I am mildly concerned that many discussions involving religions that I have read here focus far to narrowly on Christianity. In my view Christ's teaching while good and even vital were extremely limited and were irrationally attached to the utterly insane, bloody and cruel writings in the first testament. Examples: The Rape of Jericho with Jehove as a bloody accomplice and the cold bloodied murder by black magic in Egypt of thousands and the absolutely appalling doctrine of "original sin"
I am not sure of Buddhism but both Lao Tsu and Confucius believed in and extolled "The Basic Goodness of Man."
Confucius was by far the most day to day practical of the phrofets.

I think that I might be able to make a strong case for the fact that "Morals exist genetically in the human mind and were installed there by the forces of natural selection and evolution perhaps a quarter of a million years ago.

I like the dictionary definition of "Myth"
"A traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events.
"ancient Celtic myths"

A myth is a story first and formost although it can relate to and refer to much greater complexities.

Also I have a suspician that in earier discussions of "myths" I have read there was lacking a firm awareness of the basic power of tradition. Tradition has always been the sole governing power of all societies up until the recent breakthrough invention of democracy by the Greeks. Tradition directed societies have no other source of direccion and control than their tradition they cling fanatically to their traditions because their loss would mean bloody chaos and death.
Thus a "traditional Myth". May become far more important to the a society than a mere myth.

Am I making any sense?

Hi wayfarer. No, I live happily in highland Guatemala among Mayan Indians whom I have taught how to make hi temperature stoneware. I have sadly no resources at all for the necessary scholarly research which is a big handicap to my participation here.

You say, "Yes, it does seem that there does appear to be some higher source behind the scenes of the laws of the universe, some mysterious factor that gives rise to the laws of nature and ignites the spark of consciousness. Many have called this God, or the Tao.

I may well be mistaken here in this present assumption that people are probably similar all over the world and that these thoughts are universal and that there does appear universally to all of them to be some higher source behind the scenes of the laws of the universe, some mysterious factor that gives rise to the laws of nature, some need for feelings of religiosity itself. Also perhaps a "need" or yearning that would permit them to to observe or to know more.
If that yearning actually is universally the case then obviously this yearning must be genetic and inherited and would exist independent of thought or logic and indeed there would be no need for these thoughts to be in any way logical or reasonable or be remotely connected to some actual "higher source."
Do I make any sense?

I always seem to bring things down to lower levels of abstraction. To me a near death experience is exactly what the words say. Thoughts that would normally occur during moments of attenuated awareness. Such as Delusions, clear memories of events that have never occured or hallucinations. Misinterpretation of present observations together with some low level of conscious control.

What else could they be?
What near death experiences do Bushmen have?

That is why it is named: "Unseen"

I consider confession to be a very valuable form of mental therepy but also, I am witness, it can contribute to licentiousness. "Okay, we're forgiven, now we con go out and do it again."

I am a born again atheist and I deny that my life is desolate and barren. I have all of life, all of literature, all of science and, indeed all of philosophy including this philosophy forum'
I have all of art. I, myself, am an artist.
I even have you, to liven things up.

Re your statement: "I think the mystery of existence necessarily points to something beyond our everyday experience. That is, recognizing the existence of God is the rational inference from our being here, in my opinion.

I agree with the first half.

But then you say: "to something beyond our everyday experience." Agreed, but the words: "Something" point to nothing specific. Nothing at all. That something could be any one of dozens of different possibiities. The existence of a "God" or rather "the son of a God" is certainly not the most probabable possibility. I might suggest it is the least probable.

I Quote: "Were one asked to characterize the life of religion in the broadest and most general terms possible, one might say that it consists of the belief that there is an UNSEEN ORDER, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto."

The search for An Unseen Order is currently very widespread and very powerful in the world including in thousands of universities.

Take a good look at the words : "AN UNSEEN ORDER." To me those words very accurately describe Science in its most generalized sense.

Even more precisely they also describe Philosophy and Philosophers
including this very Forum

But, a caveat. Also I deny that a Concept of a God with magical powers comes even close to describing that Unseen Order. In fact it even obstructs the search for an unseen order. Once it even attempted to obstruct Me personally from my personal search for an seen order. I could describe that event with an anecdote.

The belief in magic in any form except for that of a stage magician is ultimately childish. And if you remove childish magic from a concept of a God what is left of that God? Nothing.

