In this example the person being interviewed, instead of refusing to answer, was siding with the bullies, while presumably knowing that their position is delusional. — M777

Is there an intent in this piece of yours? Can you explain it? Would you want to explain it?

Not so fast. We've established that you are the street interviewer, himself. Now you try to claim that you are "petty"?

Yes, and it is manageable, if we manage it. Peirce didn't think anything remotely what Rocco says. And neither does he dismiss sender and medium. Peirce's trick is to take everything into account - same as Husserl does - for the health of science, personality, civilisation etc.

Reductionism is to always insist everything be made less than less. The essence of the real is to grow into growth.

rid ourselves of the bulk of philosophy — ZzzoneiroCosm

truth/falsity — Rocco Rosano

The dumbed down so called "truth" / "falsity" tables were at best a "blind alley" in Susan Haack's opinion. That is all the cynical sophistry and pharisaism of the nihilists and resurgents is. Children should trust their own observation, contemplation and insight, and good hearts, more strongly. My own life was devastated because this got wrenched out of me.

Alfred Whitehead is an eye opener

The easy way to get an ought form an is is to respect what and who is. (Respect = ought.) This is why deep down true morals have got to do with morale, as Julian Baggini points out.

I like what I think you are saying. I have always thought like this since infancy. So many people around me tried to crush this. Metaphors are rather like fractals.

To Shannon, Wheeler and Halliday existence is an expression of meaning. Popper in later years mused upon propensity fields. Husserl (whose writings the fake tolerant William James suppressed, to Bertrand Russell's horror) regarded ontology as a branch of logic.

In my view, there is something rather than nothing, because we are on an existence wave. I don't know what the other waves "look" like. But that's why the other verses in the "multi verse" aren't up to so much.

Metaphysics may be the logic in Nature. We find it enjoyable and interesting to discuss science and knowledge in a sense that is an approximation to the non-anthropic. To claim to make something cast iron actually makes it less firm.

It's more likely because some stranger has just accosted them with an unclear and possibly provocative intent and they are not sure how to react. — Cuthbert

M777, this is exactly the point I started by making. In protesting how different you are, you would surely allow for them to be their authentic selves and react honestly to their own insight? Have you internalised some dishonesty of your own from around you?

If an M777 isn't witty, has he still got his wits about him? I didn't watch the experiment but what's to preclude wit? Why would you so heavily imply respondents are "wrong to walk on eggshells" when you are doing so yourself?

That's good if you do. But your taste and sense of confidence doesn't conflict with some others' at any moment, hence you were probably reading too much into some of the reactions. (While you were replying I added my afterthought in "edit" mode.)

I'm suggesting my own fallback for when my imagination hasn't caught up / I'm in a hurry, and that it might be of use to some others sometimes too. I certainly wouldn't know who would want to interview me or for what purpose.

Thank you Tzeentch for the video link. Marshall McLuhan dealt with these things as well. As long as one doesn't think the things on your screen are figments of your own mind or vice versa, you can stop the intensity taking away your personality. Bad religion seizing the media and posing as "resurgence" has devastated the world.

Re. anaesthesia I was gassed to have too many teeth taken out (I did need a few out). After that what was meant to be our private light hearted tittle tattle about "sex" was supplanted by creeps in authority (and that wasn't the "sex lesson"), just when Savile was on our parents' screens.

It mustn't be forgotten meanwhile, that you probably wouldn't answer anyone in the street at all, who asked you any question at all - or you shouldn't. What (objectively) is anyone up to? I would just say, "sorry, i don't give interviews".

People knew who Socrates was, AND they posed as people with "the" answers, that's why his situation is so different.

Another thing: one can say a woman is a fine mind (whic h doesn't conflict that I knew boys and men who were that as well).

But what is it for? — Benj96

So that it can be.

numbers in Nature ... sets of sets of sets — Mww

There are numbers in Nature in the form of recursions, which a lot of prominent personalities make great show of "not" understanding. When they are calculated, they are calculated approximately.

Page 35 of a book I greatly like, 50 mathematical ideas you really need to know by Tony Crilley, describes imaginary numbers as grouping several pieces of maths together to be done at the same time. Reportedly quaternions are a very advanced form of this. Reputedly sets are a greatly more complicated development from that. And models are a greatly more complicated development from that. "Model theorists" claim not to be modelling anything > sigh < Once we can't see it at all, it stops being even 1 % synthetic or a priori and one no longer has assumptions one can consciously critique or adjust.

