Relativism can mean two different things:
that views have a relative reference point (that they are personal) rather than that they have an absolute reference point (that they are universal)
that every view is equal to every other view
I agree with the first and disagree with the second.
Insofar it is claimed that the second is an absolute truth, rather than merely a personal view, it is a form of absolutism, and so, the opposite of relativism in proper sense of the word.
You seem to think that I think that you can walk down a sidewalk by simply making a wish.
When did I say, or imply, something like that?
Insofar it is claimed that there is a universal law that obeys our wishes, though not necessarily that makes them come true, we are in the territory of absolutism.
Had some reading into this forum, and have very little time to read, but found an MIT PHD math prof stating Something to the effect that the Narcissism is nothing else but a set theory signifying self reference.
Don’t have the paper, and it makes fodder for future reading. It is bookish, yes, but I am depending on it in a sort of way the injured pining for a salve.
There is not even the implication of wishing in my objective statement. I’ve seen straw men before, but never one so blatantly obvious and just awful.
That wasn’t a strawman. Strawman is an attack. That was a defense. A defense against one possible interpretation of what you might be saying. I have no clue what you’re saying. Though I am sure it’s misplaced.
An example of strawman would be claiming that relativism is self-refuting because its statement that “there is no absolute truth” is a statement of absolute truth. Which it is not. The statement is perfectly consistent. It applies to every statement including itself. No statement is a reflection of absolute, universal, impersonal, omniscient, perfect, God’s-eye view. Not even that statement.
A straw man is not an attack, it is an argument that you defeat besides the one I gave, to feel like you won.
My argument for objectivity was simple:
In order to walk down a sidewalk, you must actually walk down a sidewalk (duh!!)
So your straw man is that I was WISHING !!!
It’s logically incoherent!!
You’re a disingenuous moron
You make zero sense.
You might have missed the thread.
This isn’t Objectivity vs Subjectivity thread.
This is Absolutism vs Relativism thread.
They’re the same thing.
If I say something is objective, I’m saying it’s absolute.
If I say something is subjective, I’m saying it’s relative.
You are not even a good thinker Magnus…
Let alone a great one.
They aren’t.
The word “objective” means “independent from mind”.
Objectivism is the position that reality is independent from, external to, mind.
I am an objectivist.
But I am not an absolutist.
This is like talking to a really bad cell phone ap, called “talk to retards”
Absolute means true under all circumstances…
I’m sorry man, but your philosophy is so bad, I can’t even humor this anymore
The subject of this thread is the nature of subject-object relation.
The question is whether the perceiving subject can acquire perfect knowledge of the perceived object.
The question is whether there is such a thing as perfect knowledge – view, position, model, map, representation, perception, etc – or not.
Whether there is, or at the very least whether there can be, a map of reality that has one-to-one correspondence with reality.
Absolutism, in this context, is the position that there are perfect positions.
This thread has NOTHING to do with the question of the extent to which knowledge is applicable. We do not care whether knowledge is applicable to some or all situations.
Also, this thread has NOTHING to do with the question of whether reality is objective or subjective. This thread does not question the existence of object as separate from the subject.
This thread examines the nature of the object – it already assumes that there is an object separate from the subject – in order to establish whether there can or cannot be perfect subject-object correspondence.
My position is that subject-object relation is antagonistic.
There can never be any unity between the two.
Everything objective is a process.
Everything subjective is a state.
Process is imperceptible.
It’s unconscious.
Forever outside of our view.
Thus, it can only be defined using negative statements.
In opposition to state.
Process is that which is not state.
State, on the other hand, is perceptible.
It’s the building block of our consciousness.
It is defined using positive statements.
State is orthogonal to process.
So it cannot mirror it.
However, it can imitate it.
It can approximate it.
A sequence of states forms a pattern.
A difference between two successive states is change.
Change is the best approximation to process.
The faster the change, which means the less persistent the state, the better the approximation.
Absolutism is the insistence that there is, or can be, a subject-object unity.
It insists that states are real.
That the difference between the subjective and the objective merely lies in the kind of states.
They acknowledge nothing unconscious.
Everything must be explained, visible, evident, clear, apparent, revealed, exposed, public, naked, obscene, pornographic . . .
