Comments

  • Analogy of Idea to World
    I wholeheartedly agree with the OP. Analogies extract the pattern from pragmata (issues); the next step is to come up with a specific instance of that motif. The objective varies - from trying to drive home a point (philosophy proper) to exposing bad thinking in a jocular fashion (rhetoric).
  • Reverse racism/sexism
    Even in the antebellum American South, people were having much biracial sex, from what historians can tell. Slave owners were the first one to do so, due to their power over their victims, but there were also instances of consensual biracial sex, eg through prostitution. So even such a thoroughly racist society could not eradicate it. That's how powerful the sexual pull is between different ethnicities. — Olivier5

    Tempus fugit.
  • Marxist interpretations of Feminism fail to be useful
    We no longer hunt (for food) although it still survives as a sport. That should serve as a good starting point to discuss feminism. A lot to unpack there.
  • Is the harmfulness of death ante-mortem or post-mortem?
    Exactly. I had the same question in my mind whenever I finished the read — javi2541997

    Bartricks is in explore mode and he did make the case for an intrinsic value to life but then backtracked for obvious reasons (dukkha). It appears as though life is bootstrapping itself - it, in a sense, knows that it's value is 0 if we ignore gratuitous suffering and we can't.
  • Why are people so afraid to admit they are wrong here?
    The best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer. — Cunningham's Law
  • Maximize Robotics
    Pretty sure we're already at this point, unless you're working with a supernatural sentience definition, — noAxioms

    I'm overjoyed!
  • Is the harmfulness of death ante-mortem or post-mortem?
    ↪Bartricks


    I don't think it's that simple but I do agree, as mythology attests, immortality aka cancer :snicker: (+ happiness) have been/are/will probably remain our top priority.
  • Is the harmfulness of death ante-mortem or post-mortem?
    I don't understand your question or its relevance to the OP. Please clarify. — Bartricks

    You can't be serious.

    Suicide is predicated on postmortem benefit (the cessation of suffering). How do you square that with your claim of postmortem harm?
  • The Concept of 'God': What Does it Mean and, Does it Matter?
    What is it that we're certain exists/doesn't exist? What are the criteria for existence/nonexistence?, i.e. if I claim x exists/doesn't exist, I must know why x exists/doesn't exist. Clearly, we all agree that the Eiffel tower exists in Paris, France. Also, equally clearly, elves don't exist.

    Now, claims of existence/nonexistence vis-à-vis God have to be in accord with our intuition & reason as outlined in the previous paragraph. To spell it out if God exists, then it must be in the same sense as the Eiffel tower does and if God doesn't exist, it must be in the same sense elves don't.

    Something worth pondering upon is that, within the domain of our senses, all we have are necessary conditions & not sufficient conditions for existence [re hallucinations (insanity) + illusions (hyperbolic skepticism)] i.e. it's impossible to prove God, anything else for that matter, exists).
  • Is the harmfulness of death ante-mortem or post-mortem?
    What explains suicide then?
  • The Fine-Tuning Argument as (Bad) an Argument for God
    ↪Gnomon


    Your theory, I realize, is reminiscent of how Thales thought of water as the arche & how Heraclitus declared fire was the arche. A monistic stance alright but what I don't get is why? Is it just our natural instinct to simplify despite the cost which is internal contradiction (how can light & dark be one?). Even you, an information monist, had to posit a yin-yang duality.
  • "What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer."
    points to the issue of the incompleteness of coherence theories of truth. — Banno

    Si, si señor!
  • Maximize Robotics
    ↪ToothyMaw


    Autonomy (self-determination) is part and parcel of human-level sentience and that could manifest as independent values & goals - not exactly the kinda stuff that fosters obedience.
  • Reverse racism/sexism
    ↪Olivier5


    So Darwin! Are races/ethnicities proto-species? We were treated as distinct species in the sense that once upon a time, when racism was at its peak, interracial unions were forbidden, punishable by death since even consensual marriages/sex were/was taken to be rape/beastiality or something like that. A species is defined as being able to breed, biologically speaking.
  • Seeking resemblance in an unfriendly reality
    Birds of a feather flock together?