There never was anything wrong with approximations being approximations, or honesty about ideals being ideals.

It supports Kant, but others say it opposes him because they only see the cases where it isn't (much) the case. I think developmental experience supports Kant plenty: if grouped neatly and nearly enough, we can take in five objects as five. If we're quick at it, two groups of five as ten. But sets of sets of sets (which claims to be based on the same maths) isn't so obvious. My shades of grey / spectrums / continuums outlook tends to resolve false dichotomies and affirms more viewpoints, hence is epistemically successful.

I don't think Black criticised Kant for his brevity on that. The spectrums / continuums is something I added because I found they are very successful for me in various circumstances in all fields of knowledge.

I got The nature of mathematics in a second hand shop ages ago, didn't understand it totally, but Black is basically juxtaposing several viewpoints or camps in maths. Godel's findings were new at that time but surely it was always obvious that maths is an ideal / a fiction / an approximation? Even at the everyday level we have the paradox of one, two or three oranges (integers) versus 1.35694027 (continuums). And right angled triangles are right enough. This all fascinated me since infant school, and indeed it doesn't get spelt out enough (imagination isn't appealed to enough). At the greengrocer he didn't slice an apple when we asked for a pound of apples: it was over or under.

I've now downloaded the same book as free PDF.

I think zero is an approximation, and infinite and infinitesimals are approximations to approximations.

I expect this is only a small part of Kant's story and I don't want to make the thread subject small or partial. A site based partly on Fries, and which appreciates Kant somewhat, that I stumbled upon is www.friesian.com

Baudrillard is quite cheeky, he knows as well as I do the original is not "artificial" or fake, but he is trying to say that at the level of publicity or propaganda the one is substituted too glibly for the other.

With my "clunky" mind I would always infer, in situations like that, that a smaller number of skilled and qualified scientists go nearer to protect it from mass exhalations, litter etc. and that if you are one of those what you see is "very much like" this replica only obviously better, and can be analysed (but perhaps more difficult to see). Presumably there is some sense, for some people, in visiting to see the ambient locality (more than just to buy "Lascaux wallpainting" mugs and pendants, etc).

Been to Lascaux, done the "wallpaintings" / replica / "whatever".

Likewise he often says war is effectively largely reduced to the same status as anything else on the television screen. A sort of "meme" that is just "there" and most people aren't even "supposed" to ponder what it "is".

As a critic he is telling us (not straight, he wants us to make the jump, he is telling it to us "startlingly") we have got to use curiosity about background knowledge, we have got to use valuation, and we have got to use inference: the three themes on my mind these days continuously.

Increasingly enforced absence of these three things is the "christmas cake" and not the "fairy cake" ("vodka" and not "cup of tea") recipe, the express and not all-stops itinerary, for total human disaster.

Indeed from the passage quoted if one remembers from one minute to the next that one peeped at the real and walked through the whole replica, it should be a matter of adding two and two together. He is saying don't forget to do that much! And how many people have forgotten that ("encouraged" by power larger than themselves).

At least when I was sightseeing with my family of origin I never wanted to sleepwalk.

For your enjoyment a vector diagram:

https://www.friesian.com/images/onto-14.gif

I've only just discovered that site, https://www.friesian.com/ (it is run by Kelley Lee Ross). I for one am going to enjoy dipping into it much more. I think neglected thinkers like Fries have much to tell us.

I should have added to my previous, it's also vital not to be superstitious about others' or even our own observations.

Speculating what gods can do is not the best starting point because I intuit that gods were always meant as a metaphor for a metaphor, even for peoples who go through very "serious" looking motions (and I'm not touching on relative revelation as such). Their reality is different from reifying them. As we don't have gods and little understanding of them, in common, they can comprise a weak term in discussions yetawhile.

In my young day we were taught not to be superstitious of metaphors, either pro OR anti. I think dreamtime is saying some things worth saying that some people don't think of saying and not saying some things some people do think of saying, I don't think it's more complicated than that. Where we need to critique is what is too dumbed down which is disrespectful to us all.

The inner world can potentially contain all sructures there are in the matter world and can influence that matter world. By thought patterns or by the body. For now... my brain hurts... A physical process with magic content. — Prishon

:rofl: It can seem that way because our imagination is the laboratory atop our shoulders. Also since Hume (or Bacon) we have all been taught not to use any inference.

