My Philosophy of Life

Gisteron wrote: No, please, please go on, I'd love to see your illuminating refutations of those entirely fallacious and unfounded claims. Maybe we will learn something from you.. Unless you'd rather not have us benefit from your insight and keep it to yourself, of course... I suppose that'd be your prerogative then, and in your view likely a perfectly morally justifiable choice.

:woohoo: :evil: Always nice to see someone who is as fluent in biting sarcasm as I am. :whistle:

Gisteron wrote: I'd love to contribute something useful but I'm afraid I'll only learn little from the exercise and wouldn't have many adequate things to add, so I'll leave it to Alexandre and instead will restrain myself to good old being-a-dick-to-other-people.

scott777ab wrote: You assume to have a mind you must have a brain. I disagree.
-There are numerous cases of people being medically unconscious and can recount in perfect detail everything that goes on around them as though they were watching from outside of the body. What was watching?

Yes, and those accounts are usually taken from them once they are conscious and the time of the conception of their experience cannot be identified. Also, each one of them have brains, many of them have presuppositions and cultural influences that shape the experiences their injured brains generate through the hormones and natural drugs they flood themselves with. Let alone that there is no way of telling how many of them are being sincere in front of the press.

You assume that sense [sic] there is suffering there can not be a God. I disagree. Suffering shows that we do indeed have not just free-will but free-action also.

I would agree with where you were going. Suffering in itself doesn't disprove any gods in general, though perhaps a few particular ones. The way you went on however is utter bollocks. There is suffering with and without human intent, and no amount of free will and free action (which btw while I grant you, you still technically would have to justify prior to using that as an argument) can account for, much less justify the suffering of innocent people and animals during natural catastrophes.

You assume that suffering in some way leads to a greater good. I disagree. Sometime suffering is just suffering. Stick your hand in a fire, you will get burnt. You will suffer till you heal.

And yet you will learn to not do it again and advice other people to not put their hands into fires either. But I agree that the statement cannot be generalized. Not all suffering is to a better end, let alone a greater good, whatever that would entail. So yea, I think that's the line where I agree with you.

You assume there are flaws in the universe. I disagree. Are you of such grand mastery of the universe that you can even begin to fathom how everything might actually fit and work together? No, your not. So your point here is flawed.

That point, if made like this, is indeed flawed, though so is your refutation. After all, it doesn't take a film production and direction education to criticize a movie. It doesn't take parenthood to notice a bad parent. Just because one is not an expert in a field doesn't mean one is necessarily wrong with any evaluation one does. Each claim stands or falls on its own merit. I would have to see what the flaws referred to are specifically and how it is justified that those are indeed flaws, but the credentials of the author are a preliminary consideration, not a factor in judgement claims' merit.

You assume that God has not made itself obvious. I disagree. God is everything.

So how has it made itself obvious, i.e. distinguishable from everything else. Oh, wait, you say it is everything else already. Alright, how do you know that? And isn't that an awfully useless definition then, since it doesn't actually define anything?

You assume that God is a being like humans. I disagree. God is everything.

How do you know? And how does that mean that it isn't a being in a way similar to humans. And wouldn't you now also have to disprove every single person who claims to know a personal god who is indeed a being not a lot unlike humans?

You assume there is no evidence after death. I disagree. This was the first google result of searching for NDE after brain death. http://www.near-death.com/experiences/evidence01.html

You do know that near death isn't something actually after death, right? I mean, after all, how come that claims of coming back to life after death are universally disregarded by the medical community? Heck, even if they weren't, and even if people were to report what they saw after being in fact dead (and they never did, because whoever died never woke up again, at least so far), how do you know that they are being honest, and if they are, how do you know that their experience was genuine and not their mind playing tricks on them. It sure does while we live, so why wouldn't it on the death bed, where it is so much more stressed? And how come that those experiences entirely depend on the culture and personal beliefs of each person and aren't universally identical or at least remotely similar across the globe?

OK i can and could go on but its pointless. Your just going to stick to what you believe and find what you believe is fallacy in each one of these and this is so not worth my time.

No, please, please go on, I'd love to see your illuminating refutations of those entirely fallacious and unfounded claims. Maybe we will learn something from you.. Unless you'd rather not have us benefit from your insight and keep it to yourself, of course... I suppose that'd be your prerogative then, and in your view likely a perfectly morally justifiable choice.

Gist your reply's show exactly why it is pointless, so no I won't go on. You have your beliefs and NO MATTER WHAT IS SAID, YOU WILL FIND A FAULT.

The only part I want to reply to though is this one part.

You assume that God is a being like humans. I disagree. God is everything.

How do you know? And how does that mean that it isn't a being in a way similar to humans. And wouldn't you now also have to disprove every single person who claims to know a personal god who is indeed a being not a lot unlike humans?

God can be all that, none of that, both of that. Because God is the perfect paradox, and yes I KNOW THIS, and NO I WONT TELL YOU HOW I KNOW.

You must find it out yourself, sorry.

Gist your reply's show exactly why it is pointless, so no I won't go on. You have your beliefs and NO MATTER WHAT IS SAID, YOU WILL FIND A FAULT.

Certainly, your no different, as all your criticisms are from the first page, all faults as well, and nothing anyone has said has changed your beliefs im sure.

Please...

Let us stay on topic please....

Sorry, just trying to give perspective.

My question would more revolve around what you will do with the inevitable changes to your philosophy?

Will you write a whole new one of these every say....five years?

Is there more to this work as an experiment?

Thanks for posting that Philosofer123, I'm going to have a read but I doubt I'll be able to reply with anything useful as its not my strong area!!!

