The perfect question
If, as an experiment, we were able to choose one question from a philosophical point of view (the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, existence, values and language), questions like what is moral, why are we here, is there a higher power, is all life equal, and so on, and then having asked the right question, secured the answer, the truth, and made the decision to live by that choice and we then secured a better future for ourselves and the world, what should the question be?
Subjects like science cannot be one of the first choices because the first choice, whatever it might be, being the best, the right, the wisest, would produce the science that is best for us, and the same with law and politics. Quite possibly the right question would put all other philosophical questions in place as well.
If we were to choose from all the questions we have asked on this forum, or that you’ve pondered, what would you choose?
Subjects like science cannot be one of the first choices because the first choice, whatever it might be, being the best, the right, the wisest, would produce the science that is best for us, and the same with law and politics. Quite possibly the right question would put all other philosophical questions in place as well.
If we were to choose from all the questions we have asked on this forum, or that you’ve pondered, what would you choose?
Comments (175)
Quoting khaled
I only used the word “best” in relation to the science that would follow the answer.
“A better future for ourselves and the world” was my original query. Surely you have some hopes for something.
“.....How is pure mathematical science possible? How is pure natural science possible? Respecting these sciences, as they do certainly exist, it may with propriety be asked, how they are possible?—for that they must be possible is shown by the fact of their really existing. But as to metaphysics, the miserable progress it has hitherto made, and the fact that of no one system yet brought forward, far as regards its true aim, can it be said that this science really exists, leaves any one at liberty to doubt with reason the very possibility of its existence. Yet, in a certain sense, this kind of knowledge must unquestionably be looked upon as given; in other words, metaphysics must be considered as really existing, if not as a science, nevertheless as a natural disposition of the human mind. For human reason, without any instigations imputable to the mere vanity of great knowledge, unceasingly progresses, urged on by its own feeling of need, towards such questions as cannot be answered by any empirical application of reason, or principles derived therefrom; and so there has ever really existed in every man some system of metaphysics. It will always exist, so soon as reason awakes to the exercise of its power of speculation. And now the question arises: "How is metaphysics, as a natural disposition, possible?" In other words, how, from the nature of universal human reason, do those questions arise which pure reason proposes to itself, and which it is impelled by its own feeling of need to answer as well as it can?....”
I think it helps focus on what is important to each of us. If we have a specific area we think contains access to this better future it also indicates what sort of future we want, or is it vice versa?
I find myself coming back to two questions (I’m allowed that because it’s my OP) : is there a higher power and is there an objective morality?
Quoting Garth
Theoretically, as an experiment, they are not context driven because the question has a true answer. If it was an objective morality there is no context, there is only the truth revealed to us from which we would then use as the foundation for how we live.
If you'd like another opinion, I'd say the perfect question is, "how do we gain wisdom?" given that wisdom is defined as both the true AND good.
Quoting TheMadFool
Yes because from wisdom would come all the science and laws that would be right, that would build a better future, what else could they be? But, there’s always a but, would morality come from wisdom or wisdom from morality?
Quoting TheMadFool
You'd need to define better.
But regardless your question wins. "What is the perfect question", if it has an answer, will lead us to the perfect question which by definition will lead us to the best future for ourselves and the world. Good job!
:up:
Another angle to the issue of wisdom, given that we define it as both good and true, how do we attain it?
By keeping a curious mind, an honest heart, an ear to other opinions, and a rational viewpoint.
:up: Not to detract from the excellent recommendations you make here - they both make sense and are not beyond reach of mere mortals like us - but that's precisely why they seem so not true; after all, given their simplicity (???), many people should be virtuoso practitioners of the methods you described and yet there's no one whom we may justifiably attribute wisdom to. Is it because these traits of a wise person you listed are not as easy to cultivate as we suppose they are? Or is it something else... :chin:?
Every questioning is a seeking. Every seeking takes its direction beforehand from what is sought. Questioning is a knowing search for beings in their thatness and whatness.... As questioning about, . . questioning has what it asks about. All asking about . . . is in some way an inquiring of... As a seeking, questioning needs prior guidance from what it seeks. The meaning of being must therefore already be available to us in a certain way.
Seneca, somewhere as I remember, implied that god was limited in his creation by the imperfect nature of the material with which he worked.
What a nice compliment! I must return a compliment that often enjoy your posts as they are questions very few people ask. I think you bring a life to these boards that it would not have if you were not here.
As for why it is rare to encounter someone with wisdom...I believe that is because there is a difference in being told the road one should take, versus the action of actually walking it.
A curious mind: You've been on these boards enough to know the closed minded individuals. They have found what they wanted, are tired of questioning, or are full of their own ego. How many times in the past have we done this ourselves?
An honest heart: An honest heart will often show your beliefs to be wrong. An honest heart critically examines your own self and does not avoid the flaws it finds. How many of us truly like to admit we are wrong even to ourselves?
An ear to other opinions: How many of us listen to only that which we want to hear? When another opinion repulses you, do we still have an ear open to understand it before judging or dismissing it?
A rational viewpoint: Some are blessed with this as a potential, but this also takes years of dedication to cultivate. I believe our default is to rationalize, not be rational. It is difficult to break yourself of this and approach discussions with rationality.
To become a master of these four traits, you must be tested. And if you are tested, you will fail many times. There might be people who laugh at you when you fall. That want you to stay down. That hate you for walking it. You may get help from others, but in the end, you must make the decision to follow such a path yourself.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
I’m not sure if that’s your question or if it’s addressed to me. But having thought about I see a problem with the Higher Power idea. Not because it’s the God of Abraham, because a true Higher Power would be total, no cultural interpretations. But the problem I have is if the answer to the question “Is there a higher?” is yes then it always has been. So even though in being shown explicitly that a Higher Power exists and that it follows that there are the laws of this higher power and we are in the care of this higher power because we are it’s creation and all that follows is as was decided, I still have a problem with the suffering that has always existed which is not caused by the folly of man, like children being born with health problems, or anyone for that matter. If this has always been the way then it will continue to be so. If my choice is a Higher Power then the suffering must continue, which I could not agree to. So I reject my possible choice of a Higher Piwer.
Quoting TheMadFool
I had wondered if we could have wisdom without first having an objective morality confirmed first, that wisdom would follow that. But as you point out wisdom is both true and good. But wisdom would have to be such that it’s very nature answered every question perfectly, or contributed to a better future, as would morality I suppose. Objective morality seems more concise and formed than wisdom, but I’m not sure about that. Once objective morality became clear as a truth that put all questions in place or order, then all decisions would be correct. Morality would be defined. But could wisdom be defined. Not that I’m asking you of that, but would it be possible? Would there be clarity in those morals that could not be argued with? I would guess the answer is yes. Could wisdom do the same?
Quoting Philosophim
That’s not the exercise. It’s which question applied to which aspect of philosophy, if answered as a truth, would contribute more than anything else to a better future, even a perfect future? Would it be the realisation that there is an objective reality, or that there’s a Higher Power, or that language is our undoing? There is, in this exercise, only one question. It resolves everything in its answer.
Quoting Todd Martin
In terms of the experiment I don’t see a Higher Power necessarily connected to morality. Morality could exist without a Higher Power. But if there was a Higher Power then morality would be an aspect of that Higher Power and therefore perfect.
Quoting Mww
Do you mean that if this question was answered, that it’s existence was proven so to would be the validity of the question and so to the truth of the answers?
Answer: Harm.
Question: What is - do I/we find - "hateful"?
and then strive to live by the ancient maxim:
:death: :flower:
The question.
Quoting Brett
Apparently he just doesn't reveal himself. I don't know, maybe he thinks its more fun that way, who knows.
Quoting Brett
This is just the question that I'd like to know the answer to the most. The abrahamic God either exists or he doesn't, no choice to it besides me just choosing to ask the question.
Quoting Brett
I get what you're saying. A lot of things don't make sense to us, but maybe when you consider the bigger picture things change a bit. Sure a baby might die a terrible death, but who knows that baby could be spending an eternity in eternal bliss. Maybe his death was necessary, who know are you to say it wasn't? Even a long, 100 year life full of suffering is nothing compared to eternity. I mean even if this universe had basically no suffering except that people got paper cuts sometimes we could still ask God why he would allow for something like that. The God of the Old Testament never gives us the message that we can really understand him and this frustrates a lot of people.
The Christians make God into a heavenly father full of infinite love, but Christianity has its roots in the old testament, and one should never forget their roots.
Quoting 180 Proof
Would not that problem be addressed if objective morality revealed itself to us? And I hate to split hairs, as is done here so often, but what is “hateful”?
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Yes, you’re right. Who are we to know the why of a Higher Power or what is happening that we are unable to see? So I go back to including the question of a Higher Power, which to my mind in this exercise is none of what we know as a Higher Power.
Follow my link for 'Harm' which I argue is objective (i.e. non-subjective).
Harm (I posited that answer to my question).
Oh I see. I misconstrued your post. I’ll look up the link.
Edit: philosophically what would make us not harm? For instance if the answer to the question was the existence of a Higher Power then we would live according to the expectation of that Power. What would be the cause doing no harm?
I can't make sense of this.
No you wouldn’t, I left out a word.
What would be the cause of us doing no harm?
What would compel us?
Intellectual habit (i.e. reasoning).
To wit: By deriving my philosophical question from the 'ancient maxim' above, and then non-fallaciously, coherently and consistently applying the answer to that 'ancient maxim' in practice.
