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Bodhi of Ankou
*alternate opinion blocks path*


Registered: 06/02/09
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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: Space Monkey]
#23005892 - 03/14/16 01:04 PM (7 years, 10 months ago) |
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Quote:
Space Monkey said: This individual I think illustrates the problems involved in neo-atheism. He says that Richard Dawkins "makes him ashamed to be an atheist", because his arguments are so simple that "he would fail a intro to religious philosophy" class. Basically, there is a rich intellectual history in theology, and neo-atheism does itself a disservice by neglecting to engage in argument against this tradition that is worthy of the questions involved.
Questions like "who caused the first cause" are questions that Dawkins treats as though religious scholars never bothered to think of them ... which is idiotic, some of the deepest philosophers in history wrestled long and hard with those questions, and put out some pretty compelling and powerful answers.
Not necessarily right answers - but answers to be reckoned with, which the neo-atheist movement does not do. Neo-atheism is all too often anti-intellectual, for all it's claims to intellectual clarity. Nietzsche, David Hume - these guys put forth some stunning answers to why one should not believe in religion (cause and effect as metaphysical for example - wrap your head around that sometime!). Richard Dawkins and people of his ilk don't really match up. That is the problem with neo-atheism. It's usually not good at intellectual engagement, as many atheists in the past were.
Cause and effect? What about quantum entanglement and superposition?
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Kurt
Thinker, blinker, writer, typer.

Registered: 11/26/14
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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: Bodhi of Ankou]
#23006086 - 03/14/16 02:08 PM (7 years, 10 months ago) |
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I'd observe that the philosophers the previous poster generally referred to (Hume and Nietzsche) spoke of an empirical and historical background mainly conditioning how we form an understanding of nature. They were philosophers, not physical theorists.
Why would you propose a scientific theory to justify a rationale (one way or another) that has nothing to do with the subject matter? Incidentally that is what Richard Dawkins and his ilk - advocates of scientism - are complaining about, if not so effectively as epistemologists or philosophers.
The novel, theory laden physical science you suggest probably does not suggest anything one way or the another to do with the probability of a God's existence. I think there has been an increasing irrelavence of the notion as a whole in western culture, (god is dead), and that relates to science, but I wouldn't pretend that this is a particular argument of physical theory. Seems like a misunderstanding.
Apparently novel theory-laden physics may suggest a new opening of "interpretation" of the universe, that people will use to justify their cultural cosmological assumptions. It seems to me respectively, these cultural cosmological assumptions were not posed hypothetically, or in any native resemblence of these physicist's subject matters at all in the first place, so I wonder about this. Well I don't really.
It's just my rhetorical expression here, or two cents...I definitely don't claim to know what the "rational position" is, and I think the suggestion of the OP was posed pretty vaguely, naively, and in some misunderstanding of what rationalism really is to western philosophy (for instance, in how it actually relates to empirical pursuits.) That doesn't make apologetics any better off though... Anyway, carry on.
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Bodhi of Ankou
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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: Kurt] 1
#23006481 - 03/14/16 04:23 PM (7 years, 10 months ago) |
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Quantum entanglement is repeatable and experimentally proven. The biggest hangup I find people have when it comes to a soul is the connection issue. Now I can tell by your manner of speaking that you find the term quantum being used in this context some repulsive new age bullshit to be avoided at all costs but it does prove, conclusively that theres some sort of hyperconnection between things and locality has exceptions. I personally think if a soul had a gateway thats what it would be based on. Of course thats just a belief and not to be taken critically. Just as atheists stance of considering consciousness to be something plainly explainable is nothing more than a belief. Something none of them can back up.
