astrology

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeePsF6GhcQ[/youtube]

Of course he’s just paraphrasing Michel de Nostredame.

Iambigus can you tell my youngest brothers astrological? I made the report. For a chart, thank you!

grabbit.png

What does not “believing” in astrology mean? As that pertains to a particular context that most of us here will be familiar with.

Also, take the “decades of research” there in turn. Scientific research.

In other words, a set of circumstances involving human interaction. There we can focus in turn on the distinction that I make between astrology in the either/or world and astrology in the is/ought world.

Astrology as it relates to the laws of nature, the “in fact” empirical world around us, the logical rules of language, mathematics etc., and astrology as it relates to the components of my own moral philosophy: dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.

Again, I’m less interested in what people think or believe or claim to know about astrology and more in regard to what they are actually able to demonstrate – scientifically, philosophically – that all rational men and women are obligated to believe about it. Linking us, for example, to actual experiences and experiments they themselves have had, have tried or are familiar with.

Also, just out of curiosity, how do you imagine astrology fitting into your own life, given that which is of most importance to me philosophically — morality here and now, immortality there and then.

And go into some detail regarding the behaviors that you chose in a particular context of late. The existential relationship between “I” and the celestial bodies.

Also, also, as noted on another thread:

“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

Where does astrology fit into all of this? Given that 95% of the universe is not even “normal matter”?

Also, also, also, are we going to do this or not? :-k

Astrology Critics Don’t Even Know What They’re Criticizing
The urge to cry ‘pseudoscience!’ may be about something else entirely
Stephanie Georgopulos
Nov 15, 2019

No getting around this of course. Natural cycles explain many things. From the four seasons weatherwise here in Baltimore to the wet and the dry seasons in other parts of the world. Sunspots on the Sun, the shifts in Earth’s magnetic field, ice ages. And so many more: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cycles

And they impact on human interactions in many profound ways. They precipitate consequences that can be both predicted and measured. We can prepare for them.

The question here then is how are the cycles embedded in things that astrologers predict and measure able to be demonstrated as in fact something that all rational men and women are obligated to defend.

Ah, but my “thing” with astrology – as with philosophy, science and religion – shifts the discussion instead to the world of identity, conflicting value judgments and political economy. What can astrologers tell me about the existential interaction between the celestial bodies and the behaviors that I choose on this side of the grave as that becomes embedded in the fate of “I” on the other side of the grave?

Given a particular set of circumstances that the astrologers themselves would be familiar with.

Astrology Critics Don’t Even Know What They’re Criticizing
The urge to cry ‘pseudoscience!’ may be about something else entirely
Stephanie Georgopulos
Nov 15, 2019

Really, I challenge anyone here who subscribes to astrology on any level to intertwine these points into actual experiences from their own lives.

You have acquired this “fluency” in regard to the “language of energy”. How then are the constructed words applicable to behaviors you choose in the either/or world? And, of more importance to me, to the reactions of others who criticize the behaviors that you choose in regard to conflicting goods in the is/ought world.

Note how through astrology in these contexts, you have in fact achieved an “expanded awareness”. Of what exactly? How specifically do the celestial bodies facilitate your acquiring a “clearer picture of who you are”.

And in regard to a particular context in which human behaviors do come into conflict over moral and political value judgments, how might the celestial bodies allow one to acquire a more perfect understanding not only of why we behave as we do but how perhaps we ought to behave as well.

Astrology Critics Don’t Even Know What They’re Criticizing
The urge to cry ‘pseudoscience!’ may be about something else entirely
Stephanie Georgopulos
Nov 15, 2019

Yes, that is one way to put it. I don’t pretend to have a sophisticated understanding of astrology. And I wouldn’t doubt at all that many of my assumptions about it are flawed.

But let those who do claim to have a sophisticated, unflawed understanding of it, take their assumptions out into the world of human interactions and note the manner in which astrology is able to react in a sophisticated and unflawed manner given the existential juncture that is of most interest to me: identity, value judgments and political economy.

