All good.

They do it because they choose to and in the same way they can quit.
They're not forced to do it more than any other wage labourer is. — Noblosh

Ok, links of studies to drive home your point?

Anything that gives a rush of dopamine and considering how variable and diverse human preferences are, any prefered activity can become an addiction, for example, exercising. — Noblosh

So are addictions positive? Neutral? Negative?

Sure. — Noblosh

The point being: how can we cast a positive light on porn when we also at the same time talk about it as an addictive substance? It's cultural. Cigarettes used to be culturally acceptable, via advertising. We don't exactly advertise about porn yet. Fine. (I'm a cigarette smoker, btw).

Fair enough. Free speech over all.

Yes, and we should fight against all addictions, including porn. — Agustino

Word. Thread closed?...

1. Porn actors are free to change their jobs and porn industry is legal and regulated, the stigma that comes with it is assumed and may be itself the problem. — Noblosh

What's the impetus for your idea here that porn actors are "free to change their jobs"?

2. People can make an addiction from virtually anything. — Noblosh

What does virtually everything entail?

3. You mean: porn as an addiction has long-standing effects on the brain but so does any other addiction. — Noblosh

Yeah...definitely...

As a matter of fact the humanities, and philosophy in particular, are on the decline. — Thinker

The decline of philosophy, though, has more to do with philosophy itself. Disciplines run their course. Philology is no longer a discipline. Philosophy is a fading discipline. This has less to do with the world going to shit, and more to do with the changing landscape of human consciousness, regardless of whether or not you and I particularly like it.

I'm unsure how your response is a response to my comments. That said, the world "being on fire" certainly does and would/will have religious influences.

As a matter of fact the humanities, and philosophy in particular, are on the decline. — Thinker

I morn the decline of the humanities as well.

What we are in danger of is less and less courage in society. — Thinker

At the risk of sounding too philosophical, courage is contextual. If you're not raised in a context where courage is required or exemplified, you won't have much courage. If you are, you will. So, "the greatest generation" lived in the reality of WWII. They had courage. But because of the context. If we live in a cowardly society, it's due largely to our context, and our context is due largely to the previous generations that have handed us the culture we've inherited. We shape it and morph it ourselves, but we do so within our context. I hate how liberal that sounds (I'm fairly apolitical), but I don't know how else to phrase it.

People in the world, especially the US, have become so fat - literally and spiritually – they only see their own hedonistic needs and desires. — Thinker

And who's fault is this? You seem to suggest that it's the fault of those people. Is the uneducated McDonalds employee who eats a lot of that food and becomes fat (literally) and has no given source of spiritual sustenance (thus becoming spiritually fat) responsible? They're not responsible for their situation. As "enlightened" intellectuals, we like to say that all men have autonomy and can change their situation. But how true is that, on an every day scale? It's true on a philosophical scale, on an academic scale, but it's not true for humanity as a whole. Academic concepts trickle down into the lowest common denominator of culture at a slow pace that manages to rob the concepts of their content. Autonomy means nothing to the minimum-wage worker, and this is not the fault of the worker; in fact, there's no "fault" involved because there's no particular blame to lay; there's just two practically unconnected worlds; the academic arm-chair world, and the everyday minimum wage world. The arm-chair world preaches to the choir and makes admonishments about the minimum-wage world, and the minimum-wage world remains clueless because no real action occurs for their benefit. Autonomy requires education, it requires enlightenment (interpret that word however you want). And if we're talking metaphors (I have a tendency to be anal about metaphors), America isn't spiritually fat; we're spiritually malnourished.

The intellectually rigorous mind has always been a rare thing. Unfortunately, it will always be uncommon. — Thinker

Again, this goes back to my comments about sheep. "Unfortunately"? Again you're implying that the world needs to be more intellectual. I disagree. The rare jewel of the intellectual mind bears itself out; the value of that mind is self-evident. It's value is to give, not to control. Like the Tao, it relinquishes control. Therein lies it's "power". True intellectual power is always self-abrogating. Anything else is a masquerade of power and charisma over others.

Most Christians and Muslims are just sheep. They don’t know what they think – they wait to be told what to think. The reason is because most people are intellectual cowards. — Thinker

I think this concept of sheep is misguided. It's such a common notion, but it's not grounded in reality. Imagine a world full of philosophers. It would be a world of total disagreement and intellectual chaos (just take the disagreement on this forum and magnify it to the size of the world population). The assumption here seems to be, classically, that if only the world weren't sheep and understood "the truth" (my worldview), things would be better off.

