If there’s a rabid beast at your door don’t kick it. If there is a docile beast at your door kick it into life. I have a feeling it is these kind of approaches that get mixed up that bothers you? Insisting on humility does more to kick a rabid beast than placate it. Walk away and don’t be tempted to put the boot in on leaving.

Bit of an unfair comparison. If they were rabid beasts we’d be able to argue for shooting them before they bite us.

I understand the point though. Ignore the troll and don’t bother with impression management because they’ve already given the impression to the people I want to reach that they are a troll. Got it.

Can you be harsh to your friends and kind to adversaries? If I agree with someone I go for the throat - not to ‘win’. I mean I actively look for a means of conflict.

I do too, but I don’t send a flying strawman kick to the balls either.

The way I describe my style, is to throw stones at stones thrown to stop them hitting their mark but don’t throw stones at people unless they hit you or someone else.

I could do without people being humble as long as they're honest. I think people often respond in ways that aren't very honest here. At least I hope that's the case, because the other alternatives would be even more disheartening

Honesty first modesty second is always the best policy in my eyes. If you don’t believe someone has countered your claims effectively enough for you to believe it and as far as you can tell you haven’t given off any of the emotional responses you normally get when you believe someone has proved you wrong logically to you, (it’s a pain response) then you should be honest in saying you disagree with someone, provide counter arguments or point out the flaws in their logic or ask clarifying questions to give the other person room to expand. However if you feel that pain response then their is probably something there you agree with deep down. Doesn’t necessarily mean you or the other party is wrong or right in reality but your belief is very important. Question all of it sure and think about things and see if your pain response was wrong and even check to see if their should have been one.

Humility only has to come if honesty requires it.

Usually though I find it hard to know whether or not people who react with anger to my views aren’t either believing some of what I say and protecting themselves from that, or are ideologically predisposed to be angry at the views I posit themselves for whatever reason or any motivations between that I’m not seeing. The point is the anger isn’t helpful because it just ends up spreading and clouding everyone’s judgement to the point where real discussion is impossible. That in and of itself makes angry people very hard to listen to in philosophy as their arguments are much poorer than if they had taken a step back to calm down and engage in a more conducive manner to them producing better quality counter arguments than if they had come in angry.

Saying all this as someone who does have an anger problem too. First to admit that. Which is why I know first hand that it doesn’t help and it clouds the mind which is what it feels like genuinely too. Like a hot black cloud inside your head narrowing your perspective and closing off easy access to the rational parts of the brain.

That and realistically we all have our mental health to take care off too, I’ve been off Facebook for quite awhile too for this reason. Too many studies are coming out about the use of social media and the effects it is having on people’s mental health for me to want to take too many risks with mine.

Having and wanting people you can discuss ideas with in a safe way is something everyone needs in life. What people do with social media, their are few things like it in real life. It’s not often you’ll see people stop in the middle of the street, loudly proclaim their thoughts and ideas with a megaphone that can theoretically reach everyone on the planet and then have people from all over the world share their thoughts, criticism, praise, insults and even threats with that original person.

Imagine this; When you leave the house every single person you walk past seems to have something to say to you and a lot of it isn’t nice. The way you dress, talk, think, look, identify, job etc.. imagine that was your reality every day. Then realise that with social media, that IS a lot of people’s reality every day all done through a phone. At this point, being on social media is becoming a form of self sabotage a lot of the time. :/

If you don’t believe someone has countered your claims effectively enough for you to believe it — Mark Dennis

It's not a matter of that. It's a matter of people claiming silly things that they don't actually believe.

have I said anything I don’t really believe?

also that’s not what I claimed either if you’re taking it out of the context of the paragraph.

“Honesty first modesty second is always the best policy in my eyes. If you don’t believe someone has countered your claims effectively enough for you to believe it and as far as you can tell you haven’t given off any of the emotional responses you normally get when you believe someone has proved you wrong logically to you, (it’s a pain response) then you should be honest in saying you disagree with someone, provide counter arguments or point out the flaws in their logic or ask clarifying questions to give the other person room to expand. However if you feel that pain response then their is probably something there you agree with deep down. Doesn’t necessarily mean you or the other party is wrong or right in reality but your belief is very important. Question all of it sure and think about things and see if your pain response was wrong and even check to see if their should have been one.”

So it’s a lot more nuanced than you isolating loan parts of it as standalone.

Terrapin you’re the one making claims that people don’t believe what they themselves say. Where is the evidence of this?

have I said anything I don’t really believe? — Mark Dennis

Not that I can think of offhand. I don't know you that well yet.

