AJJ

I haven’t read that book, but my thinking is influenced by the kinds of things I’ve heard him say in the discussions I’ve listened to, which fit with ...

Is it? They don’t go in circles like a clock does; they keep ascending from 0 and left alone they never go back to the beginning.

You’re right, but does the contradiction make impossible an infinite past or just an infinite stopwatch? I’d say the latter, since a stopwatch doesn’t...

Earlier in the thread I gave this response to the clock example: It strikes me that in neither case (the planets and the clock) is there a logical pro...

I’m not sure I’d call it absurd, because what you’re identifying again is simply that there isn’t a total to be added to, which given an infinite past...

Speed one up all you like. I’m saying talk of them doing the same number of orbits assumes finitude - if they’ve been going forever there is no total ...

Talk of totals assumes finitude - to say the planets total the same number of orbits you need finite numbers to compare; instead it seems right to say...

Sure

Necessity is an explanation you can assert for an infinite universe. Brute contingency is something you can assert for a universe from nothing. Both e...

I’ve taken infinite to mean it’s always existed. Always existed goes with necessity. Came from nothing goes with brute contingency.

It isn’t the workings of the universe I’m talking about, but the possible reasons why it exists (which encompass the two possibilities mentioned in th...

Dissatisfaction

I don’t mind those explanations; I was just preempting others’ feelings towards them.

I called the hard rock either necessity (something that can’t not exist) or a brute contingency (something that might not have existed but it does and...

I’m not sure where we’re disagreeing now. I don’t particularly think that there’s a reality we can’t “reach”.

Yeah, that’s what happens when something is referred to as necessary. It can’t not exist and the explanation stops there; if you give any further expl...

This is basically what I’m getting at, except that at some point you just can’t go any further, and if you did you’d be going forever. For what it’s w...

To say something is necessary (it can’t not exist) is an explanation - it’s the same one that gets applied to God.

Concerning just the foundation of being I agree with Oppy that God isn’t any more illuminating as an explanation than asserting that there’s some nece...

Graham Oppy (philosopher of religion) makes the point that whatever world view you hold you always wind up with something brute at the foundation of i...

It’s necessarily impossible to say what time it would show, precisely because it’s an infinite clock. If you saw it and it read 12 o’clock then the ex...

To say existence is necessary rules out any further explanation—if something can’t not exist then that just is the explanation for its existence. Once...

I expect desire is going to be characterised as being itself a kind of thought. Perhaps it’s right to say that all thoughts generate actions unless pr...

What would you say accounts for some thoughts generating actions and others not?

I think this is the problem, and it’s even in the language you’ve used: our thoughts might be given to us, but our “deliberate actions” come from us. ...

You be you.

You’re agreeing with and providing support for rhetoric spoken by Mussolini.

Liberty and individual growth in behalf of the state. Freedom a concession of the state. A “Fascist concept of liberty”. It isn’t that broad.

It’s not that broad.

The Mussolini quote describes your own view. Paxton’s book emphasises a feature of fascism that we’re finding in rhetoric such as yours.

They are now, because they offered it to us and you accepted.

Now it’s you. Read the Mussolini quote; read Robert Paxton’s book; your politics appear unambiguously to be fascist.

You’re a fascist, Harry.

^ I think this is a home run. The same people who use “fascism” as a catch-all term for everything bad have straightforwardly adopted it as their poli...

Sure, given the way you describe your view here I have some sympathy for it.

Keeping with the example of creationism, someone might simply choose to believe this because it comes with a community and a sense of purpose; people ...

If you hand students a methodology that when followed brings them to the conclusion that creationism is wrong and mark them on how well they follow th...

What you’re saying here seems incongruous, like you’re advocating first *against* and then *for* having a particular methodology for arriving at our b...

I wonder if this would backfire. Learning how to think, in my experience, comes from realising that an opinion you’ve held - one that was important to...

I didn’t enjoy the monologues in The Fountainhead. I’ve heard Rand’s books described as pulp fiction and I expect that characterises them quite well (...

I don’t actually like Roark, or Dominique or Wynand. I think the rape scene is perverse and I find the dialog between the three of them sickly. Henry ...

I haven’t read the formalised version of her philosophy, but I can accept what I’ve heard about it not being very good based on some of the stuff she ...

Good one! Now try understanding the importance of that realisation (which you of course won’t).

Err... right. I’ll just leave it with you. And remember: your opinions are not facts.

“But textbooks and history! Subject matter and experts! Durrrrr!”

Very convincing. Coercion doesn’t require mandates. Limiting movement and prohibiting gatherings constitute a stay at home order. Your opinions are no...

So easy you got it wrong.

“Me smart, you dumb.” We’ve established that your opinions are just that: opinions; not facts. Do you think people should be confined to their homes a...

So it appears you have to accept that according to their nature these models aren’t to be relied on. To reiterate: this isn’t “I’m right” vs “No, you’...

Well then.