Art is not simply about beauty — Jack Cummins

You kinda shot yourself in the foot when you said that. I hope it was deliberate but then it looks accidental. Never mind, it doesn't matter, in the long run (we're all dead). Art is, I feel, a mode of expression (a language as it were) and as that, it can be used to convey thoughts + emotions; I might be able to translate (say) Wittgenstein from text into a painting or, if one is creative enough, into music (the tractatus-logico-philosophicus can be made into a rap song :grin: ). When looked at this way the confusion as to what art is is cleared up, oui? Don't think of art as a subject that has a finger in every pie and thus impossible to define; rather consider it as a language translating texts/ideas/feelings/whatnot into images, sounds, colors, and so on.

As for the divine in art, can a watering hole that caters to all animals be said to favor any single one animal? Seems like a good question, you be the judge.

Knowledge, on the other hand, is a God attribute, explicitly mentioned as omniscience.

That's all from me (at the moment).

Mysticism is, inter alia, the rejection of rationality as a means to truths, herein the divine variety. That however doesn't mean mysticism is irrational. That would me the mistake naysayers often make.

Leibniz was of the view that our minds are little gods and introvertive mysticism allegedly attempts to find the divine spark within our self.

Extrovertive mysticism is, as the name indicates, appreciating the oneness of nature; union with the cosmic soul (Brahman).

Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted. — Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein, A1 physicist, not an ethicist!

We must, re William James, believe despite insufficient evidence when a belief in question is (a)

1. Forced (sink/swim). Conversion to Islam by the sword.. Argumentum ad baculum?

2. Vital (it makes a huge difference to your life and whoever else matters to you). I need God to guide me.

3. Living option (Christianity is alive while shamanism is quite dead). I can't adopt shamanism, its an extinct way of life. Perhaps it can be resurrected à la Jurassic park.

model — Tom Storm

Model? What model?! I don't want a model!! I want a super model!!! :lol: I hope s/he comes free!

What could the trio Socrates, Plato, and Aristotel have against sophists?

My guesstimate:

Sophists' goal: How to win arguments! Nobly/ignobly doesn't matter!

Philosophers' goal: How to find truths! Nobly!

Ignoble methods of winning in an argument: Fallacies part of the toolkit or should I say arsenal?

Noble methods of doing the same: Fallacies, a big no-no!

That's just the tip of the ice berg, there's (probably) more!

Wanna win the war? Give me one sophist, just one. Oh, there's Krishna! We're in luck, fellas!

By paying attention to, for instance, "the negligent and the insignificant" (J. Miller) – "the immensity of the particular" (G. Steiner) – to begin with. IME, Heidegger makes a distinction without a difference: the "ontological mode" corresponds to limit-situations (K. Jaspers) of "the everyday mode". To wit:
Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.
— Zen Kōan
NB: Closer to the pragmatic sense of wu wei, I prefer ecstasy to the term "enlightenment" — 180 Proof

Everyday mode? Is that like a normal person's life? A set of ideas, a method à la Sherlock Holmes, simply put a compass for navigation in the ocean of life? Create a favorable mileu. Make roads.

Ontological mode: Forget all that stuff you learned in school, college, from friend, foes, family, etc, includes Heidegger's own teachings (?) and just immerse yourself in Being. The opposite of the feeling just die a**hole!, to make explicit, just live a**hole (still)!. Find a favorable mileu. Find roads.

:chin:

Stability of form and structure is an illusion. It is a product of our minds' frequency relative to the frequency of what is being observed. Change is relative and minds change relative to every other process. The rate at which they change, or process external information, is relative to the speed or frequency at which the external world changes. Some changes happen very fast and some very slow. Those that happen fast appear as "non-physical" processes, while those that happen very slow appear as stable "physical" objects. — Harry Hindu

Nec caput nec pedes.

What case? — Banno

Never mind. As you were, soldier! :smile:

@Banno. Some examples would go a long way to proving your case. :smile:

A social existence, is I believe, intended to be a mutually beneficial arrangement. Part of the deal is sacrificing personal freedom or compromising on one's individuality.

There are 3 possibities here.