Whether conceptual consciousness is working towards re-integrating itself with holistic consciousness is another question.

I caught the tail end of this phrase a few hours ago. Interesting. Could you expand this a little?
Thanks, Ken Edwards

I will try to clarify what I am thinking.
I am talking about the history of we human beings directly and about the history of all life indirectly.

When I say "we" I don't mean we as individuals. It is common knowledge that we as individuals live fewer than 115 years.
I am talking about some microscopic sized bits of sperm like protoplasm in our reproductive mechanisms (in the testicles in males) that contain complete genetic descriptions of our bodies and that are 350 million years old and that have never experienced the cold of death.

I think that these are obviously truthful statements and are routinely accepted among scientists. After all, we had to come from something. The obvious proof of that is that we are here now. Keep in mind that when a living cell divides into two parts the two parts will be identical to the original cell and can only be changed by mutation.

but I have 2 caviets.
First regarding your last sentence: "That's why when something touches me I direct my attention to it."

I agree but Attention from where? from your conscious mind or from the subconscious ie, over-mind? I would say the latter.

But, a caveat. 2 or more events must occur before you can direct your conscious attention to it. If you are touched that would activate your sense of touch without the participation of the conscious mind. If it were something that was very hot that would instantly turn on a series of alarm bells and you would take violent action without the participation of the conscious mind.

Who or what is "I". Your conscious mind obviously. It would be normal for me to use a slightly different vocabulary. That's why when something touches me I would say: "It would attrect my attention" which would be a general statement refering to all aspects of my response. Rather than: "Direct attention to it"

Now in regard to your first statement: "What I tried to explain in the last post, is that i do not think that thinking is provoked, it just goes on and on, somewhat automatically."

I agree. I think it does, indeed "go on and on", somewhat automatically, one after another and can continue. But, I think any thought can be interrupted or cancelled and a new thought provoked or intruded or substituded. Multiple thoughts can occur coming from different sources. But never 2 at once. For instance: #1from the senses - a crying baby #2 from the emotions - "drat it, where is that nurse?" #3from the memory - "Oh, she went shopping" #4 from logical processes. - "That's funny, she didn't take the car. She must have gone to the corner store" #4 from the pain centers. - a kick in the ass - "Ouch!" .

You are correct. I shouldn't have used the word: "eternal".
I say we are 350 million years only in a very narrow sense. When I say "we" I don't mean we as individuals. We as individuals live fewer than 115 years. I mean some microscopic sized bits of our protoplasm in our reproductive mechanisms (in the testicals in males) have never experienced the cold of death. I think that is obviously a truthful statement and is a routinely accepted fact among scientists. After all, we had to come from something. The proof is that here we are.

I mean that our 350 million year old bits of protoplasm may well continue to live another 100,00 years or more.

Keep in mind that when a living cell divides into two parts the two parts will be identical to the original cell.

No I am not remotely suggestig such a thing. I am talking about the historyof humans

All true, Valentinus. Too too true!
Basic!
But also remember playing. Remember grown men with paint guns dressede like comandos. Fantasizeing running wild. But Fun!

Whatever happened to the famous French salons? of a century or more ago?

Am I wrong?

Ken Edwards

This is not philosophical song but maybe interesting. A simple children's song probably centuries old. It doesn't seem to mean anything but I discovered the meaning by acccident during the war.

If you already know the meaning then tell me and I will discontinue this
.
Peas porridge hot
Peas porridge cold
Peas porridge in the pot. Nine days old.
Some like it hot
Some like it cold
Some like it in the pot Nine days old.

I don't understand. You seem to contradict yourself

I am biginning to suspect that we are both saying the same thing. Let me begin by repeating my own words: "-I think that most popular usage of the word "mind" means the complete mind, the Over-mind."

I erred. I should have said "-I think that most popular usage of the word "mind" means the complete mind, the Over-mind plus the conscious mind. The complete mind includes both. the overmind being greater as we have just decided.

My problem lies here. yo say: <Notice here that "thought" is a noun, so there is assumed things, thoughts, (Okay ) and "thought" also represents.......>

(let me change that to: "a thought IS a direct result of a past act of thinking.)

<"a past act of thinking. I think we can characterize a "thought" as the product of a past act of thinking.">

Let me change that to: "a result of a past act of thinking"

I Sum it up_ "A thought is a result of a past act of thinking." Am I right so far?

