Comments

  • What is Climate Change?
    How's about "climate is always changing and a 1 degree increase is positive, yet so minuscule that there's really nothing to talk about".stoicHoneyBadger

    You mean to say all this climate emergency hullabaloo is much ado about nothing? I would've loved to agree, but then all those papers, reports & seminars; no smoke without fire, a grain or two of truth, no?

    Too, there's a thread on chaos theory and last I checked it had very much to do with the weather! Does chaos not extend to climate? :chin: Oh, I completely forgot, there are patterns in chaos. I could be wrong though; do lemme know if I am.
  • What is Climate Change?
    Climate change, if a scientific hypothesis, can't be, for that very fact, the only game in town. Are there other hypotheses that are...well...inelegant, too complex, etc.?
  • Is self creation possible?
    @Bartricks

    Yahweh (the Father), "married" his own mother (Maryam) and sired Jesus (the Son). Sancta trinitas, Unus deus.
    Self-creation? :chin: In short, the Biblia Sacra, interalia, is incest porn! You might wanna research works on incest, the mother-son kind, and maybe time travel, two subjects no one would've imagined were connected in such an intriguing way!
  • Is self creation possible?


    Well, to the best of my knowledge, mechanisms are a sine qua non to establish a causal link. In other words, it isn't enough to simply show a correlation.

    To illustrate my point we all know, more accurately we're told that, smoking causes cancer. The first step involved was to demonstrate a correlation: the smoking & cancer association was statistically significant. The second step was/is to find out how smoking leads to cancer. The putative mechanism: genetic damage/mutation.
  • Knowledge is true belief justified by true premises
    I've always found Gettier "problems" to be non-issues. Take the following classic example.

    You're in a field. You see something that looks like a cow (it's actually a bed sheet waving in the wind). You go there's a cow in the field. Now, it so happens that there is a real cow in the field.

    According to Gettier you got it "right" (there is a cow in the field) by fluke (fake knowledge).

    However, before we get our knickers in a twist trying to find a solution, let's just make sure that we have a problem to begin with.

    The bed sheet is the cow to you. See?
  • Institutional Facts: John R. Searle
    Notice that such utterances are not either true or false; if they misfire, it is in some other way than by truth value.Banno

    All these sentences imply their own truth-apt corresponding statements. For instance "I now pronounce you husband and wife" means "you two are married" and that statement can be true/false.
  • Origin of the Universe Updated
    I believe we can never really eliminate God as a creator of the universe. Science, as per Lawrence Krauss, is in the business of answering how questions and so all it can do is explain how God brought this universe into existence. See? God's still in the game!
  • Is self creation possible?


    There's got to be a mechanism of causation! For instance, I push you, you fall over; the mechanism here is force & energy, how the conspire to shift your center of gravity away from your base.
  • Is self creation possible?
    I don't know what you're askingBartricks

    Causation, to my knowledge, requires a mechanism. The fastest possible mechanism is an electromagnetic signal (light and its ilk). The speed of light is finite i.e. the mechanism can't be instantaneous. In other words, cause and effect can't be simultaneous. :chin:
  • Is self creation possible?
    @Bartricks What about the cosmic speed limit (roundabout 300,000 km/s aka speed of light)? No cause can be produce an instantaneous effect then, oui? :chin:
  • Facing up suicide: is the concept of death the main difference between Western and Japanese artists?
    how worthy is the human existence itselfjavi2541997

    Collectively, take the human race as a whole, what do we deserve? If it weren't for the fact that other creatures & plants are critical to our own survival, would we be making all this racket about conservation and climate change? Selfishness writ large and I haven't yet talked about how we've been an agent of extinction from the moment we set foot in the global ecology. In other words, we're working for Thanatos! I wonder how big our paycheck is?

    First rule of assassination. Kill the assassin! — Captain Kirk

    The Grim Reaper's hitman: Humans.
  • Logical Necessity and Physical Causation
    It is impossible to separate a cube into two cubes, or a fourth power into two fourth powers, or in general, any power higher than the second, into two like powers for there to be a world without causality. I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain. — Agent Smith/Pierre de Fermat
  • Facing up suicide: is the concept of death the main difference between Western and Japanese artists?
    Instead of being a perpetual sadness they try to understand it and connect some characters related to the same topicjavi2541997

    :fire: Yeah, the point of personifying (Thanatos, Algos, Praxidice, Nemesis, and so on) nature and phenomena part of nature is perhaps a way of trying to make them people-like, a step towards building a healthy relationship as we (attempt to) do with real peeps.
  • Facing up suicide: is the concept of death the main difference between Western and Japanese artists?
    The OP is right on the money if one takes into account the fact religions and their popularity. Religions, sensu lato, boil down to treating life as a preparation for an afterlife post-death.

