Yes, well he's become...quixotic... — Janus

I try to avoid 'throwing grenades' nowadays although it's something I've often done in the past. I attempt (not always successfully) to differ tactfully. — Quixodian

You've always been better at avoiding that than I have. I continue to work on it.

I devised a new user name — Quixodian

I like the icon a lot.

I came into forums not as 'pro religion' but as 'anti-materialist', — Quixodian

You are the one I had in mind when I was talking about religious posts that don't address the existence of God. There's lots to say, but atheists don't seem to be able to see beyond the most simplistic ideas.

Richard Dawkins said in his intro to TGD that he hoped Christians who picked up his book would put it down atheist - it had rather the opposite effect on me (not that I read all of it, and not that I identify as Christian in any but the cultural sense.) — Quixodian

I gave The God Delusion to my daughter as a Christmas present as an example of bad philosophy.

Have you watched any of the online debates/exchanges between theists and atheists that you consider high quality. — universeness

I said religion-related discussions, not discussions between theists and atheists. That was my point - all religious discussions are not about whether or not God exists, although the atheists on the forum try to turn all religious discussions in that direction.

I personally thought Mikie's thread was a good one. — universeness

I'm not surprised. You think anything that shows disrespect for religion is good, no matter how badly thought out or weakly argued.

That's not really a mod bias but the prevailing mode of discussion — Baden

Yes, I was talking about the forums modus operandi, not any action by the moderators.

And to be clear, I don't think there is anything wrong with having discussions like @Mikie's here on the forum. I just wanted to point out the irony of his position.

Does it even matter what most people say on the subject when the basic way of life, notion of success etc. is so similar? — Baden

To some extent, I think the hostility toward religion here leads to the low quality of many religion-related discussions. Even nuanced and expansive discussions of religious issues tend to be steered toward typical simplistic, repetitive arguments.

Still, I expected the anti-religion to be a bit more robust given the context of a philosophy forum. — Leontiskos

Yes, that's one of my main complaints about anti-religious discussions here on the forum. They rarely have substance. People pull out the flying spaghetti monster and think that's all they have to say.

I think you're exagerrating a bit, — Quixodian

My old friend @Wayfarer would have agreed with me... maybe not.

I think you're exaggerating. — Janus

Hmmm... I'm trying to decide if you and Quixodian are right... I don't think so. I admit I do feel the need to speak strongly on these issues.

One of the reasons that I am spending time on a philosophy forum is because I want to avoid the inane evangelism that occurs—almost always between Christians and atheists—so often on the internet. — Leontiskos

Religious voices don't stand much of a chance here on the forum. Anything that shows even mild respect for religious ideas is attacked and ridiculed. Proselytization is much more likely to come from the atheist side than from believers.

I'll look forward to an answer from a moderator regarding the question of what is and is not evangelization. — Leontiskos

Sad to say, @Mikie is a moderator.

And yet, here you go starting another anti-religion discussion.

That was a minor suggestion, though. I realize the forum already fought just to get the ability to edit, so tinkering with that ability is probably not a high priority. — Leontiskos

Every so often I like to go through some of my old posts and correct the grammar. I also removed all of my statements from 2015 and 2016 where I said Donald Trump would be the best president ever.

T Clark throws around accusations of meaninglessness rather freely — SophistiCat

Hey! I resemble that remark.

You mean translations of the Tao. It is notable that no two translations into English are the same. — Wayfarer

No, that’s not what I meant.

I agree, but would prefer the subtly different 'brings the world into being'. — Wayfarer

The two terms are generally used interchangeably, although I acknowledge there is a bit of a difference in feel. Different translations of the Tao Te Ching use one, the other, or both words. I like using both. The Tao Te Ching is full of subtly different uses of language, so there is room for ambiguous usage.

I'll point out that there are multiple interpretations of the Tao. — javra

Sure, although my understanding is a pretty mainstream one and I think my observation was valid. It goes back directly to the Tao Te Ching and Chuang Tzu, the founding documents of Taoism. There is a generally recognized difference between philosophical Taoism, which I am referring to, and religious Taoism, which I know very little about.