1. Sacrifice all of one's individuality (communism)
2. Sacrifice none of one's individuality (anarchy)
3. Sacrifice some of one's individuality (democracy)

As you can see, democracies hit the sweet spot!

Final cause and formal cause — apokrisis

Hi, may I ask you something?

Since we're in Aristotelian cause territory, which one of the follwing

1. Material cause
2. Formal cause
3. Efficient cause
4. Final cause

entails a conscious being? In my humble opinion, it should be 4. Final cause which I interpret as teleological in essence and if there's a purpose, it kinda makes someone, as opposed to something, an inevitability (design argument).

Good to know we see eye to eye on the matter.

I'm curious, how did Aristotle define a virtuous person? Did he do so in terms of his aurea mediocritas (the golden mean) or something else?

If the aurea mediocritas is his (Aristotle's) benchmark, we do have a code of ethics (avoid extremes), no?

It looks complicated!

Yeah... and I keep thinking to myself, if cause is this fuckin' elusive, why even get to god? — Tom Storm

Indeed, let's first tackle the small fries before we go for the big guy! If I can't get through the door, I sure as hell won't fit through the window. I used to follow this strategy on my exams: first the easy, then the hard! :grin:

I'm not a 100% sure about this but knowledge figures prominently in a description of God (omniscience), while beauty (omniaesthetic isn't a god attribute) does not. It follows then that those who're in the knowledge business are actually doing God's work (collecting and compiling knowledge, exactly what we seem to be doing, is divine in that sense, ja?) and science = knowledge.

Nothing like this connection between god and science is to be found with respect to aesthetics (art).

Perhaps beauty is morally ambiguous (gorgeous but cold-hearted or patently evil, combinations that do occur in reality). However, even knowledge is so (evil genius, a trope of Hollywood blockbusters, Marvel and DC comics). On balance, knowledge is probably more bonum-friendly than beauty: Avidya, piggy, as the root of all evil vs. the lesser evil of vanity-beauty, birdie, re: Buddhism).

This is a deep question for me.

Causality, Hume clearly demonstrated, has no deductive necessity to it. There really is no deducitve argument that shows that, for example, when a ball hits another, the other ball should move with a specific velocity (speed + direction).

This observation, in tandem with the problem of induction, prove the case for empiricism against rationalism, the latter being the position that all knowledge can be acquired deductively, a priori.

It's odd then, oui, that causality is a topic in metaphysics, metaphysics also being deduction unless the aim is to refute empiricism in this particular case by demonstrating causality can be given a deductive foundation.

Religion, to me, is basically a system designed to address three human concerns:

1. Creation (an explanation of how the world, we, came to be; power/omnipotence)

and/or

2. Morality (a set of codes we must live by, on the whole hedonic in character; goodness/omnibenevolence)

and/or

3. Explanations (of worldly goings ons: knowledge, science/omniscience)

These three basic ideas of religion are propped up with metaphysics, or the absence thereof, unique to each faith.

I completely forgot about virtue ethics (no codes). What would a virtuous person do (in such-and-such situation)? Is that like asking (@Banno) "what would Spock do?"

However Aristotle, the author of virtue ethics, was severly criticized for the absence of codes in his ethics. People couldn't use virtue ethics to solve moral problems as easily as they would've liked.

Spock was interesting precisely because the writers could never quite make his total dedication to logic functional.

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, only ceteris paribus; the novelty of the Taurek paper is that Taurek shows that it is never the case that all other things are equal. Or rather, that it is our choice as to what is to be considered relevant and what isn't. Consider the Captain and the Islanders in the final example in the paper, who are caught in the need to determine what it is that is relevant to the evacuation. — Banno

:up: You're correct! There are way too many variables for anyone to carry out the felicific calculus; any done would invariably fall short of the mark, oui?

In other words, utilitarianism is as impractical as virtue ethich; in the former, there's a code (felicific calculus) but real-life scenarios are just too complex for the code to handle and in the former, there is no code. This, if nothing else, showcases the mind-boggling complexity of ethics.

consciousness is fundamental

Do you know anything (else) that's fundamental? Biology claims that cells are fundamental to life. What do you suppose that means? Well, the way I see it is you take any living organism and deconstruct it so to speak, the process continues until you hit a point beyond which it stops making sense to call what you have is alive. That point is our humble cell.