And then this part: astrotalk.com/astrology-blog/li … gy-behind/

Sure, that’s a reasonable set of assumptions as well. So, let astronomers and astrologers focus in on a particular aspect of the universe and give their own explanations for why the celestial bodies behave as they do. But not many astronomers then take that leap from celestial bodies to the bodies that we ourselves make the trek in from the cradle to the grave. Bodies out in a world that encompasses acquiring a sense of self, an “I” that often comes into conflict morally and politically with others who sense themselves to be very, very different. It is here that astrology is of most interest to me.

Okay, okay. But in regard to astrology given a specific “situation” that we might find ourselves in, what is it rational to believe? And how is this belief then reasonably demonstrated?

hey people only stopped “believing” astrology when there tsjurttsj wes saying ok we burn u if you don’t quit teaching it.
When science overtook the tschurch in the late 1800s astrology rose up right along with it and will keep rizering …

people people don’t want it to be true like truth is so many times a bully.

Astro bully.

Notice how he uses the word ‘sophisticated’ which the writer of the article did not use. The writer of the article talks about flawed assumptions. The OP of this thread is a dismissal, which includes mind reading of people who believe in astrology. That’s someone who feels confident dismissing something he now admits he doesn’t know much about. That’s what the article is talking about.

He is trolling. He could ask for justifications from astrologers in his OP, with dismissing and mind reading first. What he is doing is starting off with a charged post intended to trigger defensiveness and off balance responses. If he was interested, and knows little, he could just ask for information. But he does not do this. He is not interested. He wants something else.

And here suddenly astrology must be unflawed? And note the bizzare language: Let those who claim to have a sophisticated…etc. As if they bear some onus.

And then this part: astrotalk.com/astrology-blog/li … gy-behind/

And here he slides from social scientists to astronomers, and he doesn’t seem to understand that astrology does not weigh in on why celestial bodies behave as they do.

Every time what he considers an objectivism is approached it is done with a mass of assumptions on his part. When this is pointed out, none of that matters. He is allowed to use his belief system to make claims about the internal motivations and experiences of all the people in a group, but other people must demonstrate to all rational people whatever they believe. He has no onus, for some reason. He regularly and systematically slides the points made by others into ones convenient to him: straw men, red herrings, weaker versions of their positions and more fallacies.

At the same time his litmus test for what all rational people should be convinced by is whether he is convinced by something. Someone who uses fallacies and feels no need to justify his positions and judgments and mind reading is perhaps not the best first litmus test of rationality.

Sure, if this is what you believe. And, in believing it, that more or less becomes all the “demonstration” needed to make it true. In your head.

But it doesn’t have much to do with the points I raise about astrology above.

It doesn’t bring astrology out into the world of human interactions revolving the things that interest me: identity, value judgments and political economy.

It doesn’t delve into how astrologers assess the existence of “I” on the other side of the grave.

And you never have responded to my post above:

Uh-oh. The thread is no longer about astrology. It’s about Curly insisting that once again, with or without a nudge from the stars, I’m the problem here. I’m “trolling”.

No context of course. Just another caustic intellectual contraption. A thumping…by way of fulmination.

Okay, I challenge him to bring these accusations to a new thread. Either in the philosophy forum or in the rant room. We can explore each other’s point of view intelligently and civilly…really making an effort to understand what the other is trying to say in regard to particular contexts. Or we can reconfigure that into an all out polemical brawl.

I’m good either way.

One further point I was going to make.
Astrology is yet another set of systems, not one thing. IOW it is followed by a lot of different people with a lot of different values. You cannot generate values, certainly no objective ones based astrology. It is not objectivist in this sense at all. Once you have your values, objectivist or not, you can certainly apply them to readings or make judgements of other people in some astrological context, but you cannot say doing X is immoral and justifiy this with astrology. Someone probably does this, somewhere, but there really is no basis for it. Identity is also subject to the metaphysics of the user. I would say most sophisticated astrologers would see tendencies to certain qualities in birth charts and that individual qualities DO change over time due to experiences (there is a whole set of ways of charting this). So, what one is like is not fixed and even given birth chart X rather different people could arise, given their economic class, the presence of other siblings, the culture they were born in and how this would interact (fit) with their personality tendencies…and so on. At an abstract level two people born at the same time and place could be described similarly, would have similarities, but a lot would be contingent. Political economy would be part of that, though many astrologers probably don’t think about that so much, unless that is a large part of their individual viewpoint. Just like a lot of psychologists, certainly in the past, tended not to mull so much over on that wing of human experience and the role it might be playing in current psychological issues. Just as they did not think much about cross-cultural issues.