Yes, I can understand that, yet this at the same time reminds me of the saying “the Tao that can be spoken of is not the eternal Tao”: To speak of X is to necessarily have a conceptual understanding of X. A conceptual understanding will itself be other relative to that which understands it, and thereby necessitate a duality between I-ness (the personal act of understanding) and non-I-ness (that which is understood in conceptual form). — javra

I don't think this is an argument against anything you are saying. I guess it's just an observation. I don't know much Buddhism, but in Taoism, it seems to me there is much less antagonism between the Tao and the 10,000 things than there is between the I-ness and non-I-ness you are discussing. There's a cycle - Tao to multiplicity of things and back to Tao again - continuously and continually taking place. Everything is always both. The idea of illusion doesn't really come into it.

the themes of "union" and "returning" can only be coherently aligned to this state of perfectly nondual being, in one way or another, itself being a soteriological end As such, the state of perfectly nondual being is then a teleological determinant, — javra

Again, in my understanding of Taoism, the Tao and the multiplicity of the world are recognized as continually cycling, returning. Neither causes the other. The Tao is not better or more important than the 10,000 things. What's important is our awareness of the cycle.

I struggle to see the sense in defining anything as relative. You could say something changes in relation to something else, but that relation is defined in absolute terms. To say the world is relative seems arbitrary. Relative to what? I also have the issue that I don't see the sense in defining anything as absolute, since a word means nothing in isolation. It requires context to provide any meaning. That context can be seen as its relation to other words. Defining something is like providing a set of boundaries for that thing. Those boundaries can be seen as a definition of its relation to everything else, its context. Without anything else, so in isolation, this would make the definition of that thing meaningless. — Matt Thomas

Do you really struggle or is that just a rhetorical garnish? As Lao Tzu wrote:

When the world knows beauty as beauty, ugliness arises
When it knows good as good, evil arises
Thus being and non-being produce each other
Difficult and easy bring about each other
Long and short reveal each other
High and low support each other
Music and voice harmonize each other
Front and back follow each other
Therefore the sages:
Manage the work of detached actions
Conduct the teaching of no words
They work with myriad things but do not control
They create but do not possess
They act but do not presume
They succeed but do not dwell on success
It is because they do not dwell on success
That it never goes away — Tao Te Ching - Verse 2 - Derek Lin translation

This is a fundamental insight from just about all ways of seeing the world, not just eastern philosophies. When you get to know me better, you'll see I bring the Tao Te Ching into just about all my arguments.

Welcome to the forum.

Alva Noë argues against the view that consciousness is solely a product of the brain's activity. He contends that the traditional approach of trying to understand consciousness by studying neural processes within the brain is insufficient and ultimately misleading. Noë proposes that consciousness is not something that happens exclusively inside the brain but emerges through dynamic interactions between the brain, body, and the external world. As such he is aligned with enactivism or embodied cognition which explores how our perception and experience of the world are shaped by our embodiment and interaction with our surroundings. — Wayfarer

At the risk of starting an argument where you don't intend one, do you think there is anyone on the more materialist side of the consciousness issue who doesn't believe "consciousness is not something that happens exclusively inside the brain but emerges through dynamic interactions between the brain, body, and the external world." I certainly believe that.

The theme of this book is that a universe comes into being when a space is severed or taken apart...
http://www.siese.org/modulos/biblioteca/b/G-Spencer-Brown-Laws-of-Form.pdf — unenlightened

As you note later in this post, this is the essence of how Lao Tzu saw creation and the ground of being. Here are a couple of verses from Ellen Marie Chen's translation of the Tao Te Ching:

Verse 1

Tao that can be spoken of,
Is not the Everlasting Tao.
Name that can be named,
Is not the Everlasting name.
Nameless, the origin of heaven and earth;
Named, the mother of ten thousand things.

Verse 40

Returning (fan) is the movement of Tao.
Weak is the functioning of Tao.
Ten thousand things under heaven are born of being.
Being is born of non-being. — Lao Tzu - Ellen Marie Chen translation

The idea that naming brings the world into existence is the foundation of my metaphysics. What that implies for human psychology, sociology, and ethics; not to mention science; is profound.

If you are a consequentialist, the best outcome is the one which can be most reliably produced, the one over which you have the most control. It is unrealistic to apply something like an objective standard - the best outcome - when any kind of non-trivial activity invariably results in unforseen outcomes. — Pantagruel

Yes. Good response, saving me the necessity of responding.

Eve of Chaos by Sylvia Day. Bought it at Dollar General. It's sexy and about hunting demons. I bought it like last year sometime and now it's time to start reading what I bought. This is going to to be a little more like I want my life to be like. Current goal: to read a little more. — magictriangle

Once we get to know you better, we'll playfully tease you about getting your books at Dollar General, but for now, welcome to the forum.

What things feel like on the inside has never captured my imagination. I'm not even sure what that would mean experientially for me. — Tom Storm

But at the same time, the way you see things and the way I do are often very similar. We both have a use what works pragmatism.