    The leitmotif of the post-mortem spans entire human history - from Egyptian pyramids and mummies on to faiths as part of modern culture.
  • Facing up suicide: is the concept of death the main difference between Western and Japanese artists?
    Western folks fear deathHaglund

    I fear that you're not quite right there. World wars have been, by and large, a Western folks thing. What about extreme/dangerous sports, where do they originate?
  • Deus Est Novacula Occami
    I suppose you're on target. There are some systems that the moment you dissect/disassemble them they immediately stop being what they actually are. Life is a classic example: A cell is alive, as soon as you break it down into its parts like in a centrifuge, it dies. If so, did we really study/understand the cell?
  • Facing up suicide: is the concept of death the main difference between Western and Japanese artists?
    Completely. I would sound as a crazy boy but for me that specific act was so pure and authentic. At least the Nipponese died defending their thousand years old values and history… beautiful doesn’t it?javi2541997

    I wouldn't use "beautiful" to describe mortality & morbidity, but I suppose that's one of the ways the Japanese were looking at Thanatos (romanticizing war and all that). My hunch is that for some folks, Japanese or not, there are things worse than death (re spies and their cyanide capsules). Tokyo eventually capitulated post Hiroshima & Nagasaki - pain & death at that scale weren't worth it anymore.
  • Facing up suicide: is the concept of death the main difference between Western and Japanese artists?
    It is not necessarily connected to wars. You can feel stressed for whatever reason in our Western cities. I wanted to point out that while in Japanese arts the death is accepted, in the Western is seen as pure dramatic and it looks like you are forced to livejavi2541997

    :ok: I just thought it odd and interesting that the Germans didn't resort to suicide when it seems quite justified to do so, as the Nipponese folks did.
  • Mathematical Definitions
    Yes, Suicide is the last thing I do. But depression being caused by serotonin deficiency overlooks, in my optimist opinion, the cause for the deficiency, which in a broader context can be seen as an effect of depressing causes. Somehow, the view that neurotransmitter shortage is the cause has it backwards. Depressing circumstances can do the trick.Haglund

    So, we're just sacks of chemistry? :chin: — Neil deGrasse Tyson

    -Woman
    A Sum of infinite complex vectors, with time-variable lengths and rotating with time dependent angular velocities, similar to, but not to be confused with Fourier series:

    c1(t)eiω1t+c2(t)eiω2t+c3(t)eiω3t+...cn(t)eiωnt...c∞(t)
    Haglund

    ¥€$

    Depression:
    The minimum of the God Function, of which sights have been reported. Its exact shape remains largely unknown. Progress is being made though, and probably within the current decade the problem is solved. Breakthroughs have recently been achieved.
    Haglund

    What's a/the God Function. Cool name nevertheless...is it like the God Particle, a step towards a The Truth?

    Atheism:
    The Hermitian conjugate of the God Function. Though it has been conjectured It's the inverse. Depends on the God Function. Extremist atheists consider the minus symbol sufficient.
    Haglund

    Nec caput nec pedes.

    Pessimism:
    The constant function f(x)=−∞
    Haglund

    Good one!

    So, how can we describe a cause with math?Haglund

    I see causality as a pattern (duh!) and that puts it within the mathematical domain. Legend has it that mathematicians can always explain patterns.
  • Facing up suicide: is the concept of death the main difference between Western and Japanese artists?
    Most interesting. — Ms. Jane Marple

    All that comes to mind is that during WW2, the Japanese had kamikazes but the West did not; of course one has to take into account the fact that the West were never in a situation where they were backed up against a wall/driven into a corner. Worth noting is the Germans didn't have kamikazes though they were in the same do or die situation as the Japanese were. There's a grain of truth in your view then, oui?
  • How May Nietzsche's Idea of 'Superman' Be Understood ?
    Yes, it does seem that Nietzsche's approach was about looking beyond the 'animal' aspect of the human being as Gus Lamarch suggested. I was just looking at Colin Wilson's discussion of Nietzsche in, 'The Outsider'. Wilson suggests an interpretation which is more about the development of the inner aspects of the human being, saying how Nietzsche, asked himself about happiness and the nature of delusion and,
    'His imagination set to work on the problem, to conceive a man great enough to affirm. Not the Hero- no hero could ever command a philosopher's complete admiration. But the prophet, the saint, the man of action; or, perhaps, a combination of all four? ' in this way, Nietzsche's emphasis can be seen as going beyond the animal and irrational aspects of human nature, and of becoming the highest possible example of how a person may become.
    Jack Cummins

    Well I :grin: did say something about what kinda lowlives h. sapiens are (vide infra).



    Nietzsche: Guys, guys, guys, we're better than this! C'mon!
  • How May Nietzsche's Idea of 'Superman' Be Understood ?
    People can't understand me cause I m 1000years aheaddimosthenis9

    That's the Treponema Pallidum talking.

    Zombie Insects. Who knows, we could all be zombies too. Jesus was trying to tell us something!

    Our brains hijacked, we're under the illusion that we're engaged in some highfalutin colloquy about love, honor, gods, transcendence, nous, aretê, whathaveyou, when in fact all we are are vectors for a sinister virus (DNA & RNA). :scream:
  • How May Nietzsche's Idea of 'Superman' Be Understood ?
    Perhaps Nietzsche was condemning the animal in us - low on rationality and high on emotions and you know what that does - and was suggesting that we leave that behind and become human (guided by mind-heart i.e. rational & compassionate). In other words, his übermensch = peak human, kinda like Steve Rogers aka Captain America who's both good, knowledegable, and strong (re Christian Manliness or Muscular Christianity).
  • Deus Est Novacula Occami
    Nein,
    God is the most unimaginable being.
    SpaceDweller

    :lol:

    Most interesting — Ms. Marple

    "God is", as per Anselm, "that, than which nothing greater can be conceived."