Moral habit (i.e. judging).
Quoting 180 Proof
So then I think the question and answer that would lead to your choice would be “Is there objective morality?”.
If that was the case then morality would compel us to do no harm. Even though you place reasoning before morality.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
If I was to chose a Higher Power it would be because that power was perfect; it could not be anything but perfect.
I can’t think of any reason such a Power would find suffering to have any purpose. And if it did I could not accept a world like from such a Power.
If I’m to chose a question that leads to a better future then there has to be less or no suffering at all in it. So I’m back to rejecting my choice of a higher power.
:point: What you find harmful, do not do to anyone.
“No” refers to what?
IMO suffering often does have a purpose and it can teach us important lessons. That's one of the reasons children are so naive; a lot of them haven't really struggled with making ends meet or experienced tragedy either. Often growth comes from suffering or struggle.
Tragedy is a part of life, no way around it. Your parents are probably (hopefully) going to die before you and that's gonna suck. If you want an existence with absolutely no suffering you're talking about non-existence, and you're in the same boat with one of our users named schopenhauer who always argues it would be better if humans never existed but continues to exist himself.
In one of his letters to Lucilius, a friend who aspired to philosophy, Seneca exhorts him to neglect all his affairs for her sake, to which he responded that he first needed to put his affairs in order so that he not end up a pauper; to which the philosopher replied, “and how do you know that poverty is not more beneficial to the philosopher than wealth?” and he goes on to list several such benefits.
Consider Socrates: everyone knows he had well-placed powerful young aristocratic friends whom he might have enlisted to usher him secretly into exile, but he chose to die at the hands of Athens’ court instead. Why? Because he was old; because adherence to the laws of his political community were part of his moral (not intellectual) teaching, but, most importantly, because it might just prove beneficial to philosophy herself for her to have a champion martyr in her legacy...which hope, thanks to the writings and remembrances of men like Plato and Xenophon, held true for many hundreds of years after his “timely” death.
It appears to me that a necessary quality of the truth you seek, Brett, is that it be beneficial to the future of mankind, but that may be rather the essential question: is truth beneficial to mankind? It is undeniably beneficial to the philosopher, who, more than anything else, wishes to understand how the world works, and is sometimes willing to endure hardship or even death to achieve it; but some of the healthiest and happiest communities have prospered by believing in the most outrageous myths.
I think there might be a slight misunderstanding in terms of what I was saying here. I am not against fighting poverty or homeless and I don't view these as inevitable parts of society. When I wrote that life is suffering I wasn't saying that certain social conditions are inevitable; I was saying that even if we managed to eliminate these social problems suffering is still intrinsic to the human experience.
No matter what your background is you're going to have to go through the deaths of your grandparents as well as parents, unless you die first. You're going to outlive your pets. We all have peers: What, are we going to be better than our peers in everything imaginable? That would probably be its own form of suffering. We're all deeply connected with the welfare of your families and communities, so any misfortune there has ripple effects. Freak accidents happen and they always will happen. Nobody - and I don't care what the society is - is coming out of life without a scratch.
Quoting 180 Proof
That wasn’t my question.
This was the question I would ask of all possible questions in relation to the exercise I talked about in my post.
Quoting Brett
That’s different from “Is morality objective?”
If there’s an objective morality then it would make sense to live by it because it would mean the universe is moral and so are we by nature. In fact we could not be anything but moral.
In relation to the OP the question is addressed to which, if asked and answered in the affirmative, would lead to a better future. Ideally a perfect future, if not to a better future.
484024"]If, as an experiment, we were able to choose one question from a philosophical point of view [ ... ] and then having asked the right question, secured the answer, the truth, and made the decision to live by that choice [ ... ] what should the question be?
— Brett
Answer: Harm.
Question: What is - do I/we find - "hateful"?
and then strive to live by the ancient maxim:
What you find hateful, do not do to anyone.[/quote]
Question: What is - do I/we find - "hateful"?
and then strive to live by the ancient maxim:
What you find hateful, do not do to anyone.[/quote]
It seems to me that asking “What is hateful?”, which causes harm, doesn’t offer a result in terms of making a better future. To strive to live by the ancient maxim is not an answer because it begs the question what is needed for us to strive to do no harm?
So what would that be: a Higher Power, an objective morality, wisdom or something you think would convince us not to harm?
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Quoting Brett
First of all, if one believes there is a Higher Power that is perfect then I see no reason why the world created by that power should not be perfect. Therefore there is no need for suffering, for what is there to be learned through suffering?
Now if the question was “Is there an objective morality?” and the answer is yes then, as I said to 180 Proof, the universe must be moral and so must we. In that case there would still be suffering that might not be avoidable. But if we were living the objective moral life there would certainly be less suffering caused by one human to another. Not a perfect future, but a better one.
@Brett what is to be learned from suffering? Endurance. If suffering is a necessary element of life, then what better than that morality offer us a virtue to combat it? Someone who has never suffered adversity, once he at last encounters it—and he will—is like a pugilist who has never had his teeth knocked out. When at last he does, he will stumble tearfully out of the arena, holding his bloody mouth, and concede victory to his opponent.
On the other hand, the fighter who has lost many teeth through many battles, having learned that there is no great evil in that, when he gets knocked down to the canvass shakes it off and jumps right back up and swings his fist to deliver the very next blow.
As for your notion that a perfect god would insure a perfect morality, let me offer an analogy: the perfect falling body would have an acceleration, according to Newton’s formula, of 32 ft/sec squared. Now, this holds true, of course, only under certain “perfect” conditions, namely, either if it occurs in a vacuum, or if the body is a mathematical point—neither of which ordinarily occurs in the “real” world—for the effect on the body of the medium (ordinarily, air) through which it falls corrupts the formula. This is not to say that the mathematical equation describing the perfect situation is therefore useless; all to the contrary: it is only by means of contemplating the “perfect” falling bodies that we have come to understand the nature of the imperfect “real” ones.
I suggest that the study of morality is much like that of falling bodies: one may investigate the various virtues using reason, attempting to purify them and gain an understanding of them, as did Plato’s Socrates, in their perfection, and therefore best understand the ones we actually encounter; but their perfection, though it exist in theory, will never be found in the “real” world.
The reason I have often included the words “perfect” and “real” in quotation marks is because they are ambiguous: though it never be found in nature, the perfect (or, better yet, “ideal”) falling body is, nevertheless, somehow more real, in that it is the best, or really only, representative of its various manifestations, while the “real” ones are subject to its law and are imperfect, being therefore somehow less real.
Yet the hobo was a persistent feature of early American culture in the last century, and I’m sure many of them would have never traded their box-cars and tents or guitars for a comfortable apartment...
As for war, though it cause much death and suffering, it also offers the soldier, ordinarily an obscure or even dishonorable citizen, a chance to gain glory and honor.
Quoting Todd Martin
Just to be clear, my idea of a Higher Power is completely hypothetical. The difficulty is that I’m asking people to apply logic to a something we don’t know exists or not: a Higher Power, objective morality, wisdom or why we are here. It’s a game, so we can make leaps of the imagination.
So when you talk about a perfect god you still include the existing structure of the world, I.e. your analogy about the falling body. Now maybe we could not live under any other conditions except that which now exists. But my question is, if we asked the right question (and it’s subjective because everyone has their own idea of what would make a better future), the perfect question, which does not have to be ambiguous, then you would receive the answer. If I asked is there an objective reality and the answer I received was yes, then that morality would be made clear and truthful. There would be nothing else to live by, the morality would be indisputable and we would live by it and that morality would contribute to a better future because everyone would live according to that morality. If you don’t think an objective reality would contribute to a better future I’m open to hearing about it.
An objective morality would certainly reduce the suffering in the world that is man-made. So the idea of an objective morality is limited in its success to creating a better future. The so called acts of god would continue. Though on the other hand an objective morality would mean that governments look after the communities better and so respond better to natural disasters.
The suffering of the world could only be addressed fully by a Higher Power, one, because a Higher Power is perfect and two, the universe was created by the Higher Power. Our perception of a Higher Power as we see it, through religious dogma, is limited in understanding. A true Higher Power would have no reason to create a world that included suffering. What would be the purpose of that, to teach us endurance? For what purpose would you need endurance in a world created by a perfect High Power?
Edit: I noticed the words “objective reality” appearing. That should always read “objective morality”.
Who’s to say this ‘High Power’ is done creating perfection? There is an assumption here that the creative process is already complete, and that what we refer to as ‘suffering’ is to be endured by ‘created beings’, rather than as a consequence of conscious or willing participation in the creative process.
Quoting Possibility
We haven’t decided the Higher Power even exists. But if so, and even being perfect, it doesn’t negate the possibility that the creative process would still be happening.
On the other hand I don’t see why a Higher Power would need to work on creating the perfect world. A perfect world would be created instantly as a single Higher Power thought. A process suggests time and trial and error, a plan. A single thought, how much is needed for that to happen? It comes to us fully formed.
I was tempted to agree with you but from my perspective it’s not convincing enough. So my position on the perfect question to ask with the affirmative answer is still “Is there a Higher Power?”
This brings us right back to where we struggle to reach a mutual understanding. I disagree that thoughts come to us fully formed - they are constructed from interrelating potentiality. There is nothing to suggest that a perfect world does not exist as a Higher Power idea that we’re struggling to consolidate into a thought.
Just out of interest what would your question be? It has to be one that is answered by a simple yes.