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Space Monkey
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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: Bodhi of Ankou] 1
#23007088 - 03/14/16 07:30 PM (7 years, 10 months ago) |
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I find Wittgenstein framed the feeling of "the mystical" quite well. He said that the mystical was the feeling of wonder at the world's being at all. He said this was a feeling that didn't make sense on a logical level because wondering is something which is usually comparative (one "wonders" at the size of a dog for example because there are smaller dogs in general). One cannot compare the bare fact of being with anything else, being is impossible to think outside of. He said that this was a case of the soul throwing itself against the bars of its cage ... an action he said that on his life, he would not disrespect. This throwing oneself against the bars of language is where things like ethics are derived - normative value does not have a place in a logical framework of language, because all propositions have equal value in logic.
I think that's an accurate reading of where the human impulse to mysticism/religion comes from, really. Wittgenstein said whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent. I like to think it is a reverent silence.
I don't really think about science when I think about these matters. I don't summon religions to mind when thinking of them either. Theologians perhaps (who are often in dialogue across religions), but not particular religions. I think the question of being is simply one that has the universal capacity to strike a being who can reflect on questions at all.
Edited by Space Monkey (03/14/16 07:34 PM)
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DividedQuantum
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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: Space Monkey]
#23007144 - 03/14/16 07:45 PM (7 years, 10 months ago) |
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Nice post.
-------------------- Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici
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Bodhi of Ankou
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Registered: 06/02/09
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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: Space Monkey]
#23007361 - 03/14/16 08:40 PM (7 years, 10 months ago) |
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I think quite the opposite actually, wondering about your own being, wondering about where the roots of this world lie. Its whats driven us forward. Its whats compelled us to discover and evolve. Its whats led to the creation and deeping of the sciences and our understanding of the world around us. Why stop at the grandest question of them all. What are we? To that question, silence will bring you no answers.
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Space Monkey
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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: Bodhi of Ankou]
#23007556 - 03/14/16 09:41 PM (7 years, 10 months ago) |
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Well yes, but that's the concern with ontics (particular manifestation of being), not fundamental ontology as Heidegger would put, the concern with the being-ness of being (which is inseparable from ontics, but is nonetheless a question). Being-ness itself I think is the question.
Wittgenstein was mainly concerned with analysis of what our language is capable of. We can't think outside the boundary of language (at least in logical terms), but we can demarcate a boundary by analyzing our language nonetheless. Throwing oneself against that boundary, and doing things like making ethical claims is something Wittgenstein respected deeply though.
I think he was mainly concerned with the state of philosophy and it's many metaphysical propositions, which he saw as mostly logically nonsensical. It may be you cannot speak of certain things and must therefore remain silent of them, but only in a certain sense, like in the sense of making metaphysical propositions.
Basically pointing toward an ineffable reality, but one we can't reduce to language. Our attempt to know if not speak this reality might bring us closer to it though, perhaps.
There are many interpretations of Wittgenstein, this is only my novice reading of him. Many think he meant things like the mystical are simply mumbo-jumbo. Based on a lecture he gave on ethics though, I disagree with that reading.
Edited by Space Monkey (03/14/16 09:44 PM)
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Bodhi of Ankou
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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: Space Monkey]
#23007677 - 03/14/16 10:12 PM (7 years, 10 months ago) |
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Ah, my question is directed at the fundamental state of being. Conciousness itself is ineffable, life cannot be explained. Yet I dont need to go through the length of this thread to know 3,000 of the 3,246 posts in this thread are people claiming to know whats going on. In that sense of staying silent, I think more people need to take his advice.
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Loaded Shaman
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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: Space Monkey]
#23008328 - 03/15/16 03:08 AM (7 years, 10 months ago) |
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Quote:
Space Monkey said: I find Wittgenstein framed the feeling of "the mystical" quite well. He said that the mystical was the feeling of wonder at the world's being at all. He said this was a feeling that didn't make sense on a logical level because wondering is something which is usually comparative (one "wonders" at the size of a dog for example because there are smaller dogs in general). One cannot compare the bare fact of being with anything else, being is impossible to think outside of. He said that this was a case of the soul throwing itself against the bars of its cage ... an action he said that on his life, he would not disrespect. This throwing oneself against the bars of language is where things like ethics are derived - normative value does not have a place in a logical framework of language, because all propositions have equal value in logic.