If so how has that thinking been provoked? Might it not have been provoked by something exterior like a tree or a traffic cop. Or provoked by an earlier thought coming from either of the two minds or from the newly discovered default mind?

How does "directed" come into it?

Einstein's equations show that an object at the speed of light would have both infinite mass and a length of 0.

Also Greater speeds provoke greater weights (Mass).

If you moved at a speed near to the speed of light you would weigh as much as the entire universe weighs. My only suggestion if that should happen might be to try the Robert Adkins weight reducing diet.

-If you have a better word than my word "Over-mind" please tell me. — Ken Edwards


<OK, I'll go with that term. We could almost just call it "mind", but that would imply that we were limiting ourselves to the conscious aspect.

-I think that most popular usage of the word "mind" means the complete mind, the Over-mind.
-Examples - "The mind reels." "You are out of your mind." Joe has a mind like a steel trap. Other unrelated examples - "Don't mind me" Mind your manners"

<I think, that when we talk about "thinking" we are talking about a directing of the mind. So if we use the limited conscious "mind" as an example, we assume some sort of conscious directing of thoughts, when we say "thinking".

-I am not sure what you mean by the word "directing". That is a verb and it requires a subject and a complement to make sense, "He directed me to his mother's house". So, could not the over-mind direct parts of itself to other parts of itself? I think much more probable, the over-mind directing the conscious min and visa-versa.

-The conscious mind cannot direct thoughts towards me because the conscious mind IS me. (I think)

<Notice here that "thought" is a noun, so there is assumed things, thoughts, and "thought" also represents a past act of thinking. I think we can characterize a "thought" as the product of a past act of thinking. It's like an object which has been created, like a memory, and is now employed in the act of thinking. That object might be a word, or some other symbol (mathematical for example), or an image, or something like that. Now, we have this representation of conscious "thinking", the limited type of thinking, as an activity which is directing, or some sort of ordering, of products (thoughts) previously acquired from this activity.

-Remember that I assume that Thinking is not an abstraction anymore than belching is an abstraction. Thinking is the actual movement of a living piece of matter inside of the skull.

<If we extend this now, to the "over-mind", then we are forced to forfeit from the conscious mind, the principal capacity, which is the capacity to direct, or order this activity. But this is contrary to our experience, which demonstrates that the conscious mind does have the capacity to do this directing of thoughts. To maintain consistency with this empirical observation therefore, we must deny any relationship of supervenience. There is not a relationship of necessity between the over-mind and the conscious mind. It also proves expedient to deny supervenience because if we pass this capacity to direct on to the over-mind, we have no means for locating what sort of thing actually does the directing, Then we're faced with an infinite regress, or determinism, or else some sort of homunculus.

-Again I am misunderstanding the word "directing".

<If thinking requires thoughts (remembered content from previous thinking), we're looking at an infinite regress

-I think thinking is the creation of thoughts that may or not lead to more thoughts ie questions and answers, and are things in themselves. The act of thinking can be precipitated by many kinds of stuff. A pretty sunset, an angry face, a question, a kick in the ass an erotic picture etc.

-I will try to expand all this, reluctantly, because I am relying on data that I remember imperfectly from dozens or hundreds of psychological printings that I have read including Freud himself over a period o 40 years or more. But not now. Give me a few more days to prepare and then return to the forum and make an ass of myself. Fun!

-A preliminary sample: ''Thoughts are rich in vitamin D"

<So we ought to allow that thinking is an activity which can occur without any content, no thoughts, an activity without anything moving.

-I don't think that is a true statement.

-Thinking is movement, (actually the movement of electrons in an electric circuit which can be detected).

Hi Darknes. These following opinions are 100% accurete. No leeway here at all.
You say: Pretty sure the conscious mind came first otherwise you wouldn't have language.
They came together.

I wouldn't put much stock in research put forth by psychology since half of it had to be thrown out due to reproducibility and from what I learned in psychology courses in college it's not the best indicator of how humans work or their minds. So many theories yet nothing truly conclusive.
Pure uninformed gibberish

There isn't. The unconscious as we have found out turns out to not be some hidden brain but more just upkeep processes of the body.
Meaningless.