I think clear language goes a long way in fostering better debates, which tends to lead to more respect. Of course I'm not always clear. But I think clear, well responded debates allow room for us to become aggrevated by the ideas themselves, not the people. I think that's the ideal.

So I thought of how we think of learning the meaning of a word, like learning a definition, and then use that word when we need something that means that. But what if we looked at it the other way round? We could just say you learn to say that word when you need it. If that's what it means to know the meaning of a word, you needn't think of it as a bit propositional knowledge at all. Adding a word to your vocabulary is learning how to use it, so it's learning how to do something, not learning that something. — Srap Tasmaner

This is totally on point, per my view. Language is a living thing. That's a metaphor, but it's a metaphor about language. It's barely even a metaphor, in that sense.

Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lacked any thing. — Bitter Crank

This strikes me as great poetic structure, not specifically great use of simple words. Although I suppose the two are intertwined, especially in verse like this.

Putting valuable objects and decorations speaks to a ritual. A ritual, especially in relation to the dead, speaks to a religion. We do not know specifically what the religion was; but these burials point to an after-life. — Thinker

This is still a projection of how we see these concepts. Imagine you lived 50,000 years ago. Are you telling your neighbors, "we need to do this as a ritual! It's because I believe there's an afterlife!" Concepts like "ritual" and "afterlife" exist for us now because of the genealogy of these concepts, sifted through countless sub-disciplines like linguistics, philology, philosophy of religion, history of religion, archaeology, ad absurdum; all modern disciplines. These archaeological finds say as much about our own pre-conceived notions and our own perceptions as they do about the artifacts themselves. Think about it this way: what actually tells us more about the past: a knife we uncovered in the desert, or our study of the language used by the people who used the knife? Or, what kinds of things does the knife tell us, and what kinds of things does the language tell us?

50 to 60 thousand years ago we begin to see art. Art tells us about abstract thought. — Thinker

I would say abstract thought begins in Greek philosophy, especially Aristotle. I don't think of art as being the birth of abstract thought. It's more like the birth of representational thought.

If we can see them saying – they are going to an after-life – can’t we assume there is also a place before life? — Thinker

I'm not sure what you mean.

I have to think they are talking metaphysics. — Thinker

No they're not because the concept of metaphysics didn't exist.

Does man need God?... – absolutely. — Thinker

Why? If we're an experiment, why not say "fuck you, God"? I'd rather not exist than be God's pet experiment.

Now God, the scientist, is taking notes. — Thinker

..who?..

As soon as humans began to speak we asked questions of our origin. Also of importance is to recognize who asked the ontological questions? The first person to ask – where do we come from – set the stage for religion. The next person to answer that question was a sage – priest – shaman – philosopher. — Thinker

I'm always hesitant about these reconstructions of what things were like within human consciousness (presumably) at the dawn of history (as opposed to pre-history). Consciousness "evolves" (that's a metaphor) in a way where we need to try to place ourselves in the state of consciousness that those people might have been in at the time, rather than to assume they were asking the same questions we ask now (where do we come from? etc). It's better to try to situate ourselves in their state of consciousness rather than to project backwards our own. But it's of course no less difficult, maybe more difficult. Studying language is probably the starting point. If we try to interpret mythology and ancient religions, we need to do it through the lens of how language was forming and shaping the reality that those people existed in, the same way that we can do that today (philology is a lost art, though).

Ok, so back in the cave, who was the most important person? I would answer the biggest, strongest dude. He could protect and hunt the best; also he could kick your ass. Who was the second most important person? I would say the shaman because he could chase the boogeyman away. Over time these people really did become leaders with a privileged position in society. In time, as the saying goes, absolute power corrupts absolutely. This is where the quid pro quo comes in. It never seems to fail in the human experience – give a man an inch and he will take a mile. — Thinker

That being said, this seems reasonable.