Donna Williams helped me understand that first we get either a sensory impulse we don't identify (or a memory or spontaneous imagining of one) then it "takes" form or we identify or interpret its kind and location, then thirdly we accord it value. Only after all of these ("fulfilment") do we move beyond perception to judgment, i.e inference. Deliberate revaluing can influence the way we handle the last of these. Hence assumptions (crucial in Occam, Husserl, Nietzsche et al) are vital in valuing as well as inferring. The second stage meantime depends on us matching prior learning with impulses.

I saw things on the floor when I was getting out of bed. I soon concluded they were feet. Then I decided they must be mine. That was the first two stages in three because I'm slow. Then I decided it's not so surprising, and that is valuation. Then I judged it's OK to carry on with my day and not plan to call for help (about that specifically), and that was my judgment or inference.

Your usage of "magic" is poetical. It's good to gain a sense of wonder.

Analogy tells us something is partly like something else in some way, but it doesn't tell us more than that. The world where we eat and track the sun and build and talk and study, is firm enough for those purposes, yet our knowledge is made up of partial likenesses to other partial likenesses. We know it is firm enough due to inference (much as we're told not to try). Logic is putting knowledge together with other knowledge.

All language is metaphorical. All words allude, and when we have several intersecting allusions, we can begin to see meanings in what is said. (This is where reifiers and fundamentalists go wrong.)

Analogy shouldn't be mistaken for a solid asteroid-like piece of gunk. Things (at every level) are like people who tell us part of a story. It has always worked like this.

A term like "predicate" is often taken in two separate senses: its presence and function, or its content.

1. Cant mental states and physical states coexist? By mediation maybe of the body? Is there an independent physical pulling through our mental states? 2. If so then say a true material circle form pulls through our mental image of it cant we connect it with other physical circels, or other forms, to create a new physical reality which wasn't present before our thinking? — Prishon

In what sense do you mean "create"? Are you talking about awareness in perception? To piece together or discern might be what you mean?

I think Phenomenology, a contemporary introduction by Walter Hopp (2020) will delight you.

incommensurability — Prishon

Incommensurability in the sense of using different scales (or spectrums / continuums of scale) to measure has never been sensational.

Angels on pinpoints (not heads) was metaphorical (I don't know what for) till a few nutcases tried to allege it was literal.

"Angel" has probably a completely different meaning from usual, in context. In any case, everything in the world "tells us something". The meaning and the story of what is, is "Is".

Last night I found "ontological relativism", later today I'll put it here for you (whether it's the same as Prishon had in mind or not). I'll also think out vectors and dreamtime because they don't fit in the way you might think.

The thread you have started means you need to accept all our answers alongside each other. I recommend more reading on all subjects. Reasoning doesn't work without background knowledge of all kinds.

You asked what the counterargument to a position that you made up yourself is. But you didn't state anything about your position — CaZaNOx

This is a fair point.

I've scarcely read this sort of thing anywhere except in SpLD literature (and the odd hint in Husserl commentaries, and, more vaguely, Max Black's comments in The nature of mathematics dealing with intuitionism). This supports Kant's point against his usual opponents, but I wonder if he was too brief. I'm not actually reading CPR yet (so shall probably stay out from now on) but shall enjoy referring to this thread when I do.

Mathematical judgements are always synthetical — Mww

Some simple ones are 100 or 99 per cent synthetic and the more complex they get the greater the analytical proportion of it. Any educational psychologist or person that is being helped with specific learning differences will tell you that much.

As for the a priori part that is on a sliding scale as well. Husserl who followed Kant quite a bit, found there are three sequences to perception alone (which apply whether priori / posteriori / synth. / analy.)

I like the thread, thanks for posting the notes.

tool box — T Clark

Great analogy! :grin:

removal — Joshs

Not complete removal, so much as simply setting different issues in separate view as much as is needed to avoid conflating and confusing them. For example, one needn't lay down that metaphysics is about some sort of horrific solid gunk before knowing anything about perception (one would be likely to know less that way). Assumptions in other words: the real version of Occam's razor - clearing the way to investigate real realities that can form a layer of better probable assumptions to further research after. Some irrational "metaphysics" which was the background at the time, exhausted and closed people's minds to proper assumptions because improper ones made them look incompatible. There are other phenomenologists, but I gather Husserl's distinctive is his breadth.