Take the same approach with anything at all - it doesn't havta be alive, a toilet, your eye liner, whathaveyou - and analyze it (break it down into more simpler constituents), you'll end up with consciousness, beyond that, nothing, absolutely nothing. That's what "consciousness is fundamental" means. The world, at the smallest of smallest scales is an idea!

The universe looks more and more like a great thought rather than a great machine. — Sir James Jean

Niels Bohr, someone else, not sure who, said that atoms (matter) behave like mathematical points (ideas).

Am I on the right track, here? Sabrá Mandrake!

So we can forget No. 3 because it's not a solution. — Alkis Piskas

I most humbly beg to differ. These responses have been documented in the animal world, aren't we too, animals? I for one see it as a viable option and I believe, if memory serves, I did respond by freezing up once upon a time. My life has never been the same and, odd as it seems, I'm thankful for it.

this would not considered moral — Alkis Piskas

No, no, he has a point!

However, I've, of late, given up trying to figure out what God's plan is. It's just too complex. Have you ever had the pleasure of watching Rube Goldberg machines? You might intend to shoot your enemy, you pull out your gun, your arch foe is in your cross hairs, with all your hate you pull the trigger. Bang! You die! Don't ask me to explain this. Deep down you know what I'm saying is the truth! :smile:

God moves in a mysterious way. — William Cowper

You could, with little difference, swap God's plan with mother nature's. Trust mother nature, some call her Gaia, she's always right! You'll see :grin: If there's a freeze among the options, believe me it's there for a good reason!

Die if need be, never kill. — Cândido Rondon

A tough act to follow, talk is cheap, easier said than done, but that's exactly what makes it so amazingly profound. Pragmatism you might respond, but what a cop-out it is to say we must stick to doable things! Where's the fun in that?!

I just said that "major good" is not a code, not that codes are not needed. — Alkis Piskas

So major good is not a code! You know ethics becomes meaningless without a code, right? Ethics is about how to handle situations that are ethical in character, which in very general terms can be described as that involving hedonism (suffering/pain vs. joy/pleasure). We need formulae, that's what we call codes in math (I learnt that in high school).

Maybe as a method or rule. — Alkis Piskas

Word play Alkis Piskas, word play.

Good day.

What's the difference between metaphysics and conspiracy theory? In both cases, the mind runs wild in the world of possibilities.

It depends, to some degree, on how many entities need to be posited/proposed to explain necessetarianism as opposed to contingentarianism. If the universe was/is necessary, how complex is the explanation for such a state of affairs? The same question for contingentarianism.

Off the top of my head, I think we can come up with multiple hypotheses for both scenarios with varying levels of complexity and that would be our cue to whip out our novacula occami and shave off the superfluous and reduce to the bear essentials. I like beards though!

If we could live forever — TiredThinker

The idea is not to wish for eternal life, rather the wise move is to ask for eternal youth (neoteny). Have you seen what happens to 500 year-old Greenland sharks? Not a pretty sight to behold!

Ashrama

ashrama, also spelled asrama, Sanskrit āśrama, in Hinduism, any of the four stages of life through which a Hindu ideally will pass. The stages are those of (1) the student (brahmacari), marked by chastity, devotion, and obedience to one’s teacher, (2) the householder (grihastha), requiring marriage, the begetting of children, sustaining one’s family and helping support priests and holy men, and fulfillment of duties toward gods and ancestors, (3) the forest dweller (vanaprastha), beginning after the birth of grandchildren and consisting of withdrawal from concern with material things, pursuit of solitude, and ascetic and yogic practices, and (4) the homeless renouncer (sannyasi), involving renouncing all one’s possessions to wander from place to place begging for food, concerned only with union with brahman (the Absolute). Traditionally, moksha (liberation from rebirth) should be pursued only during the last two stages of a person’s life. — Encyclopedia Britannica

Stage 1: Brahmacari (devotion to learning)

Stage 2: Grihastha (starting a family)

Stage 3: Vanaprastha (withdrawal from family, beginning one's spiritual journey)

Stage 4: Sannyasi (Spirituality in earnest)

Each of these stages probably last around 25 years, assuming a life-span of a century. Indians/Hindus had long lives and I'm talking about in vedic times! Go figure!

