TheMadFool

Thanks! Becoming Entangled In Thought. Sounds painful! :chin:

:up: :ok:

I feel sunyata is deeply connected to the idea of existence. It's about nonexistence to be precise and in that there's self-denial (anatta). There's t...

:smile: :up: :ok: Well, if you allow me to go Mahayana on you, I'd say a human life, ceteris paribus, is supposed to provide us the best conditions fo...

Reduces suffering is more to my taste.

Slaves are human and yet we treated them like robots!

I see. For me, it's like :point: https://youtu.be/ZBAijg5Betw

No saying, no knowing! Yes, precisely what I believe is Wittgenstein's position vis-à-vis epistemology (knowledge) which he equates with a person's wo...

:up: Thanks a ton! A drive-by of the relevant Wikipedia pages suggests to me that what sunyata means can't be understood until we grasp what the void ...

You're equivocating. You know that right?

1. Most people would want x 2. Y is a person Ergo, 3. Y would want x It's not possible to refute this argument. It's an inductive argument and dependi...

Yes, a possibility but I accept arguments that dismiss possibilities only if it's based on probability.

:rofl: Don't get upset! :up: :ok: By the way, you need to take opposition more positively.

You're contradicting yourself. Language = saying. This doesn't make sense. Saying = Doing. Disambiguate please.

Please do! Boy, do I have a lot to kvetch about.

Now I know why I'm feeling a little different today! :lol:

It's not such a big step to go from being wary of conmen and false friends to entertain the possibility of Deus deceptor (Descartes).

The peace of Westphalia (1648) was a watershed event for Human Nature. Pre-statistics, we couldn't tell precisely whether there was such a thing as Hu...

Excelente! There must be a reason to doubt. Have you never been fooled? I've been, countless times, in the most humiliating ways possible. Worst of al...

Indeed, anything meta necessarily involves essence. Thus, I believe, Wittgenstein's unwillingness to discuss such matters. Pando (Tree) We have to dig...

What puzzles me about these various definitions is "self-delusion or dreamy confusion" and "a belief without sound basis" appear alongside God, Deity,...

The expressive power of language few can tap into. Rhetoric? An orator can touch the hearts of a hundred thousand people with one speech. Not an orato...

I understand. This is what I wished to convey. There are two parts to this issue: 1. Sometimes there's agreement on the oughts e.g. theistic morality,...

That's what I suspected but that means emptiness/sunyata isn't nothing, right? For if it were, sunyata is as valuless as nothing and my argument makes...

:zip:

Thanks! :up: What do you suppose are the determinants of value? I'm running with the way I view emptiness as not necessarily a metaphysical concept bu...

I see morality as a reaction to how things were/are. We're dissatisfied (dukkha) with the status quo and in that sense it's objective - there are cert...

CSE + awareness of CSE = consciousness Conscious state = The something CSE is about. So a dog is a conscious state. The mental image of the dog is a C...

It's ok. Never mind!

Mighty interesting, once you compare the above to, Lao Tzu seems to be saying that there are things you can know but can't put into words. Wittgenstei...

The Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes the rules.

:brow:

But that's still use - as an object of decoration! So, called trophy wives come to mind! Good point but the Buddha's teachings were to prove that ever...

del

Skepticism is not contradictory - "...defend both sides..." All it states is given a proposition p, it can't be known whether p or ~p. In other words,...

:up: :ok:

@"Wayfarer" Hey unenlightened. I want to run something by you if you don't mind. I've been thinking about value recently and here's what I think is ha...

Would a professional writer have done better - vocabulary, style, etc. - if you'd asked faer to write your post for you?

I didn't have to read the whole text to realize that a good writer was at work. Kudos to you! I suppose you meant to get some feedback on the quality ...

Lemme guess

Well, you have a point but the error in judgment you commit is that now you've swung to the other extreme - to believing in subjectivity. This is not ...

I see no difference between what you say here and what Descartes and Gilbert Harman are implying with their thought experiments. The idea is to rattle...

You deserve an award for this, you know. All I can offer you is a :up: and :clap: In the educational setting in which I grew up, children were not tau...

It appears both, oddly, amount to the same thing! :chin:

That reminds me of wisdom of the crowd and also a forum member, can't recall faer name though! My memory is kaput!

The brain in a vat is simply Descartes' deus deceptor given a modern sci-fi makeover. The point seems to be everything could be an illusion. In Descar...

I'm impressed 180 Proof. Do you ever waste time? Rhetorical question! Anyway, I'm particularly interested in negative utilitarianism because of one si...

Agreed! Evil is subtlety taken to stratospheric heights. You won't see it until it's too late.

From what I could glean from Wikipedia, a constructible set is one which can be, well, constructed via set theoretic operations (intersection, complem...

Crème de la crème problem: Best is not enough. Best of the best, you have a chance of...not winning the Nobel Prize but only getting shortlisted. Thos...