a non-physical thing

Discussion in 'Religion Archives' started by swarm, Jul 10, 2009.

  1. Enmos Valued Senior Member

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    Ok, whatever side I'm going to agree with by saying this I don't know, but what you said ("So you believe only things that you can prove to others.") is pure nonsense.
     
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  3. Doreen Valued Senior Member

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    It is nonsense as a criterion. But swarm did not think so.
     
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  5. Doreen Valued Senior Member

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    Again, context. If you read swarms posts he is demanding more than providing evidence. I have given you a thread to show that you assertion is true and can be stated without qualification. Please provide evidence that it has been proven - your wording......


    And how does one decide what is objectively valuable. I await your evidence that this has been proven with bated breath.
     
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  7. Enmos Valued Senior Member

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    Look Doreen, I don't know what crawled up your ass. But perhaps I'm not interested in 'proving' it. My point in this thread is that you shouldn't believe anything that cannot be backed up by evidence.
     
  8. Enmos Valued Senior Member

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    I do think so.
     
  9. (Q) Encephaloid Martini Valued Senior Member

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    DUH! How useful is it to acknowledge that which cannot be demonstrated? Essentially, allow peoples imaginations to run amok. Useful?
     
  10. (Q) Encephaloid Martini Valued Senior Member

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    You need not get hung up on "proving" things. If you can at least demonstrate ANYTHING regarding such claims, you'll have a case. However, if it's just empty words out of your mouth, it means little if it can't be demonstrated.
     
  11. swarm Registered Senior Member

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    Amazingly irrelevant and yet I bet you couldn't actually get more than 3 or 4.

    You may not approve, but the conquest and subjegation of an entire subcontinant with a few hundred troops is a non trivial problem. Just randomly killing a few people wouldn't do the job.

    Actually being a savvy leader is required.

    Not all knowledge is happy, happy joy, joy.
     
  12. swarm Registered Senior Member

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    Why do you really feel the need to make everything so toxic? It seems so sad.

    You just don't get it do you. If you mention a restaurant and I recall having eaten there before, I just say something like "Jimmy Walker's? I remember eating there a time or two." And that's perfectly fine for ordinary conversation. If we continue discussing it and you mention its great view of the mountains and I remember it sitting on a peer I might say something like...you know I could have been mistaken, I don't think I at at the same restaurant you did.

    Now if you are saying you were at the same restaurant as me 15 years ago and you want me to testify at your murder trial for an alibi, I'm going to need more substantial proof before I agree that we ate together is a fact than just the names of the restaurant matching and your claim.

    So? That doesn't it mean I can't express opinions as opinions instead of misrepresenting them as truth.

    You aren't going to get a carte blanch from me to let you claim any old thing you care to claim is true, is in fact true.

    It is equally ridiculous of you to assert that I must limit what I care to discuss simply because I endeavor not to misrepresent what I'm saying.
     
  13. swarm Registered Senior Member

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    I'm flattered. You should definately do it more frequently.

    Even taken out of context I'm sure the effort would be beneficial.

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  14. swarm Registered Senior Member

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    So close...Let's fill the holes.

    You should not assert as true things which you cannot reasonably demonstrate or prove to be true nor should you accept as true things which canot be reasonably demonstrated or proven to be true. Truth is a special claim about a statement and it needs verification and to be verifiable.

    "Reasonable" depends on the circumstances of the dialog. Reasonable in a court or in a scientific paper is more rigourous than reasonable over a cup of coffee. Likewise what is an acceptible demonstration or proof varies with the claim and the circumstance.

    Finally there is no absolute certainty. If new evidence arrises it must be evaluated and the truth of the original statement may end up being reconsidered.

    So that is truth. Is truth the only type of communication available? No. There are many other forms of statements and claims, opinions for example. Also there are many forms of non literal statement, such as sarcastic statements.

    That said do people, even me, do things they shouldn't? You betcha!

    Yes after misrepresenting my positions you are then full of reasons for not having to bother with justifying your claims.
     
    Last edited: Oct 6, 2009
  15. swarm Registered Senior Member

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    Isn't that Q's call?

    Interesting claim. Care to ellaborate?

    All humans value their breath most when it is absent.
     
  16. swarm Registered Senior Member

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    You might want to let me worry about what I think since I happen to agree with him about your statement.
     
  17. laocoonsis Registered Member

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    There are things that it can't explained
     
  18. swarm Registered Senior Member

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    And yet trying to eff the ineffable is a productive endevor even if it is doomed to fail.
     
  19. wesmorris Nerd Overlord - we(s):1 of N Valued Senior Member

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    To you, sure. Then when someone disagrees with you on what they think is a sound basis and provide what they see as sound reasoning to demonstrate, you may not think it is sound.

    Who says which is correct?

    Well obviously, each party respectively. Though they may affect one another to whatever degree based on their interaction.

    The part that is choice is how much effort you invest in trying to understand someone else's.

    Even within the span of your own lifetime in your own frame of reference, what comprises sound reasoning is now different than it was 15 years ago in your own life. So it's a matter of choice and a matter of time.

    Reason is an individual act. What is reasonable in one conceptual frame of reference may or may not be in another. There is no absolute standard by which to judge it.