I think that's an accurate reading of where the human impulse to mysticism/religion comes from, really. Wittgenstein said whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent. I like to think it is a reverent silence.
I don't really think about science when I think about these matters. I don't summon religions to mind when thinking of them either. Theologians perhaps (who are often in dialogue across religions), but not particular religions. I think the question of being is simply one that has the universal capacity to strike a being who can reflect on questions at all.
10/10 post.
Quote:
Space Monkey said: Well yes, but that's the concern with ontics (particular manifestation of being), not fundamental ontology as Heidegger would put, the concern with the being-ness of being (which is inseparable from ontics, but is nonetheless a question). Being-ness itself I think is the question.
Wittgenstein was mainly concerned with analysis of what our language is capable of. We can't think outside the boundary of language (at least in logical terms), but we can demarcate a boundary by analyzing our language nonetheless. Throwing oneself against that boundary, and doing things like making ethical claims is something Wittgenstein respected deeply though.
I think he was mainly concerned with the state of philosophy and it's many metaphysical propositions, which he saw as mostly logically nonsensical. It may be you cannot speak of certain things and must therefore remain silent of them, but only in a certain sense, like in the sense of making metaphysical propositions.
Basically pointing toward an ineffable reality, but one we can't reduce to language. Our attempt to know if not speak this reality might bring us closer to it though, perhaps.
There are many interpretations of Wittgenstein, this is only my novice reading of him. Many think he meant things like the mystical are simply mumbo-jumbo. Based on a lecture he gave on ethics though, I disagree with that reading.
Again, spot on.
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  "Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance." — Confucius
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Kurt
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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: Loaded Shaman]
#23009008 - 03/15/16 10:43 AM (7 years, 10 months ago) |
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Bodhi of Ankou said: Quantum entanglement is repeatable and experimentally proven. The biggest hangup I find people have when it comes to a soul is the connection issue. Now I can tell by your manner of speaking that you find the term quantum being used in this context some repulsive new age bullshit to be avoided at all costs but it does prove, conclusively that theres some sort of hyperconnection between things and locality has exceptions. I personally think if a soul had a gateway thats what it would be based on. Of course thats just a belief and not to be taken critically. Just as atheists stance of considering consciousness to be something plainly explainable is nothing more than a belief. Something none of them can back up.
I'd consider myself a pragmatic holist. I think the oppositions set up between realism and idealism are pretty narrow, neither side suggests anything manifestly conclusive.
Anyway, take it all with a grain of salt... I am not here for any bone of contention.
I think it makes the most sense to speak about scientific theory today in a non-reductive, and yet critical sense. Generally it seems about time to start recognizing philosophy of science, rather than just an institution of science riding abrasively on culture.
People who are seeking to ground a theory are of course free within their practical means to seek out to confirm whatever speculative possibility they choose to. Theory is theory. If it were something else, we'd call it something else. Yet theory suggests some background or context for being clarified and grounded at least in a conditional way.
Generally, I think it is possible to guide theoretical speculation conservatively and realistically, in relative degrees. It is indispensible today to recognize this. In theory there will be some extention to philosophical speculation.
For instance, I'd observe that between the initial claims of philosophers, and as well by tendency, a theory of consciousness has tended to be correlated with theory in general for so long, it is thought to be some purely metaphysical concept riding above physical world. I think there is room to critique this notion of pure consciousness, or soul.
For example, I'd say a yogi's concept of consciousness is grounded in a set of embodied practices. It is mainly a notion that a mind (citta) operates in its more subtle fluctuations (vritti), or grosser imprinting (samskara), as observed in a stream of consciousness (yoga/meditation) that westerners cannot ultimately grok or reconcile, outside of this being a metaphysical proposition. Ultimately cosmology is perhaps indeed there to be considered, but I would say not so much a proposition, but an embodied practice. "Karma" for instance, broadly means talking about conditionality of "work" (that would probably be the literal translation, but obviously it goes untranslated for good reason). "Karma" (or work) generally acknowledges some relation of human beings' meditative involvement, with the world. It is also a notion of causality, and to the westerner, you notice it is immediately considered something to do with cosmology and metaphysics. Ultimately dialogue here does not tend to meet. I think what it would be appropriate to say, is indic philosophers are concerned with "psychological” conditioning, for whatever this is worth to the logic of a westerner.
