But as I have said before, where is the information that proves him wrong? I mean it is one thing to say that he is wrong but without the requisite data I can't make that call. Plus searching the Internet could yield a variety of results, how do I know which one is right?
I need a little more that "wrong" to think otherwise.
As for the link, apparently the logic that great minds in the past were once shunned is used here.
I figured. The middle source seems utterly convinced of his genius as a "superior mind", aka not listening to criticism that isn't his own. This is just one example of the crazy. Then again he thinks Charles Manson is a sage an has dubbed himself a philosopher (an insult to the field really).
Then again he does mention how the same problems (poverty, disease, suicide, murder, pollution) than man had before persist today. Followed by a weak assertion how man 10,000 years ago didn't commit suicide.
But the papers where intriguing. It made me think twice. But I think the point earlier about the level of the task matters.
Just one example listed is overimitation, how children copies unnecessary steps while chimps did not. The middle post also lists other points for that case.
Is hard to look into something on your own. Considering that the origins of our feelings are prone to confabulation it's hard to know what it is.
Then don't do it on your own. There are professionals in the field of psychology who are trained to help you find the answers to such questions.
The trouble in that regard is that I need a philosopher to assist with this matter. Psychologists are rather inept in such matters as my personal experience has shown. So quick to prescribe a medical solution when that isn't the problem. It's almost like a fall back when they are out of their depth in regards to serious life questions that others have posed.
Things of that nature make me wonder if there is really any good to doing it. It seems like all it does is make people miserable.
You are writing words on a computer, and you are wondering whether philosophy has any useful function?
A computer, dude. A computer.
You clearly didn't read my first post. Your comment is invalid.
Not to mention the part about people being happy considering suicide rates. People say they're happy, but that's more out of some social obligation than an honest assessment.
And what about the part where they say that we don't have any hope of being happy because our parents raised use on the misguided knowledge that we are owed and deserve happiness.
That humans are burdened by time. That hope is a curse, and that philosophy and reason just bring misery by dispelling illusions (among other things), or that consciousness is a disease.
Reading the book makes it almost hard to believe he’s married with kids.
You have Rousseau going on about how man was happier in early times and how we are slaves to the judgment and opinion of others. That our desires can never be truly satisfied because novelty is in a losing war against time. Then leopardi saying that living longer isnt good of life is just empty and actually endorses risky behavior, saying we can’t achieve happiness but we distract ourselves. They all seem to agree that we can’t be happy. If that’s true then what’s the point in living, how can they be against suicide.
Not to mention they argue that reason and philosophical thinking is the result of man’s ills, that it doesn’t offer solutions to problems. It just dispels the illusions that make us happy. The same goes for knowledge.
They say no one deserves or is entitled to happiness (so what does that mean about the issues in the world, do we leave them? What about abuse of others?)
The author does a poor job of making it seem like it has a benefit despite what the summary says. In a sense it says there’s no point in doing anything since it won’t bring happiness.
Things of that nature make me wonder if there is really any good to doing it. It seems like all it does is make people miserable. It seems to me that the people who don't use it live happier not having to question things about their lives. The illusions they have let them live happily. But once introduced to the methods of philosophy then the questioning becomes like some kind of parasite, undoing the life you have carefully wrought. Even questioning the fact whether living longer is even a good thing any more. There's less and less positives that result from doing it.
Wouldn't it be better to just live in illusion and be happy?
Note that your evidence for not being in a dream isn't actually evidence that you aren't in a dream.
You have no evidence that you are in a dream.
Dreams can have continuity with reality and things in them can feel real, and you have no way to test it.
That's rather the point, isn't it? Your claim isn't falsifiable. There is inherently no way to prove a negative of your statement, to disprove that we are in a dream. We could all be dreaming right now. It could just be you dreaming right now. There's no way of disproving that, no way of proving the negative, because it's not a falsifiable claim.