You’re playing lots of word games.
I asked quite simply 3 pages ago why our walking through reality cannot be the terrain. Why it must be the map?
Why can’t our words be the terrain ?
You ignored me.
Absolute is what’s true for every possible state of being.
Even the relativistic can be true for every possible state or process.
It’s only merely relativistic because you have multiple beings … But that does not imply all those beings disagree.
When I state that “in order for a person to walk on a street, a person much actually be walking down a street”
That is relative because it’s a person, and absolute, because it’s true under all circumstances.
Absolutism and relativism are not mutually exclusive formulations. They coexist.
To suggest otherwise is incoherent.
In my ongoing polemic against post-Modern tripe, masking as intellectual mysticism, or what I simply call Modern and Nihilism, I offer this “saad truth”…
The practice of slinging together impressive sounding words to imply you are saying something deep, or that you are saying something at all, is used by the most desperate pseudo-intellectual buffoons across many fields…and it is most popular in the forum circuits where lost minds desperate for attention and acknowledgement often use this tactic as abstract artist, with no talent, use the method of shame, and peer pressure to make a name for themselves as “profound artists” whose works can then be sold, to naive, impressionable imbeciles for extraordinary amounts.
The method uses popularity, peer pressure for an effect.
Some gibberish is put together, some paint splashed on canvas, then marketed as the new, trending, revolution in human thinking and/or art.
Ant resistance is shamed with accusation of stupidity, because only the deserving can fully appreciate the nonsense. most succumb to pressure and begin pretending that they too see the “genius” in the nonsense - the few simply ignore it, leaving fools to be taken advantage by such infantile ploys.
In the field of philosophy where science meets art, this practice is becoming increasingly popular.
with it idiots, charlatans, can declare themselves anything they desire, projecting their preferred image.
Using words, as cRappers use them, to produce an effect, to trigger emotions, to tickle primal instincts, they string together words, in word associations exposing their own psychosis, their own needs, and then sell it as profound insight.
If studied carefully one realizes how shallow and infantile the implied message is.
Its purpose is to feed into primal emotions, and not to raise concepts to lucidity.
Sampling is rampant, as recycling takes the place of creativity to rearrange the old in newer, more fashionable ways.
There is no meaning, other then the actor trying to pull all who listen or read into his own psychosis, creating a clan of collective neurosis.
Pain shard is suffering reduced to a tolerable level.
Plagiarism is avoided by tweaking the words, rearranging or replacing them with other ones, as if with this alteration a deep insight has been produced.
Those baffled by the pretenses, are accused of lacking something necessary to fully experience the magic.
Those seeing through the transparency of the motives are ridiculed or slandered, forced to remain silence, so as to not shatter the illusion being manufactured.
Sampling is the repetition of past creativity, by simply including it along side other ones, and then synthesizing the entire piece of garbage with a hook, like a rap sequence, full of innuendos and multiple references.
The listener plucks bits and pieces, combining them in his own mind in ways that have meaning for him.
The piece itself is meaningless, purposefully incoherent, allowing the listener to project into it his/her own personal experiences, triggered by a verbal sequence.
to clarify it would reduce it to garbage. Its magic lies in its incoherence, directed by a seductive background primal beat, and those sampled melodies, triggering emotional reactions, imagery, sensations.
In philosophical contexts the method restricts itself to the theoretical, the noetic, the completely abstract.
The world is really a nuisance, it draws inspiration from, samples from, imagery to trigger the appropriate reactions in the reader.
Such “philosophical work” is meaningless. It simply takes advantage of simplicity, of need, of lostness, a desire to find purpose in the one reading - it exploits weakness.
Sequence of words can be anything, since there is no order, no world, to restrict their usage. The only directing utility is to trigger, in the reader, sensations, emotions.
Having read the trash the reader feels enlightened, inspired, when, in fact, nothing with any pragmatic meaning, or application, is presented.
The actor/writer may market himself, promote himself, by declaring himself someone impressive, using some popular idol as the icon.
Self promotion is essential, because the work itself is garbage, and will confuse, if the writer does not imply greatness within it, hoping myriads of readers will dedicate themselves in finding it, and if they do not, will pretend they have.