Yet the actual difference here, would be at face value, that the indic philosopher finds a mind (citta) to be a component of nature, within its fluctuation and vibrating, or conditionality, in ways which a westerner (under the conception of Descartes, for instance) cannot under his certain assumptions accept. The westerner immediately and by conceptual definition, appropriates his idea of mind as a metaphysical entity, riding along. Comparably, citta (mind) to the indic philosopher is not "spirit" (purusa) but an observed aspect conditioned by nature. The eastern cosmology and metaphysics, which come along with "psychology" arise intimately out of a practically engaged and embodied meditation.
So what you might call either the exoticism of such a notion, or its senselessness, even though "new age" by and large does generally demonstrate a stereotype, it also stands for some issues regarding the dialogue between cultures with broadly different philosophical assumptions. The westerner is centered in a certain kind of logic, and well, where it may wish to walk or leap off the cliff in an act of faith. That is partly what engenders this meaning. Things are generally more complex. The yogi indeed finds a basis of epistemology, or bases of right knowledge (pramāna) to be ultimately a fluctuation of the mind, and not the primary concern, within the practical means of meditation, (meditation is seeking to cease fluctuations, not gain or prove knowledge) and that could be seen in context. So could the usual invocation of cosmology. And I would speak from experience, there are certainly some issues, not just in justifying a philosophical assumption, from one culture to another but for instance in practical conjecture on human physiological and mental health. Following empirical studies on yoga, for instance (which I routinely do) leaves a lot to be desired, and yet it comes down to a broadly equivocal dialogue, and the best way of dealing with this, is being broad and relative.
On a notion of consciousness, I'd say western humanity could ground its speculations organically in biology. The conditionality of a "theory" in biology (for instance, Darwinian theory), is quite apprehendable at the same time, as it is theoretical. This speaks to the possibility of is meant by theory in context.
Much of what was portioned off as a pure, removed concept of "human consciousness" (for instance by obligatory conceptual distinctions of "nature and nurture", the tabula rasa or "clean slate" of mind) is eroding. Empirically grounded theories have indicated broadly this gradual erosion of the place of pure consciousness again, and again. Some recent work in biology indicates that "propensities of learning", which may theoretically extend to symbolic capabilities that were thought to be uniquely "human" (traditionally defined as the sphere of "nurturing", in opposition to "nature" or instinct) are possibly conditioned and meditated in genetics. For instance, we do not have an innate fear of snakes, but a propensity to socially and symbolically learn this fear (there are many indications of fear and veneration of snakes in many cultures). There was recently a book called "nature via nurture", that discusses this theory (Matt Ridley).
Anyway, in general, evolutionary biology is something "theoretical" in another certain sense, in proposing genetic, and environmental conditioning as the basis of behavior.
Finally, "theory" is conditional in an entirely different way, in the theoretical physics you are proposing. Theoretical physics is not more or less grounded in any absolute sense, than Darwinianism. It is just different. I would note that openness and puzzle of speculation of modern physicists, as you mention, appeals to a different concept of consciousness, when people relate it to consciousness, It seems like some physicists will look for a pinhole, which confirms the highest and metaphysical speculations of a connection between mind and body (for instance in the cartesian sense). There is room to speculate of this no doubt, and namely also to appropriate a philosophical concept of a pure consciousness or soul, so far as it is sought. Is this justifiable? Science today, is theoretical.
I would say the conditionality of the theory is just different, and not ideally reducible, but something to possibly be critical of. I think we need to look not only to proposed rationale, but the certain means and ends, or embodied practices of humanity to characterize a science. In the west, pragmatism is embodied in the way philosophical assumptions will guide "theory". That is where things seem to stand today, it seems to me. I think it is best to be relative, critical, and to try to avoid being oppositional in critique.