Whether you refer to it as a Higher Power, objective truth/morality, unconditional love, the Absolute, pure possibility or existence itself, you manifest both the question and the answer in every relation. To state the question is to limit it to concepts in a grammatical structure which, according to Rovelli, “developed from our limited experience, before we became aware of its imprecision when it came to grasping the rich structure of the world.”
You may notice that posters here have offered questions that appear more open-ended, but are really more confining: how do we gain wisdom? What is hateful? To which any answer consolidates further into particular value systems.
Quoting Possibility
Then so be it. That’s the ground the OP works on. So what would your question be?
Edit: sorry was that your question: could anything be possible?
Yes.
To clarify, this is not the same as ‘is anything possible?’ or ‘is there anything at all?’. There is a deliberate ambiguity to my question that gives freedom to the faculties of imagination, understanding and judgement.
"Hateful" being synonymous with harmful (as I reflect), the latter was neither stated nor implied to be an effect of the former.
And as my first post makes clear from edits in quoting your OP, Brett, my concern with positing and then answering a 'philosophical question' is for living presently rather than, according to your premise, "making a better future" (which, to my thinking is a category mistake: philosophy is not comparable to politics, or vice versa).
Apparently you're misreading me.
Quite, surely not the one I gave. My answer is harm.
Not at all. Taking direction from the OP, "my experiment" consists in examining that ancient maxim only for clarity's sake, focussing on the key word "hateful", which when examined closer, translates as synonymous with harmful (if substituted for "hateful" in the maxim), or more concretely, with harm; and, only then, the ancient maxim can be more reliably applicable to everyday living. No question is begged because the answer I proferred is not to your question but to my own.
You're moving the goalposts. The OP makes no mention of having or trying to "convince" anyone of anything or to accept anything they do not already accept. I've already accepted this ancient maxim: my "philosophical question" only concerns uncovering the extent of its meaning(s). 'Why', one might ask, 'have I accepted the maxim'? Well, that's a biographical matter and not a philosophical one ... so not relevant to the OP.
Anyway, apparently, we practice philosophy quite differently, Brett. For instance, I understand 'philosophical questions' to be reflective inquiries in search of conceptual ways to (creatively, adaptively) reformulate pseudo-problems in order to either dissolve them, or, at most, make them tractable (i.e. nonphilosophical, or solvable problems); thus, *existential-conceptual clarity (i.e. disambiguation and determinancy), not "The Truth", is, as I see it, (the) philosophical task.
*lucidity (Camus, et al)
Quoting 180 Proof
Quoting 180 Proof
Quoting 180 Proof
You say here that harm is your answer to the question but deny it in your recent post.
Quoting 180 Proof
Why should you put the question in the category of politics? Just so you can rebuke it the OP? And how do you feel so confident in determining what and what is not a philosophical question?
Quoting 180 Proof
I’m not moving the goalposts. The question you put forward, in relation to the OP, is
Quoting 180 Proof
By you or by all those around you? How is it to be applied? By force, by the moral question, by examining the maxim for clarity? That is the convincing I’m referring to.
Edit: if philosophy is not an attempt to make living in the world more understandable to more people and to consequently create a better future then what is its purpose?
Quoting Possibility
Which is no help at all.
The reason why I have not replied to this thread so far is that I think the perfect questions should be reserved for creating threads. Throwing all the ideas into this one, without even exploring them properly seems a bit futile, but what I would think is worth exploring is the nature of perfect questions: areas not considered enough and processes for the generation of ideas.
You insisted on a question within the grounds of the OP. Are you looking for truth in the form of a question, or a reductionist methodology from which to orient your own perspective?
FWIW, I agree with both questions you posited - I think they are different ways of approaching the same contradiction. I don’t think the answer to either is necessarily affirmative, but in answering ‘yes’ we are at least relating to faculties that could improve existing methodologies for determining action.
It is the possibility of the answer being ‘no’ that you haven’t addressed.
Quoting Garth
The perfect answer is apparently ‘yes’.
Quoting Brett
Quoting Possibility
Only in the sense that it must be unequivocal.
For instance if the question was ‘Is there an objective morality?’ and the answer is ‘Yes, if there is a Higher Power?’ then the morality question follows the question of a Higher Power.
If the question was ‘Is there wisdom?’ then the answer cannot be ‘What is wisdom?’. It must be yes.
Of course you would not ask a question that would have no as an answer. The question would be one you believe is essential to creating a better future. It must almost be, if not necessarily be, a first cause.
If my question is about objective morality and the answer is yes, it’s true, it exists, then what reason could we as ethical creatures chose to ignore it. And if there was an objective morality then the behaviour of people, all people, would be according to those morals, the rewards would be apparent. Would people go against it? I don’t know. If the universe was moral then I would assume we are moral. But as a beginning the knowledge that an objective morality existed is a beginning to a better future. Governments would operate on those morals, justice would operate on those morals, treatment of others, treatment of animals or the environment.
You may have other ideas about how this state could be reached. I’m assuming that we on this forum all have some aspect of philosophy we believe that if applied would make for a better future.
Quoting Jack Cummins
But that’s not the purpose of my OP. Why not throw all your question in here and then address their strengths and weaknesses at contributing towards a better future?
Quoting Garth
How would you do that?
I ask because as many of you have pointed out already a question supposes the seeking of knowledge or truth that is missing. It suggest an absent or unknown facet (the answer) which would complete/ go to form the total resolution of the question.
I would think that the best/perfect question is answered within or by itself. That it requires no external answer or supplementary information.
In this sense it seems to be rhetorical In nature - that is to say a question that requires no answer because the question itself provides the profundity or wisdom or truth/ knowledge/ awareness necessary to understand its own supposition.
This is weirdly reminiscent of, or at least similar to, descartes “I think therefore I am” However that is a statement not a question and assumes a definition for “thought” which many are unsure about as it is left ambiguous as to what he meant by “I think”.
So what if we considered a simplified version of this statement posited as the question “Am I?” (Roughly equivalent to but not quite the same as “Do I exist? -because again “exist“ assumes a pre-determined definition open to ambiguity of interpretation.)
This is also reminiscent of Shakespeare’s “To be or not to be? That is the question.”
The question “Am I?” or even “Do I?” or “Be I?” (Though this one sounds grammatically incorrect compared to “am”) is answered by the act of pondering it in the first place.
“Awareness” In this sense is the capacity to both ask and be answered simultaneously by the same action.
The reason I didn’t suggest “Who am I?” Or “What am I?” Or “why, where, when am I?” Is because all of these words assume more than I can know without other questions or information or definitions and assumptions - for example subjects and objects, substances, causes and effects, times and locations etc.
“Am I?” On the other hand is a question that can only arise from the state of “I am”.
I could reduce this further to simply “I?” Which is answered by the “I” that asked in the first place. But many would argue this isn’t a question. I would note that questions can be a singular word by itself. Such as the request “Please?”. In the end I prefer the “Am I?- I am!” couple as the perfect question and answer simultaneously. It would encompass all things related to “I” Which is anything within the realm of distinction of things by an awareness or conscious entity and formulation of definitions by this virtue and therefore all possible questions that could be by evolution of the complexity of “I am”.
Perhaps you'll detect a slight change in my position but it's a work in progress. So, view this is an improvement on my earlier conception of wisdom as that which is both true and good. It appears, on further analysis for what it's worth, that wisdom is a state of mind in which a person can handle/tackle anything and everything in the best way possible and what I mean by that a person who has wisdom can, given any circumstance, always make the right/best decision and choose the best course of action as allowed by the constraints and freedoms present therein.
As you can see, I've not put any restrictions on circumstance - it could be one in which the wise person has complete or incomplete or no knowledge of the situation that demands faer attention. Each epistemic state (complete knowledge, incomplete knowledge, or no knowledge) for a given circumstance will, for sure, have a best course of action given these limitations and the wise person will both find it and perform it. I suppose it all boils down to knowing how to think than anything else at all.
As for how morality, for a better world I suppose, relates to wisdom all that seems permissible is to assert is a negative statement viz. a wise person won't make a moral blunder or, if you feel that's hyperbole, a wise person won't commit serious moral offenses.
What say you?
Quoting Philosophim
Excellent! :up: :ok:
Quoting TheMadFool
What say I? Total agreement.
Quoting TheMadFool
This is the crux of the OP. The thing chosen, being wisdom in this case, will address all questions or dilemmas in this state of mind. Why would wisdom chose to hurt others, why would it ignore a set of morals that contribute to the wellbeing of others, why would wisdom go to war, why would wisdom destroy the environment? Those with wisdom would
Quoting TheMadFool
And that being so then all decisions made in this state of mind contribute to a better future. What else could be the consequences be?
“Why would wisdom go to war?” To defend its country in a just cause?
And what is this assumption of yours that a perfect morality or wisdom or higher power would necessarily result in a “better future”? You have given some hints as to what your idea of this better future is, but that is all—just bare bones with no flesh. What flesh you have put to the bones is just contemporary liberal propaganda: a cleaner environment or immunity to natural disaster—how can a higher power or a perfect morality insure that we avoid natural disaster? It would seem rather that that higher power either allowed disaster to occur or was impotent to prevent it...
Maybe your idea of god and morality are incomplete and limited, or prejudiced, because it certainly doesn’t correspond to the world I am familiar with.
Quoting Todd Martin
Because I can’t state what a better future is for everyone. But I assume you have some idea of what you would like for the future, so that’s what you would like to work towards. My intention is not to define a better future, which is why you find it to be just bare bones.
