Equality eliminates the slightest degree of difference, and similarity implies difference, just like difference implies similarity. When I say something is similar, I mean that it has patterns that are like something else to a degree, but not equal (this is the implied difference).
Good example I found:
Perhaps something similar would be more to the point …
Right or wrong?
Critics against philosophy, generally denigrate philosophy as “bullshit” to compensate for their own bullshit. It’s a preemptive attack. The idea that philosophy can derive truth, or true knowledge of any kind, is foreign to these types of people. They actually do not and will not use philosophy. They will not participate. They will not philosophize. Because if they could, had, or did then they’d know about which types of truth can be derived by philosophy (through doubt) and which cannot (through faith).
For example, if you doubt premises, and take nothing for granted, then you eventually learn about the deepest types of beliefs, which people refuse to doubt at all costs. Like a zealot’s faith in god. Like a romanticist’s faith in love. Like a liberal’s faith in equality. Like a secularist’s faith in rights. Like a humanitarian’s faith in humanity. Etc. For the “bullshitters”, it’s not about learning, understanding, exploring, existence, reality, or anything like that. It is about social pretense. It is about reading a dead philosopher, repeating a few quotes, impressing friends within the close knit social circle, and appearing to be much wiser that she actually is.
Go on, I’m listening.
If this were true, we would not be able to say that a painful shot of vaccine can be considered good for us, since our body tells us that the needle hurts… or that one should drink a medicine which will cure us, that tastes like shit… or that one should lift weights to become stronger, since our muscles become sore… or that staying underwater longer to train oneself to require less oxygen is good for an competition swimmer, since the body is gasping for breath… or that punching hard surfaces to develop calcium deposits in the knuckles is good for a martial artists, since it hurts like hell.
What the body ‘tells’ us is not always accurate criteria for determining what is good or bad for us. With the exception of obvious things like shooting oneself in the knee or jumping off a bridge, we are completely responsible for deciding what is good or bad for us… and this decision rests on the factors I mentioned earlier in this exchange; what we intend, whether or not we achieve what we had intended, and how we renew our intentions at each and every moment during this ongoing project before we can experience regret. It is the ‘upsurge’ of this forced reorientation that causes us to redefine ourselves at every moment; does Joe regret dropping out of school? Impossible, because Joe is not the Joe who dropped out of school anymore… he is a new Joe with a new horizon of possibilities.
To regret a past decision is to pretend that the only arrow of time that exists for Joe is one which includes Joe’s finishing school and everything that would follow. But had Joe stayed in school, and arrived at future point X, he would be existentially no different than he would be at point X after dropping out of school. He would be at point X faced with a new set of possibilities, each one being a unique arrow, so to speak.
Joe has to decide that dropping out or staying in school is good or bad, and this decision rests solely on what he intends to do next. Every moment Joe intends to act he redefines himself.
Sartre elaborates on this with his idea of radical freedom. He does not mean freedom in a metaphysical sense, nor does he deny causal determinism. What he means is that the meaningfulness of our actions cannot depend on any deterministic compulsion. In other words, one cannot not choose to act. And where there is choosing, there is deliberate autonomy and intention… not just in action, but in how we believe these actions to be meaningful.
A of C wrote:
However, this is not philosophy.
Unfortunately, based on what you have contributed here, you must be the single prime example of a bullshitter.
I bet you work part time at McDonalds 
You’re misunderstanding the nature of logical axioms. Consider mathematics where 1+1=2 cannot be doubted. Nor can it be properly “proved”. It is only an abstraction of thought. It has no “physical reality”. Yet these axioms are still useful, and produce real world results. 1+1=2 maybe just an idea, but it has affect and consequence. Engineers can build huge bridges and skyscrapers with 1+1=2 when it’s granted truth. Plato called this the realm of ideas according to his “Theory of Forms”. Perfect shapes are another example of this, as is female Beauty.
Beautiful women are a more practical example. You innately understand that some females are beautiful and desirable, and others are ugly and undesirable. You may even learn and understand some of the ‘How’ they are beautiful to you, pathologically. But philosophy begins to answer the ‘Why’ they are beautiful. Philosophy answers why 1+1=2 and why perfect shapes can or cannot exist.
Because those golden statements are the best possible truths that ages of philosophers, over thousands of years, over countless thoughts, writings, and texts have produced.
It should be obvious that when searching around life for what is true, false, or an outright lie (“bullshit”) that people must begin somewhere or inevitably will be forced to pick some truth, or any truth.