Quote:
Pragmatism rejects the idea that the function of thought is to describe, represent, or mirror reality.[3] Instead, pragmatists consider thought an instrument or tool for prediction, problem solving and action. Pragmatists contend that most philosophical topics—such as the nature of knowledge, language, concepts, meaning, belief, and science—are all best viewed in terms of their practical uses and successes.
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Kurt
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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: Space Monkey]
#23009913 - 03/15/16 03:27 PM (7 years, 10 months ago) |
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Spacemonkey, I didn't realize you had been taking part in this thread earlier, and there was some context in dialogue. I may have spoken on a snap judgement there. I don't know what value there is in christian apologetics to me personally.
But speaking of judging a book by the cover, I once read the beginning of a book by Richard Dawkins I had gotten at the public library. It was called the "The Greatest show on Earth", and supposed to be all about cultivating a natural, open eyed wonder for nature, or whatever. At leaat on the face of it. I think the cover of the book was actually covered in sparkles and glitter, (Maybe to the effect he was going for). Well anyway, I got about as far as the preface. Dawkins to be so frustrated with people calling evolutionary biology "a theory", that he thought to coin a term "theorum" (to aignify epistemelogically based theories that according to him, resemble an axiomatic-like certainty.) I thought that was pretty rich, but couldn't read anymore.
I tend to wonder about the present anglo-american philosophical scene which seems to value a economy of discussion between technical specialist and layman, or in other words an institutional authority of science and culture. It does not seem to be a more challenging critique, of science coming up against its own structure, for instance, history, as philosophers of science (including to my familiarity, Heidegger) have proposed.
I do not know how to ultimately characterize the problem with Dawkins without falling into the terms of oppositions he seems to dredge up.
Quote:
It may be you cannot speak of certain things and must therefore remain silent of them, but only in a certain sense, like in the sense of making metaphysical propositions.
This is a good one. Yet I think I agree with Frank Ramsey on Wittgenstein's mystical notions though -
"What we can't say, we can't say, and we can't whistle it either."

I think it is possible to understand the provisions Wittgenstein came by in "language" in a somewhat broader historical narrative of analytic philosophy...
I see Wittgenstein as basically borrowing, and attempting to appropriate the earlier logician and mathematician, Gotlobb Frege's concept of "sense". This would be sinn - the "sense" we make (or not). And this sense "we make" is an expression embedded in the logical/symbolic at the same time as it is a proposal we express about the world. (We make sense)
How do we "make sense" as these 20th century logicians/empiricists favored? There does not seem to be anything so mystical in Frege's suggestion that we can reason about our senses, if our relative relation to objects in some point of "reference" (Bedeutung) may be given. That is what he suggested, and Wittgenstein followed upon. Hence for example, if you stand in one respect to some object or thing, and I do to, but in another perspective, we may not know this is the same object at all, and could seem to be trapped in what traditional philosophy has indicated as our relative dispositions of mental perception, even though we look to the same thing.
Yet if we reason from a third person point of view, or if the object and frame of "reference" is somehow given, (and that is precisely hat is insinuated in Frege and Wittgenstein) we are able to reason from this. To Frege, then you can find how "sense" is not just a faculty, but an effective reasoning that must constitute what a sense should be in an objectified relation (in reference). Sense becomes the sense we make. In Wittgenstein's more idiomatic philosophical suggestion, Frege's "sense" is explicitly insinuated in the "logic of our language". Their general suggestion remains dominant in philosophy today, as a state of affairs: an implied or instituted gathering of relations, where we generally make sense or not.
Quote:
In philosophy, a state of affairs, also known as a situation, is a way the actual world must be in order to make some given proposition about the actual world true; in other words, a state of affairs (situation) is a truth-maker, whereas a proposition is a truth-bearer.