He will not push them, known that their subjectivity will be enough.
To evade exposure, the actor/writer will cloud his meaningless gibberish with enough insinuations as to permit him to claim any position.
Being misunderstood is essential to defend himself against those that know what he is doing, but of pushed the multiple insinuations will allow him to go any way with his defensive retreat.
I’s how Love became a mystical bond, conveniently bridging reason and irrationality, for the Christian charlatans, but any other positive sensation, any positive motive, like survival, will do.
A possible alternative would be self-preservation raised to the level of universal force, binding everything from stones to amoeba in a cosmic embrace.
But to make the base disappear in magical mysticism, you must pretend more is going on, by changing the words being used.
To place it within art, an untalented artist may paint a tree, but to hide his inability to paint it realistically, he may disguise his lack of talent by painting it different hues, or by exaggerating its form, or by rearranging its parts, as if the artists motive hides a profound insight, rather than a lack of skill.
A “musicians” lacking talent wills ample melodies, splice them together, and then speak over them, word-association gibberish - he may even hide his inability to sing, in this way.
The emphasis is places on the effect, not the cause, just as it is placed on nurture and not nature, as the sum of all nurturing, or on the subjective rather than the world as the object of interest.
It is the effect which is being worshiped and mimicked and not its source.
The abstraction, the noumenon, rather than the world, the phenomenon.
Because the abstraction is intimate, it is malleable, it is mutable.
Nihilistic inversion.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y7aexzSZiM[/youtube]
Free-Will and Determinism
To explain free-will in a way that even a modern moron can slightly understand we must use imagery.
Let us imagine ourselves swimming in a vast ocean with no end, and that in this ocean we are swept forth by a wave.
This ocean and wave is time.
What is our free-will against the surge of a massive body of water.
We can swim horizontally on the surge, or dive into its depths, or stay on its surface, but we cannot swim contrary to it…reason is that we are also part of the wave and to do so would contradict our existence…but let’s not make this too complex for the retards.
From the imagery we can now understand how the past is immutable, and though it is determining, as it is pushing us forward whether we like it, or not, we can adjust ourselves, and our trajectory, relative to its force.
With effort, determined by the power of our will and the aggregate energies it focuses, we can move horizontally on its crest, deeply or on the surface, like a surfer, and that is the next of our will’s power.
Will here is mind, aggregate energies is body, which also includes brain of which the mind is but an extension.
To this we must mention chaos, because the imagery fails to incorporate randomness and only represents order, in the form of water.
Things become too complex for retards, so best we keep it as simple as possible, and like most retards only believe in order - primitive minds cling to their primal comprehension, and order is all they can process as existing.
Psychological Predispositions
The difference between a realistic and idealistic approach to life and the world it finds itself within, can be divided into Top<>Down or Bottom<>Up thinking, corresponding to an approach towards phenomena through noumena, or noumena through phenomena.
Nihilism finds its natural disposition in the Top<>Down, idealistic approach.
It begins with the desirable abstraction, to whatever degree it is based on experienced world, and then proceeds to justify it by shaping world to fit into its established “truths”.
Nihilism begins with a fabrication as a given, and then demands that it be disproved, absolutely, otherwise he remains convinced that it is no better or worse than any other “truth”. Using nil as validation of whatever it took as being self-evident.
The realist begins from the position of nil, and then proceeds, through experience, to judge what is more or less likely, never expecting any final, absolute conclusion. He holds hypothesis as superior or inferior, not as certain, and adjusts his positions if and when new data is experienced, multiplying his confidence with every repetition of it. The onus is upon the theory to prove itself, not as absolute but as superior, basing this assessment upon perceptible, repeatable outcomes, and in reference to an indifferent world of (inter)activity.
Not so for the Nihilist.
He expects his presumed theory to be disproved, and that it be disproved absolutely, otherwise he uses the absence of an absolute as justification of parity
He prefers to level cosmos to infinite space, so as to avoid the impact of matter/energy, representing probability, within it.
Whether he understands it or not, his disposition of a desire to escape in the uniformity of theoretical nil - infinite space/time, where no distinctive fluctuations can trouble his fearful mind.