And yet you have many saying they don't including me so they're clearly doing something wrong. It's more likely the inability to keep the tongue still. I mean it's fairly tricky for humans to remain perfectly still even if they are sitting down. Their study had nothing to do with thinking and words.
Meaningless

But I guess psychology is desperate for something to publish since that blow it was dealt
What blow?.

Jesus. I checked this out again with 3 guys and they got awkwardness all 3. But I had a time getting them to be aware of their thinking itself rather than the awareness of the meaning. Maybe try it again.

I am going to take awhile to answer this because I got visiters. But keep in mind the urgent need within this conversation to invent more names for thing which you just did and also that the mutiple mind gestalt, the pyramid, is only partly conscious. The very devil is that you and I are so restricted to one part of the gestalt.

You say: there is far too much crossover, back and forth of neurological activity to allow such proposed divisions to provide a meaningful representation of thinking."

You are totally correct of course at least among mere philosophers. I intuit that these endlessly complicated neurological activities are actually being dealt with by Psychologists in complicated discussions and experiments including coining new vocabulary.

If that is so then: Good luck to them but it doesn't help us any.

You say: "I believe that all thinking which you propose as "conscious mind thinking" has a huge component of non-conscious activity mixed throughout it."

Again I agree. All of these Different mental functions are not different at all and are are intimately an intricately interconneted and, in fact are merely part of the vast over-mind

If you have a better word than my word "Over-mind" please tell me.

"However, I think the conscious activity is just like the tip of the iceberg, and there is a vast amount of non-conscious activity going on, which is supporting a tiny amount of conscious activity. We could represented it like a pyramid, the base being non-conscious, with the point at the top being conscious. Since it is activity we are talking about, represented as a thing (the pyramid), there is continuous back and forth throughout this proposed "thing".

Very well expressed. I applaud.

But I suspect we are going to have big problems with our buddies in this forum that might confuse the fact that we are forced to use only words with each other in these forums to mistakenly think that words are the do all and end all of thinking.

But now step back a moment and take a look at thee and me.

We are at this moment using our 2 vastly limited semantic minds with occasional flashes of intuition from the overmind and trying to do the impossible.

That we have progressed as far as we have with these pathetic tools I think is remarkable.

Congratulations!

Our contemporaries is this forum have been of some help but not very much. (I am probably mistaken here) so what happens next? If you have no ideas then I suggest we go out for some pizza. But I can't invite you. I don't what state you live in. Hell, I don't even know what Contenent you live in

Okay, f I should refute your evidence with a single definition might that not be valid?

You use the word: "Consciousness" as if it actually exists, not just metaphorically but physically as real matter in the real universe. (whatever the hell that is.)

Ok, I emphatically agree with you that Consciousness does indeed exist.

Where does it exist? In the conscious mind.

So my definition of Consciousness is - "Arrangements of human brain cells located physiologically within the conscious mind which is known to exist within the prefrontal lobes just above the eyes."

If that statement is accurate then your statement cannot be accurate.

An interesting related idea. Consciousness can be amputaded and occasionally has been amputed with an operation called: "A prefrontal lobotomy. The entire prefrontal lobes are removed and the scar sewed up.The patient is deprived of a conscious mind and has no Consciousness which is the only part of the mind that can talk. The patient can no longer talk but he is normal in all other ways and can still communicate using shouts or grunts or pointing or laughing or crying or learning to use Indian sign language.

Hi darkness. Well, we have here a very trivial point. All I can say is this. I have read thousands of books in my long life and many of them have been books about psychology.

But I rarely read to learn. I usually read for pleasure. I read the Scientific American for pleasure like reading Tom Sawyer. I never take notes or anything. And all very random. So I can't begin to tell you where I read all this.

It is considered a fact among scientists of various disciplines that speech arrived first and foremost, in evolution, well before the conscious mind came along, because speech type electric brain circuitry had already been evolved millions of years earlier. Grunts, screams, growls etc. So when the conscious mind came along about a half million years ago, I seem to remember, it came along as an adjunct to speech which had gotten there first.

So that when words finally did come along and vocabulary storage facilities developed in the prefrontal lobes and people began talking it was only as one aspect of speaking.

As you know evolution never makes big jumps. It always makes changes as minor developments of things that were already there. I have been talking of the electric, mental, thinking circuits necessary to talking but many other things had to evolve as well. Lip muscles and tongue muscles and vocal cords had to enlarge their capacities. A modern mouth can make at least 40 different sounds. And, of course, wordless communication had long since existed, witness Indian sign language.