Mostly when it comes to intuition or thinking I have instant access to a thought and it generally has no feeling attached to it or anything additional to the thought itself. Maybe this is why I don't care much for poetry and you do - it's in how we are wired to experience things. — Tom Storm

That's a really good question. It opens up a bunch of issues for me. I'll just keep it simple and say yes, the importance of intellectual self-awareness for me is related to the way I think when I'm reading or writing poetry. That kind of thinking has a purity and depth that are blunted with my regular old every day thinking.

That's not what the research shows. — Darkneos

As I noted, the research you referenced studied your misconception of what intuition is.

Have you seen that TED Talk? If not, I get the impression that you would appreciate it. — wonderer1

I'll take a look.

Either the now is already over, or it is never over. Certainly awareness has the characteristic of an ongoing now. Does what we designate as time really only refer to the awareness of time? Perhaps the concept of time only makes sense in the context of awareness. — Pantagruel

My preference is for William James’ notion of specious time — Joshs

I've been following this thread but didn't feel like I had anything to contribute. Then I tripped over this from Charles S. Peirce last night while reading. When he says "air" in this context, I think he is making the distinction between the notes and the melody.

In this process we observe two sorts of elements of consciousness, the distinction between which may best be made clear by means of an illustration. In a piece of music there are the separate notes, and there is the air. A single tone may be prolonged for an hour or a day, and it exists as perfectly in each second of that time as in the whole taken together; so that, as long as it is sounding, it might be present to a sense from which everything in the past was as completely absent as the future itself. But it is different with the air, the performance of which occupies a certain time, during the portions of which only portions of it are played. It consists in an orderliness in the succession of sounds which strike the ear at different times; and to perceive it there must be some continuity of consciousness which makes the events of a lapse of time present to us. We certainly only perceive the air by hearing the separate notes; yet we cannot be said to directly hear it, for we hear only what is present at the instant, and an orderliness of succession cannot exist in an instant. These two sorts of objects, what we are immediately conscious of and what we are mediately conscious of, are found in all consciousness. Some elements (the sensations) are completely present at every instant so long as they last, while others (like thought) are actions having beginning, middle, and end, and consist in a congruence in the succession of sensations which flow through the mind. They cannot be immediately present to us, but must cover some portion of the past or future. Thought is a thread of melody running through the succession of our sensations. — Charles S. Peirce - How to Make Our Ideas Clear

Do you know what being wrong feel like? — wonderer1

[irony]It hasn't happened yet. I'm curious to see what it would feel like.[/irony]

You just can’t admit that you’re wrong — Darkneos

IMO you’re examining a settled matter and trying to make to more than it is — Darkneos

Your thinking is rigid and dogmatic. And wrong.

What does an awareness of how one's thinking process look like? — Tom Storm

A lot of what I've written in this thread is a description of my own experience using my mind. Earlier in this discussion and in other discussions I've described my experience of intuition as a cloud of knowledge, lit from within and containing everything I know and have experienced - all connected and interacting. I recognize that visual imagery like that has a big role in how I think. Although my thinking is strongly verbal, I visualize my thinking as ideas, thoughts, words bubbling up from a spring from a source I can't see or feel. That invisible source feels as much like me as the part of me I can be aware of.

I have been criticized by more philosophical types that my philosophy is too dependent on introspection, which they find suspect. I've started at least five discussions that examine what different types of mental process feel like from the inside. I've said many times that the focus of my intellectual life is on knowing things, knowing how I know them, and knowing how certain I am of that knowledge. Knowing what knowing feels like is a big part of that.

This is fun. I could go on and on.

Not sure what you are getting at, if you aren't aware of it then there isn't really anything you can do about it. — Darkneos

People who lack intellectual self-awareness are often unaware of how their thinking processes actually work. I have found that's true of people who dogmatically reject the value of intuition.

Seems like Dick was in the vanguard
— T Clark

From a certain perspective, maybe he was, — Jamal

As I said, I'm not a fan of Dick, but many people seem to think highly of his writing. I was thinking of "Foundation" and how I loved it when I was a kid, but when I reread it recently found it to be poorly written and boring. I can still feel the impact Asimov's ideas had on me, but I don't think I would enjoy it if I read it for the first time now. I guess I was trying to grant Dick that same benefit of the doubt.

Speaking of "Foundation," it's amazing to me the first story was written in 1942.

That "limited" meaning is what it actually is. Like I said, it doesn't matter what you think that doesn't make intuition more than what it is. — Darkneos

It has always surprised me how many people are not aware of their own thinking processes. Unaware that their consciousness and reason are just a small part of their mental life and that most of what we think, feel, know is not a function of those two limited processes. It's certainly something you see all the time here on the forum. So, I guess you could say you're in good company.