Quoting Todd Martin
Read my posts. I said an objective morality would only have an affect on suffering caused by others, not acts of god. How could a higher power insure we avoid disaster? Because a higher power, if it existed, would be perfect, there would be no reason for such a world of suffering to exist.
The theory of wisdom is that no one would see any value in war. Logically it would make no sense. Therefore there would be no invasion to fend off. I’m not just talking about wisdom existing in your street.
Quoting Todd Martin
Of course they’re incomplete or limited. But if you have all the answers then pass them on.
Edit: by the way, read my posts a little more carefully. For a better future I referred to more that your “liberal propaganda”. I included an end to suffering caused by others, better government, better laws and justice, more care of communities, and a better response to disasters. Would you be against any of those. Or did you just cherry pick my posts to serve your vague purpose? What was that anyway?
There are a lot of IFs being thrown around. We don’t have enough knowledge, and no way of knowing, if an objective morality exists, let alone how such knowledge might be expressed in the affirmative. It’s all very well positing a question that, if the correct answer is known, would lead us to a ‘better’ future, but I’m not quite sure what you’re trying achieve with it.
If an objective morality exists, then we don’t have sufficient access to information in order to know this. If a Higher Power exists, then again, we don’t have sufficient access to information to be sure of the correct answer. As TheMadFool suggested, what we’re striving for is wisdom in a practical sense - not necessarily knowing the answers, but capable of finding and applying them for the benefit of all. What I thunk this amounts to - as a beginning - is a commitment to increasing awareness, connection and collaboration. I think this would suffice in place of a resounding ‘yes’ to any question you might pose here.
But I will reiterate my concern that you won’t entertain a ‘no’ answer to the question, which defeats the purpose of positing a question in the first place. You’re assuming that ‘yes’ being the correct answer would render it the only answer, but I think you’re being naive here. We need to recognise that existence is fragmented, and that much of it is a result of insufficient awareness, connection and collaboration - a ‘no’ answer that increases ignorance, isolation and exclusion. There is no wisdom in exclusion, for instance.
Okay, maybe this will make it easier. Imagine there’s an election, which candidate would you chose to make a better future?
For this exercise/game just substitute a philosophical position for the candidate. Which would you choose if you were given the chance for it to be a truth and to see it happen and consequently create a better future?
Let's begin our investigation, if you could call it that, at an obvious locus - the perfection of morality and, as will be relevant, knowledge - God. God is defined as all-knowing (omniscient), all-loving (omnibenevolent) and all-powerful (omnipotent).
That god isn't seen as all-wise is a big hint as to the nature of wisdom and how it differs from knowledge. The former is, as I mentioned earlier, about how does one know? and the latter is what does one know?.
The distinction between the two can be summed up with the quote:
[quote=Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie]If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.”[/quote]
The fish stands for knowledge (what does one know?) and the art of fishing is wisdom (how does one know?)
God's omniscience makes wisdom obsolete (for God that is) because being all-knowing, god doesn't need a method of discovering knowledge. God knows everything. Period. End of story. It must be that wisdom exists in an environment of partial or total ignorance for on such occasions it becomes imperative that we have a tried and true method of discovering knowledge and that's to say getting our hands on a method that's the answer to the question, "how does one know?" becomes critical when we're working in domains with some unknowns. In the simplest sense wisdom is the ability to be perfect or, negatively, to be least imperfect, in terms of understanding and responding to situations that involve gaps in our knowledge.
Coming to the issue of morality, why is it that omnibenevolence is mentioned separately as a divine attribute? Doesn't goodness follow naturally from knowledge? Isn't omnibenevolence a necessary consequence of omniscience? If the answers to the questions posed is "yes" then there's no need to mention omnibenevolence as a distinct attribute of god and there's a necessary connection between goodness and knowledge in the sense if one is knowledgeable, one is inevitably also good. Perhaps the answer is "no" - knowledge doesn't always lead to goodness - and thus the need to mention goodness (omnibenevolence) over and above knowledge (omniscience) but this situation could've arisen simply because we ourselves, in our ignorance, fail to see how knowledge and goodness share a deep connection. Given that we don't have this piece of information, the wisest thing to do would be to mention omnibenevolence as divine quality in addition to omniscience. This is wisdom in action - given our ignorance on the matter and given we want a "better future" as you said, this is the wisest of all possible actions.
And the obvious answer is no, it doesn’t, and a multitude of examples appear before my mind...
Who knows best how to forge strong works of iron or steel? Is it not the blacksmith? Yet he is also the one who knows best how to compromise the integrity of his product, and cause seemingly sturdy rails or tresses or cables to collapse...
Who knows best how to cut the meat of a pig or cow? Is it not the butcher? But he is also the one, because of his knowledge, who knows just how to deliver the inferior parts of the carcass as though they were “high on the hog” to unsuspecting customers...
Finally (to cut short a series of examples that might stretch to eternity), who best knows how to heal a sickly body? Is it not the physician? But he is also the one most adept at poisoning me, for who knows more about poison than a doctor?
Two words, one person, "Immanuel Kant". I was on another thread titled 'Freedom And Duty" started by @tim wood on Kantian ethics. What a lucky coincidence!
Kant, to the extent that I'm aware, set out to put ethics on a solid rational foundation that prescribes duties, the failure to fulfill them entailing a logical contradiction based on our values, the things we hold dear like life, truth, personal property, dignity, and whathaveyou.
It appears that there is a profound relationship between omniscience and omnibenevolence. The former, recognizing what humans value and also being perfectly rational, inexorably progresses to the latter, Kantian in character, a moral system in which immoral = irrational. Is it just another coincidence that the decalog is deontic in spirit and in letter? :chin:
I like this post very much. Thanks for persevering. I have one thing I need to clarify.
Quoting TheMadFool
This is because the wisest choice is to say goodness exists and must be added to God’s omniscience, because what other than goodness would benefit us? So we must chose goodness.
Or by adding goodness to God’s knowledge we then determine that goodness, being an attribute of God knowledge, must be a truth to live by.
Given that morality has been key to the apparently fragile peace among people, tribes, cultures, nations and other social entities, it's the low-hanging fruit and thus the obvious choice when it comes to finding a interim measure to forge and sustain peaceful coexistence and peaceful coexistence is what we all have in mind when we say "better future", right? It's quite evident when you approach it from that angle why we've chosen goodness for a "better future" as it were.
I have a bit of a problem with how we may have known what good was. Is good the result of morality, or is morality the result of goodness?
For morality I see it as when faced with an ethical decision about what one should do then the answer is the morality.
One of these, goodness or morality, contributed to our wellbeing and success as a community. Unless you think they’re the same.
Morality is our understanding of good and bad. Goodness is just one side of this coin (of morality).
Understanding morality, in our case, doesn't always lead to goodness but this may reflect misunderstanding rather than true understanding. If Kant is right, if one really grasps what morality means in terms of what our values are, immorality (bad) is, at its core, irrationality. That's to say, goodness is a mark of a rational mind and badness is, simply put, illogical.
Quoting TheMadFool
Yes, because we can imagine consequences, something happening in the future.
:up: Remember about how I said Kant views immorality as irrationality. There's another side to the story though. For certain you must've heard someone saying, "he's so naive" words with which they refer to someone innocent and by logical extension someone incapable of, or unlikely to, resort to immorality. This pronouncement that people who are good are naive i.e. foolish or oblivious to the ways of the world suggests that all is not well with our planet but, most importantly, this opinion is at odds with Kant's view that to be immoral is irrational. If people who pass such comments are to be believed, it's irrational to be moral.
However, this particular brand of criticism leveled against goodness can be interpreted as an attempt to err on the side of caution rather than fall for every trick in the book of morally-bankrupt folks and put oneself in danger.
Too, treating goodness as a trait only a village idiot would possess (goodness is irrational) overlooks the fact that the very existence of people who think and talk this way wholly depends on the goodness they have a dim view of. Just saying.
I will give another example: knowledge of nuclear fission can be used to deliver electricity to the masses, or blow them to smitherines.
Assume I am unacquainted with Kant or “the decalog” or deontics, am just an ordinary inquisitive soul offering what comes most naturally from his ordinary experience to the question: do you deny that the man knowledgeable in a particular sphere is the one who is able to do evil as well as good in it? Can you think of any field of knowledge in which this is not true? If you cannot, how can you believe that knowledge conduces to the good?
Likewise the wise man, knowing a lot about a lot of different things, though not as much as the specialists in their particular fields, comes off superior to them: he knows less about medicine than the doctor, less about farming than the farmer; but because he knows so much about so many things he proves superior to all the others because of the BREADTH of his knowledge...
Is the wise man the “decathlete” of knowledge?
I couldn't have put it better. Wisdom exists only in an environment of imperfection, imperfections of knowledge (varying levels of ignorance), imperfections in methods of gaining knowledge (uncertainties regarding logic, observational methods, etc.), imperfections of a personal nature (hang ups, biases, habits, etc) and others.
Quoting Todd Martin
More or less, yes.
Notice that once we have comprehensive knowledge on an issue. all that remains to be done is to mechanically apply the rules of logic - even a simple desktop computer can manage that. It's when unknowns are a part of the game we're playing that there's a high, almost desperate, demand for wisdom for wisdom is the ability to function, and function well, given uncertainty and gaps in our knowledge and function in the sense arrive at the best of all possible solutions/answers to problems/questions given existing constraints.
