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TheWillowOfDarkness

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The "useful fiction" argument doesn't make sense in the way it's often termed. For physics, the important question is its descriptive power. What make...
January 12, 2017 at 01:53
But that's the problem. The only way to account for the measurement ( including the device) is through describing it. This preculdes certain predictio...
January 11, 2017 at 10:24
The problem is it doesn't work. Take out the measuring device and one is talking about a different interaction in the world. It is no longer a state w...
January 11, 2017 at 07:12
The point it's equivalent in the context of observation and description. We can't get past uncertainty to give a description of the (pre)determined fu...
January 09, 2017 at 02:40
The issue is that basically claims non-locality. If our problem is an inability to locate particles, then our local space is defined by something else...
January 08, 2017 at 22:28
To me that reads more like a question of ignoring the behaviour or not raising it, rather than it being beyond discovery. Something like a society whi...
January 08, 2017 at 22:06
I'm not surprised. I am defending the identity of the celibate and sexually restrained. Alas, you do not extend the same curtesy when I point out your...
January 08, 2017 at 00:51
"Need" tends to be understood in a sense of human destiny, as if all human are programmed to perform sex by merely existing. It forms sort of an image...
January 07, 2017 at 23:20
On the contrary, it demonstrates an understanding of the eternal, as far as the human body and mind goes. Spinoza's point is the eternal is an express...
January 06, 2017 at 20:50
Indeed-- they are not crisp enough in their thoughts. The doubter doesn't stick to the particular thoughts, feelings and actions they are meant to und...
January 06, 2017 at 00:51
That's a contradiction. The spiritual reality is defined by how it is not vague at all. "Faith" is in knowing exactly what to practice and think-- a b...
January 06, 2017 at 00:29
It's not a contradiction. People don't come to act morally by being outside the world. They act within it. Any instance of changing from immoral to mo...
January 03, 2017 at 22:17
Indeed. Those are unethical acts and outcomes of the world. Horror, tragedy and immorality, an eternal expressed by the world. Not something to transc...
January 03, 2017 at 22:08
God is immanent for Spinoza. Not a transcendent force that makes the world meaningful or produces an escape from the meaningless world, but an express...
January 03, 2017 at 21:42
They don't need to be rationalised. The "higher" is already expressed (always too, given they are eternal truth of ethics) in the world. "Transcendent...
January 03, 2017 at 04:35
Realism requires it. Without it, objects wouldn't be anything without us thinking about them. Though, this doesn't mean there isn't a way we think abo...
January 02, 2017 at 22:04
Which is why he has an expectation of unity. Rather than treat and accept the world as separated, he tries to pull it back together into unity, as is ...
January 02, 2017 at 00:04
It’s an incoherence. What you are describing understands God to be an existing actor. This is the logic of “miracles.” The existing actor, all powerfu...
January 01, 2017 at 23:28
Yes. You suggested you might be wrong about the empirical not amount to the ethical. This is not true. It not possible of empirical description to be ...
January 01, 2017 at 21:24
Any world. To claim that empirical states amount to an ethical value is logical incoherent-- "is" is not "ought," "presence" is not "value."
January 01, 2017 at 21:21
It is when there's no God doing healing. I'm referring to the misuse of "possibility" to then claim it might still be God who did the healing. The sup...
January 01, 2017 at 01:40
It's not a logical possibility. Ethics judgement is not made on the basis of empirical states. It's a question of a logical position which has various...
January 01, 2017 at 01:32
Only if you are accepting the incoherent argument that contradictions are possible. To someone who is thinking in terms of logic, "anything and everyt...
January 01, 2017 at 01:24
As states of the world, something the world does, the events classed under both are possible-- a entity that cures disease, creates life, hurls lighti...
January 01, 2017 at 01:20
Which is true-- one can only describe a possible outcome if it is a possible. This is not a "circular" argument. One is not "deriving" that a "possibl...
