crash, emptying the mind it's called I believe.

Imagine you're in a room and there are two people, x and y; you're conducting a murder investigation. You ask the witness, "did x do it?", she answers "no"; "did y do it then?", she replies "no". "Perhaps both did it then?" you query. She responds "no". "You mean neither of them did it?" you continue and she responds, again, with a "no". So, who is the murderer? All possibilities are exhausted, the mind has nothing to latch onto, its usual habit. Cessation of all thought! Analysis paralysis! You become a mind without a mind (mushin no shin); you're conscious but not really conscious (your thinking has come to a halt, but you're not dead). Your mind has simulated kicking the bucket (virtual death).

The Buddha’s knowledge surpasses logic. — Wayfarer

God moves in a mysterious way. — William Cowper

The Buddha, the legend goes, is fully aware of the temporal triad (past, present, future); I guess this is the Buddhist version of omniscience. Normal folk have access to the past (memory) and present (direct experience) and think/reason/plan within these boundaries. The Buddha, on the other hand, is in a sense a seer and reasons/plans acts with the future (indefinite) in mind too. He would then appear to surpass logic for his actions would make no sense to us normal folk.

The Buddha’s knowledge surpasses logic. However, that doesn’t invalidate logic. — Wayfarer

:ok: I'll get back to you later.

Are those really the only options you consider?
Is there no way to live as a sane person? — universeness

The bitter truth is described as such because it's debilitating (depression), even lethal (suicide). Psychiatrists make a big deal of what they refer to as losing touch with reality.

Here's a story I read in a book on psychiatry. There was this woman, living next to an airport. She was "suffering" from delusions of grandeur (thought she was a Duchess or something like that).

She was taken to a shrink, who promptly, in good faith, treated her. She was declared cured (of her delusion). Within a fortnight or so she took her own life!

[...]And from making the cure of the disease more grievous than the endurance of the same, Good Lord, deliver us. — Dr. Robert Hutchison

SO can you explain why it must be true - what that means?

Wouldn't it be simpler to just say that "heterological" is neither heterological nor autological? — Banno

Perhaps, but I presented an argument. Is it sound? Does it not lead to a contradiction?

Your "solution" to the paradox is standard technique (like how the liar sentence was banished from the kingdom of propositions). It did cross my mind, but autological and heterological are mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive i.e. they constitutes the most powerful version of a dilemma. I could be wrong of course, show me where!

There's a ton of literature on the Grelling-Nelson paradox. Please read up on 'em.

All I can say for the moment is that it's a true paradox.

Ok,

The word "heterological" describes a word that doesn't describe itself e.g. "long" is a short word and hence, it's heterological.

Question: Is the word "heterological" itself heterological?

If it is heterological then it doesn't describe itself and so it is not heterological.

If it isn't heterological then it describes itself and so it is heterological.

Paradox, oui?

An intriguing question by all acounts.

The JTB theory of knowledge mentions justification as a separate condition i.e., in other words, false that belief $\leftrightarrow$ proof. Clear as crystal, oui?

Plus, the whole rights issue (freedom of thought, freedom of religion) implies that one is at liberty to believe anything you want, the caveat being you don't impose or foist your whacky beliefs on others; to do that, one needs strong justification (philosophy) or one needs to have a silver tongue (sophism), preferrably both (philosopher-orator). :snicker:

Beauty per se is an attractive force on its own, delinked as it were from the usual qualities that are associated with it (good & truth). We couldn't have come this far if that were not the case; later, in our evolutionary history, these qualities separated from each other, they came into their own so to speak, became independent of each other, and hence the predicament we find ourselves in - the fragmentation, the dismantling, of our psyche was inevitable, we're all, maybe not all, :broken:, hanged, drawn, and quartered; behold brethren, our brothers and sisters, in pieces! :snicker:

Lucy, a gorgeous gal!

I don't see the problem. The supernatural is, to my reckoning, defined as that which is not natural and that which is natural is what we experience on a daily basis (aka the laws of nature, others have referred to them as habits of nature). An account based on these, well, habits (of nature), are plausible, oui? When someone, here nature, goes off-script, goes out of character, seems to have broken a habit, we instinctively go :chin: WTF? That's implausibility for you! Back to the drawing board or...something else.

It seems similar to the problem of objectivity: objectivity is unable to justify itself: it aways turns out to depend on subjectivity. — Angelo Cannata

:fire: Sometimes, it ain't what's said, but how one says it that's important! Mass delusions (Lasègue–Falret syndrome)/Mass hysteria.

That's unhelpful. You can't learn if you can't see your errors.

Ok, try this then. Can you set out exactly wha the Grelling-Nelson paradox is, and why it is "true'? — Banno

Please go through the literature on the paradox. I'm unable to fathom how you know I'm wrong when you don't know what the Grelling-Nelson paradox is in the first place!

By the way, any (real/true) paradox will do! Do you know any (real/true) paradoxes? If you do, I'm sure you do, follow it to its logical conclusion in re the LNC & paraconsistent logic.

Honestly, it doesn't seem to me to even be an argument. You seem simply to have misunderstood quite a bit of what is going on in talking about logic.

You talk of a "true" paradox. I wonder if it will help you if you try to set out explicitly what that might be. — Banno

WTF?

1. Grelling-Nelson paradox is a true paradox in the sense both a proposition and its negation is true.

If so,

2. The LNC must be done away with (1 & the LNC are incompatible) as an law of the thought (a counterexample exists).

Then,

3. We have to choose one version of paraconsistent logic (contradiction-tolerant but blocks ex falso quodlibet)

If not,

4. Every and any proposition is true!

The choices are clear. What'll it be?

This thread isn't going well. — Banno

You can say that again. Someone resurrected it a coupla days ago. I believe the culprit wished to point out flaws in my reasoning.

The takeaway: I need to do a lotta reading.

By the way, what's your opinion on my argument. Do we need to do an overhaul of the logic we're using in this forum and in philosophy as a whole?

1. All beautiful things are art (say the heart).
2. Not all art are beautiful things (says the mind).

Xin (heart-mind).

The conflation between art and beauty is (almost) a given; nothing to see here, move along, move along!