The whole scheme is reminscent of multi-stage rockets. Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos are you guys reading this?

Why do you assume "art, science and God" have anything to do with depicting "reality"? (Btw, follow the link highlit by "Agency".) — 180 Proof

:up: 180 Proof!

Think of it like trying to explain yellow to someone who is blind — I like sushi

:up: The "yellow" smell of shit! :grin: Will it work for someone with anosmia? Don't know what shit smells like? Here, it smells yellow!

If you have had an episode of psychosis you probably understand this a little. — I like sushi

Not really, I thought I had psychotic episodes multiple times, like a woman's orgasms. On later anaysis, they turned out to be me getting scared out of my wits; nothing psychotic, just terror, very natural, don't you think? Old people gravitate towards theism. No, not because they have a solid argument, but for fear of oblivion. We're not attracted to Yahweh, we're repelled by Thanatos and Algos; the effect is the same. God probably is in the know and hence his indifference to our plight is not suprising. "No, no, you don't actually love me; you're just scared of the Grim Reaper and his accomplice, Duriel, the lord of pain (Diablo II)" said God to all his worshippers.

Thanks for reminding of the lady who had a stroke and experienced "nirvana". She was on TED Talks. The brain shut down: mushin no shin (mind without mind), empty your cup, wipe your slate clean (tabula rasa); empiricism/rationalism?

Should the numbers count? — Banno

A thousand thanks for the link. What I'd do is not refute the thesis that numbers count; let's grant utilitarians that it is a mathematical calculation: the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one.

However, what if this one person you're willing to kill/sacrifice is going to find the cure for cancer or is Jesus, the savior? This one person is actually equivalent to the millions s/he'll save, oui? What now? Should I still kill/sacrifice this individual to save just 5 (trolley problem).

The future, mon ami, is shrouded in darkness; utilitarianism is predicated on being able to tell fortunes, not something any person, living or dead, has done till date. Yes attempts have been made, but the success rate = zip/nada/zilch/nix/sifr/zero!

Hoisted by his own petard!

"You shall not kill". This can be very easily "broken" without diminishing morality, by just considering the case of killing to defend oneself. — Alkis Piskas

There's a thread on just war, does it exist/not.

In a confrontational/threatening situation, there are 3 options:

1. Fight (to the death)
2. Flight (run for your life)
3. Freeze (die)

Killing in self-defense is 1. What about 2 and 3? Some animals are known to roll over and play dead (possums); I, however, can't tell you how successful the possum strategy is. Reminds me of a war movie in which soldiers bayonet enemy soldiers lying on the ground, you know, to make sure they're really dead!

A digression perhaps, but it seems vital to study all possible responses nature, in her wisdom, has endowed us with.

The bottom line - it isn't necessary to kill (even in self-defense), you could just die! :chin:

Going by difficulty level, and doing/being good is no walk in the park, I'd say Freeze (just die, you a**hole!) hasta be the best a person can ever hope to be, ja? :grin:

Right. It's not a code. It's more even than a principle. It's the foundation on which ethics and etchical behaviour are built. A code is addressed to a particular situation or a kind of situations. A foundation is independed of and covers any situation. — Alkis Piskas

So, you're positing an ethics without a code? Suppose you say each individual ethical case needs to be examined separately because each is unique and that precludes mechanical application of moral injunctions. Isn't that a code?

That's all for now.

I'll get back to you later. Sorry, I have a lot on my plate. Good day.

Empty phrase that needs work. — L'éléphant

Help me then!

God said "don't kill" (people, animals, perhaps even plants).

He never said "save" (people, animals, or plants).

If God's plan is real, we're not supposed to interfere with it, oui?

How is not killing part of the plan while saving isn't?

Naturalists doing field work follow a principle: Don't interfere with nature, if you see a pack of wild dogs disemboweling a deer and eating it alive don't try to save the deer from such a horrible fate. However do ensure that you don't go hunting for deer yourself. Thou shalt not kill! However, that doesn't mean Thou shalt save!