    That won't keep us from judging it anyway of course, and that's all cool... but I think philosophically, it's best if you at least realize there could be a view that is beyond your capacity to conceptualize, lacking the direct experience that led to a conceptual relationship for the persons perspective in question - whether you admit to that realization or not.
     
  20. swarm Registered Senior Member

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    To me and anyone who employs sound reasoning.

    If it is actually sound we will come to an agreement.

    Reality.

    No, the process is still the same.
     
  21. wesmorris Nerd Overlord - we(s):1 of N Valued Senior Member

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    It's enough that I'm sure you hit me. If I doubt it, I might react differently than if I don't. Whether or not you really did is irrelevant.

    Once conceptualized, even direct stimulus is symbolic representation. My beef with your argument really hinges on what seems to me as an authoritative aspect of your attitude. You insist "this is real" whereas I'm quite satisfied with an honest "this seems real".

    That you know it does not make it absolute. Practically, sure I'm with you and think similarly. Philosophically, I don't lay claim to know "this is real" nor do I much care - as I said - being pretty sure is good enough and leaves room for fallibility.

    Nor do I care much for the tired argument you're regurgitating. "If I clock you I bet you'd care" while probably accurate, is obvious and exhausting. Of course I would care, but a thousand assholes killing a thousand innocents in cold blood doesn't define reality. As you said "reality does". So while those thousand murderers may think they're murderers and the thousand dead innocents may think no more... and to the entire world it may seem all too real, that we think it so does not make it so.

    That we DO think it though is what matters and necessarily suffices as it is the only means available of attempting to navigate reality. No matter what instruments we design to aid us in our cartography of all that is, we can never create more than maps... models. Obviously, some are more useful than others depending on yes that's right, one's perspective.

    you can't get milk from a cup? what was that I was just drinking? tasted, smelled, looked like milk. I haven't died from it yet nor do I feel ill. don't care if it really was or wasn't. seemed real enough to me. give me a reason that satisfies my own criteria for what's reasonable, to doubt that it was milk and I might care.

    Is that a fact?

    Descriptions are necessarily from perspectives which are necessarily subjective. While you may agree with another perspective, you gain argument by popularity. Nice work.

    We're talking about the relationship of perspective to reality. I've got mountain dew, cigars and a natural feel for the topic because it's just how my mind seems to work. The "fact is" what you "have no problems with" doesn't necessarily make a shit's difference to person x. What's strange to me is that you seem to insist that it does... that you're basically infallible in choosing what is or is not reasonable (even if you have no clue as to the context, and disregarding that your own may be shockingly limited), or that it's some kind of process that exists somewhere, somehow outside of minds (which are the only place of which I'm aware such things can exist).

    Obviously incorrect and rather presumptive. What I seek is to understand, jackass.
     
  22. wesmorris Nerd Overlord - we(s):1 of N Valued Senior Member

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    Ah, and you think reality is the judge... but in order that you find something to be reasonable, it has to translate through YOU. YOU are representative of YOUR perspective into reality. It's a very simple geometric relationship. The circle of the venn diagram has "swarm" inside and "reality" outside. You see "what happens to swarm" and seem to see "what happens to others and general shit" but all of it, every slice is filtered through "what happened to swarm" as you are trapped inside the circle (the nature of perspective - you are the circle) and relate to what is outside of it through what comes into it.

    And who says what's sound?

    Reality has and needs no voice. It just is. People say all sorts of things abou tit. It does not judge. It does not decide. You do. I do, etc. Our eyes may witness the same event but reach radically or subtly different conclusions as to what comprises "reality" for said event.

    Wow, static human. Fascinating. Doubtful.
     
  23. swarm Registered Senior Member

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    Then you are irrational. Checking your facts is how you know they are facts.

    I'm already a pragmatist. Getting more wishy-washy doesn't seem terribly useful.

    The honest answer is to truthfully say I know when the reasonable requirements for knowing have been met and to be open to verification and correction as needed. Saying "this seems to be a cup and it seems to be on what seems to be a desk" is stupid and annoying, not honest.

    I don't deal in absolutes. Reasonably certainty is sufficient.

    You sure seem to care.

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    Fallibility is not a problem.

    That's why I stay in shape. But really you should expect getting smacked about taking this tact with either Buddhists or pragmatists. Anybody can talk a load of doubt. Show me doubt when there is a fist headed for your face.

    Your complaints are really that our ability to capture things linguistically is limited ... well sure. But by those same limits you can't draw the conclusions you are drawing either if thing are as bad as you claim.

    So I simply am offering the direct and traditional Zen test to see if your language and reality are reasonably matching. We could go with the pragmatist test, can you make better beer?, except I don't drink.

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    I thought that was my line?

    Almost all thinking happens after the fact. Thinking is really slow and most of it is just backfill to make you feel good about what already happened. Also you might consider that plants navigate reality just fine.

    Milk comes solely from mammals.

    No, its an informal definition.

    "Necessarily from perspectives which are necessarily subjective[/i ]" doesn't necessairly mean erroneous. Objective descriptions can be checked and known to be true or not.

    If I hand you a dead cat, its being dead is not just a subjective opinion.

    That is what you are talking about. I'm talking about shaving off superfluous equvocation.

    Understanding is understanding of something.
     

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