Possible existence: Entails no contradiction (not great)
Potential existence: In limbo between possible & actual (not great)
Actual existence: Existence proper (great-est)

God, as per Anselm, actually exists for the reason that existence contributes to greatness.

My grandfather was very greedy and because of that I had a good childhood. — Vincent

:snicker:

Well said! — universeness

Danke!

Not the most detailed reasoning you have ever offered. — universeness

I'm...only human. :smile:

we can more easily predict the future — Vincent

Predict disasters, cataclysms, catastrophes, armageddon, the apocalypse and you've basically established yourself as an authentic seer! Entropy will make sure of that! :snicker:

No wonder eschataology figures prominently in religion. It's as if iron age folks had an intuitive understanding of the 2^nd law of thermodynamics, end of days and all that.

Meno's slave knew how to construct a square exactly twice the area of a given square. He only needed to be reminded of it! Go figure! :chin:

brother Smith — Hillary

:snicker:

How's the 3-year old doing? — Hillary

Nothing to report. Merci for asking.

I've heard of Job's tragic story. I didn't know Job's tribulations were visited upon him & his family (?) on a dare by Lucifer.

Do not put the Lord your God to the test. — Jesus

No spirit of reciprocity in this, our relationship, with YHWH. Perhaps that's the moral of the story: (Learn to) give without expecting anything in return. Has (human) sacrifice undertones! :scream: Religious practice is an oxymoron in my humble opinion - they're humanly impossible, have been and will probably remain so. Thus, I suspect, faiths are, at the end of the day, exhortations to transcend our nature and its limitations! Übermenschen (Nietzsche, God is not dead).

Which part do you consider too radical? Uniting in common cause with global humanity? — universeness

No, the things...you want us to put on our ignore list.

greed — Vincent

Don't be so quick to judge. You might owe your existence to a an avaricious ancestor! Greed existed for a reason, but, in the modern world, in so-called civilization, it's more of a curse than a blessing. I chalk this up to what I call The Mind-Body Gap. Our minds have tasted as it were the power of cooperation, our basic instincts, however, seem more attuned to a solitary existence in the savannahs.

A bit too radical for my taste but these are desperate times...desperate measures in order!

strong sense of empathy — FlorenceKaia

:snicker:

You talk funny! :snicker: I thought I was the only one!

there is something inherently toxic about masculinity. — Tzeentch

Even among deer (picture Bambi), the males are violent (during the rutting season), fatal injuries have been reported. What hope is there for apex predators like ourselves (h. sapiens)? Testosterone should be reclassified as a Class I (extremely hazardous) toxin. The Green Goblin was all DHT! :snicker:

Never heard of it. But yes, I think that's how the world works. I call it the law of conservation of hassle. :razz:
The problem is that people see the current system as 'normal'. People don't want to change until they see the problem. So one must be forced. I think that's what Putin is trying to do now. — Vincent

We need good ideas, really good ideas and soon! The Doomsday Clock is ticking and I believe, unlike garden variety clocks, it makes sudden jumps: One minute it's all sunshine and rainbows, the next minute it's the friggin' apocalypse!

Your attempt here will go down in history! :smile:

Here's food for thought: An planet-killer asterioid on a collision course with earth can be dealt in 3 ways (there maybe more).

1. Blow it to smithereens
2. Deflect it
3. Slow it down

Options, options, we need options, fast!

:ok:

Progress! Reminds me of Gödel's incompleteness theorems: In system x₁, problem p₁ arises. We then develop system x₂ to solve problem p₁. What happens next is that system x₂ has a new problem p₂. A new system x₃ is needed which will have its very own problem p₃...ad nausesum :vomit:

brother Smith — Hillary

:snicker:

Good points! Kudos for the nobility of the sentiment.

Two issues

1. Sometimes, the tool is the problem. Fossil fuel based engines for example.

2. Sometimes, the tool user is the problem. Replace money with x. Money has been removed, but people are the same. The problem will resurface immediately or later, but it will resurface with x now instead of moolah.

Leaving aside the inane suggestion regarding extraterrestrials — Wayfarer

:snicker: This is not the first time you've killed my vibe! Knock some sense into me whenever you feel like it. Gracias.

existence is a perfection mean — Wayfarer

A coupla points:

1. A real woman is orders of magnitude better/greater than the best blowup doll money can buy. A real lion will kill you but a picture of one can't. Existence/Real > Nonexistence/Fiction.

2. Antinatalism is the only philosophy that takes issue with the perfection of existence (for reasons you alluded to in your post).

'Tis better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. — Voltaire

If God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish Him. — Mikhail Bakunin

[God is a]...celestial dictator. — Christopher Hitchens

Arithmetic is objective, yet many are (functionally?) innumerate. Grammar is objective, yet too many are (functionally?) illiterate. This planet is objectively 'round', yet more and more socially-mediated Earthlings subjectively (make)believe "Earth is flat". :mask:

NB: By objectivity I understand demonstrably subject-invariant (as well as language/pov/gauge‐invariant). — 180 Proof

Nice!

All I can say, for the moment, is that morality is objective and appears to be subjective. The purported subjectivity is simply an artifiact of social dynamics and different rates of progress in re rationality.

It appears that the transcendentalia are not a package deal. Each of the items (verum, bonum, pulchrum) are sold separately in a manner of speaking.

fixed basic income. — Vincent

I think this has been tried before! It didn't work out.

It is not human nature not to be kind to useless things. — Vincent

Perhaps I'm wrong, but then so are most of the people I know. The world has a way of taking perfectly normal people and turning them into cynics & pessimists. It's rather curious. Plus these very same people tend to be highly successful.