HOWEVER, you are trying to draw a false equivalency between "I cannot disprove this claim" and "this claim is true." And they're not the same thing.
And they're definitely not the same thing in your case, because you know you have absolutely no basis for believing you're dreaming, aside from wanting this to be true for some strange reason. Thus,
You have no evidence to support it. It's quite frankly a guess based on nothing. You can believe whatever you want but don't know if it's true, you just think so.
this applies to you.
In fact, that's what really gets me about this thread. See, I've had lucid dreams. I've had dreams in which I knew for a fact that I was dreaming. Never, not once, in any of those dreams did I react with dread or fear or despair based on that fact. In every single one, I reacted in the same way: "Oh cool, now I can do whatever I want."
Which brings me back to what I've been saying in this thread and in the other one: you keep making threads asking people how to deal with your existential dread, yet you have legitimately no reason whatsoever to feel it, and every time someone calls you out on this, you consistently push back against their argument, even though you have no evidence or logic - in other words, no validity - with regards to your position.
So, therefore, you're actively going out your way to feel existential dread. Why would you do that? Don't you think your efforts would be better spend on answering that question?
I'm not going out of my way to fell this. The replies that I have heard before in regards to this are just not good answers to the issue I raise. The threat of this being a dream and wasting any effort that you do is crippling. It's a thought that what you do has no real impact on things around you. No real consequences. Kind of like a game. Granted it is limited according to the type of game and whatnot, but there aren't any real consequences to your actions. There is no danger in killing all the NPCs because you know they don't have real feelings or pain. But then again, anything done in there doesn't carry over to reality. Any success is rather empty. All your effort is wasted on what was essentially nothing but pixels. If the data gets wiped then there is no proof. The same applies to a dream. You can dream you achieved success only to find out that when you wake it was all an illusion. All your effort wasted. That is if you don't realize you are dreaming, in which case if you do you are stuck with the painful knowledge that nothing you do matters and neither does any "one". Your point about being joyful is incorrect in this sense if you happen to be in a lucid or being aware of dreaming. Since none of it is real then all the joy is sucked out.
Then again, typing all that out does make me think there are cracks in all of it. My powers of analysis when it comes to philosophy are rather poor so I just get stuck on things over and over. Of course reading about the probability fallacy helps (just because something is possible doesn't make it certain). Plus appeal to ignorance. I don't have evidence I am dreaming, but that seems to matter little. The distinction between dream and reality seems clear, but upon realizing that pain can be felt in a dream it blurs that. Truth be told, this never bothered me until now. I could tell the difference between the two.
You haven't proven the belief that you aren't dreaming is true. You have no evidence to support it. It's quite frankly a guess based on nothing. You can believe whatever you want but don't know if it's true, you just think so.
The evidence is that my waking experience exhibits continuity and consistency. Today I have been awake for hours and I have clear memories of all that time in which events follow logically one after the other. Furthermore, the events of today follow logically from the events of yesterday, and so on all the way back for years. Every day, every hour, every minute I experience that is continuous and consistent with the past constitutes evidence that I am experiencing something real and external to me. The probability that I am simply hallucinating things that happen to be consistent gets lower and lower, and the probability that the consistency is the result of reality grows higher and higher. This is how evidence works. This is what evidence is.
If you're flipping a coin over and over again, and you keep getting heads, this constitutes evidence that the coin you're flipping is double-headed or otherwise non-random. It is always possible that you're flipping a fair coin and you just happen to get heads every time. You can never prove that the coin is double-headed (assuming this is your only method of testing it). But the probability of the coin being fair drops by half with every flip. The probability of a fair coin getting heads is 1/2 on the first flip. The probability of it getting two heads on the first two flips is 1/4. The probability of it getting three heads on the first three flips is 1/8. And so on and so forth. It does not take very many flips before the probability of the coin being fair is extremely low, and you can say with a pretty high degree of confidence that the coin is double-headed. After a hundred heads, the probability of it being fair is about the same as the probability of being struck by lightning this year... on five separate occasions. At that point, it would be pretty asinine to say, "But you have no proof the coin is double-headed. You can't know it is. You're just guessing it is based on nothing." Yes, you can; yes, you do; and no, you're not.
