Something Instead of Nothing

I provided you with the necessary conditions for a rational conversation between you and I… and you question their value?
We have no basis then, on which to conduct this conversation…

deleted, wrong thread

Okay, that’s your bottom line. Mine revolves more around the assumption that, as with many here, you have no real interest in bringing your “technical philosophy” down out of the clouds. You’re just more comfortable with “analyses” that I construe to be largely intellectual contraptions. You present us with assessment after assessment after assessment embedded squarely within the parameters of what I call “general descriptions”.

Arguments, in other words, in which the reasoning is tautological, circular, internal. These words are said to be true because those words define and defend them.

They have almost nothing to do with the lives that we live!

Or, perhaps, like others here, you are more discomfited by the argument that focuses in on the seeming futility of ever pinning any of this down. Why? Because none of us come even close to having access to an understanding of what lies behind existence itself.

So, what then becomes of more importance [in my view] are psychological needs being met in convincing yourself that there are answers and that your own are the best place to start.

And you can always find those in the philosophy community who share your conviction that the answers are there. Only most will assure you that the answers are theirs and not yours.

Unless of course there was never any possibility that you could or would contribute to this exchange in any way other than as you were compelled to by the laws of matter.

You can always fall back on that, right? :wink:

I can’t believe it! A post with actual substance!!

I’m only joshing my friend. :wink:

What, like physically? or do you mean conversationally?
Because if it’s the latter we first need to have a foundation for a productive conversation…

How on earth could you possibly grasp the meaning and the nature of time itself?

You may not like me pointing it out but speculation of this sort is no less subsumed in the “unknown unknowns” that stand between what you think you know about it here and now and all that can be known about it going back to how it is wholly integrated into all that can be known about the meaning and nature of existence itself.

We are all stymied here of course.

Now, I make what I construe to be a crucial distinction between what we seem able to demonstrate as in fact true for all of us in the either/or world, and what we cannot. At least Insofar as we interact out in the world from day to day.

But how can that ever be removed from all that I don’t know about the really big questions revolving around threads like this one?

Most crucially though [in my view] we don’t know if the future is something that we can steer in one rather than another direction autonomously.

In fact this point is one that I would make in regard to “I” in the is/ought world. Even assuming autonomy, we can’t possibly grasp all of the variables that came/come together to form the trajectory of our actual lived life. In my opinion, the “self” here can only be reasonably construed as an existential contraption in a world teeming with conflicting goods as we go about the business of interacting amidst an avalanche of contingency, chance and change.

Back to my hypothetical aliens. They note us choosing to do one thing rather than another. But then they point out that on earth everything unfolds in a part of the universe that is wholly determined. We think [psychologically] that we chose freely to eat cheese doodles but there was never really any possibility that we could have chosen not to.

Consider this: youtu.be/vrqmMoI0wks

Now, how close is this speculation to all that would need to be known in order to demonstrate that the points here are wholly in sync with that which explains the existence of existence itself.

Come on, I note these things in order to elicit from others reactions relating to their own lives. How are those things deemed to be problems for me not problems for them? How are they not down in an existential hole when their own particular “I” is confronting conflicting goods?

What else can it mean? There is what I think I know about morality on this side of the grave and oblivion on the other side. There is what I think I know about my own capacity to choose things with some measure of volition.

And, in thinking about them as I do, it precipitates frames of mind that trouble me. I come into places like ILP and note this. How then are others either able to empathize with me or instead are completely at a loss in understanding them.

Exchanges commense. And they are either sustained with a mutual respect for each other’s intelligence or they aren’t.

In time, with many of them, one side or the other [or both] will pull out of them. For any number of reasons.

Right, that will make it go away.

Well, here we will just have to agree to disagree. The gap between them is, in my view, enormous.

Well, yes, the gap is always there. No matter the context.

But the part about “existential contraptions” can only be explored as it pertains to a particular context. In other words, there are things we seem able to demonstrate to each other are true for all of us and there are things we seem unable to.