Scientist applied motion detecters to lips and tongues and vocal chords and observed that when guys thought in words tongue movements, sometimes just tiny little twitches, were invariably recorded but never registered with non word thinking, admiring a sunset or something.

You say: "But those experiments are flawed."Thousand of experiments on 5 continents over half a century are flawed ? Wow!

You say: "As has been shown plenty of people don't move their mouths at all while thinking. Not even a little bit." How do you know? A motion detector can be made so accurate that it would detect even a mouse's tongue movements.

I have received many comments similar to yours and those comments have provoked me into thinking about this stuff and guess what? A lot of of my present understanding of these matters has evolved thanks to you.

So thanks, just keep it up.
Ken Edwards

You say: "I find most of my thinking involves relating activities. That is how I organize my day, This has to be done before that, and something else has to been done afterwards, etc.. None of this involves words, just some sort of images of the activities in question, so that I know what it is and I can relate it to the other activities. In the end, I might assign words to help me remember what I figured out."

I emphatically agree. Well described. The ratio of "Relating Activity Thinking" must be hundreds of thousands of times more frequent than conscious mind thinking.

I think that there are, indeed, many other ways of thinking. My problem is that I don't have good names for these. Intuitve thinking, thinking by the overmind, aesthetic thinking, musculer control calculations, sight, hearing and feeling acivities etc are commonly used much more often, perhaps a million times more often than Conscious mind thinking.

But, the coscious mind is not negligable. Consider. You might pause in your days activities to add up a grocery list with a pencil. That would be Conscious mind thinking. You might pause to make a telephone call. That would be Conscious mind thinking. You might pause to write a letter. That would be Conscious mind thinking. Your sister might come for a visit. You might hug each other. That would Not be Conscious mind thinking. Then you might converse. That would be Conscious mind thinking.

Also, please stand up and step back from the table and take an obective look at what you yourself are doing right this moment. You are using your conscious mind, ie your talking mind, to read my words. That is Conscious mind thinking.

But then you may finish the day and go to bed without again usung the Conscious mind at all. Millians of thoughts, of overmind thoughts.

The truth is that all these thousands of mental mechanisms work smoothly together in intimate cooperation.

A possible solution might be to adjust your environment so that it includes a higher percentage of compatibles.

Like moving to live in today's equivalent of Haight Asbury or Greenwich village.

But don't you think that technology like telephones and computers has improved things notaby?

Witness what Athena and you and I are doing right this minute. And witness the Philosofy forum.

We have done it electronically.

I would say that to be a gentleman is possible today. I am so old that I actually Was once a gentleman. I know the ropes. Not an Englishman country gentleman, of course, which implies a rich landowner. But a gentleman never the less.

Your words reminded me of my own school years. I was a "creative bohemian outsider" but the pressure to conform in my school was so strong I frequently found it necessary to conceal my thoughts and to pretend to conform.
Then by great, good luck I found two friends who were just like me. The result was we became combative and fought back and largely succeeded.
Here is a definition I made at the time - "Bohemian" is an old-time word that refers to a Thinking, Principled Person that has a fanciful outlook on life and was born with too much imagination and inherits very artsy-fartsy genes and reads more books than is good for him and is frequently an artist or an actor or a writer and who looks at you with far-away eyes and who dotes on Beethoven and Bach and the Beatles and who goes his own way in the world and knows his own mind and does his own thing and who cares not a gnat’s ass for tradition or convention.

No, I do not think that there can be understanding without thinking, almost by definition. I might say this. Thinking is usually considered to be thinking with words and that there is no other way to think except by using words. But I am an artist, a sculpter and I know that that idea is false because I know that I spend much of my time thinking about forms and shapes and the locations of pieces of clay in relation to other pieces of clay without using words at all. I call that kind of wordless thinking -"intuitive thinking". And wordless thinking includes no understanding at all. That means you are correct - thinking is more extensive than understanding. Much more.

There is no such thing as subjectivity. There are only subjective thoughts. All thoughts exist as living matter. All thoughts are tangible. All subjectivity is tangible.

There is no such thing as objectivity. There are only objective thoughts. All thoughts exist as living matter. All thoughts are tangible. All objectivity is tangible.