Who has the greater need here – Man or God? — Thinker

I don't see this as an important question, because I don't feel the need to question the hierarchy of God over man. When I talk about the deification of man by God, it's something akin to salvation, for instance. Just a way of explaining it that puts man in a higher position than just "lowly sinner saved by grace". There's some scripture about man being "a little lower than the angels". That's about where I see him, but Christianity as a whole, for instance, certainly doesn't see man there. It sees man one conscious decision away from burning in Hell eternally. That's more of what I'm getting at. So as far as who has a greater need of the other, that question is only important if you're questioning the hierarchy of beings here, and I feel no need to do so. The intensity of need could be equal for all I know, or something that doesn't even translate; need for God could mean something else than what need for man is, in the same way that two people in a relationship have different needs.

Most religion is not spirituality - it is a confidence game to get your allegiance and then your money. — Thinker

Were the earliest religions a scheme to get money? Sounds more like a description of a tendency seen in some forms of modern Christianity more than anything. Religion may require allegiance, but religion isn't an entity with motives like "get your allegiance" or "get your money". There is, maybe, a sort of hive or gang mentality; a lowest-common-denominator social pressure to conform. This is just the necessary tension between the subjective nature of a spiritual experience on the one hand, and the unity or "one-ness" that so many spiritual revelations call for or are imbued with, on the other. Spiritual revelation generally calls for something that brings people together, but the very attempt of those people to bring themselves together after the fact is what leads to the failures of religion. This tension never gets resolved, or hasn't yet been resolved within history. Per my own view, I don't see that as enough evidence to say that the divine doesn't communicate with humanity. I view the relationship as Divine-Human. This leads me to your comments here:

God does not need us – quite the contrary – we need God. Or perhaps I should say we desire God. We are almost nothing to God – a speck of dust. — Thinker

Nikolai Berdyaev, a Russian existentialist/Christian/mystic/other Philosopher suggested that God has a need for man; the inverse of man's need for God. God's revelation to man is the first half of the equation; divine revelation by nature is existential; it involves a human subject: the recipient of revelation, and that's where the Divine-Human link exists. God's revelation to man needs to be consummated by man's revelation to God. Without getting too deep into Berdyaev's philosophy, my own interpretation is that everything, including spiritual experience, is what John would call intersubjective, because man's revelation to God is a revelation of human creativity which is generated by the divine; for instance, the "indwelling of the holy spirit". Man doesn't become God, but God is birthed through man. Man isn't deified by himself (as in the most literal or extreme versions of humanism or transhumanism), but rather God deifies man, and man deifies God; the one is interdependent upon the other. It's an expression of agape that sounds very heretical if you were raised in the church, for instance. But this idea doesn't set God and man at equal terms. The key here is that man needs to fully embrace the scope of his freedom; conceptions of God that categorize man as "unessisary" (because God has no need of man) are nihilistic because they literally eliminate man from the equation; God having no need for man renders life meaningless and human life valueless. Atheism is a more proper view than that view of God. If God exists, man must have a purpose, and if man has a purpose, then God has need of that purpose, and so God has a need for man. God's need for man is, then, expressed through man's potential to embrace freedom through creativity, because this is the existential act that fulfills the need for God to be "birthed" in man. That's the fulfillment of God's need for man. This is a view that's pretty deeply intertwined with a teleological view, which I know a lot of people here are not interested in.

Thank you very much for your response, it is appreciated. — 0 thru 9

Thanks!

[I'm]Definitely not intentionally dismissing, denying, or downgrading them. — 0 thru 9

For sure, I wasn't saying anything along those lines. I agree with your thoughts.

I'm at work on my phone, I'll read through it when i can. This is pretty tangential to the op topic, though.

I'm not familiar.

The description I made of meditation could pretty well be described as knowledge of acquaintance. An experience of momentary changlessness, then, fits within that.

change occurs physically (which is also a metaphysical truth about it--ontology being metaphysics). Changes occur in experience, too, of course, and experience is physical as well — Terrapin Station

Ok that clarifies it, I see how that makes sense from a physicalist position. That wasnt clear to me before. I disagree, but it makes sense.

How would you know that you're in a state of changelessness? — Terrapin Station

Knowledge in what way? Something like meditation is a direct, primary form of experience that's ontologically before analysis. The way to have knowledge about it is to experience it. We can analyze our experience after the fact, but in this context analysis without prior experience is ontologically fallacious.

Answer my question and I'll answer yours.

You'd have to describe that in some detail in order for there to be any hope of it making sense to me. — Terrapin Station

As Thinker mentioned, the experience of a still mind, for instance. Meditation can lead to a state of perceived, momentary changelesness. Awareness and thinking are different states. They can overlap, or not.