As for what radica skepticism has done it talks of what it can do. Bringing someone a sense of tranquility by doubting everything and not passing judgment on anything. Saying that the problems in the world are the result of beliefs and opinions and the solution is to extinguish them. It's quite similar to Buddhism in some regards. Also states that we suffer by labeling things good and bad and suffer in their pursuit and absence.
Nothing you're saying constitutes a valid argument for radical skepticism. You are recommending the theory on the basis of incidental effects it may have on our mental state. Theists sometimes similarly recommend belief in God on the basis that it might make you feel better about yourself and the world. This is called the appeal to consequences, and it has no bearing on whether or not radical skepticism or theism is justified. Maybe believing that there's pirate gold buried in my backyard would make me feel better, but if in fact there isn't, I ought not to believe that there is. Maybe believing in God would make me feel better, but if in fact God does not exist, I ought not to believe that he does. Maybe disbelieving reality would make me feel better, but if in fact reality does exist, I ought to believe that it does.
I might also bring up a second problem with this recommendation, that severing attachments is more likely to lead to or exacerbate depression than bring contentment. But that's more a matter of psychology than philosophy.
But like I said before, the Gettier problem has rendered JTB a poor definition of knowledge. BAsed on your replies you havent been sufficient to overturn that.
The concept of intensional statements renders the Gettier problem a poor objection to JTB.
No, I'm not going to tell you why. I'm just going to state that your failure to respond adequately to this claim demonstrates that it is correct.
And in regard to science, bare in mind that it has also achieved a great deal of problems in addition to the gifts (maybe even more than the good). That seems to be what uncertainty brings
You're missing the point -- and unwittingly conceding it. The point is that science has achieved. If empirical reasoning and the knowledge it generates were useless, then science could no more develop nuclear weapons than it could smallpox vaccines.
Note that your evidence for not being in a dream isn't actually evidence that you aren't in a dream. Dreams can have continuity with reality and things in them can feel real, and you have no way to test it. Memory is also poor evidence since it is not only fallible and subject to editing by your mind, but you can also remember dreams. Your evidence doesn't lead to an external reality, it just proves consistency (which dreams can have).
Your probability doesn't speak to those small chances though. Sure you could conclude that it's an unfair coin but you cannot really do that. You could be caught in the rare chance that it's all heads. There is no reason to treat it as unfair, you have no confidence to treat it so because you are stuck in that small probability event. The same goes for your "is ought" statements. You are assuming one isn't the case even though you cannot prove it. Just because something could be a certain way doesn't mean you should believe it so, especially when there isn't evidence for it. God and reality have no evidence for either one, so your points fail.
As for what radica skepticism has done it talks of what it can do. Bringing someone a sense of tranquility by doubting everything and not passing judgment on anything.
Really? Because between your two threads you seem to be exhibiting crippling indecision as a result of following this method of thinking, rather than tranquility.
Actually I haven't followed the method. I'm still judging things as good and bad and seeking judgment.
I don't know enough to say that. Philosophy is pretty much just a foreign language to me at this point.
That interpretation of the quote makes sense now.
You haven't proven the belief that you aren't dreaming is true. You have no evidence to support it. It's quite frankly a guess based on nothing. You can believe whatever you want but don't know if it's true, you just think so.
As for what radica skepticism has done it talks of what it can do. Bringing someone a sense of tranquility by doubting everything and not passing judgment on anything. Saying that the problems in the world are the result of beliefs and opinions and the solution is to extinguish them. It's quite similar to Buddhism in some regards. Also states that we suffer by labeling things good and bad and suffer in their pursuit and absence.