As to the first I emhatically agree with you about the complete primacy of Talking.

As to your second I am not sure that thinking and talking and understanding are not three different aspects of the same thing but no, understandig is more extensive and includes intuitive and possibly aesthetic understanding as well as logical understanding.

Your last is, of course, correct. I might prefer to say "adunct" to thinking rather than "representation" of thinking and is trivial.

You say: "Thoughts are arrangements of neuron-firing patterns, not arrangements of brain-cells.."
I take that to mean: "Thoughts are arrangements of patterns" I am using the meanings of both patterns and arrangements to have the same meaning and so I don't get the meaning of the phrase: "Thoughts are arrangements of neuron-firing patterns.

I agree with: "And what is being detected is evidence of thought, but not necessarily the thought itself."

I would not say: "before we cross a bridge we are already on the other side."
I would say: "The words themselves -"before we cross a bridge we are already on the other side." not us might be on the other side or anywhere else fot that matter.

Re "Thoughts actually exist physiologically as Patterns or Arrangements of brain cells inside of human heads. Those brain cells produce tiny electrical currents that can be detected."

Is there anything wrong with the following statement?

All thoughts are rich in vitamin C.

A puzzling fact about thinking.
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Ken Edwards
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I stated above, (Not claimed) about the intuitive mind: It produces all emotional processes. Please read more carefully.
3 days ago
god must be atheist
2.5k
↪Ken Edwards If you stated it, you claim it is a fact.

You're right, I have to read your argument more carefully. Be back to on that after I read your claim more carefully. (Maybe.)
3 days ago
god must be atheist
2.5k
↪Ken Edwards I read the line and the entire post that contained it.

I think the claim that happiness is a function of the over-mind is an opinion. You must prove that it is a fact, that happiness is not a function of the front cortex, but of the "over-mind". I accept your use of the word, it is clear and precise. I just don't think feelings such as happiness, anger, sadness, grief, etc. are functions of the over-mind. You have to prove that to us. If you think it's kindergarten stuff, please provide references contained in the applicable literature and not take them from hearsay or from imagination.
3 days ago
Ken Edwards
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↪god must be atheist ↪god must be atheist Does a monkey or an ape or a dog have no feelings?

I have no interest or desire to support my statements. My statements are based on memories of books and articles I have read over the last 50 years. I am not arguing. I have no opinions, only memories.

I am not sure what you mean by proper arguing but intuitionally I think most arguing is mindless and worth nothing.
2 days ago
god must be atheist
2.5k
↪Ken Edwards I understand your unwillingness to prove things that are not easy to prove. I have been there, done that, mostly in cybernetics and astrophysics.

But this is a philosophy site. We toy with ideas, and if someone has a claim, we like that person to defend their claim, otherwise the discussion is futile.

I could say that my brain is green, and it can detect flying space ships that are twenty parts per billion in the air because they are also green and they contain therefore bits of my salami sandwich. Would you believe me? If I said, "It's my memory and my recollection and my opinion, and I am not willing to part with it, or defend it," then where do you think that discussion will take us to?

I thank you for candidly stating your opinion formed on the basis of memories, and I commend you for saying it is not something you can defend before reasonable scrutiny. (You did not say it this way but this is how I take what you said.)
2 days ago
Ken Edwards
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Now I think we are discussing the meanings of two words. Are you stateing or claiming the 2 words mean the same thing?
You say - state - claim that I must prove that it is a fact, that happiness is not a function of the front cortex. Must I? No I Must not. You say - "You have to prove that to us." I am curious to know what will be the consequences if I don't.
What about reasoning? Is it not an obvious fact that men and apes have experienced happines for millions of years? Is it not an obvious fact that no animal except ourselves have conscios minds and can talk?
Re - ↪god must be atheist ↪god must be atheist ↪god must be atheist ↪god must be atheist ↪god must be atheist ↪god must be atheist
2 days ago
Ken Edwards
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I am not sure but I think you replied to this and that for some reason it failed to get recorded. Perhaps I am mistaken. Would you please resend your last post?

Thank you
2 days ago
god must be atheist
2.5k
Stating something is giving a statement of a fact or of an opinion.
Claiming something is normally the same thing, with the extra meaning that it is true.

If you state a fact, it involves the inference, that it is true. Facts are not topics of debate.