It's not a limited understanding, you're just trying to make out to be more than what it actually is and I'm showing you the research doesn't support you. — Darkneos

The research applies only to the limited meaning you incorrectly applied to it, as we pointed out to you during this discussion.

So in this case you're just wrong. — Darkneos

You can say it over and over again, but that doesn't make it true.

Intuition isn't some special knowledge, it's rooted in what you already know and is prone to bias as well. It's pretty much "thinking super fast" to where you reach the conclusion so quickly that it feels like "knowing" but it really isn't. — Darkneos

This just shows that you ignored everything other people said in this discussion.

Like I said already, it doesn't matter what you THINK it is that doesn't change the reality of what it is. All you and others here have shown is that you REALLY want magic to exist, but humans just aren't special bud. — Darkneos

Do you really think that the only way you can think other than by reasoning is magic? Also, capitalizing letters doesn't make you more correct.

To put it bluntly, you’re wrong about intuition. — Darkneos

To put it bluntly, of course I'm not. The "evidence" you provided at the beginning of the discussion was based on an incorrect understanding of what intuition is. I, and others on this thread, have demonstrated that your understanding is too limited. There's a name for a logical fallacy when you can't win an argument, you fall back to a more limited position that's easier to defend.

Well I’m right and you’re right wrong. — Darkneos

Am I right that you're wrong, or wrong that you're right?

Calling it a ring of truth is just wrong. — Darkneos

You and I disagree.

I remember the specific moment I decided to trust my intuition. I was in college, at the library studying, and some guy came in and dropped his books on the next table over from where I was and dropped into a chair. I glanced over and thought to myself, dumbass. And then I upbraided myself -- Why do you do that? Don't be so quick to judge. Don't jump to conclusions, you don't know that guy. After a while he left and I left shortly after. I was heading for the stairs that were right next to the elevator and he was standing there, repeatedly pushing the down button. We were on the second floor. I decided right then that whatever I had picked up on when I first saw him, I was right. Dumbass. Probably hungover dumbass. I have trusted my intuition ever since. — Srap Tasmaner

And that dumbass turned out to be Osama Bin Laden. True story.

Intuition is rooted in knowledge. The more you know the better it is. It honestly doesn’t matter what you think about it, doesn’t change what it is. — Darkneos

Intuition is a kind of knowledge. Has anyone really claimed it is more than that? If not, I'll do it now. I see intuition as that sense of the world, the ring of truth, that underpins all knowledge. I've described this before here on the forum. I carry a model of the world around in my head. I visualize it as a cloud lit from within that contains everything I know. Not just things I've learned formally, but anything I've picked up living in the world through observation, imagination, reasoning. Everything is there - electrons, elephants, love, lemmings, tomatoes, tetrahedrons, dogs, diamonds, galaxies, goldfish, integration, ice cream, Occam's razor, the Peter Principle, Murphy's Law... And everything is connected by strings of memory, history, logic, proximity, coincidence, analogy... If I wiggle and idea here, a bell rings somewhere over on the other side.

Dystopian fiction goes back to the nineteenth century and there are several famous examples from the early twentieth century, so I don’t think so. — Jamal

Sure, but it seems like now is the golden age of dystopian/apocalyptic books and movies, if "golden" is the right word. There is a sense of doom that permeates popular culture, and I guess society at large. Seems like Dick was in the vanguard. "Blade Runner" is probably the quintessential instance of the genre.

what is depressing about PKD? I don't get it. — Jamal

This is a conversation we're supposed to have once gets off his ass and finishes "Ubik."

Be that as it may, I don't have a lot of experience with Dick and I hadn't read any in a long time. My memory was that his books were full of unappealing people I don't care about doing uninteresting things in a bleak world. Reading "Ubik" reinforced that prejudice. The ideas examined didn't strike me as particularly insightful or interesting, although I recognize that the kind of writing he pioneered has become much more common. In a sense I guess he invented dystopian fiction, but that's not something I am drawn to.

Fuck! — Noble Dust

You shouldn't be reading either DeLillo or Dick. They are both depressing. I suggest one of my favorite science ficion/fantasy books, "Goodnight Moon."

Goodnight comb
And goodnight brush
Goodnight nobody
Goodnight mush
And goodnight to the old lady whispering “hush”
Goodnight stars
Goodnight air
Good night noises everywhere — Goodnight Moon

For a special treat, you can listen to Christopher Walken's reading:

I picked up Libra by Don DeLillo from one of those little free libraries. — Noble Dust

Well !@#$% put it back and get back to reading "Ubik"

Can a limitless power do the impossible? — leo

To me, this question belongs in the same category as "Can Santa Claus beat up the Easter Bunny." They are meaningless.