But if we look at this ‘interest’ and then compare it to the OP, I see someone either going about a search for knowledge about something he knows little about in an extremely poor manner - just throwing his assumptions out as if they are correct enough to justify rudeness and mindreading - or that the presented goal is not the real goal. Often people can lie to themselves about this kind of thing.

‘I was just…’

Seems highly unlikely. The OP has all the earmarks of trolling. It probably seemed safer, giver the way astrology is viewed by many. So on this topic, rather than others where he is expressing his ‘interest’ he was more honest up front. He’s not interested. And he might get to frustrate or annoy some people who believe in something he does not.

Debunking Astrology – The Planets Just Aren’t That Into You
At the A Science Enthusiast website

Okay, the first thing that pops into my head when I hear the word “predict”, is the manner in which it seems [somehow] to subsume the future into the present [somehow] subsumed in the past.

If over and again you predict the future and over and again the prediction comes true, how, in an autonomous world, to explain that other than in suggesting that the future is only what it could ever be.

Now, with astrologers, I’m presuming that they embrace some measure of human autonomy. After all, if not, then the predictions themselves would become but necessary manifestations of the laws of matter. They would predict only that which they could never not predict.

So, free will in place, the prediction is based on the position of the celestial bodies preconfiguring one set of human interactions instead of another.

But: How exactly? And isn’t it true that to the extent the celestial bodies are embedded in what the future must be, that can only detract from our own free will?

Okay, is there anyone here who connects the dots between the present and the future by way of daily horoscopes? Or, if you just read them for fun and marveled at their accuracy, cite some specific examples. How detailed were they?

I will Google my own horoscope [as an Aries] and check out the first site: astrology.com/horoscope/daily/aries.html

AUG 29, 2020: Some magic could happen to you today, but you’ll have to slow down in order to truly experience it. Specific details are what makes a day special, and if you whisk through things too quickly, you will never notice them! When someone gives you a compliment, will it go unnoticed because you’re too busy checking your phone? Don’t let that happen. Look up, look out at the world, and engage. Your life is not as harried as you’re making it out to be.

Almost nothing of this is applicable to me. But it is vague enough that dots can be connected to some things, sure.

And though astrology is a lot more complicated than daily horoscopes, 1/12th of the world’s population are Aries. So, is this then “generally” applicable to all of them?

Debunking Astrology – The Planets Just Aren’t That Into You
At the A Science Enthusiast website

And that’s before – way before – we get to the part that is of interest to me: discussing with those who do have a sophisticated understanding of astrology how the celestial bodies factor into our moral and political prejudices on this side of grave and the fate of “I” on the other side of it. Are they “prejudices” because they are necessarily impacted on by the stars and the planets and the moons? Does that make them at least up to a point, beyond our autonomous control? And, in astrology, is there the equivalent of reincarnation or Heaven or Nirvana on the other side?

How does this “up there”/“out there” work?

Again, forget about how all of this propels you into the future in regard to the things you think, feel, say and do. My interest lies in astrology’s role insofar as these things are reacted to by others in such a way that conflicting goods become embedded in human interactions. Do the celestial bodies favor one rather than another moral and political prejudice? How does that work?

Here’s the thing. While astrologers may not be able to explain definitively why and how this is the case, those who scoff at astrology are not able to argue definitively that while celestial bodies do have some impact on the lives we live this does not include the stuff embedded in horoscopes and more sophisticated assessments. We just don’t anything at all about these relationships definitively. It would be like establishing definitively that God does not exist. So, from my frame of mind, the obligation lies far more with those making the claims for something rather than against it.