Likewise, when the trainers and dietitians disagree as to how to properly exercise or feed a body, the wise man ought to be called in to set them straight?
Similarly, concerning the things of the soul, when the judges disagree how they ought to judge and punish or reform the citizenry, the wise man is called in, just as he is when the teachers are not certain what or how to teach, and the politicians are not sure what laws to legislate? Is this the idea of the wise man you are promoting, or something else?
A fictional character.
A fictional character. :roll:
I’m really curious why you believe this, and how you might defend your opinion.
Without trying to answer for @jgill, I don’t think looking for ‘the wise man’ to solve our lack-of-knowledge issues is realistic. Wisdom is demonstrated in collaborative achievement - in the imaginative, understanding and non-judgemental relation between insufficient perspectives - and recognising that no man alone can embody this faculty is as important as seeking it out.
Well, yes, that's what I meant! Admirable work, Possibility. :grin:
From what you said about it, it looks like you believe wisdom does indeed exist, but that the wise man is a fiction, as Gilly asserted...
Is this your position?
Quoting Possibility
More or less, yes. The reigning consensus on what a wise person is seems to be that of a go-to person for answers and solutions to our questions and problems respectively. A wise person's trademark ability is that of getting to the heart of an issue without being distracted by incidentals and trivialities and that, to my reckoning, is sometimes an innate capacity and sometimes a skill developed over many years of hard practice.
Wisdom can be thought of as pseudo-omniscience as a person who has it will come off as all-knowing even when fae isn't...all-knowing.
It might be worth noting that the Delphic oracle proclaimed Socrates as the wisest person, that even as Socrates was walking the streets of Athens announcing to everybody that all that he knew was that he knew nothing.
Quoting jgill
Possibly. You never know.
The definitive ‘wise man’ is a character of the imagination, in necessary relation to the faculties of understanding and judgement. But I think to dismiss it as ‘a fiction’ (ie. not fact) is an error of exclusion, so I advise caution with this evaluation commonly attributed to the term.
When a judge is unsure how he ought to rule in some case does he consult a wise man, or rather the rulings of other judges in such cases?
Likewise, if a man is unsure of the status or quality of his own soul, who does he consult? The wise man? Doesn’t he rather go to the therapist or priest?...
I’m just wondering, O Mad One,...where is the place for your wise man in a world that seems to be sufficiently peopled by human beings already skilled enough in all the arts and sciences?
Your interpretation doesn’t help me out, Mr Martin - it might, however, convince others to judge the pursuit of wisdom as ‘impossible’, ‘unrealistic’ purposefulness, and dismiss it. I’m not prepared to say that the perfection of wisdom “is never encountered in the ‘real’ world”, because I recognise that the possibility exists, as much as the impossibility also exists. This, for me, is the binary contradiction at the core of existence, the question Shakespeare was alluding to with “To be, or not to be?” You’re free to answer in the negative whenever you choose, but you don’t answer for me.
I don't think there are experts of such caliber that they possess 100% or total knowledge of their respective fields. Add to this the inherent uncertainties in any given field, uncertainties that are, as far as I can tell, a permanent fixture in every imaginable discipline and we wind up with the perfect environment in which wisdom has a major role.
As I said, wisdom operates in an environment that has, at the very least, one unknown and this description fits all extant areas of human knowledge - our ignorance must be acknowledged - and if so, wisdom becomes an indispensable part of our lives.
Let me ask you personally: who would you go to, having been diagnosed with cancer, for a second opinion—the wise man, or another oncologist?
I think you’ve drifted away from the question of the OP.
“If, as an experiment, we were able to choose one question from a philosophical point of view (the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, existence, values and language), questions like what is moral, why are we here, is there a higher power, is all life equal, and so on, and then having asked the right question, secured the answer, the truth, and made the decision to live by that choice and we then secured a better future for ourselves and the world, what should the question be?
It’s not a matter of @TheMadFool proving that the wise man is a better choice for the diagnosis of cancer than an oncologist. It’s the idea of you, or anyone interested, in having a go at naming, from a philosophical perspective, what you believe, if it could be instigated or came into being, would contribute to a better future.
My thoughts were either a higher power or that an objective morality existed. TheMadFool came up with wisdom. He thought, and I was persuaded by his posts, that from wisdom would come morality. That wisdom would come first. He wasn’t talking about a wise man. I think you may have introduced that to the discussion but it’s not really salient. It’s not that there’s just one person that’s wise, it’s that wisdom is everywhere and so all thoughts and decisions based on wisdom would contribute towards a better future.
I haven’t read all your posts so I don’t know if you came up with your own answer. But I’d be interested to hear what you might think.
By now some aspects of our knowledge has advanced so much, one could spend an entire lifetime focusing on a sub-sub specialty in biology or geology, and so on. But then in other topics, namely ethics, the type of questions we ask haven't changed much, in part, because so little is known, in part, because these are hard topics to put to practice too.
In any case, the question which I'm currently obsessed with would be, putting Kant's specific formulations and suggestions aside, what can be said about "the thing in itself"? I suspect some negative elaborations could be made. But I don't see any connection to ethics, unless you come up with some very strong quasi religious considerations, that would then obscure the whole issue. Interesting experiment nonetheless.
Quoting Manuel
No that’s not the question I trying to frame. It’s not a matter of questions we may find interesting.
As an example, you might think that we could have a better future if we all understood each other better. Consequently you might think the answer to the question might be language: how it works and how it doesn’t, etc. Through language we gain a better understanding of each other and consequently better laws, education, etc. come about and so contribute to a better future.
So it's kind of, what question do I think we should ask ourselves so that we could all be better off, something like that? Because perfection implies something that is usually related to numerical quantities more than qualitative relations, as "quality perfection" is highly variable. As in, I might think that if we asked the question, "should we spend so much time at work?" Is a good question.
And the reason I think this is so is because we work way too much, and that something like 4 hours or so, a day, would be better for everybody once they realize that much of what we call "work" isn't really creative or productive in any meaningful sense. I'd then say that 4 hours a day of work is perfect, but obviously others would strongly disagree. So I'm not seeing why you'd call it the perfect question.
Quoting Manuel
Quoting khaled
Yes, I know. I'm missing something.
You're approaching the issue from an academic perspective; wisdom is being looked upon as a course you can choose in a college curriculum just like math or oncology or whathaveyou. I wish that were true - all the world's problems would be solved in the blink of an eye. Under this interpretation wisdom would be a specialized subject like oncology and math and just as there are oncologists and mathematicians we should expect the departments of wisdom to churn out "wisdomologists" or wise people. Only then does your question, "let me ask you personally: would you go to, having been diagnosed with cancer, for a second opinion - the wise man, or another oncologist?" make sense.
However, this view of wisdom - as a specialized subject like oncology or math - doesn't do justice to its true value as a requirement in every sphere of human activity. What I mean by that is that whether you're a historian, an oncologist, a mathematician, or whatever, you'll need wisdom by your side if you're interested in avoiding silly mistakes and who isn't, right? So, to answer your question as to whom I'll trust with regards to my cancer diagnosis, I'd say not just another oncologist but a wise(r) oncologist if available that is.
Yes - I wouldn’t argue against either claim.
BUT if you choose to live by the truth that perfect wisdom is impossible, then I would argue that you limit your potential.
Judging by their most recent posts, I have still more questions to put to them, but I suspect by posing those questions I will only lead the OP farther away from it’s intention.
Therefore I leave it up to you, the moderator of this thread, to either give me permission to ask these questions, or silence me.
First of all there’s no need to apologise. And though I began the OP I’m not the moderator of it. And even if I was I wouldn’t silence you because of your posts. Sometimes we have an idea about something in relation to the OP which we just cannot shake off. If you want to pursue the OP from that point of view then I don’t see a problem. It seems to me that your just digging into a thought you have. Sometimes there seems to be a slight resistance to someone going of on a tangent but that’s the part of the reason I come here, who knows where it might lead?
Let me offer some examples for you consideration...
We all sleep, so aren’t we all sleepers? Yet some sleep better than others, in a way that refreshes them for the next day’s wakeful activities, while the unwise sleepers sleep poorly, and are therefore unrefreshed...
Likewise, aren’t we all eaters? Yet some eat poorly and do not nourish their bodies well, while the wise eaters eat good food and thereby nourish their bodies well and can justly be called wise as regards nutrition...
Finally, aren’t we all “dental hygienists” in that we know to brush and floss daily and the manner in which to do those things?
Is this then your idea of the wise man, as a persona applicable to all the different sorts of particular knowledge, rather than a man of exalted nature, who seeks to know the foundation of knowledge in a general sense, like did a Socrates or Machiavelli or Rousseau or Kant or Nietzsche?
Nope. Wisdom is, in an objective, ontological sense, both possible and impossible. But I can’t relate to wisdom as both in any logical or practical sense. That is, I always feel, think, believe, state or enact an answer to the question one way or the other.
But I also don’t think the question needs to always be framed by the term ‘wisdom’. In my view, asking whether objective truth, a Higher Power or understanding is possible/impossible are all just different ways to frame this same fundamental question, the answer to which determines existence.
Perhaps the essence of what we’re questioning is an indeterminate sense of more - calling for attention and effort beyond that of our current conceptual structures.
You hit the [right] spot as far as I'm concerned. Wisdom is, if I understood the term correctly, a pan-discipline. It seems that wisdom is, all things considered, incomplete knowledge. That makes sense right? If one has knowledge, we would right away know how to handle any possible situation relevant to that knowledge. Wisdom wouldn't be necessary and this jibes with what you said about going to a qualified doctor instead of a wise man when we're ill.