Peirce ... Hegelian — Joshs

Comparing my knowledge of Peirce commentary and Hegel commentary I'm not aware that he had that problem. He was motivated by his scientific practice (surveying etc). Until and including Kant (and so I've just learned, Fries) dialectic was a group of related arguments or, in Peirce's case, relations. I think they all intended to be descriptive. I keep getting told Hegel saw everything becoming something else and that he has an Absolute fixation. Soon I'm going to seek guidance about primary sources - I want more free PDFs.

what you mean by ‘personality and societal
disturbances’ — Joshs

Imposing some "Absolute" on others (which has been done, always accompanied by some form talk of same). Whilst maths for example isn't a complete language, its proper understanding furnishes us with a clue: something "more than more" invites us to be more tentative and not very categorical.

Aboriginal dreamtime and their reality of a Natural world — Prishon

It's the same world as the only world there is, it isn't a different reality.

That was meant as an illustration (sample) of how analogy tells us something about separate things, even though it doesn't tell us exactly the same about each - just something similar.

I hopped to that, from what A W Moore in The evolution of modern metaphysics: making sense of things considers an illegitimate usage of reduction which Heidegger claimed in contrast to Husserl.

(I do a lot of hopping.)

I think all philosophy, within and across the oeuvres of all writers / thinkers, is in spectrums / continuums. A few have flown a flag of an "ism" - well I think that's up to them. I don't go by badges but that's just me. For example Epicurus to name a pocket-sized example is plenty alert to interplay between small and big pictures.

The position at 1 is to pause for thought to figure out how many possibilities there are and prioritise them for examination or trial.
The position at 2 is to revalue. Most of us had such traumatic schooling (or outlook in the family background). It took me 30 years to overcome shame and my schooling and family are fairly lucky. After that one can proceed as 1.
Bad thinking in families or social classes isn't in genes, it gets passed on as memes, which hits us in our habitus (which Bourdieu deals with).

Lots of racketeers make money out of the dumbed down so-called "MBTI". In the real one which I've done, your reading of yourself is subjective and you can discern your development over time if you wish.

Importantly it flags up what auxiliaries you have potential to further excel in. For example, a general who talks to the troops outside the tent with the subaltern inside attending to detail, is like an extrovert that doesn't forget his inner strengths. While a general inside the tent pondering deeply while the adjutant explains is like the introvert that's good at communicating and interacting. By the time they are 60, barring mania, you can't tell extroverts and introverts much apart.

The reason for eight or more poles is that they are not opposed. Furthermore one can be fairly near the middle. For example I was INTP but some of those were nearly middle. (The question procedure prevents one "making" any particular result.

Intuitive and analytic don't conflict and go together terrific. Gary Klein's The power of intuition (2003) is about this.

I could have been a mathematician, engineer or chemist (but you have to watch dodgy contracts that get foisted on you). I got steered out of the requisite classes, not entirely because I'm fumbly. My forebears were tailors, engineers' pattern makers, carvers, labourers, musicians: tectonic and aesthetic. I'm a spatial thinker. I've had the opportunity to always stay near words.

To me "logic" means wider reason. A bumptious subset have elevated inapplicable gobbledygook above reason instead of making it be (if possible) at the service of wider reason and the wider public: our challenge to them is, "we want in".

The premise of reason is always to accept what "is" and not claim to dumb it down (that is how Newton did things). All inference should be in degrees. All hypotheses, and ideas towards hypotheses, should be kept on the table indefinitely but provisionally prioritised and re-prioritised. This is a fresh task from each individual and isn't meant to be uniform across society.

Facing responsibilities takes thoughtfulness. A thing most destructive of humanity is telling people thinking is not for them.

That's more like Heidegger's version (he traded on his Husserl connection so that most people are too confused to tell them apart). Some flaws in Husserl's own version needed attending to and Walter Hopp in Phenomenology, a contemporary approach pubd Routledge 2020 covers the scheme systematically and the comments already made by others to make it hang together better. In particular Husserl identified three successive phases in perception including valuing (which ties in with Nietzsche's call) which is separate from judgment.

Husserl maintained you can't genuinely perform "reductions" or "brackettings" (which just means hold two or more things in your mind alongside each other) beyond what "is" into the fact of "is" itself. This strikes me as similar to those people who say being is not a predicate, and Duns Scotus who warned against making analogy of being too much like equivocity and not univocity.

(I work in intersecting spectrums and continuums.)

Heidegger reifies a thing he calls Being itself, which causes all sorts of personality and societal disturbances.

Ontological pluralism (not relativity) is sound because each thing has its own identity. Epicurus urges us not to weaponise the big picture against the atoms so as to "pulverise" them. Then, any possible worlds is a mathematical construct, and inference tells us which one is real (the rest of the calculations are a good exercise).