Another way that time and change interact is through perception of time, like I've been saying. The more aware we are of the passage of time, the slower our perception of it; the less aware we are of the passage of time, the faster our perepction. You can think of spiritual experiences as an acceleration of that faster perception, to the point of indistinguishability.

Also, you haven't answered me this question:

Where is change happening for you? Physically? Metaphysically? Within space-time? Within experience? — Noble Dust

I've had experiences that involve the perception of not experiencing change. Where is change happening for you? Physically? Metaphysically? Within space-time? Within experience?

If you'r comments about time are in reference to what I said about time in relation to spiritual experience, note that I was referring to our experience of time.

I enjoy a good discussion about spiritual matters. Can be quite enlightening. — 0 thru 9

I do too, and I think this is the point of departure for me. I agree that a spiritual experience is a deeply personal matter, and that what you call the "ontological" can get legalistic, or what I would call dogmatic. But I don't think this problem means we can't try to at least describe the divine, if not define. I almost think the emphasis on spiritual experience being subjective and personal can become a way to avoid having debates on spiritual topics that actually interface with those experiences (rather than just analyze them). In other words, it seems to be a common approach of those who haven't had any spiritual experiences; emphasize the personal nature of the experience so as to avoid the topic or tacitly dismiss it. Which is fine, if you don't want to discuss it, but I think insisting on the personal nature of the experience can ultimately lead to an idealism that robs the experience of value. Experiences, even personal ones, have value within a social context. "Keep your religion to yourself", while well intentioned, isn't actually how spiritual experiences play out in real life. It's a pesky fact, but it's true.

In fact, most open discussions I've had with people, on or offline about spiritual experiences have been overwhelmingly positive, and usually leave me more with a feeling of solidarity, rather than disagreement, even if they come from different perspectives of faith, or lack thereof. But these are spiritual discussions, not philosophical ones. It makes me wonder what types of discussions are actually worth having.

It seems that to make definitive declarations about the Supreme Being(s) presents potential problems on several sides. — 0 thru 9

The problem is that spirit is "living", in the sense that it's closer to the chest than analysis. A spiritual experience is often something that seems to not be bound by linear time, and, by definition then, also extremely fleeting. We would think something that breaks linear time would feel "timeless", which we associate with "eternity", or something being endless, but the reality is that by the very nature of our experience of time, anything that challenges our perception of time (within experience) is by nature something fleeting. This often leads us to question the validity of the experience, especially with skeptics on the right and the left.

So the safe thing to do is to analyze it and come up with theology. Rules, ways of thinking about the experience in ways that define and categorize. But this process kills the life of the spirit. Or rather, it kills our perception of that life.

:’(

One thing it's not is that it's not a being that you can communicate with or pray to, like the Christian concept of a God — stonedthoughtsofnature

Indeed, the idea of a relationship with God is an anthropomorphisation. The way that God interfaces with us is not relational. A relationship (in the way it's used when referring to God) is a back and forth of things like language (spoken directly or written down), body language, physical touch, relation per relations with other people in the social situation, shared activities, a shared physical presence...none of these literal aspects of a relationship actually apply to an experience of The Divine; hence it's a metaphor at best. On top of that, any direct, miraculous experience of The Divine that any of us might experience is always an exception to the norm; for instance, an experience of actually communicating with God is an exception, not the norm. It's fine to use "relationship" as a metaphor for how we experience The Divine...until it's not ok anymore. The metaphor blurs and we learn to assume that we're supposed to actually have a relationship with The Divine in the same way we might have a relationship with a father figure. This doesn't lead to a deeper spiritual experience; it leads to a self-imposed neuroses.

The experience of The Divine is in reality much more diffuse and complex. Social situations determine how the experience is interpreted and named. But the experience is uniform behind the backdrop of the interpretation.

No problem, looking forward.

Well yes, because I take the question to be a joke too. I don't think I've been lacking compassion towards TL in our interaction here. Why would you think I have? — Agustino

Softness? Warmth? Tenderness? Please quote posts of yours that exhibit these tendencies.

I'll let her respond. My comment was more general to this forum.

"How we all see"; that is intersubjectivity. — John

Ok. I can at least go with that for now.