    Now, is something that's inconceivable (apophasis or, in vedic terms, neti neti) greater/lesser than Anselm's Deus? You might wanna look into contradictions, are they inconceivable? Sancta trinitas Unus Deus.

    Ya, it does. The ultimate simple is not a part (one of many), but the Whole (all-encompassing Unity).
    But, a better name for that unpartitioned infinite Potential might be a "holicale" (play on Holism). :joke:
    Gnomon

    Isn't the whole made up of (simpler) parts?
  • How May Nietzsche's Idea of 'Superman' Be Understood ?
    My understanding of what Nietzsche meant by beyond good and evil was not about ignoring life and pain. It was more about the conventional superficialities and appearance of 'kindness' represented in the development of Christianity.Jack Cummins

    It's my suspicion that Nietzsche committed the nirvana fallacy. He set the bar so high that not one human could shake off the label of superficiality. I don't blame him though; morality, if that is what we're discussing, has always been divine territory i.e. it's always been beyond the reach of mere mortals.

    Regarding letting the beast that's been caged inside us out and allowing it to roam freely in society, I'd say that there may not clear-cut evidence that such was Nietzsche's intent, but the Nazis surely saw something in ol' Freddy's works that could be interpreted thus. Why else Nazism which, though so lofty in its claims, turned out to be nothing more than a cover for a gang of thugs to do what thugs do - loot and kill?

    :joke:
  • An Argument Against Sider’s Hell and Vagueness


    Merci beaucoup monsieur/mademoiselle for the graphical representation of my stand on the issue. Indeed, when displayed as such, as a graph, my position "stands" ( :chin: ) on rather shaky ground. However, what if look at it this way: True, hell is a place of punishment, but that the penalty is proportionate to the offense. So, even if two people both are in hell, the intensity and duration of their suffering is determined by the net valence of their bad deeds (-1 suffers less than -8 in a manner of speaking). The long story short, hell isn't a one-size-fits-all kinda arrangement; au contraire, treatment, if you could call it that, is personalized. The same goes for jannat.

    What sayest thou?
  • Mathematical Definitions
    :chin: I'm sorry, DOES NOT COMPUTE!
  • Deus Est Novacula Occami
    God PotentialGnomon

    What if that's a particle? God is, according to some, the simplest thing imaginable (re Divine Simplicity) and it doesn't get simpler than a point particle, ja?
  • On The Origins of Prayer
    The origin of prayer could be the toddler's habit of her needy, pre-linguistic 'call' for her mother's tit and the soothing 'response' from her mother as the she suckles.180 Proof

    You mean to say God's simply sublimated boob fetish? :scream: :lol:

    Yahweh

  • Question on categorical imperative
    Like Daniel Bonevac, says in a video, there are two kinds of approaches to morality:

    1. The Ideal: Everything's picture-postcard perfect! The world and ethics are fully compatible, they dovetail into each other - a marriage made in heaven :wink:

    2. The Non-Ideal: Bonevac uses the word "broken" - the world, as it was/is not exactly an environment conducive to morality, even if it were dialed down to the barest minimum. The question then, he says, is "how do we fix it?"
  • Deus Est Novacula Occami
    mysteryAlkis Piskas

    Is philosophy, at its heart, an attempt to solve the mystery the universe is?
  • Deus Est Novacula Occami
    Which means...god is, first and foremost, an explanation, one could call it proto-science if you will. The late Christopher Hitchens once remarked of the ethics of the Abrahamic Triad, paraphrasing, "...because it was our first, it was our worst!" Ditto for science!



    No one's ever made the first jump. — Tank
  • Mathematical Definitions
    A big issue as depression it is not as simple as a "deficiency" on neurochemical serotonin. This is probably just the scientific explanation but goes this illness goes further. I cannot count or "mathematise" why a depressed citizen ends up killing himself..javi2541997

    We must try before we die!
  • Mathematical Definitions
    If you are only familiar with high school mathematics then you have literally no clue what mathematics actual is.I like sushi

    :sad:

    Most people have no idea what mathematics isI like sushi

    What is mathematics?
  • Deus Est Novacula Occami
    What kinda a particle would you say deserves the name The God Particle? It has to be, well, fundamental to reality as we know it, oui?
  • Deus Est Novacula Occami
    I'm particularly interested in miracles as evidence. As all evidences go, miracles only, for lack of a better word, support a god hypothesis. In other words, they don't clinch the case for theism, merely suggesting the possibility of a tertium quid, as between Joseph the carpenter and Miriam, his virgo intacta wife. Yahweh's guilty of adultery! Shouldn't we stone Him to death? Aaah, but Jesus, none other than Elohim Himself, did say "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." Adonai, covering His own lousy ass!