January 01, 2017 at 01:08
That question is based on a logic error. It assumes that "anything is possible" can include contradictions. By the definition of contradiction, this i...
January 01, 2017 at 00:57
It's worse than circular. It would be incoherent-- the logic expression of non-contradiction entails that contradictions aren't possible. The supposed...
January 01, 2017 at 00:49
People will revere ignorance if it let's them be the saviour of the world. Without those mistakes, their work couldn't be passed off as the Jesus of p...
December 30, 2016 at 23:35
It wasn't your point. You were more or less trying to use metaphysics to take out (the necessity) of radical contingency. In your argument, you treate...
December 30, 2016 at 23:20
Not quite. The point about possible worlds is they do not exist. Rather than a state of the world, they are a logic truth, necessary and unaffected by...
December 30, 2016 at 23:01
All relationships end in the sense of the world. Our lives are not eternal. Life-long love in the sense is only transfinite— a continuing series of fi...
December 30, 2016 at 22:36
It's eternal. The expression of the one night when they were meant to have sex doesn't die because they don't continue a sexual relationship. Desire f...
December 29, 2016 at 22:46
For those who don't care about the other person, sure. This is not always the case. Sometimes casual sex is a mutual expression of a a short term desi...
December 29, 2016 at 22:15
The issue is more that it's frequently immoral to obtain pleasure because sex involves and interaction between two (or more) people. Without love (and...
December 29, 2016 at 21:59
The material universe which expresses meaning and value. A reality in which God is not a foundation of the world or meaning, but rather an expression ...
December 28, 2016 at 13:20
More like "the truth (whatever that might be)" is irrelevant. Many objective facts cannot be changed at all. This, however, doesn't mean they are rele...
December 28, 2016 at 12:27
It's always intellectual though, for ethics is the reason that matters. For the theist, the God without the political is not God. If God is merely rhe...
December 28, 2016 at 11:29
I think that's many atheists reason for rejecting God, but then I think that make sense. I mean what is God without the "traditionalist" elements? If ...
December 28, 2016 at 00:21
I don't think they are-- "tradition" more or less means "values and behaviour" that ought to be handed down through generations. Atheists and/or "non-...
December 27, 2016 at 22:58
Only to the eliminativists who equate existence with real. Non-eliminative materialists have no such issues. Where logic is recognised as real in the ...
December 27, 2016 at 02:29
That's a contradiction: a particle does not pre-exist itself such that it's there with a "nature" that determines its own form. For sure. Such a machi...
December 27, 2016 at 00:13
That's pre-determinism-- not only are is there such gas, but no other outcome was possible. Or in other words, there are no worlds in which gas could ...
December 27, 2016 at 00:00
Second law of thermodynamics is partly metaphysical. The arrow of time isn't just a distinction of one state of existence from another, but a identifi...
December 26, 2016 at 23:26
The gas laws model describe interactions of gas as we have observed. In effect, it does model interactions of individual particles, just only to a spe...
December 26, 2016 at 23:08
Sometimes. Here "faith" (in the sense of an argument for a belief, as opposed a description of a belief) is a about a little bit more than that. It do...
December 24, 2016 at 21:14
Fruits which are irrelevant to the faith argument. It doesn't mention them. It can't, for that would take knowledge. Instead of arguing what is true (...
December 24, 2016 at 00:02
To you, as you have refused to marry her. But that's your action, not her loyalty to her partner. In the context of belief in God, this would merely m...
December 23, 2016 at 23:52
Which is why it's rehtorical-- faith is convincing you to marry her. It has nothing to do with with truth, nothing to do with describing her or her be...
December 23, 2016 at 23:45
That's precisely why faith acts as a rehtorical enforcer. The world anyone hopes for gets attached to faith, creating a situation where people think f...
December 23, 2016 at 23:36
I do: that's why it merely rehtorical. In faith, one hopes for God, for an unknown to turn out how they wish. In terms of an argument, it like saying:...
December 23, 2016 at 23:14