Having abandoned the childishness of absolute order, as in God, he turns to the opposite, never letting go of the absolute, and hopes for an end in a future where his own inferiority will disappears in uniformity of chaos.
Unable to endure the uncertainty of his own presuppositions, perhaps sensing their motives, he wishes to pull the world down with him, so that even in the case of his own error he would have not have left anything behind to laugh at his cowardly foolishness.
Unendurable, for him, is the thought of wasting a life trying to make amends for the “injustices” of natural selection, he wants to spread his own feebleness by seeding doubt, and the ideologies of self-hating, life-negation.
Unbearable, for him, is the possibility that others will strive to stand-out rather than blend-in; discriminate rather than be blind-to.
Dragging the world into the dark where nothing can be discerned, and he is no longer assaulted by his own reflection, where everything is a matter of touch, careful hands groping in the dark, with delicate soft fingers.
Somewhere where eyes no longer reveal what lies in the distance, and it can sleep and dream, with “eyes wide shut”.
Crow, first of all it’s a pleasure to meet intelligent new people here.
Now to the topic. predisposed and free will are at times inclusionary, or at other times- exclusionary events. I don’t call them conceptual, because it is the kind of ambiguous process, where there may not be, or can be connections.
If the connection between the will and its manifestation is missing, predisposition is totally casual, and historic. One is drawn in, as if by necessity, in an absolute sense, without being able to identify any of the particular elements which goes into its phenomenal manifestation. Trying, one is indeed reduced to a aberration, where ultimately, which can draw in other tangentional perceptions/perceptiveness.
On the other hand, when an inclusionary bond is formed, at first no difference can be noted, and again it becomes a case of a dog chasing its own tale. It is only when a re-differentiation is sought in terms of, not only in pictures, but pictures stored away into an array of sequential prioritize, when the become formalized in an order of progressive significance.
The recall finally does away with the informal and substanticpve content, for the sake of expediency, for there are too many pictures to deal with, and reduces the redundant latency into an entropic patency.
The absolutism is the result for a total search from all the cross searched possibilities. But that is not to imply that absolutism and relativism completely divide like a cell into the many called perfect world of
Unending relativism.
Don’t call me intelligent it will hurt the feelings of the sane ones on this forum.
Here is how I see it.
Predisposition, nature, is what we are inclined to do, programmed to react - path-of-least-resistance.
It is determined as the sum of all past nurturing.
Tried and tested methods of reacting to particular stimuli.
Free-will is a self contradicting concept. You cannot be independently striving to gratify a dependence.
Willing consists in choosing the path-of-more-resistance, as a method of outperforming other organisms.
Consider the Will, the brain focusing the organisms aggregate energies, or those under its control.
A focus of energies that multiply their effect, breaking through more, greater, resistance.
Will is not independent, in the purest definition of the word ‘free’, it is always dependent.
To become independent, to whatever degree it an, depends on how much need it can endure, or get rid of.
Consider need as mass. The stronger you get the more mass you can endure comfortably.
Therefore the Greeks had one word for exercise and mental discipline- asceticism.
Exercise placed mind/body into controlled stressful environments to increase its endurance.
We can also separate needs into those produced by lack, as hunger, thirst, and those produced by excess, as a byproduct of the first, for example growth, reproduction, art, play.
We can also differentiate between the above and those fabricated by society as wants, desires, by associating symbols with needs.
This is again a different cell, experiencing/seeing/trying to understand one of manifold ways.
I do understand this, but I will defer the question of intelligence, and its effect on the feelings of others to a later time, for the it’s own sake.
Sorry Crow, I didn’t mean to pre-empt our conversation but needed to reaffirm something about the below normative thesis by McCay.
Genetic memory automatically reacts to otherness, surprising the conscious mind, as if the actor were someone else.
Know Thyself is an ongoing process missing from newly evolved self-consciousness.
The mind perceives itself acting, after-the-fact, as the processing requires lags behind the more automated acting already programmed into the organism - genetics.
To compensate it trains itself with multiple experiences to react automatically to the same stimuli with a slight modification - Will having an effect.
Like training in the martial arts.
Reactions have to become second nature - not thought and prepared.
This is how nurturing modifies the sum of all past nurturing = nature.