Q: Why do people think it's necessary to understand the nuances of language and propositions to understand the essence of the mind?
A: Propositions are a convenient unit of analysis because they can be true or false.

The nothing you're talking about isn't an example of nothing, it's an example of empty space. So let's use that as our token. The base state of the mind, as opposed to the ordinary mind, with all its non-named empty spaces in a passive state of silent mental potentiality holding the object of knowledge aka awareness that is also not a nothing but a totality of potentiality, in all its approximate splendor, only further serves to demonstrate that what you're talking about is implausible enough to communicable in regular language, let alone mentalese.

Basically what you're doing is pointing to your head and talking about the rich inner mental world that you can never describe. Why bother?

Demonstrable inference.

Imagine nothing. Do not give the nothing a name. That seems to be the base unit of your mental analysis. And whatever it is, it's incommunicable. Yet it has a function. How is this coherent?

Right, but nobody is telepathic. Yet.

By "the rules of formal reasoning are systematically violated by human participants in trials quite regularly" I mean that psychological studies have found, and will probably continue to find, people engaging in thought processes do not use any known formal method for their reasoning as dictated by the cannons of deductive logic.

Frege thought there were real things called "The True" and "The False" in which his concept of logic (based on arithmetic) constitutes what is or is supposed to be how humans do or should reason. Supposedly he is the precursor of modern logic as it's commonly understood.

I'm also not sure "why people think it's necessary to understand the nuances of language and propositions to understand the essence of the mind", but I think it may have something to do with the way that nothing can be expressed in a non-language.

I'm not quite sure what you're asking for since the rules of formal reasoning are systematically violated by human participants in trials quite regularly meaning there will likely be no recent literature on the subject. I also understand there is also no such thing as any kind of recognized causal link between the neurological and the psychological, hence the mind-body problem.

What do you want? Frege?

Seek a fairer game. Most are rigged with traps for honest people.

'Rational' is that word which I don't think can ever be satisfactorily defined. You can eliminate every -ism except rationalism because once that's gone we have nothing left to talk about and philosophy dissolves.

So definitively, there are rational decisions -- all of the ones we can talk about.

To me rationalization is where a belief-seeking agent selects the conceptual framework which best supports the information. Why pick the arduous and painful paradigm when there are in principle an infinite number of hypotheses that can support any given observation?

I think that relativism and pluralism are slightly different because pluralism seems to be about competing truths, rather than just seeing them as being just equal. It has some greater sense of constructing a model from the various pictures. — Jack Cummins

See, I'd interpret that more as relativism, while pluralism acknowledges the fundamental plurality of our collective reality. Pluralism seems more descriptive while relativism has more normative connotations. — Pantagruel

Sorry if I'm barging in but by my understanding relativism draws its metaphysics from pluralism as therefore subsumes it as a dependency because relativism necessarily arises when we have the symmetrical conflicts of pluralism. Given relativism's broad coverage across philosophy, it likely has a metaontological range, if not a metaphilosophical one.

Relativism can also be descriptive, evaluative, or prescriptive. Often the last two seem to be called normative relativism. Sometimes the last one seems to be called methodological relativism. Then there is obviously the plurality of domain-dependent relativisms which substantiate it individually (but not globally).

Hi. I think your definition could use a little tuning.

Relativism: Any x subject can, does, or must, have y status relative to z system of y2 qualities.

'Qualities' can be a set of policies, practices, precedents, predicates, principles, procedures, processes, properties, or propositions. There's no reason in particular why I chose p-words other than to show that it doesn't really matter what the base units are called as long as they function as part of a sufficiently cogent argument. Here that value happens to be 'morals'.

The 'system' can be a simple as a prior psychological bias. That opens the door to talk of optical illusions, false memories and hypnotherapy -- all of which are real, effective, and classically erroneous. To deny the existence of systems would potentially imply some kind of terminal noncognitivism. Kant believe it?

Whatever morality a person subscribes to, from the global perspective, is ultimately a matter of the taste of one person. And somehow relativism, with its overtures of tolerance and defeasibility, is the narcissist?

All of them. It varies. — ernestm

All of the members of x unless x somehow varies? You sound almost political, no?

Chalmers.

Poststructuralism is at this point, by serious observers, an seriously empty vehicle.

Why? It provides no solutions. It only dissolves them. This is fun but not helpful or scientific.

politicians make use of whatever they can to control the world — ernestm

Which?

delusional fantasy, sometimes bordering on psychosis — ernestm

What?

I'm afraid I don't see what the subject has to do with this. For me your argument-for-god fails there.

Edit: Also worth noting iff is bivalent equivalence, not an identical equality.

Heaven and non-heaven are different?

Ohh. Art. That's rather cool.

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will leave the UK and rejoin the EU. — Punshhh

I doubt this. This is not an ideal world for stragglers. Unless you're Switzerland.

Give me the ol' tractor-trodden cut. I want my hair to taste the dirt.

You devil.

Why not both?

Moral obligation is about maintaining the fabric of society, for better or worse. In this fabric we can have people who are more committed to that aim than others. Individual virtue is an untenable concept.

Maybe. But I think your argument makes the mistake of conflating existence with suffering.

"There was, however, no significant correlation found between D614G status and hospitalization status; although the G614 mutation was slightly enriched among the ICU subjects, this was not statistically significant (Fig. 5C)."

I trust expert opinion and I'm optimistic there's currently no cause for alarm. Mutation is par for the course.

Interesting. For (everyone's) perspective, the areas are: Care/Harm, Fairness/Cheating, Loyalty/Betrayal, Authority/Subversion, Sanctity/Degradation, and Liberty/Oppression.

No worries. I do agree, it's hard to describe. But not impossible!

If not the Tantra, what else?

Look around you. Am I wrong?

Can we get back to your essay?

Ah.. sure. My objective is to shake you out of the dharmatic sleep.

Your essay is good but not good enough for me..

Ok. What do you think about that weird Tibetan thing? They did a thing! :]

I like your honesty. Give us your thoughts on Sarvastivada? (Briefly)

I know enough, but most importantly I can learn. I currently only like Nāgārjuna.

Nāgārjuna smells like Parmenides. And Nietzsche. Am I wrong?

Unless you're entertaining coffee beans there's no reason to grind a corpse.

I'm merely suggesting you're overthinking this.

Yes.

I see. But how does this fit into Nāgārjuna? There is no dharma, sir. The only reality is null.

Both. I think. Yeah, both.

May I please have a condensed version?

I'm quite willing to take this seriously.

I dunno man. Come closer. Let me cough on you. Sensually.

Thanks. But aside from quotations, what does this mean?

This ethics crap is so confusing. I can't express why I wouldn't cough on someone.

Many throw out the baby with the bathwater. Intuition leads to things that one cannot measure with a measuring stick, so many conclude it must be useless. — Tzeentch

I admire intuition. But I don't know what it is.

The issue deontology faces -- that's Kantian -- is that it faces no enforcement.

Utilitarianism will win every time.