Comments

  • Why is it that nature is perceived as 'true'?
    The question in the first response to you from me in this thread.
  • Why is it that nature is perceived as 'true'?
    I didn't say it was anyone's fault. Are you going to answer the question?
  • Why is it that nature is perceived as 'true'?
    You didn't get the point. Should beliefs alone (in the absence of respectable argument) be respected in the context of discussion?
  • Why is it that nature is perceived as 'true'?
    And I'm saying, that your beliefs are respectable. When have I disrespected you?Arcane Sandwich

    What's the difference between disrespecting someone's beliefs and disagreeing with them? Is it just a matter of not telling them you disagree and why? Should arrant dogma be respected?
  • Ontology of Time
    That is indeed his perennial confusion, which I also have pointed out to no avail many times. perhps it's a diificult point to understand—hopefully one day he'll get it.
  • Ontology of Time
    I need to see an argument before I can tell you whether or not I think it follows.
  • The Musk Plutocracy
    Are past precedents always the best guides to action? Some would think the currently precarious situation the US (and the world) is in qualifies as a time of crisis. As I said earlier this is a significant development, it is certainly no "business as usual". But what is really needed? Just more business as usual? Don't get me wrong—I don't agree with much of what Trump seems to be doing and least of all with his (lack of) environmental policies.

    It's going to be very interesting to see how this all pans out.
  • The Musk Plutocracy
    How are they actually stopping the people responsible for disbursing the funds from disbursing them? Can you answer that?

    "Stiirng the pot"! You presumptuous person! I am interested in understanding what is going on, and I don't just believe anything I read, I try to understand both sides of the argument and reserve judgement until more information comes to light, unlike hysterical people like you who are always jumping ti unwarranted conclusions on some moral crusade.

    So, it would seem the legality of what the DOGE are doing turns on the question of whether or not this is a "time of crisis"?
  • The Musk Plutocracy
    Right, and I think that, ethically speaking, the stopping of funds should come only after an investigation that shows extensive corruption and waste. If there were no legal mechanism in place allowing this freezing of funds, then how is it being effected. It's a genuine question since I know little about the US system.

    The point about DOGE's activities is that NOBODY knows on what basis all of these wild claims about 'fraud and corruption' are being made.Wayfarer

    You are assuming the claims have no substance. How could you know that? And also, you are forgetting "waste". One man's waste is another man's judicious spending. the American people voted for Trump and so will be subject to his definition of waste.
  • The Musk Plutocracy
    If you read the article I linked you will find the claim that it is congress that will enact Trump's policies, and that the DOGE are only gathering the information re corruption, waste etc that congress needs in order to act. I don't know enough to know if the article is correct. But whatever Trump and Co does one would think must be within the law or it would be stopped.

    I think your interpretation is overblown and a tad hysterical, even though I think that what Trump is doing is not a good idea and is probably, on balance, unethical.
  • The Musk Plutocracy
    He can realistically have claimed only that what he does will bring down prices, he cannot directly control the markets. It seems that what he is doing will actually inflate prices, so it seems he was mistaken to think he could bring down prices, or else it was just empty rhetoric designed to hoodwink those who are struggling economically.
  • The Musk Plutocracy
    I don't think that what Trump is doing is a good idea, but I think it must be admitted that he is doing just what he said he would. So, anyone who voted for him has no justification for complaint.
    Is he actually flouting the law, the courts? I don't know, but if what the stupid article I linked a few posts ago claims is correct, he is not, and it will be congress that acts on the DOGE's 'intelligence'.
  • Disagreeing with Davidson about Conceptual Schemes
    It seems to me that it is the various explanations for how and why the world we perceive is as it is that involve various conceptual lenses (conceptual schemes), and that is not that what we perceive is determined by conceptual lenses, but rather by what is noticed, what is selected, which in turn is determined by what is of interest or use.
  • The Musk Plutocracy
    No doubt some will reject this article out of hand, but anyway here is a counterpoint:

    https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/swamp-apocalypse-wednesday-february

    The gist is that the DOGE is merely reconnoitering, and that Congress will act on the information gathered, and that the courts will have no say in the matter.
  • Magnetism refutes Empiricism
    True, but I don’t see magnetism as a good example of more going on. It’s perceptible. So Arcane’s argument supporting the assertion that there is more going on than just a bunch of perceptible properties based on a distinction between seeing apples and (somehow not explained in the post) distinguishing magnetism doesn’t work.Fire Ologist

    The attraction is perceptible—the magnetic field is not—it is a theoretical explanation. Strict empiricism, pace Hume, claims that causation of any kind is not perceptible and is hence merely an inference made on account of the experience of constant conjunctions of observed effects and events.
  • The Musk Plutocracy
    You responded to the introduction of Rousseau. I think there is considerable anthropological research which tells against your claim. Anyway, I would agree that generally speaking when things get tough, the worst aspects of humanity come to the fore, and the tougher they get the worse the manifesting qualities, and I think that is what we are now witnessing, so it is not unrelated to the subject of the OP.
  • The Musk Plutocracy
    Which anthropology has comprehensively debunked - many tribal and non-industrialised cultures are shown to have high rates of murder and domestic violence.Wayfarer