    But then ... opposites attract!

    dizziness of freedom — 64bithuman

    Love that phrase: Basically overchoice, a burden as great as choicelessness. Hence aurea mediocritas I guess.

    all of reality is hostile to life — 64bithuman

    There are many ... many ... ways to die! Encircle, annihilate! Encircle, annihilate!
  • Perspective on Karma
    ↪baker
    :smile:
  • Perspective on Karma
    Do you have any doctrinal support for this idea?
    Which established theory of karma says this?     — baker

    :blush: How about things at your end? Any "doctrinal support" that asserts the contrary?
  • Reverse racism/sexism
    That is true: there is such a thing as near universal xenophobia, and there is also such a thing as a near universal desire or attraction for the exotic -- which I like to call the "Pocahontas effect", or simply "xenophilia": sexual or intellectual attraction for other folks. — Olivier5

    Xenophilia?!

    Most interesting. — Ms. Marple

    I should've known. Which is the rule and which is the exception? Beats me!
  • Reverse racism/sexism
    Xenophobia — Olivier5

    What then explains SETI? :chin: Peoples (hate) fear each other but then they're oh so eager to contact aliens. Something doesn't add up now does it?
  • The Concept of 'God': What Does it Mean and, Does it Matter?
    Jack Cummins reasons thus: I begin in hyperbolic doubt, Descartes style; after all we're not sure at all about all this. I, Jack Cummins, 100%, exist and everything else may not exist (cogito ergo sum). If God exists then the only possibility is that I, Jack Cummins, am He! :snicker:
  • Searching for meaning in suffering
    Perhaps it would be better to get some help from the experts and for better or worse, I've found them - Buddhists. I haven't the foggiest how these dudes & gals found the time and peace of mind to do such an in-depth analysis. I'll present an outline of the Buddhist take on suffering although some scholars are of the view that Buddhism has an even broader notion - dukkha - which is dissatisfaction, sensu amplissimo.

    Dukkha

    1. Suffering (birth, aging, illness, death, ...)
    2. Superimposed suffering (rubbing salt on wounds)
    3. Tanha - the unsatisfiable thirst of craving
    4. The anguish caused by refusal to accept anicca/anitya (impermanence/change)
    5. Getting what you don't want and its mirror image, not getting what you want (Life can be cruel)

    Wikipedia articles on suffering & dukkha are a gold mine as far as I'm concerned.
  • What a genuine word of God would look like
    ↪universeness
    :up:
  • How exactly does Schopenhauer come to the conclusion that the noumenal world is Will?
    Read the Wikipedia page on Arthur Schopenhauer. World as Will is not a conclusion. At best it's a hypothesis and at worst it's an opinion.
  • What a genuine word of God would look like
    Banzai — universeness

    What does it mean, this Banzai?
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    If Donald Trump is your typical business magnate, I now know big companies (re large family-run ventures are called empires) are dictatorships!
  • What a genuine word of God would look like
    I like Oz speak. I definitely prefer "Bonza!" to the fanatical Japanese scream of "Banzai," during there infamous futile bayonet charges in WW 2. I think most of them got shot. The Banzai charge was a rather unsuccessful war strategy. (sorry javi2541997) — universeness

    Non intellego! (I hope I got that right).
  • What a genuine word of God would look like
    I understand this apathy, when facing tasks/changes which seem insurmountable BUT, an old comparator is what kind of general responses do you think you would have got from people if you lived 500 years ago and you looked up at the moon and said 'one day, I think men will walk on the surface of the moon?'

    Addition: Maybe we were just born too soon to benefit from such needed change. It took 2022 years to get from the short, even more traumatic human life experience of the days in which the Christian fables are set, to the 'improved' state we are now in for most humans today. I think we need at least the same duration again, perhaps much, much more. Just a few more seconds in the cosmic calendar.     — universeness

    Talk is cheap. Theory and praxis are two enitrely different worlds and most of the bridges between 'em have collapsed so many times that we need to rethink whether this is even possible.

    However, this sorry state of affairs may be just a symptom of the real illness - bad thinking! I'm hopeful though! After all, we've made it this far and our present condition is definitely an improvement if we ignore perverse effects. G'day.
  • What a genuine word of God would look like
    The humans who are still here. Once they have got their act together of course. Until then, your concerns are justified but we will get there a lot quicker if we get rid of money, private land ownership, exclusive governmental control over military, countries, theistic influence over politics and/or politicians etc, etc.
    The fact that the list is still quite long shows how much there is to do. Maybe the anti-life people could get off their misanthropic butts and help out a little more. That would help!     — universeness

    This, some would say, is building castles in the air, a mere pipe dream. I'm an optimist though so, yeah!
  • Quantitative Ethics?
    To my reckoning, the logic of utilitarianism is as plain as the nose on your face.

