For the sake of argument, let’s invent a totally hypothetical environment, in which this child’s every whim is obeyed on the spot while the child is simultaneously kept from all harm. The child is never forbidden to do anything and does never experience the slightest inkling that there are things in this world that you shouldn’t do. Never mind that it couldn’t be done; if we assume that it could, do you believe this child would invent the concepts (not the labels) of “right” and “wrong”? Would it understand such a concept if introduced to it at the age of twenty?
So, no matter if Jesus existed or not, someone who lives the way you believe he did “lives the truth”. What exactly was it that he did? What would I have to do for you to call my lifestyle “living the truth”?
No offense taken, but no, I see nothing arbitrary from my reference frame, although it might be from yours. From my reference frame, it is arbitrary that you entered this discussion. But from yours, I presume you gave the matter some thought, and upon pondering its meaning, formulated an opinion and then a response. So it was with me as I read the existentialists and the essentialists and formulated by own opinions. I did not put two slips of paper into a hat and pull out “essentialism”.
Due respect, I believe that is a horrible comparison. Sartre and Hegel did not intend to formulate predictive scientific hypotheses. They were writing on matters metaphysical.
In my opinion, physicalism is the most arbitrary of all philosophies. As I have said before, it seems to me that it holds that what is physical is everything conceivable plus everything that isn’t.
Well, you’re sort of making a mud pie and going “Yum!” as you eat it. You’re basically asking me whether I’m a theist or a deist, but you’re describing them both (as they relate to me) with terms that you have chosen for their possibly negative entendres. In other words, damn you if you answer yes and double damn you if you answer no. Inasmuch as no matter what I answer, you will see it as snide or irrational, I won’t waste either your time or mine by repeating — again — my belief in man as a dual creature, the differences between biological and spiritual life, or the fact that a theist can be a deist but a deist cannot be a theist. Nor will I cite for you the fact that revelation is as valid an epistemology as any other, lest you lift up the banner that Lib is using the E-word to sound smarter than he is. If you intend to damn me, then just damn me. Do not couch your condemnation in the form of questions as though I am a defendant and you are my prosecutor.
He recognized the truth of who we are and lived according to that truth. Not just as a philosophical idea, but as reality. Don’t put value the things that pass away, the tempoary things, {that includes your body} but seek the things that have eternal qualities.
What ever you do unto the least of these you do unto me. {because in reality we’re all connected} The kingdom of heaven is within you {if you release these illusions} The truth will set you free. He refused to compromise the truth one iota, even though it cost him his physical life. Even though no one truly understood what he was saying.
What would you have to do? Thats the beauty part. Perhaps you are already doing it. {In a sense} We are called to live the truth as we honestly percieve it. If we do that then the still small voice will show us the next level. Each journey is unique. It takes a commitment to seeing the truth. The process of letting go of long embraced beliefs can be difficult and often uncomfortable.
The most cautious philosophy, perhaps, but not the most arbitrary. Or maybe the least adventurous, or least reckless. I don’t know what ribbon to pin on it, but then I’m not really interested in that particular contest.
A “most arbitrary” philosophy to me would mean one that ignores all connection to observed reality, and then speculates wildly after that. (That’s not a sarcastic dig at anyone. It’s a serious remark.) Maybe solipsism would qualify in this way?
But is that really an established fact? I assume then that there’s a means of judging the validity of various epistemologies, and that we can then compare their track records. Revelation would come out near the top of the list?
What if I have a revelation that there is no God or Creator, in brazen conflict with your own? How do we decide whose revelations are genuine, when they are mutually contradictory and cannot be verified? The answer (surely?) is that we can’t decide among them, and so personal revelation isn’t really helpful after all.
I can’t speak for Abe, but he didn’t sound prosecutorial to me. He seemed to be using the Socratic method: making an argument in part by asking revealing questions of one’s opponent.
I tried. I repeat there are too many varibles. Your attempt to be more specific didn’t remove very many. Your qualifiers do mirror the story of Buddha. I do think thats a legitamate comparison to the child you described.
I said I don’t think the child would invent those concepts. I think he could develop an understanding of them if introduced. For Buddha it was the suffering of others that moved him to ask questions. Someone else might have had the identical experience and reacted differently. “man lets go back in the palace. They look awful and smell worse.” Have the palace guards make sure I never have to see that again." Each individual is in his own unique place in the ability to hear the voice of God.
If you’re trying to get me to take a position you can then demolish, this impossible question won’t do it. Ask another. If you’re trying to make some point. Spit it out.
Specifics about what Jesus did or specifics about what you have to do? Okay heres some specifics.
CHoose truth and love above all else. Everyday speak nothing but the truth. Examine your own heart and values to make a judgement call about whether you are being completely truthful and honest in all your actions and words. The same with love. Ask yourself am I being a loving person? Can I be more loving than I am? How do I do that?What does love require of me? Be willing to abandon anything that keeps you from liveing your honest understanding of truth and love.
The specifics aren’t be baptized, read the Bible, go to church every Sunday, pray 5 times a day faceing Mecca, or be a vegatarian or anything like that. Those are only tools and traditions to help someone do what I suggest. Different tools for different folks. I believe Jesus was the example of the goal. He wasn’t chooseing Truth and Love. They were who he was. A part of his nature.