I'm thinking of other people I've interacted with a lot here. I gave an example earlier.

Evidence is the person saying things that don't cohere with what they claimed to believe.

that’s fair enough. Did you watch this video that came with this post? I’ve been wondering if anyone has. I think it’s fascinating.

Did you watch this video that came with this post? I’ve been wondering if anyone has. — Mark Dennis

Hi Mark, I started watching it, but it didn't grab me; I was at work anyway and distracted. But I felt like I understood the gist of what you wrote, and that's what I responded to. :smile:

I didn’t get into everything that was in the video. The overall theme of the video was that Adam was admitting to some of the mistakes his show has made over the years and everyone was freaking out because he was doing this and saying he’s going to ruin their credibility and were expecting him to get mad and defensive about having his mistakes pointed out. Another claim was that getting things wrong shows he doesn’t care about the facts.

His counter was that actually admitting to your mistakes increases your credibility and shows that you care about the facts so much that you’re willing to let go of pride so the truth gets the spotlight.

He explained that while the shows research team is excellent they are all human and humans make mistakes.

It also linked me to another video explaining the backfire effect. Which is when people who are shown evidence against their claims it actually makes them cling to the claims harder. Due to the fact that for most people, being told they are wrong and especially being faced with proof (which in philosophy can be a well put, logical counter argument free of fallacies) they are wrong illicits a pain response and can put them into fight or flight. It’s how the mind tries to protect itself from what it perceives as a painful truth.

Of course, In philosophy just because someone might have made you feel this pain response doesn’t mean they are right or wrong, it just means to you they have made a convincing case.

Thank you for sticking around. I might message you directly for conversations every now and then if that is okay? :)

His counter was that actually admitting to your mistakes increases your credibility and shows that you care about the facts so much that you’re willing to let go of pride so the truth gets the spotlight. — Mark Dennis

Brave, ethical man--except that we seem to living in a culture that values the opposite: deny the truth at all costs--just like the lawyers for big pharma have been doing, and of course the republicans are in deep, utter denial about what's been going on, but they only care to protect their own interests, so of course they deny it.

When we admit to our mistakes, it shows some psychological maturity. When we can't admit to our mistakes, we're in denial, and that can end up distorting the hell out of reality. People in denial can become extremely violent when they project onto others whatever it is about themselves they can't face. History tells the story over and over.

The Emmett Louis Till case is a very specific instance of what I'm talking about; if you care to, you can scroll down and watch a short documentary about the pictures taken of the boy's body after he'd been beaten to death by white men who insisted they were defending southern womanhood. http://100photos.time.com/photos/emmett-till-david-jackson#photograph

This was the kind of atrocity inflicted on black people throughout Jim Crow era: all of white men and womens' sick projections onto black people of their own sick and sadistic urges. Black men never wanted white women: we know that in reality, it was always white men, since they were slave owners, raping black women. But they couldn't live with their own psychopathic urges which they acted out of the bodies of black men and women, all the while maintaining that the black people were the sexual predators.

Being in denial can be some scarey ass shit.

Denial really can be scary. I wonder if there is any reading out here in the area of phenomenology of emotions. I remember looking for one for logic at one point and could not find any. Extremely disappointing. You can have a phenomenology on ghosts in literature but no one has done anything on logic as far as I can tell.

only perfect beings can recognise perfect answers or other perfect beings. — Mark Dennis

It would follow then that either you're perfect or you cannot know if an answer is perfect. If you cannot know if an answer is perfect, then what sense does it make to claim that if one is assailing the answer, then the source of the answer is not perfect?

:brow:

No sense at all. Because objectively perfect beings don’t exist. Unless objective perfection is to simply be a being in which case nature is perfect.

To be perfect is to be unassailable, so it stands to reason that if you are being assailed then you are not perfect. — Mark Dennis

No. It doesn't seem like that claim stands to reason at all, does it? Reason tells us that it makes no sense to claim the source of an answer is not perfect. That's precisely what you propose in the OP.

Are you changing your mind?

If you’re not able to understand the argument you don’t have to respond to it. My argument is and has always been against the existence of a perfect being and the burden of proof is on you to provide a convincing argument for a perfect being.

...is being right the same as being perfect?
— Mark Dennis

Of course not. One can be right about something and wrong about other things. However, perfect knowledge would be had by a perfect person. Perfect knowledge is right. So, if one can be right and assailed, then it is not true that if one is being assailed one is not right(perfect).

So far this has been your only argument. In which you deny that being right is the same as being perfect, which is what I think. Then immediately flip by the end of the paragraph and all of a sudden claim in parenthesis that “Right” does in fact mean “perfect”. This doesn’t prove the existence of a perfect person nor the existence of perfect knowledge either.