But like I said before, the Gettier problem has rendered JTB a poor definition of knowledge. BAsed on your replies you havent been sufficient to overturn that. Not to mention the other problems with epistemology.
And in regard to science, bare in mind that it has also achieved a great deal of problems in addition to the gifts (maybe even more than the good). That seems to be what uncertainty brings
But in regards to dreaming, there is simply no way to know that you aren't dreaming. We already know pain is possible in dreams, which was a main counterpoint in the past. Even that quote (I forget who said it) stated that he dreamt he was a butterfly. Upon waking he couldn't tell if he was himself dreaming he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreamning it was human. You cannot know whether you are still dreaming or not given what we know about dreams. You can only know it's not real after waking, but during the dream you believe it to be real. Given that, you cannot know you are currently not dreaming.
I don't see how that quote by Kant really adds anything here.
It doesn't mater whether physicists disagree on that point (assuming others people even exist which can't be known). The point is they can't prove that isn't the case.
And the Gettier problem essentially drove the nail in the coffin for justified true belief, to the point that JTBF isn't a sufficient basis to evaluate knowledge anymore. The objections to the problem haven't had any success in overcoming the conclusions.
I need a little more that "wrong" to think otherwise.
As for the link, apparently the logic that great minds in the past were once shunned is used here.
Also the comments have another person elaborating on what he already said.
But why is it off the deep end?
Also how is he wrong about all the points he makes? It's not enough just to say someone is wrong.
Then again he does mention how the same problems (poverty, disease, suicide, murder, pollution) than man had before persist today. Followed by a weak assertion how man 10,000 years ago didn't commit suicide.
But the papers where intriguing. It made me think twice. But I think the point earlier about the level of the task matters.
https://www.ideapod.com/idea/The-Evidentiary-Proof-Humanity-is-a-Biologically-and-Genetically-Brain-Birth-Defective-Species/58f6a211fe3a59f26568c688
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/13/science/children-learn-by-monkey-see-monkey-do-chimps-dont.html?_r=0
Just one example listed is overimitation, how children copies unnecessary steps while chimps did not. The middle post also lists other points for that case.
The trouble in that regard is that I need a philosopher to assist with this matter. Psychologists are rather inept in such matters as my personal experience has shown. So quick to prescribe a medical solution when that isn't the problem. It's almost like a fall back when they are out of their depth in regards to serious life questions that others have posed.
You clearly didn't read my first post. Your comment is invalid.
Not to mention the part about people being happy considering suicide rates. People say they're happy, but that's more out of some social obligation than an honest assessment.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0984480277/ref=cm_cr_arp_mb_bdcrb_top?ie=UTF8
Not to mention that it shows consciousness is a mistake and that to be born is to be doomed to suffer and die.
That humans are burdened by time. That hope is a curse, and that philosophy and reason just bring misery by dispelling illusions (among other things), or that consciousness is a disease.
Reading the book makes it almost hard to believe he’s married with kids.
You have Rousseau going on about how man was happier in early times and how we are slaves to the judgment and opinion of others. That our desires can never be truly satisfied because novelty is in a losing war against time. Then leopardi saying that living longer isnt good of life is just empty and actually endorses risky behavior, saying we can’t achieve happiness but we distract ourselves. They all seem to agree that we can’t be happy. If that’s true then what’s the point in living, how can they be against suicide.
Not to mention they argue that reason and philosophical thinking is the result of man’s ills, that it doesn’t offer solutions to problems. It just dispels the illusions that make us happy. The same goes for knowledge.
They say no one deserves or is entitled to happiness (so what does that mean about the issues in the world, do we leave them? What about abuse of others?)
The author does a poor job of making it seem like it has a benefit despite what the summary says. In a sense it says there’s no point in doing anything since it won’t bring happiness.