I am a Pisces but astrology is evil, but I still look like Pisces and I am also emotional. (like Pisces)

How can we ignore it. To get to heaven we have to stay pure.

I don’t believe in any of it, but it can be uncannily descriptive. But that may be just some kind of cognitive fallacy at work.

From the Lord Saturn thread:

Outward mask? What is that supposed to mean?

My interest in astrology revolves entirely around my interest in philosophy itself. And that revolves around probing the question, “how ought one to live?”

More specifically, how ought one to live rationally and morally on this side of the grave in order to attain that which one imagines the fate of “I” to be on the other side of the grave.

And then the part where someone is willing to at least make an attempt to connect the dots between what they believe about astrology “in their head” and what they are able to demonstrate is in fact true about it. Objectively. For all of us.

As for the soul, let’s put off what you know about mine, and explore more substantively what you claim to know about your own. And how you would go about demonstrating that it does in fact exist.

If, however, that has little or nothing to do with your own interest in astrology just move on to others.

Or, sure, turn it all into a “clever” jest?

On the other hand, if a woman is pregnant and is agonizing over whether or not to have an abortion, what can an astrologist provide to her in the way of information and options?

Also, something else you often provide us with here: gibberish:

Unless of course it is not gibberish at all.

Perhaps you might be willing to note how in fact all of this is pertinent given your own quest to answer the question, “how ought one to live?” Given particular sets of circumstances.

Then connect the dots between that and VO and…Nietzsche?

_
…as we now approach that time in the moon’s phase again…
ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop … 4&t=196656 ; )

On the other hand…

scientificamerican.com/arti … full-moon/

[b]Water at Work?

Following Aristotle and Pliny the Elder, some contemporary authors, such as Miami psychiatrist Arnold Lieber, have conjectured that the full moon’s supposed effects on behavior arise from its influence on water. The human body, after all, is about 80 percent water, so perhaps the moon works its mischievous magic by somehow disrupting the alignment of water molecules in the nervous system.

But there are at least three reasons why this explanation doesn’t “hold water,” pardon the pun. First, the gravitational effects of the moon are far too minuscule to generate any meaningful effects on brain activity, let alone behavior. As the late astronomer George Abell of the University of California, Los Angeles, noted, a mosquito sitting on our arm exerts a more powerful gravitational pull on us than the moon does. Yet to the best of our knowledge, there have been no reports of a “mosquito lunacy effect.” Second, the moon’s gravitational force affects only open bodies of water, such as oceans and lakes, but not contained sources of water, such as the human brain. Third, the gravitational effect of the moon is just as potent during new moons—when the moon is invisible to us—as it is during full moons.

There is a more serious problem for fervent believers in the lunar lunacy effect: no evidence that it exists. Florida International University psychologist James Rotton, Colorado State University astronomer Roger Culver and University of Saskatchewan psychologist Ivan W. Kelly have searched far and wide for any consistent behavioral effects of the full moon. In all cases, they have come up empty-handed. By combining the results of multiple studies and treating them as though they were one huge study—a statistical procedure called meta-analysis—they have found that full moons are entirely unrelated to a host of events, including crimes, suicides, psychiatric problems and crisis center calls. In their 1985 review of 37 studies entitled “Much Ado about the Full Moon,” which appeared in one of psychology’s premier journals, Psychological Bulletin, Rotton and Kelly humorously bid adieu to the full-moon effect and concluded that further research on it was unnecessary.

Persistent critics have disagreed with this conclusion, pointing to a few positive findings that emerge in scattered studies. Still, even the handful of research claims that seem to support full-moon effects have collapsed on closer investigation. In one study published in 1982 an author team reported that traffic accidents were more frequent on full-moon nights than on other nights. Yet a fatal flaw marred these findings: in the period under consideration, full moons were more common on weekends, when more people drive. When the authors reanalyzed their data to eliminate this confounding factor, the lunar effect vanished.[/b]

Of course Donald Trump was always warning us about those science guys.

On the other hand, Saturn is a lot bigger than the Moon.