Since each journey is unique to each person, I’m not sure I can give you any more specific details than that. I don’t know what the right tools are for you.
I think I’m out of my league but I still want to comment. In some ways revelation is the only source of knowledge. Suppose you’re told something is true and you accept that for years. You make choices based on that which you percieve as true. Then for whatever reason, an experience, or new information comes in and you question. Suddenly you realize that thing you believed isn’t actually true. That process when your perception was changed is revelation.
You may be speaking specificaly of divine revelation. I don’t think the two are all that different.
We make judgement calls on what a certain revelation means. Often our judgement is influenced by other factors and so the revelation is misunderstood.
example; on the boards you hear people talk of the moment they realized all their previous religious teaching was BS. They realize the things they once held to be true don’t make any sense. Someone might throw out a particular concept of God and still believe. Someone else throws out every concept of God. It’s a personal reaction to a similar revelation. Now these two people who had essentially the same revelation are at odds in their belief.
Revelation is a continueing process of refineing our understanding of what is true.
Except that the historicity of that story is disputed, and rightly so. It’s a myth, maybe true, maybe not.
Great. I agree with you on the first point, probably not on the second point.
I wasn’t trying to get you to take a position for me to demolish, I wasn’t even trying to make a point. I’ve been completely honest throughout this discussion. I wanted to hear your answer so that I would understand our differences.
So no lying, even when the truth would cause suffering and a white lie would protect innocents from that suffering?
Well yes , but your example was just as made up so that myth and the similarities are just as valid as any answer I made up. It does portray something I think could happen.
The parameters of what we judge good or bad has a lot to do with our enviorment but not entirely. There is something born in us that determines advantages or disadvantages.
okay. That was my impression.
I believe the truth is always the best choice. Wisdom in delivering the truth makes a difference. Sounds like a good subject for another thread.
My example was a hypothetical framework for a question. Your example was used as the answer to that question, and would only be legitimate if true.
To take this to its logical conclusion: do you think the people hiding Anne Frank’s family in Amsterdam should have told the truth when the Nazis asked whether they were harbouring Jews?
I am not saying that your opinions, which you mention above, are necessarily arbitrary; I am saying that “assumption” philosophies such as dualist systems are necessarily arbitrary because they rely on the assumptions of so many unknowns that it makes it impossible to establish a proper system of knowledge (not faith). Essentialism, for example, makes sense only if you accept the assumption (among a couple others, I am simplifying here) that any entity, object, idea, etc., contains a limited number of essential characteristics that all entities, objects, ideas in the same group must share. Has this arbitrary system of knowledge, this sub-standard attempt at taxonomy, ever worked for anything in a rigid frame of reference that does not tolerate unwarranted assumptions? Not to my knowledge. There is no requirement to grant essentialist premises. And if you do not first grant the fundamental premises of Essentialism, it is an inert hunk of broken machinery. If you do grant the premises, that makes Essentialism arbitrary, much like…
As were Freud and Jung. Indeed, though Freudian and Jungian psychoanalysis and sciamachy are often garbed in the attire of scientific hypotheses, they are pseudoscientific in the extreme. For example, according to Freud’s theory of dreams, which is nonsense of the worst kind, dreaming of a sword is to be interpreted as phallic symbolism. How did Freud decide things like that? Through reasoning that was itself highly arbitrary, based on his private a priori opinion. How did Freud figure out that personality consists of Id, Ego, and Superego? Arbitrary assumption. How did he figure out that the conflicts between this tripartite structure are repressed and lead to anxiety? Arbitrary – pretty and interesting, yes, but arbitrary nonetheless. The priority of reliable systems of knowledge is the reduction of unknowns; as you well know, assuming unknowns in any application of reason is like throwing sand in the machinery. If just one of your premises is flawed (by, for instance, assuming an unknown) you can use iron-clad logic to prove anything at all.
That was the nature of my example. Not the people involved or even the nature of their work, but the assumption of unknowns and, following that, the reliance on a system of knowledge/reason based on resulting faulty foundations.
Physicalism is, as Bytegeist pointed out, the safest of all philosophies, epistemically speaking. It does not posit unknowns and unknowables; it simply operates with the material available at hand (which happens to be entirely matter-based, hence its name physicalism). There is nothing arbitrary about physicalism, with the possible minor exception of the reason why many scientists find it to be valid: either the universe is entirely physical, or it is not; if it is not, there appears to be no way to reliably tell anything about what is not physical (from ghosts to gods), and Occam’s razor simply slashes away that entire unfathomable undetected unknown part from the equation.
In one sense, I don’t think physicalism assumes that everything must be physical: it simply describes the state of the universe to the best of our knowledge, without so many of the fascinating but epistemically null trimmings that dualist philosophies rely on.
No no no, you are reading me wrong. I’m not out to damn you, I am out to ask you specific questions that will hopefully lead us to a discussion on why your prose frequently exudes so much certainty in your own view and why you see fit to dismiss other points of view you are obviously set against (such as the logically superior weak atheism, probably the strongest and most defensible position of them all).