Things of that nature make me wonder if there is really any good to doing it. It seems like all it does is make people miserable. It seems to me that the people who don't use it live happier not having to question things about their lives. The illusions they have let them live happily. But once introduced to the methods of philosophy then the questioning becomes like some kind of parasite, undoing the life you have carefully wrought. Even questioning the fact whether living longer is even a good thing any more. There's less and less positives that result from doing it.
Wouldn't it be better to just live in illusion and be happy?
I'm not going out of my way to fell this. The replies that I have heard before in regards to this are just not good answers to the issue I raise. The threat of this being a dream and wasting any effort that you do is crippling. It's a thought that what you do has no real impact on things around you. No real consequences. Kind of like a game. Granted it is limited according to the type of game and whatnot, but there aren't any real consequences to your actions. There is no danger in killing all the NPCs because you know they don't have real feelings or pain. But then again, anything done in there doesn't carry over to reality. Any success is rather empty. All your effort is wasted on what was essentially nothing but pixels. If the data gets wiped then there is no proof. The same applies to a dream. You can dream you achieved success only to find out that when you wake it was all an illusion. All your effort wasted. That is if you don't realize you are dreaming, in which case if you do you are stuck with the painful knowledge that nothing you do matters and neither does any "one". Your point about being joyful is incorrect in this sense if you happen to be in a lucid or being aware of dreaming. Since none of it is real then all the joy is sucked out.
Then again, typing all that out does make me think there are cracks in all of it. My powers of analysis when it comes to philosophy are rather poor so I just get stuck on things over and over. Of course reading about the probability fallacy helps (just because something is possible doesn't make it certain). Plus appeal to ignorance. I don't have evidence I am dreaming, but that seems to matter little. The distinction between dream and reality seems clear, but upon realizing that pain can be felt in a dream it blurs that. Truth be told, this never bothered me until now. I could tell the difference between the two.
Note that your evidence for not being in a dream isn't actually evidence that you aren't in a dream. Dreams can have continuity with reality and things in them can feel real, and you have no way to test it. Memory is also poor evidence since it is not only fallible and subject to editing by your mind, but you can also remember dreams. Your evidence doesn't lead to an external reality, it just proves consistency (which dreams can have).
Your probability doesn't speak to those small chances though. Sure you could conclude that it's an unfair coin but you cannot really do that. You could be caught in the rare chance that it's all heads. There is no reason to treat it as unfair, you have no confidence to treat it so because you are stuck in that small probability event. The same goes for your "is ought" statements. You are assuming one isn't the case even though you cannot prove it. Just because something could be a certain way doesn't mean you should believe it so, especially when there isn't evidence for it. God and reality have no evidence for either one, so your points fail.
Actually I haven't followed the method. I'm still judging things as good and bad and seeking judgment.
That interpretation of the quote makes sense now.
You haven't proven the belief that you aren't dreaming is true. You have no evidence to support it. It's quite frankly a guess based on nothing. You can believe whatever you want but don't know if it's true, you just think so.
As for what radica skepticism has done it talks of what it can do. Bringing someone a sense of tranquility by doubting everything and not passing judgment on anything. Saying that the problems in the world are the result of beliefs and opinions and the solution is to extinguish them. It's quite similar to Buddhism in some regards. Also states that we suffer by labeling things good and bad and suffer in their pursuit and absence.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Epistemology#Problems_In_Epistemology
But like I said before, the Gettier problem has rendered JTB a poor definition of knowledge. BAsed on your replies you havent been sufficient to overturn that. Not to mention the other problems with epistemology.
And in regard to science, bare in mind that it has also achieved a great deal of problems in addition to the gifts (maybe even more than the good). That seems to be what uncertainty brings
I don't see how that quote by Kant really adds anything here.
It doesn't mater whether physicists disagree on that point (assuming others people even exist which can't be known). The point is they can't prove that isn't the case.
And the Gettier problem essentially drove the nail in the coffin for justified true belief, to the point that JTBF isn't a sufficient basis to evaluate knowledge anymore. The objections to the problem haven't had any success in overcoming the conclusions.