    Can you cite sources for that claim?
  • Arguments for and against the identification of Jesus with God
    Neither can I. I just believe in it.Arcane Sandwich

    I have definitely been drawn to the idea, but I have never been able to believe in it. Same with religion and mythos in general. I love some of it as literature, as expression of the endlessly creative human imagination. That'll do for me.
  • Magnetism refutes Empiricism
    I think the point of the OP is that there is more going on that what we can be conscious of directly sensing, from which it would seem to follow that there is more to objects than just a bunch of perceived qualities.
  • Magnetism refutes Empiricism
    We need light to see objects attract and repulse - all we ever see is light, we never see anything else.Fire Ologist

    I think that's not quite correct. All we ever see is not light, but due to light. We see objects on account of the light that reflects from them. We cannot see light itself. Our eyes are affected by light, but that effect is pre-cognitive, and I don't think it can rightly be counted as "seeing" because we cannot be conscious of the effect of light except when we look at its source or at a reflecting object.
  • The Musk Plutocracy
    Why does democracy fail to bring about what he hoped?frank

    In order to give all people freedom democracy would need to be strictly regulated with a view to stopping personal accumulation of wealth (at least beyond a certain quite limited point) and its economic policies would need to take account of the environment as an integral part of the economy in order to curtail the depletion of resources.

    Many would likely consider such measures undemocratic. hence the problem—people will not vote for a party that proposes introducing the kinds of regulation that would be necessary to support the continuation of democracy—and democracy unchecked undermines itself.
  • Ontology of Time
    It sounds illogical to be able to imagine a world independent of mind, when imagining is a function mind.Corvus

    That doesn't seem to follow. Do you have an argument for why and how the fact that imagining is a function of mind precludes the possibility of imagining that the world is independent of mind?
  • The Musk Plutocracy
    I'm afraid you're right...the world might get the Mumps.
  • The Musk Plutocracy
    I doubt it is as benign or 'business as usual' as you seem to want to paint it Frank. Anyway, we'll see how it all plays out and what the ramifications are. Not just for the US, but for the world.
  • The Musk Plutocracy
    The kid seems to be pointing to Trump. I imagine him saying "look Dad, there's a disgruntled ogre over there".
  • Arguments for and against the identification of Jesus with God
    Nothing to comment here, from me. I neither agree nor disagree with those statements.Arcane Sandwich

    Fair enough.
    Deleuze says he was an atheist.Arcane Sandwich

    Yes, and I think that's a fair reading. Spinoza's God is a deistic one. not a personal one either aware of or concerned with its creatures. Spinoza's God also lacks free will, just as we do according to Spinoza. So there is little to distinguish his God from Einstein's conception of nature.

    As far as I'm concerned, Hegel's concept of the Absolute Spirit is the Ultimate Truth about Reality itself. I do not intend that as a polemic. It is simply what I believe.Arcane Sandwich

    Whereas Spinoza's God is static and eternal, Hegel's God is evolving along with its creatures. Peirce extended Hegel's idea to posit that even the laws of nature have evolved, having become crystallized due to established habit.

    I can't claim to have understood the idea of Absolute Spirit. or the 'end of history'.
  • What exactly is Process Philosophy?
    Nice summations! :up:

    I was drawn to Whitehead's philosophy and struggled on and off for years to penetrate what I thought must be the sense of it, only to conclude in the end that it is pretty much vacuous, unintelligible.
  • The Musk Plutocracy
    Cheers, I haven't read the book. I'll place it on my list.
  • Arguments for and against the identification of Jesus with God
    Are you assuming that God exists?
    — Janus

    No, I am not. Fictional entities have essences, just as much as real entities do.

    Because if God is merely a human idea, something imaginary, it seems strange to say that it is impossible to understand it.
    — Janus

    No essence can be understood.
    Arcane Sandwich

    I'm confused here because you say even fictional entities have essences and then say that no essence can be understood. The first statement seems to suggest that an essence cannot be some intrinsic thing like being because fictional entities have no substantive being beyond what is said or imagined about them, and also what is said or imagined can presumably be understood.

    But the idea of an essence as a set of defining or identifying characteristics would also seem to be ruled out because such sets must surely be understandable.

    There's nothing incoherent about the idea of a single unique essence. It's called pantheism. Spinoza was a pantheist, unlike Descartes, for example.Arcane Sandwich

    Whether or not Spinoza was a pantheist is a matter of interpretation. An alternative would be to see him as an acosmist. Spinoza held a distinction between 'natura naturata' and 'natura naturans' with the former being the manifest nature we experience via the senses and the latter being something like creative nature or the laws of nature that give rise to manifest nature.

    It's possible. Kant didn't believe in intellectual intuition, yet Meillassoux does. In After Finitude, he says:Arcane Sandwich

    Correct, and Hegel tried to reintroduce it. Yet the historicist character of Hegel's thought is not compatible with Spinoza's system of thought.