We were all taught not to use inference, hence widespread weak thinking, sadly.

To my mind the meaning in what is, is "Is". Things that are, are telling us that they are, and that they are what they are. This is the answer to the "why is there something rather than nothing" question. (There must have been an existence wave or something. Popper's rather nice word is "propensity". I call it Sam Johnson's Toe.) Why questions are mostly how questions, and how questions are mostly what questions. To my mind, this must be the basic premise of logic.

The fabric (weave, which is like wave, perhaps Epicurus' shimmering) of the universe is analogies, all the way down. After all, particles that have no "mass" are themselves made up from some that do. If you look closely enough, the question of "location" of submicroscopic fragments becomes complex (not contradictory). This is obviously firm enough to stand on, eat, read, stretch our minds, help each other know more, build bridges, fly planes.

Isaac Newton's "non fingo" was about acceptance of his own findings and of our common findings, and not dumbing them down. Husserl is streets ahead of those miserygutses who moan that you and I are figments of their diseased imagination.

When one adds (to Husserl's scheme) the semiotics of Peirce (reading the language of nature as well as culture) and those forms of hermeneutics that resemble it (i.e not Heidegger's), not forgetting quasi-indexicality in holy texts (why gods are reported to say what they are saying and who it was as if to) and one gets a toolkit for sanity. Everything makes proportionate sense (analogy means using partial metaphor as aid to proportionate sense). (Peirce commentaries and Barthes make illuminating combined reading.)

Various other schemes called "phenomenology" don't have the breadth of coverage hence too much gets dumbed down.

In my childhood I thought every child knew that there is what is "out there" and what is "in here" in my head at the same time. It's not necessary for every one of us to rush headlong into the communal mental breakdown. What is real sends us its message that it is real as well as us whom the message is coming to: anthropic, not solipsistic, not antihumanising. We're here so that we can talk about what's here also.

I'm a beginner and I've not yet found out whether scholars have posited "ontological relativity" (my search engine is buzzing as it is).

your mistake — Alkis Piskas

https://www.julianbaggini.com/

Indeed did I not add three paragraphs in explanation?

Seems that money is one of the main reasons that chaos would be greater in societies without God — dimosthenis9

In the United States combined with other powers, money is the reason chaos has been made greater in societies claiming to have a "god" and my acquaintances are in grave danger in direct connection with this sort of thing. I have spent a lot of time looking into this. The detail would to have to be made suited to a worldwide largely agnostic readership.

People wouldn't need lies if they could follow Logic, but apparently they can't. — dimosthenis9

Aha, interesting point. This is where we need to expand on our own understanding, then others will catch hold of it when we are conversing with them.

Straight and crooked thinking by R H Thouless pubd 1953 inspired me. Also works on the thought of Husserl, and on semiotics, and on historical linguistics, geology and astronomy, as case studies.

Sharing your views is a kind of mutual leading by example. I didn't say change people (that's their job, if and as much or as little as they want to), I said teach which is what we do when we do exactly what we do. To set a mutual example and pick a mutual example up from each other and give our contribution individual flavour. Why give up hope, when you already know this works? Essentially it's only tanks, lies, and mafia that most of us disagreed with you on. I was frightened by your lack of care for all the theists in your country because you think they deserve tanks, and mafia, and lies, rather than your sitting down with them discussing.

Even 180 Proof had constructive ideas. His message I think was to leave religion out of it if others want to leave religion out of it. Which was the central issue in your OP. When the tone is temporarily over the top you can come back to him later if at all. Normally most of us perhaps like Banno would assume that if you didn't react you had accepted our answers anyway. But you kept insisting that we were contradicting you. Your mode of discourse confused me and some others at some point or points.

I should have italicised Forgotten fatherland, it's Macintyre's book. Nietzsche's brother in law Forster sold plots of swamp in Paraguay. The Forsters' associates used twisted versions of Nietzsche's loose notes to drum up business for the Nazis, though Hitler himself is thought not to have bothered with either those, nor the real thing.

Do you maybe mean "morality"?
(Morale is "the confidence, enthusiasm, and discipline of a person or group at a particular time" (common definition)) — Alkis Piskas

According to Julian Baggini morals are to do with morale (as I twigged before I read that). Not hubris or mania.

A "god" that was to do with morals with religious connotations would only be worthwhile if it / he was respectful of your morale that is to say good heart in your well-respected individual self - suppose you are a gentle person or grieving, or just plain honest and straightforward (and I'm all four) - and not one that wants to whip up hubris and mob mania (subtext: lies, tanks and mafia :rofl: ). The media have been full of the latter these 30 years and it's unsurprising some react sharply.