For theists to maintain the Islamic position on God (there's nothing in us or in the world that could be used to get a handle on God hence Islam's hard-line iconoclasm) and also to claim knowledge of God, something quite clever needs to be done, oui? Apophasis (via negativa) + Cataphasis (BothAnd @Gnomon)

Theist: God is unknowable. I know God. (self-refuting statement)
Atheist: WTF? :chin:
Theist: :grin:

All is not lost though. Leibniz called our minds little gods and the Greeks believed that our rationality was our most divine attribute. Yet theists are violating the most important rule in classical logic viz. the law of noncontradiction (vide supra).

Enter mysticism: Mysticism is an approach to the divine/god after having applied rationality and failing to make any headway. It acknowledges the power of reason, but not in heavenly matters if you catch my drift. We need something else and that something else is what we've come to love & hate as religious experience. Controversial subject! Naysayers have gone so far as to say that religious experiences could be hallucinations, psychotic episodes, whathnot. However mystics, as it turns out, are normal, healthy people, well-integrated into society, have families, hold jobs, and so on. Temporal lobe epilepsy pops up in discussions on mysticism; intriguing, ja?

roll a pair of dice — RepThatMerch22

I'm reminded of the time when I started a thread on die roll and coin flip randomness. As you said, true, each roll/flip is completely determined (if you have knowledge of the initial conditions of the die/coin, you can predict the exact outcome of the die/coin).

Amazingly, if you roll a die/flip a coin a large number of times the frequency of the outcomes begins to approximate the frequency of randomness i.e. the experimental probability approaches the theoretical probability; note that the theoretical probability assumes true randomness. In other words a deterministic system can produce true randomness. Isn't that fascinating?

If all I said is correct, and randomness has something to do with free will, compatibilism must be true.

Aristotle was talking out of his ass and the conclusion derived from his ass makes as much sense as a turd on a plate. — 180 Proof

:lol: Hell, even Aristotle made mistakes!

How can everything not? — 180 Proof

Did you follow the argument? It uses Aristotle's views on time, the conclusion is mine though. :smile:

Aristotle's time puzzle:

The past doesn't exist, it's gone; the future too doesn't exist, it is yet to come; the now is an instant, it is nothing! Existence is an activity, and like all activities, requires a non-zero length of time. How can anything exist?

Prepared in advance. (The term "preset" is mainly used in music, but I like it! ). Maybe the word "predefined" is more appropiate. What I mean is a laid down list --formulated methodically-- of things to do or not to do. (The word "list" is used loosely here, of course. But "The Ten Commandments" is actually such a list.) — Alkis Piskas

No, no I meant how does a moral code being preset diminish or invalidate the moral code that is (preset)?

Ethics based on "major good for the greatest number" do not include any kind of codes — Alkis Piskas

You mean to say major good for the greatest number is NOT a code. It looks like a code e.g. the code don't lie or don't kill.

I trust your goodwill Agent Smith. Really. But I can't believe that you are asking this after so many times that I presented my position on the subject of ethics. In fact, no one came to me with his/her position! So your question sounds quite ironic, doen't it. (No offense.) — Alkis Piskas

Sorry, it must've slipped under my radar. The forum is a bustling cyberpolis with multiple active threads, hard to keep track of all the posters and their pet theories. I hope you understand my situation. Would appreciate it if you could.

What if I don't believe in your God or to any God? — Alkis Piskas

That's a different kettle of fish.

The ancient polytheistic notion of gods as super-humans, living on clouds or mountains, would certainly be verifiable/falsifiable by modern scientific methods. Ironically, in Daniel 14, the prophet performed a sort of scientific test, to falsify the belief that the idol called "Bel" was actually consuming the food offered to him. But that real-world god-concept long ago succumbed to the ideal-realm god-concept of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic monotheism. Yet there are no scientific methods to verify the existence of a deity that is defined as a non-physical Spirit, and exists eternally outside the limits of space-time. So no, there is no way to reconcile the religious belief in a holy spiritual God with the scientific belief in a wholly material world — Gnomon

:up: The point of the theism is to push God out of our line of sight so that we can't see Him at all:

1. God's nonphysical

2. God is beyond space and time

3. God is beyond our mental capabilities

With just these 3 simple statements, God is nudged out of our field of view, never to be seen, not even in principle mind you. It reminds me of the so-called cosmological horizon (beyond which we can't see for space is expanding faster than the light from the regions beyond can reach us).