You routinely provide as support for your arguments the claim that God saved your life, and, when that claim is pointed out as suspect (at least on an anecdotal basis), you say that god saved the lives of plenty of other people too. But we both know you are too well read and too well versed in philosophy and logic to seriously make that particular fallacious argument. Hence my questions:
-How did God save your life? (I don’t mean to ask for details, in fact the other questions are probably more relevant than this one)
-How did you know that it was god?
-Is it conceivable to you that it was not in fact god?
… and its companion:
-Is it conceivable that you may be mistaken on this subject?
If, as I suspect, you are able to entertain the notion that you may be mistaken in spite of your faith, do you not think that your frequently expressed certitude is in fact irrational (i.e., based on a powerfully emotional belief but ultimately arbitrary or similarly invalid in any system external to your own conviction)? And please do not take “irrational” as an insult, I mean it strictly without any offence or loaded meaning, but solely intended as described in the parentheses (kind of the way Dawkins meant “delusion” in that Salon article that you found offensive a couple weeks ago).
Tsk, tsk, you are assuming how I will react to whatever you say, which is either a tad too defensive or doesn’t give me a whole lot of credit. Anyway, I point out the extremely important term you used above: “belief”. You have FAITH. I do not intend to judge your faith, rather I am addressing how you sport your faith in a number of these discussions when confronted with other points of view that rely considerably less on faith. You believe the nature of man and the universe is dualist; we’re clearly not going to solve that discussion here, I am just pointing out that mocking the “artificial land of atheism” on the basis of a belief that is ultimately arbitrary is not very cautious.
Well, that simply is not true. Revelation is largely unfalsifiable and subject to the whims and forgeries of mankind. It automatically requires you to believe in something for which no real support is provided. Whose revelation are we talking about? Why is it such a valid epistemology?
I’m not attaking your belief or choice of beliefs, but to state that a personal belief is as valid an epistemology as, for example, physicalism or the scientific method is quite an extreme position and requires strong support.
Ugh, no need to descend to such vulgar terms! Again I point to Bytegeist’s response (with a thankful nod of the head).
It seeks to provide a physical mechanism for the process called “conceiving things”, just as computer games are physical. It similarly seeks to provide a mechanism whereby physical linguistic referents can be combined such that they form “inconceivable things”. A physicalist is someone who is largely satisfied with these mechanisms having explored the cognitive scientific support, not someone who merely asserts that conceivable or inconceibavle things are physical. I suggest that your characterisation is misleading.
I have found in my life experiance, that when I help someone else to better their life, then the life of others as well as my own are enhanced. I think the early humans, (like some early animals) found it benificial to all to cooperate with others, life became better and helped the survival of the species. Hence the Golden Rule (500 B.C.) Morality came out of that( people aiding people). People survived long before there were 10 commandments, and religions that do not have the 10 commandments( like there is in Japan) are still moral (as we call it).
The part that I’ve highlighted is the problem. Unless there are morality particles, or unless there is some gestalt mechanism, how can it be that your edification of someone else edifies you? If you feed someone else, you do not benefit from the nourishment. If you save someone else’s life, it might even mean risking your own. If you allow a gay man (or straight woman, whichever is more inappropriate for you) to touch you in a manner that he (or she) would find edifying, you yourself risk damage to your psyche. Before you attribute any of this to evolution’s guiding hand, I would caution you against anthropomorphising a process that has no goals or design of purpose.
Sure, but that’s taking the example a little too far, because there really is no benefit to letting someone abuse you. If I let a burglar ransack my home his material edification gains me nothing; nor do I gain anything if I let a thug rough me up, regardless of how much he might enjoy it.
Evolution doesn’t need to guide in this or any other case, of course: any particular trait, such as altruism, simply needs to confer advantages that are adaptive just that much to make a difference – then it is likely the trait will continue. Sometimes traits have direct applications to personal or kin survival, and sometimes they confer benefits on larger social groups (altruism, fairness, perhaps even language).
Neither of these are necessary. There are eg. no “life” or “computation” particles either, nor are there mechanisms by which life or computation are greater than the sum of their parts. Life and computation emerge from arrangements of physical particles: they are physical processes.
I don’t agree with this and don’t understand the thinking that brings you to this statement. Perhaps I should have been more specific than “Ummmm Buddha”
such as, Your hypothetical question seems very similar to the story of Buddha. I think what could happen to child you propose is what the legends say happened to Buddha, in which case the concepts of good and bad were not so much invented as discovered. As I said too many variables. The individuals personnality. Hundreds of other small details that I a unable to hypothesize away.
I was just thinking about that this morning. I was thinking of starting a thread to discuss the pros and cons of always telling the truth and thinking of examples.
As I said, use wisdom in chooseing when and where and how you deliver the truth. In that case there are some choices that would be truthful without revealing those in hideing.
Well, then you should have been more specific, because that’s not what I took from your statement at all. I thought you were using the story of Buddha as evidence of what would happen.
How exactly does a harbourer of Jews answer the question “Are you harbouring Jews?” truthfully without revealing the harboured Jews?