How do money-spinners want to de-moralise pretend christians or designer outlet "zen" customers? Sell them something that specifically isn't the real thing!

A material dialectic is a pincer movement. I was - so it happens - on the inside of one of those for 28 years! :rofl:

My personal description of discipline is that by bringing together:

- acutely perceptive analysis of what is practical (e.g if one has a physical handicap)
- identifying exactness as to issues involved
- a quality of attention to detail

then applying individual initiative . . .

we arrive at a discipline in specific affairs that works and carries on working (maybe with ongoing tweaks). People with specific learning differences may need more practice runs before "internalising" this enough for it to be semi-conscious. It can be enjoyable and good for self-respect to consciously and "mindfully" rehearse the procedures. It reminds me of the way my mum would chant "knit 1 purl 1" when knitting. Or piano learners call the notes as they play them. Ones faculties are like ducks - we can get them in a row!

A non-intense and non-scary view of initiative, and ample analysis beforehand, and refusal of any shame afterwards if needing to repeat the procedure umpteen times, are the keys. My workplace coach showed me to "chunk down" all issues to make them possible to handle mentally and physically.

If not sending straight from a publisher, I use abebooks.co.uk . I like using overlapping secondary sources to build up my own "pictures" of what various writers produced and what In think its uses for me might be, instead of just swallowing an official line or splashing out money on "masters" devoid of context.

1. Phenomenology, a contemporary introduction by Walter Hopp, 2020

A fairly clear survey of Husserl's scheme, touching on idealism, realism, knowledge, perception, meaning - I have especially learned a lot about the last two. Discusses suggestions by commentators for improvements to the concept and presentation.

2. The disappearance of moral knowledge started by Dallas Willard and added to by Porter, Preston and ten Elshof, 2018.

Covers the period Spencer-Green-Moore-Ayer-Rawls and others in regard to diverse attempts to rediscover sources of moral knowledge. I in fact found it a wide ranging guide to approaches to epistemology generally.

3. The evolution of modern metaphysics: making sense of things, by A W Moore, 2012.

A remarkable book and a favourite of mine to dip into serendipitously and take copious notes. Selects a limited number of source personalities' works but is structured ultra helpfully and the argument is extremely clear about the issues so that I can make up my own mind (Heidegger has shown himself up). Exceptionally well cross referenced between sections. Wonderful footnotes where they should be - at foot! Modular but easily interlinked structure.

4. Philosophy, discipline of disciplines, by D F M Strauss, 2009.

A tour de force across all sciences and fields of knowledge including maths, and various philosophical approaches to them. Very detailed contents list: I dip in as I please and it is well enough indexed. Besides a good range of "standards" (including rather recent ones), also contains trenchant enough critiques of some early 20 th century Dutch thinkers which is a bonus for me because I often encounter people for whom those were important. Footnotes are at the foot and Strauss draws out concrete examples to illustrate what is discussed.

5. Cassirer by Samantha Matherne, 2021.

Helpfully surveys the very wide and to my mind deep insights of this underestimated and unusually well balanced, soundly methodical figure: we would do well to build on him more than the famous trolls and saboteurs. Good reference features.

Nos. 3 and 4 are exceptionally well adapted to dipping in, but quite honestly I am adopting the same method with 1 and 2 as well with no problems (other than affecting the sequence of points in my notes :rofl: ) I was that rivetted by 5 I just went from beginning to end.

Lastly free PDFs for us all:

a. Grammar of assent by J H Newman.

His point that most appeals to me is the appeal to individual initiative and discretion, and the stress on knowledge as based on cumulative individual inference. This he calls "assent to degrees of inference". I call Newman "apostle of grey areas" because reality is to my mind "nice and nuanced". Newman offers an additional layer regarding religious belief which one can "slot out" if that's what ones version of agnosticism calls one to. Thus any examples given are merely what Newman and his readers would know, but the principles can be applied to anything. My assent, my inference in my degrees, my kind of belief, my knowledge. This accords to life because we tentatively and provisionally infer and critique in regard to the big picture as we go - or we should have been doing.

b. Anti-duhring by Friedrich Engels.

