Philosophy ILP style

And this demonstrates a posting fallacy and an error in logic on my part…how?

Let alone given a particular context revolving around my own main interest in philosophy: how ought we to live morally and politically in a world bursting at the seams with conflicting goods awash in contingency, chance and change.

Or, in regard to the Really Big Questions, the “for all practical purposes” implications of “the gap”.

Again, you made your points above and I responded to them. Let’s get the more substantive exchange going.

Even Kropotkin understands that the vastness of the universe has nothing to do with the merit of an answer or argument (unless the argument is about the vastness of the universe).

You’re a philosopher. And philosophers are interested in many things. They have tools. Logic. Knowledge. Language.

Now, I’m a philosopher interested mainly in three things: morality [one of us, one of them], immortality [God and religion] and the Big Questions [determinism, the nature of existence itself given the gap]

Phyllo created this thread in order to make certain accusations about the manner in which I go about pursuing these things philosophically. He called it philosophy ILP style but he means philosophy iambiguous style.

Okay I responded to his points one by one.

But: how on earth can we discuss any of these things without it all coming down to particular sets of circumstances in which we often have conflicting personal opinions about morality, religion and the Big Questions?

Sure, if there are those here who insist we must stay up in the intellectual clouds pinning down precise, technical definitions for the words we use, fine, let them. And, after having arrived at them, then they can bring them out into the world of actual human interactions.

But: Absolutely no one here is required to do so. So, I can only surmise/suspect that, given my many, many, many experiences with the objectivists among us over the years, the reactions I get from those like phyllo revolve more around the extent to which my own frame of mind disturbs them. Their concern [conscious or otherwise] that they may well themselves find their very own precious “I” [in the is/ought world of value judgments] becoming increasingly more fractured and fragmented as well.

I know this experience well because I have been there myself. Twice.

You folks ignore the fuck out of me.

Existence has 3 structural problems:

1.) consent violation (occurring for every being in existence in some way shape or form)

2.) the pleasurable exclusive access problem (I’m stomping on someone else’s heart while having the best time of my life)

3.) the negative zero sum problem (for every winner there is more than one loser)

I beg of people on these boards to understand and contemplate these three structural (objective) problems of existence and join the good fight. Reason, purpose, rationality.

Since he [like you and I] is utterly ignorant regarding the precise ontological – teleological? – understanding/nature of the existence of existence itself [as that relates to the human condition here on planet earth as that relates to our own individual identities and value judgments], I’d take that “understanding” myself with more than just a few grains of salt.

Instead, like you and I, he is the embodiment of this:

“There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.”

And, no, not just in regard to American involvement in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

In fact, it can be argued it is applicable to everything where there is a gap between what we think we know about something and all that there is to be known about it. The part where I make a distinction between what we think or believe is true and what we are able to demonstrate to others that, as rational human beings, they are obligated to think or believe is true as well. Indeed, even in regard to how we go about demonstrating that even to ourselves.

About Communism or abortion or determinism or, well, you tell me.

Only, silly me, I keep coming back to the part where we will need an actual “situation” that most of us will be familiar with in order to flesh out our own arguments.

The vastness of the universe is not synonymous with the limits of human knowledge and understanding.

We’ll need an actual context of course.

If someone has a context which shows that the vastness of the universe is synonymous with the limits of human knowledge and understanding then he/she can post it.

Okay, how about if the context is Communism or abortion?

On the other hand, how exactly would they go about showing it?

I merely make the assumption that given facts and conjectures of this sort…

[b]The closest star to us is Alpha Centauri. It is 4.75 light-years away. 28,500,000,000,000 miles.
So, traveling at 186,000 miles a second, it would take us 4.75 years to reach it. The voyager spacecraft [just now exiting our solar system] will take 70,000 years to reach it.
To reach the center of the Milky Way galaxy it would take 100,000 light-years.

“To get to the closest galaxy to ours, the Canis Major Dwarf, at Voyager’s speed, it would take approximately 749,000,000 years to travel the distance of 25,000 light years! If we could travel at the speed of light, it would still take 25,000 years!”
The Andromeda galaxy is 2.537 million light years away.

“The universe is about 13.7 billion years old. Light reaching us from the earliest known galaxies has been traveling, therefore, for more than 13 billion years. So one might assume that the radius of the universe is 13.7 billion light-years and that the whole shebang is double that, or 27.4 billion light-years wide.”[/b] nasa

For all practical purposes, it is beyond the imagination of mere mortals here on planet Earth to grasp just how staggeringly immense the universe is.

As for situating “I” in all of this…?

And this:

It turns out that roughly 68% of the universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 27%. The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the universe. nasa

And this:

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know. Rummy

…what any particular one of us thinks he or she knows about Communism and abortion is synonymous with the limits of human knowledge and intelligence.

On the other hand there are those here who not only shrug off “the gap”, but insist that unless others share exactly the same point of view they do about Communism and abortion they are inherently, necessarily WRONG!!!

I call them objectivists by the way. And, unless I’m mistaken, you are less one of those now yourself than when we first stared in on exchanging posts here.

Then there are those who consider an iota of immeasurable difference may imply a contextual reality that implies certainty, whereas it may be merely a counterproposal.

Not that reality is not contensional, but that a certain conclusive objectivity based on the certainty of filling that gap may not be just as elusive.

And some people can’t swallow a Thesaurus without vomitting word salad.

It’s hilarious how quickly Biggus jumps, from “the gap” in knowledge and understanding, to knowing all sorts of things about other people.