If you state an opinion, you can claim it is true or you can claim it is false.

I read once somewhere, can't remember the source, that philosophy is an endeavour where one has to have a very fine understanding of the language -- from its robust forms to the most refined and subtle. In fact, some philosophers have claimed (mainly the logical positivists) that philosophy does not exist beyond the comprehension of the language or beyond the comprehension of ideas that the language can express. If you know the language, then philosophy can't tell you anything that is incomprehensible to you.

Asking me to define the difference between "stating something" and "claiming something" is a sign you have a lot to learn yet for becoming a passable philosopher. Sorry, not to diss you or to belittle you. But it is the truth, that not knowing the difference in meaning of two very common words will require of you a lot of work to catch up to par.
2 days ago
Ken Edwards
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↪god must be atheist I agree, mostly, but my answer to your question: "then where do you think that discussion will take us to?" is - I would hope that it would take us to more discussion.
2 days ago
Ken Edwards
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↪god must be atheist I might say: "Philosophy can only contain words and symbols in contrast to science which can also include physical actions such as performing experiments."
2 days ago
Ken Edwards
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↪god must be atheist

I withdraw from the discussion of the meaning of the word claim because of pure bewilderment. I just looked it up and it had 14 differnt meanings.
I give here a sample: "used as a verb --cause the loss of (someone's life): the attacks claimed the lives of five people"
2 days ago
Ken Edwards
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↪god must be atheist I was very distressed to read the words: "philosophy does not exist beyond the comprehension of the language or beyond the comprehension of ideas that the language can express. If you know the language, then philosophy can't tell you anything that is incomprehensible to you."

If philosophy doesn't exist beyond comprehension than what am I doing here wasting my time? What's worse: Might not I be considered a philosopher? Sometimes bewidered, of course, but very good looking. Thus if philosphy doesn't exist then philosophers don't exist either.

My god! what will I do? Who will feed my children?

Sorry about that.
2 days ago
Ken Edwards
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I personally dislike the word opinion because in my mind it seems to imply: a FIXED opinion and frequently infers a high degree of rational inflexibily. " It is my opinion that: xxxxxx.? I rarely use it myself and I am uncomfortabe when others use it.
a day ago
Ken Edwards
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↪god must be atheist I Good heavens!

The meaning of a word belongs more to the science of Lenguistics than to philosophy.

I have never seriously considered myself to be a philosopher. I am sure I can't explain what phiiosophy is but I know it when I see it. Perhaps I don't belong here. Much of the scholastic research which predominates here is beyond me. I am more of a pleasure seeker and I participate in this forum for pleasure. I am enjoying it hugely. I read a lot but I rarely read to learn. I am too lazy. I read for pleasure.

This next does not relate to philosophy only to procedures and rules. My name in this thread seems to be blanked out and I don't know why. Might I ask you to tell me what that means?
a day ago
khaled
2.2k
↪Ken Edwards
the scholastic research which predominates here
— Ken Edwards

:rofl:
24 hours ago
Thinking
103
I know there's a fact that you can read faster if you don't verbalize those words read with your mouth. It is also more difficult to read those words.
23 hours ago
Ken Edwards
62
↪god must be atheist ↪god must be atheist
logical positivists[/quote
Re - "Sorry, not to diss you or to belittle you." I might describe that statement as - "A Diss sandwiched between 2 truths".
— god must be atheist
18 hours ago
Ken Edwards
62
↪god must be atheist Re your statement "I just don't think feelings such as happiness, anger, sadness, grief, etc. are functions of the over-mind." The words: Anger sadness, grief, are emotions. I am uncomfortable with the word " feelings mostly because the word has so many distinct meanings. But that, perhaps, is a quibble.

I would like to use the word "obvious" with you. The word obvious is obviously meaningless without a complement. Obvious to me obvious to you etc. and I would like to speed this up by assuming (perhaps wrongly) that the truth of the following facts are obvious to you as well as being obvious to me.

One. Animals, early men and modern men have had emotions for many millions of years. Two. Only men are self aware, have consciousness, can talk or have conscious minds. Thus only Overminds contain emotions.

A possible caveat. Conscious minds are intricately and intimately, connected to the overmind and can perhaps be considered as part of the overmind and a conscious mind can easily and effortlessly import an aspect of emotion from the overmind and attach it to an expression such as "those are sad words".
a minute ago