I don't agree much with Duhring or Engels but especially in the first third (on general sciences) a marvellously witty review of the former's work. One can in fact ignore the remainder if one wishes.

another issue to another, without making any point at the end — dimosthenis9

That's because I made several interrelated points, which you seem to be getting alright with surface reason, but your despair imposed on others then overrides. Others are despairing; but I will always be hopeful for others, as my heart attitude, whatever I do (a little or a lot).

Don't forget all the world's public can read here to gain wisdom on this interesting topic and case in discussing.

Flag me to the moderators for that. — dimosthenis9

No, I should have flagged it to you. We are getting quite a lot of your stance, but you might have been wanting to tell us more then and I failed to help. I just said, my bad.

kind of substance you want me to offer you to that? — dimosthenis9

Any that you might happen to have? A lot can be said in a line or two, you know.

what you got at the end?? That I want to replace God's lie with mine?! — dimosthenis9

If you didn't mean it in that sense, you could come back soon and clarify yourself - I have to do that sometimes.

Given that we don't know what "god" is, whose would it be?

a thread about it some time ago named "is Logic a matter of Intelligence? — dimosthenis9

Thank you, I'll look it up!

who judges what "correct questioning" is? — dimosthenis9

You do, based on context. It's responsible, enhances your feeling of self-worth, stretches your state of education, etc, then you can pass those things on to others.

you run out of arguments and you repost all the arguments made here from others against my position? — dimosthenis9

My arguments are intended to follow on from the discussion you have with others. Those were not against your earlier position which was logic, they were for it. Is this now the "switch" to supremacism?

Nietzsche wasn't embracing it (his sister edited his papers wrong * ); he was using quasi indexicality (indirect speech) on the ideas of the Bismarck and Kaiser Bill groupies, who adversely impacted my family. I agree on the need many people have to "revalue", a subject Husserl also touches on. How will they think how they want to do that, if you want them refused teaching?

How are you going to help your theist neighbours stop being less-than and become more-than? Through these very threads.

If you're not pulling a "switch" or pulling your punches then why not explain yourself as you go on.

mix it with mafia as to make your false point — dimosthenis9

Are you a reifier? All your phrases spoke volumes, consistent with this, hence mine was only a false point if you can come in and reword your proper sense, instead of getting distracted.

to most of them I replied already — dimosthenis9

If you could parse what you are saying as you say it, together with others' posts, or soon enough afterwards to nuance it, what you were doing was propose logic, get us to agree with you, and then say we're wrong, at the same time maintaining side-quarrels. I'm not in 100 % agreement with the tactic of some others to counter-sealion you, but my priority was to dialogue with you. In any case you could defuse their tactic and that would help me. I told you to prioritise the contributors and things will get clearer, easier.

If you want to change tack you can start a new thread and link this one; or even do it in this thread but say straight this is what you are doing, namely that the arguments of 180 Proof, Banno, and all the others in favour of your OP no longer interest you sufficiently: it happens but frankness is vital in forums.

Your social observation is not bad, but you are imposing your pall of despair on everybody with an iron fist. Yesterday you were going to launch a project. Honest logic doesn't mean switching, or pulling punches. Thinking out loud needs frankness and openness so people will know you're a sincere interlocutor.

Doesn't seem that case with you though. — dimosthenis9

I don't do cues. Would you assume some TPF members aren't here to exercise, and educate millions of readers?

{ * see Ben Macintyre, Forgotten Fatherland }

People wouldn't need lies if they could follow Logic, but apparently they can't. — dimosthenis9

Seriously, this is where your and my leadership comes in, by example. If we examine it ourselves, we can pass it on. Alkis looked like he could help as well?

It's just that your unimaginative tone conveyed that you wanted to fatalistically piggy back on oppression.

To abandon hope for others, by proxy, when you are in a position of leadership, is nihilistic.

You are now actually discussing your own questions!

What about if to make yourself useful you could help people become less mechanical by thinking for themselves?

Have you experienced thinking for yourself? Using spatial imagination helps. Do you like the diagrams of M C Escher, or admiring the view from a mountaintop?

I'm alarmed by your concept of "use", seeing as you are going to become a leader. I think you should care for the "theists". Do you think atheists are superior?

What do you think of all this:

https://lishanchan.com/teaching/

This is a good point by praxis, and he hasn't mentioned the tanks or the mafia:

if he’s being genuine or honest, though openly speaking of lying to others so they’ll behave the way you’d like them to behave is both pathetic and contemptible. — praxis

The point is that no historical period was ever embraced in its totality by anyone, contemporaries included. — Olivier5

This is profound. But huge amounts of research has been done, then unjustly forgotten. Every now and again a new researcher cites older research - exactly like you should - and is decried for it.