And then there are the times when does a complete 180 and he actually expresses scorn for those who refer to the “the gap” … as if they are doing something wrong. For example, when religious people talk about God’s mysterious ways. That’s “the gap” right there, isn’t it?

Let’s face it. Shopenhauerian pessimism was merely a luxury ridden view of sadly flying down from the perch of the bird’s eye view.it drained vital energy more, to come down.
.

From ancient foundations, now only the glitter of it attracts and most stumbling blocks forgotten

Nietzche tried to replace that metaphoric hubris with It most generally looking boldly back, turning it into anathema, a fearful descent

The violation of primal consent is overcome, by muffling cries of innocent babes, "why did the bring me forth from my comfortable domain, the attractive womb, mow again to be raped over and over, into the harsh direct gaze of europa? Did not a colony of bees, raping her emitting the sweet ofir, from ejaculate honey that bear so much restrained poesy? To be or not, indifferent to all, but the soblimest rhetoric?

Rubbish.
a Light-Year is not a time period but a distance; the distance travelled by light in one year.
The centre of the galaxy is 25,000 Light years away.
Currently the fastest ever space craft achieved an amazing 0.05% of the speed of light. Do the maths!

At the same time, if you begin with the humble premise of knowing nothing, you can then begin the expedition of seeking out the questions and answers and knowledge regarding Life. Considering all that can be and is to be someday known in this Universe of ours, in comparison, we do KNOW NOTHING!

I am not so sure that wisdom necessarily comes from knowledge (though of course, if utilized properly, it may) If that is the case then knowledge does not live up to its reputation. I think of wisdom as more of an inner light, a beacon so to speak.

That beacon, that light, is what leads us on the quest to knowledge.

Perhaps Intelligence is more the application of Knowledge.

So what came first, wisdom or knowledge?

The chicken or the egg?

Wisdom, knowledge, intelligence. None of these are natural categories, but socially constructed means by which we tend to describe various phenomena related to positive conscious activities.
You might just as well say that we start with wisdom enough to seek knowledge as gain wisdom from it. Or that either intelligence is the egg from which wisdom grows or vice versa.
None of this leads to understanding. Its more like restatement of assumptions and prejudices.
By the same token charateristics we decide are negative attributes we nominate as stupidity etc…
But one man’s stupidity is another man’s wisdom.

First, of course, I note that I may well be mistaken about what I have surmised regarding him here. We would have to focus in on a particular set of circumstances and explore the extent to which his value judgments either have changed over the years since we began these exchanges or have not changed much at all. The extent to which he still sees himself as a moral objectivist.

But mostly what “I” note with him is how he never seems to be all that far removed from “retort” mode with me. Or from out and out Stooge mode. The caustic inflection he can sustain that [to me] seems to revolve around the sort of contempt that objectivists over the years have reserved for me precisely because I am chipping away at their once rock solid Self.

Well, in the is/ought world anyway.

Not that there wouldn’t still be an enormous gap between what we think we know about each other here and all that there is to be known about each other. From, say, the perspective of what he still might construe God to be?

Please, let him note another example of this. I’m not able to grasp his point here in regard to God’s mysterious ways at all. Who referred to “the gap” here as if they were doing what wrong?

As for God’s mysterious ways, my main interest remains as always focused in on the existential relationships I explore here: ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop … 5&t=186929

The paradox here though is that even though I acknowledge “the gap” renders these exchanges as no less ultimately futile, I am still predisposed existentially to pursue them anyway. The rest being ineffably entangled in this…

“He was like a man who wanted to change all; and could not; so burned with his impotence; and had only me, an infinitely small microcosm to convert or detest.” John Fowles

…and [of course] godot.

Yes, and of course, that infinite microcausm h a ultimately been reduced to the imperceptible, none the less, it remains an enigmatic and variable juxtopisition between the real and unreal
That variences is a flow, a sign wave that is precipitously speeding up, so as to create the film of illusive reality for real.

That means that ultimately, one becomes his only certain observer.

Don’t perceive this waaaay out, rather way in.

Take it up with nasa.

And, come on, admit it, the only reason you responded at all here is so that you can – yet again! – call something that one of us posted “rubbish”.

My best guess:

Something or someone in your life must have really pissed you off. You can’t do anything about that so you come into venues like this one and take it out on all the rest of us. Mostly in regard to God and religion but it can really be about anything at all.

Right?

That’s what most interests me about you. Not what you post but why you seem compelled to treat others who don’t share your own fulminating fanatic dogmas with such contempt. Sure, I feel much the same incredulous bewilderment about those like, say, FreeSpirit1983. How on earth did they manage to think themselves into believing such…nonsense?

But that’s my “thing” here. Exploring not what they believe about God and religion and Saints and Hell, but how existentially they came to believe it given the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein.

I’ve been after those like phyllo here now for years in regard to that. But they almost always keep everything up in the intellectual or the spiritual clouds. Their “world of words” psychologisms – think Maia!! – that will probably keep them comforted and consoled all the way to the grave.

Insulting them changes nothing. Just accept that with so much at stake on both sides of the grave for them not much that folks like you and I bring up is ever likely to change much.

Stoicism is the only practical reaction that one can have in dealing with the moral and political and spiritual and religious objectivists.

That and the part where one of them might actually be right and does succeed in allowing me to pull myself up out of “the hole” I’ve dug myself down into philosophically.

Next up: the philosopher or the philosophy?

Start here: ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop … 1&t=176529