It seems that morality is objective. What explains the convergence on such acts as murder & theft? The fact that there's a divergence on other issues such as rape is due to the fact that those who condone it (e.g. some Muslim nations have a poor track record in womens' rights) haven't really been presented with the apposite arguments.

In other words, morality only appears subjective because not much intercourse has taken place between relevant parties/cultures. Cultures tend to put up invisible barriers against influences (customs, beliefs) from other cultures. This self-isolationism is most evident among some Moslem countries (Afghanistan being an exemplar).

Give it time...we'll all be on the same page in (say) another century or so.

Nec quid nemis. The proposal - abolish money - is too extremist. A bad workman blames his tools says the old adage. Necessity is the mother of invention i.e. money serves a vital purpose in the economy (commerce & trade).

Too, human nature doesn't take too kindly to things with zero utility.

I would suggest the rational use of money and, of course, other resources with a little bit of :heart: thrown in for good measure (xin). A pipe dream? Possibly, but it feels so right! :chin:

Another wacky "ontological" argument to defend God's existence.
Why God has to be the "greatest" thing? — javi2541997

:snicker:

Why, indeed, don't aliens try and get in touch with us?

Bollocks. It is not inherent in the definition of the greatest man to exist. It is on the definition of god. the reason being that the greatest man need not be perfect so does not need to embody existence, whereas God due to his perfection does need to exist. See the refutation to Gaunilo's objection. — Tobias

You maybe right, but I listened to a lecture in which a bona fide philosopher claimed that Anselm's notion of greatness is predicated on existence i.e. greatest $\to$ existence. I feel this is the keystone of his argument. Remove it and the ontological proof implodes.

Are the transcendentalia based on hedonism or is it the other way round? Is this question nonsense?

Ref: the Philosophy is Pointless . . . thread. — jgill

Kurt Gödel, no less, was convinced there was something to the ontological argument. He, I was led to understand, developed his own version of it. Google for more!

Keep looking for that Boltzmann brain, Smith. It'll really help. — Wayfarer

Did you know...

According to some scientists, (parasitic) worms rolled back on nervous system development (they lost their minds :snicker: ).

These Romans Worms are crazy! — Obelix

Zen Buddhism [mushin no shin (mind without mind)] is for nematodes, parasitic ones! :scream:

to be here just to eat and shit — Harry Hindu

:snicker: We're basically tubes, fancy ones but essentially tubes (mouth - guts - anus). Brains are, the bottom line, an organ that works for the tubes. It's kinda rebelling, now and then (hunger strikes), but it still serves the tubes. I wriggle, wiggle...like a worm!

hitting rock bottom — ithinkthereforeidontgiveaf

Bottomless pit? You have it good, stop whining! :snicker:

One of my best friends seems to have spent his life in depression. — Athena

:snicker: So, you, Athena, a goddess, no less, didn't help? No wonder the Romans, plagiarists, switched from Olympus to Jersualem!

NB: Aristotle didn't "kickstart the fundamentals ..." by a long shot; in the western tradition that would be Thales / Anaximander (and in the eastern tradition, the Upanishads & Laozi, respectively). — 180 Proof

:ok:

Well, by metaphysics, I refer to what Aristotle kickstarted (the fundamentals, the first principles of all under the sun).

What intrigues me is the plain and simple fact that the 3 components of the the transcendentalia (verum, bonum, and pulchrum) do not mention metaphysics separately, kinda like how omnipresence is hardly ever mentioned in discussions about YHWH. Is omnipresence/metaphysics implicit/deleted as an attribute of/from YHWH/transcendentalia?

No offense judges, but in my humble opinion, the police should be better paid than you gavel-wielding madcaps. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Minority Report (2002)

This just dawned on me. We don't eat animals alive? They have to be dead you see! Vultures got tired of waiting!

Sat, Chit, Ananda — skyblack

Merci beaucoup monsieur/mademoiselle!

Most interesting. — Ms. Marple

Panta rhei or Change is the only constant. — Heraclitus

Not exactly though, and hence

Change is an illusion. — Parmenides

Heraclitus subsumes Parmenides but the converse isn't true.

Since we can't be correct, let's at least reduce our error!

fallibilist — javra

My take on fallibilism: The idea is not not to make mistakes, but to know ? you're committing them? The former is impossible and hence absurd, the latter is Socratic knowledge (I know that I don't know).

I attempt to incorporate "ugly truths" (i.e. disvalues) in my conception – negative dialectic (i.e. non-identity) – of "the transcendentals" as
• resisting indifference / waste (aesthetics)
• resisting harm / injustice (ethics)
• resisting error / nonsense (logic)
(wherein the former concerns 'judgments-conduct' / the latter concerns 'practices') which are modes of immanent resistance instead of transcendent idealization-idolatry (re: "the Beautiful" "the Good" "the True"). — 180 Proof

Amazing how you're the very picture of clarity, señor!

1. Truth (Logic & Epistemology)
2. Good (Ethics)
3. Beauty (Aesthetics)

How do you explain the conspicuous absence of metaphysics from the transcendentalia? Is it implied/implicit? Nonsense perhaps? Unrealistic (the parable of the arrow)?

Before I forget, a million thanks.



Indeed, there's what we wish for (perfection) and what we have to live with (imperfection). I suppose we feel better about ourselves, being flawed, we can even then conceive of the flawless. There's another thread, by Jack Cummins, on human judgment & error. Can error ever get a handle on accuracy?

As for relativism, I am of the view that it's a suicidal meme (it blows itself up, for apparently no reason at all). Even so, we could set that aside and run with it. Where does relativism take us before it bleeds to death from a self-inflicted gunshot wound?