With things like Communism there are any number of facts that are “existential contraptions” only in the sense that actual individuals had actual personal experiences with it in actual contexts.

But when the discussion shifts to judging those experiences as more or less rational and more or less virtuous, that’s a very different kind of “existential contraption”.

Unless, of course, we do live in an entirely determined universe. Then they are essentially interchangeable.

What I mean is that starting with your first point…

“1. Systems are not slaves to the rules that govern their fundamental building blocks… they subsume those rules and build their own rules from them.”

…we focus in on a particular system in a particular context. One that most here will be familiar with. An economic system. A political system. A system that revolves around a business or a sporting event or a social gathering or a religious experience.

A system where actual men and women interact by making choices. Choices that others react to as either reasonable or unreasonable. As either moral or immoral. As either autonomous or determined.

What might constitute slavery in this particular system? What is the relationship between the rules that are or are not followed and what are deemed to be the fundamental building blocks?

What do you mean by a “foundation”?

Do you mean that before we actually bring the words out into the world we must first be entirely in sync with regard to their definitions?

If so, then I am willing to abide by the definitions that you give them. I just want to take the meaning that you do ascribe to them out into the world of actual human interactions.

The gap is cowardice, lack of soul.
Or you might call it instrumentalist hedonism.

The ‘cure’ is simply : fight for your values. This is assuming you have values.

That 's what the OP could be seen as addressing, isn’t it – existence, eg valuing, eg fighting, or iambs hole, oblivion, retreat into the primordial mud.

I promise not to ask you what this means if you promise not to tell me.

On the other hand, folks have been fighting for their values now for thousands of years. The rest is history.

A few have even insisted that their own values are derived…ontologically.

And, sure, let’s all just assume that we are entirely free to fight for them.

=D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D>

You’re so disconnected from reality that even ‘past’, ‘present’ and ‘future’ are too complicated for you? :open_mouth:

And let’s see, you want to discuss stuff that’s more complex. #-o

Im a bit impertinently summarizing you. No one likes to be summarized, but you make it too easy.

Lol, no dude, “folks have been fighting for their values for thousands of years” is itself an account of history.

You think all these people were in holes, but that is because you got scared when you had to fight.

Cowardice dug your hole.
Or just the bad judgment of being obedient to the wrong master.

Your character is what is at fault for producing your hole, nothing else.

Do you mean “value ontology”? In that case youve not understood the theory.

Lets not.

Because if we were free it wouldn’t be much of a fight, would it?

:confused:

Reduced once again to retorting…to making me the argument. And now with a little help from your friends. :wink:

Note to others:

Your mission should you choose to accept it is find anything at all of substance in this post.

And then further to determine if you were in fact ever able to freely choose not to.

As for “value ontology” let him take that to a new thread. He can start it if he’s interested.

I would love to bring that “intellectual contraption” down to earth!

There’s a minimum level of comprehension which required to discuss these ideas.

If you can’t understand ‘past’, ‘present’ and ‘future’ then you don’t meet that minimum level.

That’s all there is to it. :character-willie:

Okay, so what do you think [at a minimal level] these folks understand about them?

youtube.com/watch?v=vrqmMoI … e=youtu.be

“The sharp difference we see between the past, present and the future may only be an illusion.”

Now, let’s see how clever you can be this time. :wink:

We are not moving at anywhere near the speed of light relative to each other. That video is not applicable to the discussion.

signals which transmit at the rate of electromagnetic radiations/signals. … However “speed of light” generally signifies speed of light in vacuum and the brain is no vacuum, therefore no the thinking is not faster than speed of light.

This is relevant to the idea that we can only outguess consequential ideas , relatively speaking.

I don’t pretend to fully grasp the science here but that hypothetical alien was described as either moving away or toward us at a “leisurely pace”. He pedals away from us and his now is our past. He pedals towards us and his now is our future.

The suggestion then being [if I understood Brian Greene] that the past, present and future all exist all the time.

But: How close or how far is what Greene thinks is true here from all that there is to know about spacetime going back to a complete understanding of existence itself?