However the knife cuts both ways: Theists can't claim they themselves know anything about God. Could they? How do they avoid the special pleading fallacy? Beats me!

That's why some philosophers & scientists have attempted to make peace between the Spiritual & Material worldviews, by creating a no-fly-zone between them. Natural Science was presumed to be authoritative about all physical questions, while Supernatural Religion (Theology) ruled over all metaphysical inquiries. But voluntary segregation doesn't work if both sides are motivated to have it all: to have the last word on all questions of Truth. — Gnomon

Nice! Well done! When you put it that way, it become crystal clear: Religion is metaphysics and science is physics and its allied subjects. The difference must matter, oui? As @Wayfarer makes it a point to mention, science invariably ignores/treats very superficially the final cause of things, their telos. Where there's purpose, there's a God?!

However, there may be a different way to conciliate the Science vs Religion conflict. That middle way is the purview of secular Philosophy, which has no official creed, and is only interested in plausible Truth, not scientific Facts or religious Faith. Unfortunately, the polarized adversaries both tend to belittle the power of unaided Reason to discover universal truths, without divine Revelation or empirical Verification. However, those of us who are not taking sides in this "holey" war, can create our own personal NOMA, in which to hide from the crossfire. — Gnomon

Neither empiricism nor revelation. What exactly are we talking about here? Reason, ok, but as skipper Kirk says in Star Trek "I don't wanna know what it isn't, I wanna know what it is!" I hope it's not too much to ask.

Oh! It's your Both/And Principle. That makes a whole lotta sense; when we form a search party [this is the search to end all searches, the search for truth which Taoist legend says is subtle (yi), faint (shi), and wei (elusive)], the more the merrier. Did you know that herbivores team up against predators? Some hear better than they see and others have good eyesight and a poor sense of hearing, and together they make up for each others' weaknesses (alloying).

fuzz them — Jack Cummins

If that's the main quest of your OP then here's my shot at disentangling art from science in re God. Science is about, as the late Stephen Hawking allegedly said, reading the mind of God (the laws of nature and nature itself simply God's thoughts). Art or rather our aesthetic turn is tasked with discerning the beauty in nature and its laws i.e. our duty, if we could call it that, is to first find out what God's thoughts are (science) and then marvel at them for their beauty (art).

For better or worse, even though the equations of mechanics may appeal to the aesthetician in you, they also describe in exquisite detail every ghastly injury people sustain in accidents and assaults!

BTW, I'm totally against "The Ten Commandments" or any "preset" moral codes or dogmas as a basis for morality. Or for whatever else in that matter. I have already mentioned in this thread that they impair moral judgement, and thus judgement in general. — Alkis Piskas

I don't quite get the descriptor "preset". Anyway, here's the deal. if you don't quite like the idea of a code, you're really rejecting all of ethics, ethics being a system of laws/injunctions/rules (codes).

In short what's the alternative?

They actually both fit in. But not if you rely on "The Ten Commandments". — Alkis Piskas

How? Explain, please. If God wills your death, how does saving you square with God's plan?

Materialism is the claim that everything that exists is material (matter & energy, the two being equivalent, E = mc²)

$(\forall x) (Mx)$, where Mx: x is material. The negation of $(\forall x) (Mx)$ is $(\exists x) \neg (Mx)$. In other words we can falsify materialism. Find something that exists that isn't either matter or energy and we're done! Materialism is disprovable and so it has to be scientific in the Popperian sense.

Say there's something, an x, and we need to demonstrate, to prove nonphysicalism, that x isn't material (matter/energy). In the simplest of terms we need to show that x neither has mass nor volume (matter) and that no work can be done with it (energy). Is the required proof beyond our capabilities? How do we distinguish something that has no mass, no volume, no energy from nothing?

Add to our problems the fact that this x (includes the mind as per nonphysicalism) seems capable of having an effect on our bodies via the brain. Material objects like the body/the brain need energy input to do work. That means there should be an extra amount of energy that can't be explained materialistically. Have we measured this, to borrow a term from the frontiers of physics, dark energy?