Tillers of soil moved inland with some of their bards, and tradespeople / administrators sailed off with other bards. For their survival. There are and were no master races, ever. Masters sometimes, ad hoc and de facto only, often with bad practices.

We should understand why elements of subculture or "philosophies" reappear, in variants, in so many places. Some countries have had guilds and clans.

Theoretical linguists should handle historical and comparative linguistics more because this is their raw material.

Etymology should be traced across language "families" more. Every language is a mixed language. Language "families" do not correspond to essences or peoples. They have helped in aspects of research but mustn't be reified.

I think Sumerian is best pronounced (from transcription) with a mixed Dutch / Polish accent, with hints from Greek spelling? Samuel Noah Kramer is an entertaining writer about Sumeria.

One can minimise one's personal intensity with human sacrifice (say) while remembering the philosophical horror of it, and delve in detail into other aspects of cultures. And many almost forgotten researche(r)s have done and we need to work hard to retain the benefit of their work.

The Ice Ages are a historical as well as a geographical fact.

Critical thinking grasps multiple causes (unlike Bacon and Mill) so it is still bad of bad commerce to pollute and wreck and unbalance climates.

Complexity is a function of disorder - it's impossible to grasp chaos — TheMadFool

Chaos is an ideal, a fiction. Disorder is relative. It means in effect complexity. Complexity scientists (they are called that because they got chucked out of every other "discipline") are finding that complexity is, well, complex.

I don't know Maxwell nor notations but I wonder if this is the sort of thing. I got a gut feeling when I looked at the prose bits:

https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/how-to-explain-the-overdetermination-of-maxwells-equations.803535/

Here's a lovely piece about underdetermination:

https://lishanchan.com/2012/09/27/underdetermination/

I wish we had done (simple versions of) these two at school. It's vital for critical thinking, which is the opposite of jumping to conclusions.

which does not precipitate an infinite regress, in effect, begging the question — 180 Proof

This is a very interesting point. And it doesn't help "theism" (or only a little in some people's minds), overall.

In my young day "crea-tion" meant (secular agnostically) meant just "what turned up". To non-Hoylites, as an event it might mean "some sort of start" (I think we thought vacuums were more vacuumy then). A "creat-or" was a "being" or even "force" that set things in motion or being. A creator-god was a subset of that, and different religions' gods were very diverse subsets again.

All this was very modular. You just slotted out what you didn't want. Remarkably other people didn't mind us slotting in what we did want for ourselves. (You can't help others if your beliefs - on any subject - aren't held by you for you.)

It looks likely that the "single big whimper / bang" idea and the whole series of them / infinite regression or recursion-regression probably aren't incompatible: the first is either part of the second or is the second viewed in less detail.

Why questions are largely how questions and how questions are largely what questions.

Our finding is that things appeared. Out of nearly nothing (there are things in vacuums).

Our findings are mostly done with the considerable aid of complicated calculations and inferences. For example planet / star speeds and distances, as well as chemical compositions, are done by colour spectrums last I heard. I wish I had stayed in sciences of these kinds but am grateful I stayed near to words.

I'm referring to infinites. The questions that remain are infintely regressing from view, but maybe not uniformly. Whether this maps a kind of recursion, or there are spin-offs that have gone out of "sight" I wouldn't know. Maybe the existence wave that swung one way swings the "other way" or "all other ways". Are there several existence waves - but not all washing the same sort of "stuff" - "interfering"? This would interrelate with the shimmering Epicurus intuited (and people long before).

I think infinite (as mathematical "fiction" or ideal is an approximation to an approximation, as are infinitesimals. I got to this in my spatial imagination, by edging back, as near as couldbe no amount from almost more than everything. Or edging forwards, or something like that. And the same in reverse in miniature.

I jumped off the picnic tabel at the end of the universe!

I believe that zero is an approximation. The point 180 proof is making is that apparently finite and apparently infinite have intricate relationships. And we never get to "why-why". I think people should take more interest in how and especially what. Isaac Newton got where he did because he embraced the what.

In a sense "why" is "so that we can talk about it". Even better: "so that we can laugh about it". :rofl: (I'm no panpsychist because of individuality.)

Wanting to "end" it? With a title like that, I'll get it going!

This came to me as I was sat here living my useful life:

"epistemology = degrees of belief in the logic in nature through the logic in our heads"

The human race were taught by bad authorities over the last 30 years to stop using inference and to no longer have a thirst for knowledge.