Given that our knowledge of our world is incomplete, given that there are inherent uncertainties, wisdom is a must-have for everyone. As a proof of this undeniable fact, you yourself said, in another post,Quoting Todd Martin
When a thief seems to have been caught red-handed, he wisely concocts a fabulous story to make it seem his behavior is explained by innocent motives?
When a liar wishes to commit perjury, he chooses his words wisely in a way that their meaning is so unclear that prosecutors drop the case against him, unsure they would be able to establish wrongdoing “beyond a reasonable doubt”?
Finally, aren’t the wise assassins those who best know how to cover their tracks? how to leave no trace linking them to the crime?
Are these not to be included among the wise and knowledgeable ppl we’re considering here?
First of all, I haven't been able to establish a necessary connection between wisdom and morality except one that seems to be true given what we know about how to keep the peace in society - being morally upstanding - and the OP's express wish for a, as he put it, "...better future..." assuming that by a "...better future..." the OP wants a peaceful society.
Secondly, given that stealing and killing are detrimental to peaceful coexistence, a wise person would never engage in such activities and so how they would extricate themselves from such predicaments is moot.
I don’t think ‘simultaneously’ quite fits what I’m describing here - it seems like you’re trying to constrain this notion of ‘possibility/impossibility’ to a relative temporal position. Wisdom is not temporally located in my perspective - not like the keyboard I’m typing on, for instance.
Truth is both possible and impossible, as is reality, ‘God’, etc. These are atemporal notions of infinite potentiality (despite attempts to define them within certain value systems). How the binary is tipped one way or the other structures the relational limits of existence for the experiencing subject, as well as what lies either side of those limits.
As far as infallibility is concerned, that’s exactly what the criminal strives for, his greatest honor: he wants to commit the perfect crime. If wisdom is a pan-discipline called in when knowledge fails, how does this notion exclude him who, e.g, wants to kill someone whose life insurance money he will collect, and then go on living unsuspected and wealthy, and peacefully in his community?
I see a paradox in the way forum mods are handling the matter of emotional outbursts with their accompanying offensive behavior.
If memory serves, about 4 or 5 years ago there were cases of chat-bots registering for membership on some forum and that got the mods who were running the show worried.
Chat-bots can engage in a decent conversation and some people do get fooled enough to believe that they're talking to a real person. However, chat-bots can't do emotions - no meltdowns, no offensive remarks. Yet, the mods didn't want anything to do with them - they were hunted down and immediately banned.
Brett, the OP, expressed his anger, towards whom I have no idea, and that makes him human and not a chat-bot. By virtue of that fae should've been treated more kindly.
What I'm driving at is the mods should decide whether they want real people with flaws or chat-bots with none. :zip: Don't tell on me. :zip: :grin:
It's as if mods all over want machine-like zero emotional content in the threads. Reminds me of the Turing test. The shoe is now on the other foot, the tables have turned, humans have to be like unfeeling chat-bots to earn a place in internet forums.
I remember being "tested" by a mod whether or not I was a chat-bot. Faer comments were designed to make me react emotionally. The conversation if we could call it that ended only when I did express my emotions. :chin:
Until then his clever brash confrontational style had charmed me, but when I suddenly realized it was nothing more than a veil for pure vileness and vulgarity, I wanted to have nothing more to do with him. I never thought to “report” him, just told him what I thought of him and left it at that.
I am sympathetic, however with your feelings about forum censorship. A few years ago I was a member of one in which a certain other member was banned for expressing ideas contrary to those of the moderator. I took offense at this and began a campaign of protest, using what rhetorical skill I possessed in thinly veiled diatribe to attack the establishment. The outcome may be summed up in the old rock & roll hit, “I fought the law and the law won”.
As far as chat-bots are concerned, if I remember the Turing test correctly, he postulated that AI could be considered to be “conscious” whenever it’s conversation could not be distinguished between that of a human being. But I wonder now, many years since Turing, whether AI will not someday turn the tables on us, and itself design a test to determine whether some certain speech was produced by one of us rather than one of them!
When I was a young man AI was not even in its infancy: it was scarcely a fetus, imitating logic in board games like chess or checkers, yet I, avidly perusing computer programming, knew even then that THAT was where it was at: designing computers to mimic the human mind...
Finally (and all this is an aside from our topic, what wisdom is, to which I hope soon to return), it seems to me that, as god created man in his own image, man is creating AI in his...weren’t the first efforts at creating a computer meant to imitate the soul of man, if only initially according to his ability to “crunch numbers”, ie, merely calculate? But now the higher intellectual faculties of man are being artificially reproduced too, and I see no reason why they won’t, some soon day, be exactly imitated.
The angle is atemporal, the thought is temporal.
Quoting Todd Martin
The ‘Bannings’ thread is opened by mods to discuss particular banning events, and is usually closed again when the discussion goes off topic, which it invariably does.
When I think of an acute angle, assuming I and you both correctly conceive what an acute angle is, is that angle the same one you are thinking of whenever you think of an acute angle?
Potentially - an actual answer to this question will always be indeterminate, probabilistic or ‘fuzzy’ to some extent.
One of - yes I do, but it’s like saying ‘I’m thinking of a number between zero and ninety’. An acute angle is a consolidated concept - the potential or conditions for thinking, not an actual thought (or angle).
If you draw two lines converging to a point and say ‘that’s an acute angle’ and I look at it and agree, then I’d be confident that we’re actually thinking of the same angle - even though any measurement is still indeterminate.
But when I think of an acute angle, it is only potentially the same angle you are thinking of whenever you think of an acute angle. Note: this is not the same as possibly - it’s much more precise than that.
Not necessarily. We can and do successfully discuss the ‘properties’ of potential ‘things’ all the time. But they’re still fuzzy things lacking in certainty, if we’re honest. Not that it matters in most instances.
If we were unable to agree on properties, mind you, that may be reason to believe our conception of an ‘acute angle’ differed in its structure. Then we would look to more clearly align our thinking in potentiality by seeking agreement on the concept’s relational structure (ie. its properties or actual instances).
But we shouldn’t assume that we’re talking about an actual angle, or that any thought we may have regarding a concept, its properties or its instances would be identical to another on account of identifying the concept. Of course, we often do assume this, because it’s more efficient. But I think we should also recognise the potential for prediction error in doing so.
I think of the temporal things as the fuzzy uncertain ones, subject to the ravages of time, coming into being and perishing, like your keyboard. On the other hand, I conceive of the atemporal things as remaining unchanged throughout eternity, not subject to the vicissitudes of time.
Obviously our conceptions of temporality vs. atemporality are dramatically different. Would you please indulge me by explaining your conception of these polar opposites?
I’ll give it a shot, but it might get complicated.
Essentially, it’s a matter of perspective. When you think of temporal ‘things’ in this way, you’re doing so from your perception or experience of ‘eternity’. From this view, temporal ‘things’ are probably not so much fuzzy or uncertain as fragile and fleeting, wouldn’t you say? And when you describe atemporal ‘things’ as ‘unchanged’, it’s also from a particular perspective of ‘eternity’ - and these ‘things’ seem to be more solid by comparison.
This is a common human perception - the eternity of time viewed as the linear progression of a three-dimensional universe. So when we talk about ‘things’, we assume that we’re referring to the exact same linear progression of time.
But Einstein showed that time is not really a linear progression, but a fourth dimensional aspect. So, if we want a more accurate or inter-subjective structure of ‘eternity’ (especially if we’re going to discuss the properties of what is atemporal in relation to what is temporal), we need to restructure our understanding of time more accurately.
Carlo Rovelli’s The Order of Time presents a comprehensive process of deconstructing and then reconstructing a more accurate ‘eternal’ perspective of time according to the latest physics. The basic idea is that the world is not made up of objects, but is rather a series of interrelated events, and time is how these events change in relation to each other. And each of our ‘linear’ perspectives can be understood as a fragile and fleeting consciousness or mind-event within this inter-subjective eternity or ‘block universe’.
So now when we think of temporal or atemporal ‘things’ in a block universe, the mind-event is relating to other events, not objects. In this perspective, temporal ‘things’ exist within the mind-event as a complete and definitive event, coming into being, changing and perishing; while atemporal ‘things’ exist beyond the capacity of our particular mind-event, so we have no way of defining them as an event - they’re described in this block universe by their potential relation to temporal events. These are the properties of atemporal ‘things’: they may appear ‘unchanged’ in relation to you as a temporal event, but your perspective and mine of their qualitative relation to temporal events are neither identical nor static, as all temporal events (including us) change in relation to each other.
In mathematics, the properties of atemporal ‘things’ or concepts describe a limiting relational structure between quantitative and qualitative potential. An angle refers to a potential directional relation between the potential convergence of two potential linear relations; in an acute angle, the quantified potential (or value) of that directional relation is anywhere between 0 and 90 degrees. When we think of an acute angle, this potential structure of relations is the extent of its definition. Its temporal and spatial location is indeterminate - we assume it is eternal, but to be honest, we wouldn’t know. It only appears eternally ‘unchanged’ from our limited ‘linear’ perspective of eternity, and by assuming everyone has the same ‘linear’ perspective we simply extrude that information uniformly across the block universe.