Jestor, Philosofer, I apologize in advance. I'm sure if you read on you will understand at least the motive behind the following rant addressed at scott. I realize it is still off-topic and I kindly ask that it not be deemed as a display of disrespect for the thread at hand. Thank you for your understanding.

No, I'm sorry, I won't have it said that I am unwilling or incapable of changing my mind. I am a breathing, living and growing human being who has been both correct and incorrect in the past and had to and did change his mind over and over again both with witnesses on this very board and outside of it. Name me one piece of my reply that would display anything remotely contrary to that, and I shall concede that I'm a close-minded prick who just seeks fights for the fun of it. The only thing that makes you think that is that I dare to not see your flawless reasoning as you do.

I do agree that it is pointless, since you "won't tell how you know", which sure raises the question of why you kindly posted in the first place if you don't care that anyone gives an excrement. Because I do care I hope to learn something but apparently since I'm not already with you on your pedistal it would somehow be beneath you to share your insights such that we ought climb towards you ourselves instead. Perhaps you have access to some information I have no access to. Perhaps you are more than the mere primate I and everybody else here is, and perhaps I am in no right to question anything you say and you are perfectly justified in smugly looking down at petty old inferior me.
Now, look, you are free to be as arrogant and secretive as you like. If I had a kid and I wouldn't tell it that it ought not touch the hot stove, I would probably be a bad parent for not sharing my insights with somebody who quite clearly needs it (although the better analogy would be if the child asked me whether it could touch the stove and I'd say "I know the answer but you better find out yourself"), but I wouldn't be a criminal by any means unless I put its hand on that stove myself. Maybe in your world a good parent, friend or a good person in general wouldn't share such important information with his fellow people. I wouldn't understand, but then again, I am just another primate without your sources of knowledge, so I may be wrong in the end. But don't you ever dare again to imply I was intellectually dishonest and close-minded for that. I will have you talk to me in any tone of voice you deem appropriate (though I might not appreciate every single one), but there are things I will not have said about me and remain silent.

For anyone interested, I recommend AronRa's 4th Foundational Falsehood video where, though criticizing a particular group, he illustrates the difference between belief and knowledge.

Khaos wrote:

Gist your reply's show exactly why it is pointless, so no I won't go on. You have your beliefs and NO MATTER WHAT IS SAID, YOU WILL FIND A FAULT.

Certainly, your no different, as all your criticisms are from the first page, all faults as well, and nothing anyone has said has changed your beliefs im sure.

That may appear to be true to you. But I assure you it is not. My beliefs have changed sense coming here. But none on them have changed because of anything Gist has ever said, nor anything you have ever said. (Comment about you removed.)

Certainly, logical analysis and rational expression are the traditional forms for philosophical narrative, but these are not the only forms of analysis and expression. And while these are philosophy's usual tools, the challenge comes when the subject matter resists logical analysis and defies rational expression. Avoiding infinite regress and vicious circles in argumentation is commendable as these constitute the gold standard of philosophy because establishing that place of certainty is the challenge of doing philosophy.

Regarding memory: for me the Jedi Way is one of overcoming dualities (and for me especially overcoming Cartesianism and Platonism) where the primary fallacy of dualism separates: mind/body, self/other, subject/object. Sharply distinguishing mind, body, things, places, and other persons relies on containment metaphors of separation - the result of logical fallacies and vicious circularity. All the things of the world are what constitute our memories. Humans are embodied mind and our memories are embodied. Any thing can become memorial, the bearer of memories. Memories can be of things in the world, events, and places but that does not also mean that memories are discrete things.

While not offering the following quotes as 'argument from authority' they are instructive regarding possible alternatives to dualism regarding memory or the privileging of human remembering.

Jean Piaget: “Everything participates in memory.”

Black Elk: “I did not have to remember these things; they have remembered themselves all these years.”

Edward S. Casey: "Memory is co-extensive with world…Nothing is not memorial in some manner, everything belongs to some matrix of memory…It might even be that things can remember us as much as we remember them…Black Elk’s words resonate with the possible cosmological implications of a more capacious view of memory, a view which refuses constriction to the human sphere…(Humans are) privileged as articulate participants in the process of their own remembering and as acute explorers of its structure, they are nonetheless not entitled to assume that their own remembering conveys the essence of every kind of remembering."

scott777ab wrote:

Khaos wrote:

Gist your reply's show exactly why it is pointless, so no I won't go on. You have your beliefs and NO MATTER WHAT IS SAID, YOU WILL FIND A FAULT.

Certainly, your no different, as all your criticisms are from the first page, all faults as well, and nothing anyone has said has changed your beliefs im sure.

That may appear to be true to you. But I assure you it is not. My beliefs have changed sense coming here. But none on them have changed because of anything Gist has ever said, nor anything you have ever said. (Comment about you removed.)

Ah, well then, Gisterson or myself could say the same, no?

Certainly I have changed since coming here, but given that we havent really interacted since this discussion, and seeing how its going, it hasnt been in regards to anything you have ever said.

At least for now, but who knows what the future will bring?

So I dont see it as pointless at all.

So your original accusation is still more than a bit hypocritical, and lacks the scope of awareness that change in "beliefs" does not need happen with every individual, or group of individuals you come into contact with.

I am simply pointing out that your accusation is exactly the attitude you are yourself putting forth.

Simply because we do not change..."beliefs" (such and odd word) in regards to each others comments does not mean that we will not change in regards to others.

Its more than obvious that there are more people discussing topics hear than just us three.

That would get boring very, very, quickly.