Philosophy, science, and religion all fight over truth through different means. Philosophy derives truth from doubt. Science derives truth from experience. And religion derives truth from faith.
The golden statements encased in glass are almost perfectly immune to doubt. You cannot doubt them, and if you tried then you would fail. Statements like cogito ergo sum. Because any person, and any thinker, must begin with some premise, any premise. All thoughts begin with a preposition. All of time, has a past. Every mind depends upon a body, etc.
It is again well put and in finely compressed form.
But it is nevertheless quite dogmatic and needs the clarification that all three are more often connected and intermingled.
A good example on that would be the truth achievable out of Ecclesiastes book. What I am trying to say is that one can find all of these three “whales of truth” in there:
Doubt –
(nihilism)
+++
Experience –
(eternal recurrence)
+++
Faith-
(cf. Kierkegaard
Well if you are making a list flowered, you can add this more contemporary philosophy:
Fine. I made my point and you made yours. I can only hope that the discussion now goes the direction that seems more applicable to the OP. And to the forum. And in fact it has. So we both win.
This observation becomes more apparent and obvious to me as I grow older and wiser.
Intellectualism is the height and representation of humanity. The “best and brightest” of the human archetype (including philosophers here) represent what humanity has to offer to and against existence. Evolution has a purpose, an end, an ideal, or a goal, call it and interpret this however you please. That goal is an expansion, strengthening, and honing of consciousness. History’s greatest intellects are remembered, recollected, and recorded for obvious reasons. These were, are, and will continue to be, the best of our kind. So it’s unsurprising why modern people today, cling to them so tightly. It explains the popularity of dead philosophers and philosophies. Hard to let go, and hard to find a new source of (intellectual) strength to cling onto.
It should be expected that the masses, the most, and the many will hoist up their “prize intellect” to represent them all.
Not only are philosophers included into this intellectual elite, but also the best scientists and priests (religion-ists) as well.
My claim is this, quote me and remember these words specifically. Although you may focus on philosophy, it is always best to maintain an intellectual balance in all areas. Understand the doubt of philosophy, the experimentation of science, and the faith of religion.
Oh by the way, mine’s bigger
Shieldmaiden has no clue of philosophy. Maybe it is even useless to explain to her what philosophy is.
[size=109]The German philosopher, logician, mathematician Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege (1848-1925) is the father of analytic philosophy, thus the philosophical father of Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) and all other analytic philosophers. [/size]See also here (just for example).
Allegedly Shieldmaiden’s “darling” is Bertrand Russell. But if she really knew him, then she would not tell such a nonsense about German philosophers, especially about Wolff and Kant, but also about most of the others. And she should try to write Wolff’s name correctly.
[size=109]Kant’s theory about the emergence and development of planets has been true since 1755 when he invented this theory by thinking about it - without science, because the scientists knew nothing about it at that time. Compare: Immanuel Kant, “Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels”, 1755.[/size]
Shieldmaiden should post on a kindergarten webforum.
What was Kant’s theory about the emergence and development of planets?
And of suns!
Immanuel Kant was sure that (1) the sun emerged from a cosmic cloud, that (2) a dust disk with floating particles was formed by the centrifugal force of the still rapidly rotating sun, and that (3) the planets were „glued“ in this dust disk with floating particles. According to Kant suns and solar systems originate in a rotating cloud of gas that has become so much dense that it collapses, and planets originate as „collections of sun dust parts“.
See also here: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=185856&p=2557820#p2557820 .
Hmmm…
Not so sure myself.
There are two apparent options;
There must be a continuous source for such events, but either of those could be eternally occurring and perhaps both are eternally occurring. But at least he didn’t proclaim that the entire universe arose from a Big Bang. 
By the results.
“Must have been my imagination, then.”
I can believe whatever I want. I just can’t profess it as “great scientific certainty”, or whatever you called it.
No, anything that forms a pattern. However, if I see a pattern that everyone else can’t see, the onus of proof is on me to show that it exists, not on everybody else to prove that it doesn’t exist.
Gotta take the good with the bad.
Holy shit.
I post about reproducibility and you read “documenting only what other people agree with”.
Speaking of spreading the disease…
So it turns out I can tell my left hand from my right, after all.
But black holes could not be known at that said time, thus: were not known at that said time.
Yes. Probably Kant would not have accepted it as we do not accept it. However: No human of the 1750’s was talking about a “big bang” ( 
).
Kant said, for example, one should overcome dogmatism by using the own intellect.
The hypothesis of the “big bang” has much more to do with dogmatism than with science.