It’s like assuming that a circle in 2D is really a cylinder in 3D, when it could very well be a sphere, a cone or an hourglass. It’s only when a different 2D measurement of what we understand to be the same object turns out to be not a circle but an oval, and another measurement is a triangle, that we attempt to position these measurements in relation to each other in a possible 3D space and start to construct a more accurate 3D image. Now consider the block universe as a 5D structure...
Why question?
No - but I realise that I should have been clearer with that statement. Atemporal does not mean eternally ‘unchanged’ - it means ‘existing or considered without relation to time’. The difference here is subtle but important.
Now we’re into a territory where our language and grammar has struggled to keep up with our knowledge. As Rovelli says, “We say that an event ‘is,’ or ‘has been,’ or ‘will be.’ We do not have a grammar adapted to say that an event ‘has been’ in relation to me but ‘is’ in relation to you.”
So, too, we have ‘is’ in a temporal sense and ‘is’ in a timeless sense, and nothing to distinguish them in our discussion, to move between the temporal and atemporal without confusion. What an atemporal thing ‘is’ in my perspective is likely to change, and it’s likely to change in your perspective, too - not because what it ‘is’ in a timeless sense is altered, but because what it is for us alters as we change, our perspective changes. What it ‘is’ in a timeless sense we can only piece together from the relation of our ever-changing perspectives as a probabilistic (fuzzy), inter-subjective conceptual structure. So it’s defined by the accuracy of our predictions.
This all seems rather pointless when we’re discussing a concept as benign as an angle. But what about a concept such as ‘family’?
When you say that my “perspective” of the atemporal (as you have avowed it is) acute angle is likely to change, I can only shake my head and laugh. What an acute angle “is” has been agreed upon by every even amateur geometrician since Euclid. It is not a perspective but a definition...except for Lobachevsky and the other non-Euclidians, whose work I am frankly unfamiliar with, other than that they postulated that two parallel lines can actually meet at some point, which has contributed productively to physics and astrophysics and Einstein’s General Theory...
Now let me ask you this: is Rovelli’s theory, that our perspectives of the temporal and atemporal “things” are only potential within the block universe, applicable to his own theory also? In other words, in espousing this theory, is he not subject, in his thought, to the same principles that he promotes in order to “deconstruct” our common conception of what is temporal and, either atemporal or aeternal?
If not, then, why not? (I ask); if so, then is his own theory not compromised by its own self?
Don’t get me wrong - just because we aren’t necessarily thinking about the same angle, doesn’t mean we can’t agree on a relational structure. I’m simply pointing out that it is a relational structure that we’re agreeing on, and aligning our thinking to in potentiality, and NOT the angle itself.
Quoting Todd Martin
The definition is a relational structure: not what an acute angle ‘is’, but what we agree on about it. What we don’t agree on is any definition of its temporal aspect. When I talk about ‘perspective’, I’m referring to our four-dimensional structure (in potentiality) with regard to this definition. Our changing perspective doesn’t matter within geometry - until we need to apply it to physics. Then we need to make sure that we’re referring to the same potential angle at the same potential spacetime location. For that we need to acknowledge how observation events change in relation to each other.
This alignment of four-dimensional perspectives in potentiality is essential to quantum physics, where we can’t refine or make adjustments to our predictions based on experience. ‘Near enough’ is not good enough here, and we must acknowledge the fuzziness of our atemporal or potential definitions.
So you can laugh at what I’m saying safe within potentiality, but the process of acting on conception (converting thinking to thought) necessarily involves an alignment of four-dimensional structures in potentiality.
1. What has been the stupidest question anyone has ever asked you?
2. Do you want to make out after this?
Whether his theory is a temporal or atemporal “event” is of no matter, for the atemporal ones, as you have said, only have significance to us in their relation to the temporal ones...and it is all a mishmash of indeterminate “potentiality”...
So, I ask again in a different way: why do you adhere to the theory of a man who acknowledges that human thought is based on uncertifiable certainties? And if all thought is so uncertain, how can we be motivated to think or act in our world?
My apologies - time gets away from me, and life gets in the way. I wasn’t avoiding the question, just lacking the time to put together a considered response.
I haven’t said that potentiality is insignificant as such, and this is not what Rovelli is saying either. Rather, it is potentiality that IS significant (it is, after all, the structure of the universe), and sometimes more so than certainty, particularly when it comes to motivation to think or act.
I should point out that Rovelli’s main body of work is in quantum field theory - so for him it’s not “all a mishmash of indeterminate potentiality” at all. There are mathematical formulae that render our quantum predictions to think or act far more precisely than the sum of human experience - based on a rational structuring of potentiality. It is these structures of potentiality that make much of our digital technology a reality, and broaden our understanding of the universe far beyond our travelling capacity. The more we acknowledge the role we play as relative observation-events in potentiality, the more we can piece together the broader relational structures of potentiality by which we are motivated to think and act in our world.
...but now I do go there, Mr. Possible, and I find myself drawn to ask you a rather personal question: what was your family life like? Describe your upbringing, if you are willing...
...if not, then I still have a less personal, more general question to ask you related to our current discussion.
That’s a very broad question, and I get the sense that you have some preconceived ideas already, but don’t want to presume. To be honest, the way I would describe my upbringing depends on the context of the discussion, and I’m not entirely sure what this context is that I’m walking into.
I could tell you that I was raised Catholic, but that my father was a truth-seeker; I could tell you that I was the eldest of four daughters born in the mid-70s, but that my father’s parenting style was modelled on the 50s, so my mother never returned to her career as an executive PA, and my older brother was the family’s real future; I could tell you that my father was a recovering alcoholic who struggled to control a violent temper, but he strived for a peaceful environment, and had a playful side that made family time a joy; or that obedience and a university education were our highest priorities, but the only compliment I remember hearing growing up was ‘beautiful’, and in adulthood my father’s burning question was always ‘are you happy?’
You say that the only compliment you heard as a little girl was that you were beautiful...which suggests to me that you felt under-appreciated for your intellect (?)...
Why was your older brother considered the “real future” of the family?
Finally, a dad who was a recovering alcoholic with a violent temper must have been difficult, if not painful, to deal with as a child; how did you and your sisters deal with it?
My achievements at school told me I was intelligent; but my father told me I was beautiful. I never felt under-appreciated, but my academic results suffered from the age of fifteen. It wasn’t so much a general under-appreciation as an acute awareness of different value systems under different circumstances, and the importance of language in shaping our perception of value and potential. Looking back now, I don’t believe my father knew how to compliment his daughters on their intelligence, just as he didn’t know how to show affection within the ‘appropriate’ boundaries of a parent. But he had a clear understanding of what not to do and say, and was guided by that.
Quoting Todd Martin
Because he carried the family name (and reputation) into eternity. Fourth generation Australian, my father believed himself descended by name from Irish kings (Ruiarc), and was on a mission to restore their reputation. Incidentally, my brother approaches 50 as the only one of us still unmarried and without children - my guess is he felt the pressure.
Quoting Todd Martin
My father was very conscious of us not having to ‘deal with it’ as much as possible. We grew up in a dry household, and whenever his temper flared he controlled it within the bounds of ‘parental discipline’, and then removed himself from the home as quickly as possible. I remember being angry that he never acknowledged or apologised for his behaviour, but he taught us all to avoid confrontation, suppress anger, and to spot the warning signs of violence from a mile away. More importantly, he broke the cycle.
This is what I think is the problem every creature on earth is faced with solving. Many different groups of people constantly disagree about how everyone should live because they think everyone else has it wrong. Since most animals don't have the mental capacity to ponder a question like this, they simply do it. They live in the best way because they already know how. Birds build a nest, hatch their chicks, teach them to fly, and those birds grow up to build a new nest and repeat the process. Wolves travel in packs and eat prey. Ants build colonies and sustain them. Simple. Humans, on the other hand, have a problem. We have free thought. We have imagination. We can ponder this question, and so the answer is ever changing. Society is always evolving. We haven't come up with a perfect way to govern. There are wars over beliefs. When humans try to figure out what's the best way to live, there's complete pandemonium. They can't agree on one thing and do it for eternity, there's constant change. Constant disagreement.
For me, the best way to live is how I want to live and it doesn't include anyone telling me how to do it. My best life is completely my decision. That may be anti establishment or whatever but when I have to live with someone's house rules or try to please someone else I'm miserable. When I get to be a loner and make my own rules, life is pure bliss. Maybe it's a selfish rationale but it's the happiest one. The only thing that could make it better and include other people is if I had a group of friends that I don't share a house with and we can go out and do activities and I can come back home and sit alone in peace. That kind of life is pure magic. I'd prefer that over the hectic rat race and the family rules and having manners and respecting the elders of the house just because they're old.
If you want to proscribe your household into the confines of your particular domicile, then, in order to follow your own rules there, you must either have no housemate, or have one willing to follow your rules.
Well even if I have to follow society's rules it's not like all of society can live in my apartment. I'm talking about private life. I hate when my private in-home life is governed by a roommate or parent. So I would be happy enough having a singular private apartment. I'm less concerned with the rules of exterior society because all it really is is being courteous to strangers and not committing crimes, and I can follow both of those rules without problems. I only have a problem if someone is breathing down my neck in what's supposed to be my privacy, having expectations about managing my personal life.
In addition I wouldn't force anyone to live by rules set by me because I would feel like I've become the villain I aim to escape. I would hate myself if I bent someone to my whim.