In a world where states of affairs may be given, we may speak of the sense of propositions, "mirroring" the world, where that condition of reflection and relation is taken as basic and implied in the logic of our language. The contingency of our propositions (whether they make sense or not), or validity, or correctness, (much more than what they might say) becomes what is important in this formalized philosophy.
That is my reading of Wittgenstein or early analytic school philosophy. It is the institution of sense, as implied in language and the world.
I'd say the other thing about Wittgenstein, is a broader appropriation that happened in his philosophy. He was under the aegis of influence of British empiricist tradition of philosophy, at Cambridge. (Wittgenstein himself was supposedly completely ignorant of any history of philosophy in his early thought, so he wouldn't know where the lines were being drawn). Partly due to his genius, but also his naivety, and his ideological environment, he generally came to a rather idiomatic expression of modern empiricism.
If that is not clear already, by his appropriation of sense in logic, the fundamental proposition in Tractatus, for instance, is that the world (which is already described as "what is the case" ) consists in theoretical facts (idealized propositions of "sense") rather than and as opposed to consisting in phenomenological things we relate to: "The world is made up of facts and not things." (Tractatus).
In analytic philosophy in general, the philosophical problematic of perception, or perspective, or "mind" could be surmounted by describing the sense of language, and its covertly suggested analysis, in objectified relations.
What developed was a difference between the analytical philosophers, and their opposition to a more traditional basis of philosophy, and particularly in continuance with that, something which was at the same time taking root in Germany, as phenomenology. Again I think Wittgenstein wasn't even really conscious of this, but just said what he did, in the academic sphere he gravitated toward under Bertrand Russell's tutelage at Cambridge. And really, this divergence in modern philosophy was mostly accidental, an effect of the historical events of the first half of the 20th century, that split the world, rather than any shared conjecture, and that split still seems to exist today, between Anglo American, and Continental (mainly German) philosophy. For this reason, in a broad sense think the limits of analytic philosopher's notion of truth, what can and can't be said, can be seen pretty easily, if historical narrative like I am suggesting is allowed, in face of the obstinantly naive suggestions of institutionalized philosophy.
Incidentally, Heidegger had some pretty interesting things to say about the propositional reflection...I find his speculation that Aletheia (the unconcealing or disclosure in presoctratic philosophy), might be a condition preceding philosophical truth, to be interesting. Yet he contrasted this almost entirely in respect to an ideal of truth which he took (like analytic philosophers) to be in corresponding correctness.
"What makes every one of these statements into a true one? This: in what it says, it corresponds with the matters and states of affairs about which it says something. The being true of an assertion thus signifies such corresponding. What therefore is truth? Truth is correspondence. Such correspondence exists because the assertion orients itself according that about which it speaks. Truth is Correctness.
(Heidegger, Lectures).
It seems to me that this sense of truth in correspondence is important today; for instance in an increasingly theoretical, and relative, rather than object or thing-bound universe, that science is revealing. It also lends to certain problems. On what basis do we ground correspondence?
Anyway I thought I'd give a decent response here.
I made a post on correapondence, here at the shroomery. My theory is that aside from profundity, what has been considered a philosophical paradigm, based on linguistic propositions, is something that grew out of pretty simple human/value based relation. I also think Nietzsche's "On Truth and Lies" is a good discussion on propositional truth, without the analytic philosopher's mystique.
Edited by Kurt (03/16/16 02:30 AM)
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Loaded Shaman
Psychophysiologist



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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: Kurt]
#23019369 - 03/18/16 03:56 AM (7 years, 10 months ago) |
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All who aren't atheists are irrational, because atheism is the height of rationality?
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  "Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance." — Confucius
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WScott
´ ɑ `▽ ᑲᓇᑕ


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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: Loaded Shaman]
#24462635 - 07/06/17 05:06 PM (6 years, 6 months ago) |
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Why Atheism is Vacuous Grandiloquence
Enjoy!