    If 1 life is valuable then surely n lives are more valuable (n > 1).

    Schopenhauer disagrees. You'll find the relevant quotes on Wikipedia, either in the Schopenhauer page or in post-Schopenhauer pessimism page.

    It does leave a bad taste in the mouth to kill the heavy man to save 5 others (re Trolley problem).
  • What a genuine word of God would look like
    You can manage without god, if you are willing to take all the responsibility yourself. — unenlightened

    Wise words. Who will watch over my family after I'm gone?
  • Is space 4 dimensional?
    (BOTTOM LINE)

    Space is expanding. Theoretically, all the astrological objects, bodies, and groups are moving away from each other. This causes a shift in frequency causing light to change in color. 4d(t) uses that space to maintain momentum.     — Rocco Rosano

    Is this your theory of dark energy - the mysterious force that's causing cosmic expansion? You didn't mention the acceleratation that some say is occuring.

    time-Dilation — Rocco Rosano

    What do you make of Willaim Lane Craig's (physicist theologian-philosopher) assertion that time dilation applies only to clocks and not "actual" time which remains unaffected?
  • Irony and reality
    Camusian irony/paradox: Why are there beings (humans) who seek meaning in a world that doesn't seem to have any? A wicked problem! I haven't actually read Camus but I hope his Sisyphus book does at the very least mention some attempts to find meaning with anlayses of how & why they ended in disappointment.
  • What a genuine word of God would look like
    A painting can only be as good as the painter. Clearly, God is a human invention - God of scripture has flaws that are human ... too human. GIGO! Vide sci-fi writer Fredrick Brown's short short story Answer.
  • What a genuine word of God would look like
    What a genuine word of God would look like?
    — Art48

    Silence.     — Banno

    अति सुंदर

    (Ati sundar: Glorious/most beautiful).

    Accounts of God having answered prayers is total hogwash! That however doesn't mean we stop praying.
  • Most Important Problem Facing Humanity, Revisited
    lack of inner awareness. — Bret Bernhoft

    Expand & Elaborate ... please.

    Animals lack so-called inner awareness and they're in near-perfect harmony with the environment and even if they do upset the ecology, the effects are on the whole local and definitely not global. I recommend we lobotomize humans - a bit extreme but my hunch is it'll do the trick. This is a mind begging that it be switched off - a plea for mercy killing. O mind, what hast thou wrought?
  • Is space 4 dimensional?
    Interesting. But when people grow it isn't necessarily uniformed and might further emphasize the 4th dimension as a time dimension rather than strictly spacial? — TiredThinker

    It was just a pattern I saw. It isn't perfect I know, but I'm neither a mathematician nor a physicist; so all I got is a vague intuition.
  • "What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer."
    ↪Banno


    My views on truth

    A proposition p says something of/about something. If what p says corresponds to how that something is, p is true; if not, p is false. For example take the word "to". If I say "t appears before o" then it is a true statement because t does appear before o. By the same token, "o appears before t" is false. I believe this is called the correspondence theory of truth.

    I'm told there are some mathematical objects that don't correspond to anything in reality - this I suppose is one reason for the is math invented/discovered? controversy. Unfortunately, I can't think of an example off the top of my head but what about so-called imaginary numbers ()? Plus how about the inconceivability of 4D space ( - what's that?). As far as I can tell this necessitates a different definition for (mathematical) truth: p is true iff p is provable (from the relevant axioms)? Your guess is as good as mine.

    That's all I have so far. Should've worked harder in school & college. Oh well!
  • What a genuine word of God would look like
    Gamora : [as Nebula walks up]  This is the one? Seriously?

    Nebula : The choices were him or a tree.

    :snicker:
  • The Propositional Calculus
    Too ugly. — Banno

    Lookism? In the ideaverse? No wonder some of these memes - the aesthetically challenged ones in all likelihood - override our self-preservation instincts and make us fatally courageous.
  • Philosophy vs Science
    Philosophy is the junkyard of the sciences. — Some dude/gal

    The nerve! :rage:
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