So did you change your mind? Or is your next argument for a perfect being going to be a picture of yourself? :)

I suggest that you carefully re-read our exchange. It would be helpful to do so while believing that you've missed something important... because you have.

Yeah, sure.

If you’re not able to understand the argument you don’t have to respond to it. — Mark Dennis

Please show the argument. Then I'll respond accordingly.

Did you notice mine?

If you cannot know if an answer is perfect, then what sense does it make to claim that if one is assailing the answer, then the source of the answer is not perfect? — creativesoul

Here is your argument in simpler form...

Perfect is unassailable.
One is assailed.
Therefore, one is not perfect.

The primary premiss is false. All perfect answers are true. Some true answers are assailed. Thus, it cannot be the case that if one is assailed, then one is not perfect.

Being assailed does not equate to being false, mistaken, or imperfect. Being false is one feature of being an imperfect answer. Being incomplete is yet another. We may not be able to know everything about perfection, but we can certainly know that being assailed doesn't equate to being wrong and/or mistaken.


Be well.

:smile:

“The primary premiss is false. All perfect answers are true. Some true answers are assailed. Thus, it cannot be the case that if one is assailed, then one is wrong.”

Again the burden of proof is on you to prove the existence of perfect knowledge or a perfect person.

If premise 1 is false then give an example of something which is perfect knowledge?

Drop the monologic narcissistic bs too because you’re embarrassing yourself now. It’s actually kind of funny watching you think you’ve effectively challenged anything when you are too lazy to even respond properly or write an argument that makes sense.

See you actually believe you’ve countered my argument but all you’ve done is create you own argument where YOU claim that perfect knowledge is possible without a perfect being and are then trying to say it is my argument. Prove your claims or be quiet but don’t try and tell me what my argument is. This is what you sound like. “Oh well your argument is completely wrong if I change it. Derrrppp”

Prove perfect knowledge exists :)

P.S. you’re not perfect and never will be, get over it... I did.

Brilliant.

Define perfect knowledge. The same argumentation goes against you too. If you don’t make explicit what ‘perfect knowledge’ is how is anyone to argue for or against your point ... whatever it is?

it’s not that simple. Perfect knowledge; meaning something we can know to be true without any doubt, includes a definition of perfect knowledge. If we don’t know if perfect knowledge exists. How can the definition itself be thought of as an example of perfect knowledge?
If there is no perfect knowledge then the definition for perfect knowledge isn’t perfect knowledge.
if I believe perfect knowledge would also be irrefutable and unassailable and I know that the definition can’t logically exist without pre understanding the nature of perfect knowledge, then how can I trust my own definition or criteria for perfect knowledge when they are not irrefutable and unassailable?

I’m genuinely open to an argument that will change my mind here.

There is nothing to change. You’re in a position of refuting goal posts exist.

People have already offered examples of irrefutable knowledge - it is quite, quite simple. We define set parameters of play and call anything operate outside of these parameters ‘false’/‘wrong’/‘rule-breaking’.

Knowledge is dependent upon set limitations. A triangle has three straight sides because that is what we call a triangle (Euclidian space). Given we don’t know of ‘rules’ for human life and the universe we don’t seem to be able to talk of ubiquitous truths (which I gather is what you mean by ‘perfect’)..

If you don’t know what you mean why should we bother. You seem to be leaning toward absurdism.

What can I say. Perfection is absurd to me. I’d even argue over whether a triangle is a triangle haha. I mean, to a human it is. Can’t speak to it’s hidden dimensions though.

I guess fundamentally I just don’t view us as capable of being completely honest with ourselves that we 100% know anything for sure.

If we are talking about perfect human knowledge, things that are true at least of the human experience. Fully believe in that. Maybe I just think it’s pretty egoic to assume any one person or even any one species could have 100% certainty in anything. It’s so absurd that even my argument shouldn’t even be taken as 100% certainty that I’m right about this hahaha

Okay for real though. I think I need to take a break for a few days, I’ve been manically obsessing about my debates here a little too much and my own ego needs a good self roast for the next few days to deflate before I start accumulating what I’ve got so far. These have all been extremely stimulating conversations with everyone here the past little while but I’m approaching burn out.

Goodnight Sushi :)

I’m certain know the rules for tic-tac-toe.

That’s because of logic, not knowledge. It’s still not considered perfect knowledge since anyone can change the rules of a game and make a new one. Then you have the words themselves to look at and the fact that all words are entirely made up.

Cohens preface to logic goes into this a bit. It’s a really good read.