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sudly
Darwin's stagger


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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: WScott] 3
#24463235 - 07/06/17 08:06 PM (6 years, 6 months ago) |
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Lettuce preach
I care about behaviour and think matter gives rise to consciousness and we as humans understand a LOT about the universe we inhabit and the uniqueness of the human mind.
We know that we live in a community and that humans have evolved proportionally larger fore brains.
To fill the social vacuum of the fall of christianity in my own mind I replace it with the idea of mother nature. To appreciate what it provides and to not take for granted sustainable practices and environmentally inclusive development.
Christians are not the only one's with family lives or traditional values and if they base those on only a god and not the nature they live in then I'd leave them to their own sins.
The worst crimes a man can commit are murder and robbing and brutality etc. Common knowledge can say a lot about morality.
Communities and populations and culture are important and I think our spiritual nature is natural. Why someone would disagree with that? I do not know.
I have no belief in god but I do believe in a biological spirituality of energy, movement, forward planning, science, imagination(mental synthesis) and goals as well as the development of physical and mental capabilities.
-------------------- I am whatever Darwin needs me to be.
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WScott
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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: sudly]
#24463383 - 07/06/17 08:54 PM (6 years, 6 months ago) |
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Quote:
sudly said: Lettuce preach
I have no belief in god
Do you know what God is? If not, how then can one profess a lack of belief in a concept that, by nature, defies definition even to begin with? What is it exactly that you don't believe in?
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sudly
Darwin's stagger


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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: WScott]
#24463444 - 07/06/17 09:14 PM (6 years, 6 months ago) |
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My demi-god is the skin inside me. I've personally added an amendment to what could be some form of panpsychism where the physical world that is revealed by science is accepted as basically correct.
I don't believe that the mind portion of the body-mind paradigm is intangible.
-------------------- I am whatever Darwin needs me to be.
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Mr.Al
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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: Synapse Trap]
#28600931 - 12/28/23 01:52 PM (30 days, 23 hours ago) |
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Goldilocks zone disagrees. Precision calculation of environmental parameters is obviousment. Exact calculation of solar mass and distance to Earth for example. Plasma physics calculations that would break Quantum Computation. God is the most intelligent thing because never created therefore Perfect Knowledge.
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budmanman
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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: Mr.Al]
#28602780 - 12/29/23 10:42 PM (29 days, 15 hours ago) |
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Why did he make children with cancer then if he has perfect knowledge. I feel like perfect knowledge would have created a buffer to prevent that from happening, and probably make life in a way where it doesn't endlessly have to consume other life.
It like, makes no sense, perfect knowledge and then gives large snakes instincts to eat cute little animals just minding their own business.
-------------------- Everything I have ever said is total bogus bs I am full of crud therefore everything I say should never be taken literal. And I am mentally unstable.
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Nillion
Nobody

Registered: 04/14/22
Posts: 1,000
Loc: Terra Firma
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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: clam_dude]
#28602789 - 12/29/23 11:09 PM (29 days, 14 hours ago) |
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I don't believe Atheism to be rational. I view it as type of theistic claim lacking evidence, just like many forms of theism. Like the relationship between matter and anti-matter or between molecular enantiomers, they are two aspects of the same thing.
I believe that some specific theistic claims are more rational than atheism, but they aren't biblical claims nor do they involve the supernatural.
But that is just my opinion.
Edited by Nillion (12/29/23 11:11 PM)
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sudly
Darwin's stagger

Registered: 01/05/15
Posts: 10,797
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Re: Atheism is the only rational position [Re: Nillion]
#28602796 - 12/29/23 11:21 PM (29 days, 14 hours ago) |
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There's a lot to question about whether matter and anti-matter are two aspects of the same thing, but I'm not sure why you're bringing up enantiomers.. I don't believe there's a great deal of unverified information surrounding them, unless you had something specific in mind by bringing them up?
Quote:
Enantiomers are a pair of molecules that exist in two forms that are mirror images of one another but cannot be superimposed one upon the other.
-------------------- I am whatever Darwin needs me to be.
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