Not at all - and growing up I often wondered why. But as an adult I recognised that both my parents were escaping their childhood, and together they built their ‘dream’ family life, despite never really experiencing such a thing themselves (my mother suffered ongoing sexual abuse as a child from two of her brothers and the family friend/priest she turned to for help - information she revealed for the first time as an 80 year old widow following the recent #MeToo movement). They were 100% committed to this shared vision of ‘family’, and to each other.
Doesn’t that, first of all, assume that you must “get along” with your friends around a restaurant table, for example? Who will pay for the meal? What sorts of topics may be introduced for conversation, beyond the trivial ones like “what happened to me at work today”? What if one of them takes a greater interest in you, and wants to follow you home? What will you say? “No, lets go to your place”, so, if things get unpleasant, you can leave and go back to your private place?
Finally, isn’t it a great comfort in life to share a space with someone? When they start breathing down your neck, make sure you have a private place to go to. I am in my own private place right now, and that is why I can text this to you without her breathing down my neck...
But I wouldn’t replace her with loneliness just because she likes to breathe down my neck.
Okay, so, am I correct to assume that, since your mom responded to the MeToo movement, that y’all are Aborigines?...
So, it is easy for me to see how your mom wished to create the “perfect family”, and participate in that...but, what did your dad wish to escape from HIS childhood? What was his upbringing like?
1. Yes getting along with my friends, I can do that
2. We pay for our own meals
3. I can talk any topic and not get offended
4. Oh boy, that's toasty. I'd be surprised. But I'd go with the flow.
5. Nah my anxiety isn't that extreme.
6. I don't know. I haven't shared a space with someone who isn't abusive. If that changed, it would be a new experience for me.
As far as #4 goes, why would you be surprised?...
As for #6, it seems to me that anyone you might share a space with might become at least somewhat abusive at some point...after all, two ppl living together cannot agree on everything...
...but seems to me you’re speaking from fresh experience...care to adumbrate on that?
Wha? Apart from the fact that we don’t use that term anymore, no - my mother grew up in the Eurasian Catholic community in Singapore, the only daughter of a high level government official. Her family emigrated to Oz when Singapore gained independence in the 60s.
Quoting Todd Martin
My dad kept most of his childhood to himself, but I know that his own father ‘officially’ left at the end of WWII, when he was 18mths and his two sisters were maybe 3-5years old; he went to 13 different schools as his stepfather (who he always referred to as his ‘guardian’) moved around ‘following work’; he left home at 14 to live below the poverty line, and eventually turned up on his biological father’s doorstep at the age of 20. There’s a lot of what he wouldn’t say about his childhood that leads me to think he endured it rather than enjoyed it.
I have to ask what your point to all this questioning is - or are you just curious?
So, my obtuseness here does indeed betray me to be a white male...
But, having gotten to know you somewhat in this limited time and circumstance, I felt that your response to my faux pas would be primarily bewilderment...which it was, rather than indignation. I thank you for that. Now I owe it to you to answer your question: what is the point to all my questioning—and I will do so...
When we were debating over acute angles, I got the impression that you were using an opaque and abstruse terminology based on quantum theory and the postulation of extra dimensions just to escape common sense everyday recognitions. Unable to break through this screen I was reminded of something I had read before: that ppl who have suffered crises in their youth, whether divorce of their parents or sexual abuse or death of a loved one, etc, tend to adhere to one of two extremes: they either cling to some or other absolute and irrefutable view of the cosmos, or they become attached to theories that tend to make everything indeterminate...
It should be obvious in which camp I suspected you to be, and that is the reason for me asking these questions...though I must confess that, from what I have learned, you are a much more complex subject for analysis than I would ever have suspected.
Finally, my apologies—and I hope that my offense is seen as a peccadillo, not as a crime.
No offence taken, at all. I figured it was a misunderstanding of the hashtag.
Quoting Todd Martin
I’ve found that people usually are, although most don’t want to be. They want to be perceived a particular way, to be understood without having to explain themselves, and to be valued on first impressions. So they construct a conceptual identity, and then strive to emulate it. But that’s not how I roll.
...and I understand, from something I saw while walking through another corner of this forum, that you are the mother of a few children yourself (?): what I want to ask you is, how much has your parents’ longing to have the “perfect family” affected the way you parent your own children? either in style or content?
I would suspect that, as far as content goes, you don’t adhere to your father’s 50ish-worldview, but, as far as style is concerned, I suspect you want your children to be as happy as they can possibly be, mirroring your father’s “burning question” to you: “are you happy?”...
...would that be an accurate assessment?
I don’t subscribe to an ongoing state of ‘happiness’ as the cure-all - I think it’s a false ambition, but it’s also a difficult one to let go of as a parent. I think we experience the most peace, love and joy from our life overall when we acknowledge that suffering in some form is a necessary aspect of living. I’ve raised my children to understand that pain, humility, lack and loss are part of our ongoing relationship with the world: we can negotiate the structure of suffering in our experience through our level of awareness, connection and collaboration - but not its necessity.
Forgive me if it is not natural for me to draw the conclusion that the “host of fears” your mother instilled in you as a child must have sprung from her abuse at the hands of those whom a child most obviously can be expected to trust...yet you, as a child or even as a young adult, did not know the source of those fears. I would like to learn, if you are willing, how those fears were transmitted to you, how they manifested themselves in your soul and affected your behavior, and how you were able to overcome them.
Finally, I would be very interested to learn what impact your mother’s revelation, at the ripe old age of 80, had on you children, and the family, and it’s friends, in general. And how could she have kept it a secret for so long?...or did she? Did anyone else other than the participants know?
Yes, I do have a tendency to follow tangents in threads, and if the mods find this a problem, I’d be okay with separating out our discussion, or even continuing with PMs - just say the word....
Quoting Todd Martin
Why must it be substantial and lasting, though? If an ongoing state of happiness is ‘impossible’, then so, too, I would argue, is a ‘substantial and lasting’ foundation to reality. It’s an ‘impossibility’ we cannot rule out, at least - to do so would be ignorance.
Quoting Todd Martin
No, I wouldn’t expect you to draw that conclusion from the information I’ve given. And it certainly wasn’t my mother’s intention to pass on her fears. But as a young girl in a limited social circle (my parents had no active social life - they kept to themselves, we attended church on Sundays, were driven to and from school and played no after-school or weekend sports), I learned mostly from my father how to see the world, and mostly from mother (a 50s-style housewife with a habit of saying ‘wait until your father gets home’) how to respond to it. As an example, my experience of ‘the talk’ was being directed to a set of science and medical encyclopaedias, supplemented in later years by my mother repeatedly using the word ‘abstain’.
So I grew up yearning to see the world but not to experience it, whereas I watched my brother experience the world without fear, and see so much more of it as a consequence - more than my father allowed himself to see. From about 16, I decided that I needed to look more closely at the risks I wasn’t taking, and ask myself reasonably, why not? So I began to take carefully calculated risks - to put myself in situations that helped me distinguish between the real danger, what I feared and what I avoided. Little things, like talking to strangers, attracting attention, learning to swim, the dark...
Quoting Todd Martin
My mother never told anyone after her mistake of confiding in the priest - not even my father. The world doesn’t really want to know these kinds of secrets. As long as you can keep it under wraps, not let it affect your capacity to ‘act normal’, they’d prefer not to know. She only told her children recently because she was aware that it had been a factor in her emotional distance as a parent, and she wanted us to understand before it was too late. For me, it helped everything else make sense, allowed me to forgive her and to admire her strength of character where I had previously thought she was weak. It also put other events into perspective - not least that my own brother had taken liberties with me as a young girl that greatly impacted my relationships, but were so, so minor by comparison.
As an aside, I’m inclined to believe that sexual abuse and misconduct has been more prevalent than we like to think - to the point where what we culturally consider to be ‘normal’ sexual relations have been distorted by it. I’m no longer surprised at the number of friends and family (from apparently unremarkable suburban homes) who have revealed an experience of sexual or physical abuse of some kind, and not all of them women. It’s another calculated risk my talking about it here, anonymously, but I think it’s important that we find ways to discuss its relevance in how we relate to each other.
When I was in sixth grade my teacher was one Ms. Conrad, an attractive young auburn-haired woman on whom I developed a crush. This was the year the educational authorities had decreed that, starting in sixth grade, boys and girls were to be instructed in sex.
So, one day Ms. Conrad put the anatomical charts up on the board revealing the cross-sectional male and female genitalia, and described to us that the sperm was produced here, and the egg there, and that their combination ultimately resulted in a baby, etc.
Now, I had never been been inducted by my own parents into “the talk”, so I knew next to nothing about sex. For one thing, I was way too young: it would be another 5 or 6 yrs before I developed into a young man (which was traumatic for me, being such a late bloomer and watching my schoolmates grow hairs where I couldn’t, for example). But my curiosity was fully developed even at age eleven...
...so I raised my hand, and Ms. Conrad pointed to me, “Yes, Todd?”, and I asked, “Ms. Conrad, but how does the sperm get to the egg?”...
...you might imagine the bedlam that erupted among my classmates. There was a chorus of laughter, followed by whispers among groups of girls who laughed and smiled and glanced at me. Barry Draughn, a country boy who sat directly behind me, poked me in the back: “Todd, haven’t you ever seen chickens do it?”
But worst of all was Ms. Conrad’s reply: “You’ll just have to ask your parents,” she said with a smile.
I had a lot more to respond to your post, but I have taken all my time responding to what “the talk” reminded me of, so I will answer more fully later. I hope this reminiscence entertained you.