I agree with you that what is deeply personally believed acquires its vale by virtue of its being deeply personally believed. But then the troubling question is; did Hitler deeply personally believe in his worldview? — John

Oh, of course he did. Absolutely. This is an important point, and it signifies exactly this: belief is neutral, and not inherently positive. So, if belief is neutral, this suggests that there could be "right" and "wrong" beliefs. It seems pretty simple to me; I've always felt that this doesn't need to be a complex philosophical issue. Hitler believed in his view; Churchill believed in his view. Now, who was "right"? How do you go about making your claim about who was right?

I don't really see why the idea of belief being deeply personal should leave you cold. It is through personality that belief acquires its warmth, I would say. To believe something on account of intersubjective pressure is what sucks the warmth, the viscerality out of believing, as I see it. — John

Ok, so what I mean is that the less philosophical jargon of "whatever you believe is your truth! That's the truth! For you!" Is what leaves me cold. I guess I was reading your post that way, but you probably didn't mean that. I have a tendency to be too intuitive with my posts.

That entire post is a joke, right, and not a response to the problem of compassion? All I'm doing is waiting to see you actually practice compassion on this forum, that's all; it's simple.

Fellow feeling means being able to identify with others - their pains, suffering, etc. Fellow feeling emerges out of a - like you like to say - a metaphysical realisation that we're all one - or better said, we emerge from the same ground of being, we have a common source. — Agustino

Ok sour bunny ;) >:O — Agustino

.I say it requires belief because if you are not already there, then how do you know it is a real possibility and not a mere chimera? How could you know you are not merely wasting your life? — John

Well, I don't know, you can't really say one way or another. This doesn't particularly bother me.

These kinds of things can never be confirmed intersubjectively, though. What one chooses to believe and why one chooses to believe it are deeply personal matters. — John

You've used the word "intersubjective" before, and I'm not sure what you mean by it. I'd like to know.

But, the whole business about belief being deeply personal always leaves me cold. Belief is just the basic framework of how we all see the world we live in. Sure, it's personal. But that aspect of it that relates to our personality doesn't avail itself to any value. The personal nature of humanity obtains it's own value, if that makes sense. The particular beliefs of individuals has no value; value exists in the person, not in the belief.

This sounds like the Buddhist or Hindu idea of going for satchitananda over transient worldly pleasure or merely comforting belief. How many, if any, actually achieve it, though? — John

Well, again, my autodidactic stance shows itself. I don't know anything about that. But the question of how many can achieve a state of devotion to truth, and truth only, is a hard question. Even for myself, I adhere to the idea intellectually, but not often in my every day life. I routinely indulge in pleasures and distractions that add no value to my life, even to a detrimental effect.

I would say that the hardships of discipline require unwavering belief and also offer their own kinds of comfort. — John

Eh, I agree to some extent, but I also think discipline comes with personality. I have a personality of not being disciplined; my older brother, for instance, is way more disciplined. This is a typical meme, if not scientifically backed; the older sibling is the disciplined one. In any case, I don't think discipline is just something spiritual; I think discipline is something many people seem to innately possess, and it's use is far-ranging, not just for spiritual discipline.

You do have a tendency to bring your butt in from time to time :P — Agustino

Yup. Viz:

Soft - It's not hard, it doesn't press on you.
Warm - It's like a warm feeling.
Hot - It's intense.
Tender - It's not harsh, it's gentle with you. — Agustino

So where exactly have you exemplified these characteristics of compassion here? I bring these arguments against you not out of any vendetta, but because you're one of the few on this forum who argues very intelligently from a theistic viewpoint, which is something I place a high value on, and yet you seem incapable of actually distilling any religious moral values into the way in which you interface with other people on this forum. You preach sublime moral views all day while subsequently lambasting those you argue against.

Really, though, you go from a philosophical description of compassion, to then making fun of your idea of an emotional compassion? What exactly are you even arguing? I was just butting in for fun, but...

In this context? Nah...

The point of the thought experiment is to focus on the question of whether it could be somehow in itself wrong to believe what we really feel deep down in our hearts is false, despite the fact that believing gives great comfort and even enhances life. I — John

Ok, so, comfort over truth? I vote truth. But I vote truth because I think something as basic as "comfort" is a mild form of the various experiences and states of possible consciousness that are subsumed under "truth". I realize that's some arcane language. Basically, truth is the hierarchical primary thing, and "comfort" would be somewhere down on the scale.

The compassion in this exchange is so palpable.