    .
  • The Musk Plutocracy
    Clearly illegality is not the proper benchmark of corruption, nor is it the proper benchmark for "incitement."
    5 hours ago
    Count Timothy von Icarus

    Particularly when you consider the absurd presidential power to arbitrarily and with impunity issue pardons.
  • The Musk Plutocracy
    The situation afterwards is hard to know. It makes me think of the novel, Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky.Paine

    Tarkovsky made a fascinating movie, Stalker, loosely based on Roadside Picnic. Arkady and Boris Strugatsky wrote the screenplay.
  • Arguments for and against the identification of Jesus with God
    No essence can be understood.Arcane Sandwich

    Could that be because the idea of a single unique essence is incoherent? I think of essences as sets of specifying characteristics. So, I would say that we have a set of specifying characteristics for God, which is it is an imaginary entity are understandable.

    If God is a real entity, then there may well be real essences, which would presumably be the ideas of things in God's own understanding of them. In that case it would seem though, to echo Spinoza, that God would have infinite attributes, of which we can comprehend only extensa and cogitans.

    As you no doubt no Spinoza thought the highest function of reason was a kind of intellectual intuition— to see things "sub specie aeternitatis", and that intuition may well be ineffable, or only partly effable.
  • Arguments for and against the identification of Jesus with God
    It is impossible for human reason to understand the essence of God.Arcane Sandwich

    Are you assuming that God exists? Because if God is merely a human idea, something imaginary, it seems strange to say that it is impossible to understand it.
  • Could anyone have made a different choice in the past than the ones they made?
    Thanks for your interesting reply. I'm not all that familiar with the various interpretations of and theses about the nature of the quantum realm. Asa I understand it they are all compatible with observed results, which makes me wonder how we might assess their various plausibilities.

    The other issue is that they all seem to be attempts to understand the observed behavior of the microworld using concepts derived from our experience of the familiar macroworld, and I see little reason to expect that is an entirely coherent endeavor. That said, I understand that we cannot help pursuing it.
  • Arguments for and against the identification of Jesus with God
    Then perhaps you'll be surprised to know that Bunge suggests that the Big Bang didn't happen. In other words, Bunge himself denies premise FTI10: the Big Bang did not happen, precisely because (in Bunge's view), creatio ex nihilo is impossible. He says that as a physicist. He thinks that the Universe is somehow eternal in an Aristotelian sense.Arcane Sandwich

    Did Bunge say the Big Bang did not happen? I haven't encountered such a statement in my readings of Bunge. I doubt that many physicists consider the Big Bang to be "creation ex nihilo", that is creation out of absolutely nothing. The Big Bag is compatible with a Universe that cycles form Big Bang to Big Crunch for example (I am aware that current evidence is considered to tell against this thesis). It is also consistent with the multiverse thesis.

    Even if we want to say that God created the Universe out of nothing, this is not really out of nothing because God, if it exists, is not nothing (even if it might be no-thing).
  • Could anyone have made a different choice in the past than the ones they made?
    The answer depends on whether or not the Universe is comprehensively and rigidly deterministic . Current scientific understanding says it is not. But then the question is whether (assuming that our current understanding is correct) randomness on the quantum level produces a fully deterministic macro world.

    I don't know the answer to that, and I doubt whether the question is even decidable in principle, because regardless of whether the macroworld is subject to randomness to a sufficient degree to make randomness operative at the macro level, knowing the answer would seem to depend on us experiencing a counterfactual reality, which is impossible in principle since anything we experience cannot rightly be thought to be a counterfactual.
  • Australian politics
    Or maybe the younger Namatjira simply prefers a less polished, grittier style.
  • Arguments for and against the identification of Jesus with God
    Are you sure about that? It sounds like it's true, but don't want to rush to any conclusions here.Arcane Sandwich

    As far as I know in all monotheistic traditions God is considered to be an eternal, infinite being that depends on nothing else for its existence. I think that is what is meant by "necessary". The point is that if such a being exists then it would necessarily exist. Of course I'm open to counterexamples.

    Jesus' being God is not necessary
    — Janus

    Are you sure about that?
    Arcane Sandwich

    Why would it be necessary that God, assuming that it necessarily exists, should incarnate as a man, let alone as one and one only man?

    it is only in one tradition that, in the doctrines of its some sects, it is claimed that Jesus is God.
    — Janus

    Again, are you sure about that?
    Arcane Sandwich

    As far as I know it is only in Christianity that God is believed to have incarnated as one and one only individual, namely Jesus. I also know that some sects of Christianity do not accept Jesus as the unique human incarnation of Goid.

    Again, I am open to refutation. If you can show evidence that other religions held that Jesus was God or that every Christian sect held that Jesus was God incarnate.
  • Arguments for and against the identification of Jesus with God
    I find it odd that Christian philosophers only offer arguments for the conclusion that God exists, while not offering any arguments for the conclusion that Jesus is God. Why would you resort to logic in the former case but not the latter? Is there any reason that warrants this differential treatment?Arcane Sandwich

    In all monotheistic traditions God is considered to be a necessary being. Jesus' being God is not necessary, and it is only in one tradition that, in the doctrines of its some sects, it is claimed that Jesus is God.
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