Zero sum means that in order for there to be a winner, there must be a loser. Now you know what it means.
wait so you’re one of those guys who think causality implies a causa sui? holy aquinas, man. no wonder you’re having so much trouble. i always thought the ‘uncaused cause ex nihilo’ nonsense was common sense even to first year philosophy students. well then i take it back. i thought you already knew this stuff… what with all the cool looking greek words and stuff. you sure had me fooled.
oh and check this out too. another neat philosophical concept. you can have ‘universal absolute order’ even without god. cool, right? yeah all you need is a space full of material that interacts with itself… and wah-lah, you have an absolute order.
and it gets even cooler. you don’t need to observe and recognize consistent and/or recurring patterns to deduce the presence of absolute order. absolute order is a necessary consequence of the existence of material in space/time.
you can’t think of ‘order’ as only an expression of symmetry, what you happen to be able to identify with your senses.
the bad news is, the knowledge of absolute order won’t help you sleep at night. it’s more or less a useless truism. one of those ‘it just is’ things. but sure, you can tell yourself that this is ‘god’s will’ if it’ll help you make sense of the universe and provide for you some meaning and purpose.
i dunno about all that, but there certainly are herds out there. any group with more than four members is dangerously close to becoming a herd. next thing you know they got their own set of spooks they believe in; culture, nation, state, moral codes, and everything else. then they start reproducing. it always happens.
here’s a thought experiment that might help you. with the concept of ‘absolute order’, i mean.
say you’re a big ass creature bigger than the whole universe, and you’re standing outside of it with a camera. you take a series of pictures at rapid speed. later when you look at each picture, you see that every bit of the material in that universe was in a specific place. that organization of material is its ‘order’, and that order is absolute. meaning, that bit of material wasn’t kinda where it was. it was totally where it was. like REALLY where it was. no foolin around.
and then you reflect on… i dunno, something heraclitus said. wasn’t he the one with the river or whatever? and now you’re perplexed. you scratch your head; wait a minute… if time is a continuum and there is nothing but flux, how the fuck did i get those pictures?
at this point you find it reasonable to shrink down to the size of a human, go to earth, put a beige toga on and pace back and forth underneath some architectural ruins in greece that have become tourist attractions, and ponder this profound question further.
after some time you arrive at this conclusion; while time is a continuum, and there is only the flux, each moment is preceded and superseded by another moment in which there was, or will be, a definite order. and then you realize that you had it all wrong before. that ‘flux’ and ‘chaos’ and ‘asymmetry’ were all part of a larger order which is absolute, in that at any moment in space/time, things cannot not be what and where they are. it was just the changing from one order, one arrangement, to another, that turned you into a bamboozled genius. you were like ‘these pictures gotta be an illusion’, but now you’re like ‘ohhhhhhh. i see now,’ at which point you find it quite reasonable to leap into the air underneath one of those ionic columns and shout ‘eureka’!
and it just so happens that at that precise moment, a tourist takes a snapshot of you while you’re suspended in mid air (perhaps clicking your heels together, while you’re at it), your toga wafting in the cool breeze of the greek summer. upon looking at the picture the tourist says ‘stranger things have happened, i guess.’
Sounds like what Commandant Biggs has been saying for 58 pages in the ‘Determinism’ thread.
Some things have to he said 58 times before they stick. It’s a dirty job. That’s what we got special agent Biggs for. We send him in, wait, and then pick him up at the extraction point.
Except that it’s not anything worth repeating.
Things are the way they are.
So what?
Agents made it this way. And they make the future.
That’s something more interesting and useful to investigate. The how and the why.
Okay, let’s explore this in relation to the gun control debate. What is or is not worth repeating in the conflicting arguments from both sides? From all sides really.
Also, pertaining to the manufacture, sale and use of firearms, are things just “the way they are” because we live in a wholly determined universe? Or, instead, if we have some capacity to choose freely, are the tools of philosophy able to resolve the arguments embedded in the conflicting goods here? Or, instead, is my own suggestion that individual value judgments are the embodiment of “I” embedded existentially in the points I raise here…
…more applicable?
How does your understanding of “agents” fit into all of this? How do they function given, say, a discussion of the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution? And why do they function this way and not another?
No Kids please!!!
Your cat has diarrhea.
Saying that “the cat could not not have diarrhea” doesn’t help the cat or you.
Saying that it was determined at the Big Band that the cat would have diarrhea now is …
Honestly I don’t know what to call it.
Doing something for the cat and yourself requires that you investigate an isolated set of actions and circumstances.
You can do that. People do it all the time.
And yeah, it’s also applicable to “gun control”.
I said no Kids.
Seriously, though, this “crap” comes pretty damn close to what I have come to expect from them. I’ll just chalk it up to a shitty mood, okay?
So, sure, when you snap out of it please address my points as more befitting an actual exchange of philosophy on a philosophy board in a philosophy discussion forum.
You don’t know how to solve problems but you want to discuss solving big problems like abortion and gun control.
Try some baby steps.
Okay, note a problem you are convinced is within reach of resolution using the tools of philosophy and cite some examples of the baby steps you might take in order to accomplish it.
Just, please, please, please, make it applicable to a context in which human beings actually do interact.
You don’t think that solving your cat’s digestive problems requires using the the tools of philosophy?
How ought one to live? Ethics? Logic? Reasoning? Interacting with other human beings?
All of that comes into play. And more.
More Kidstuff.
Okay, if it doesn’t embarrass you to be reduced down to this, it doesn’t embarrass me to keep pointing it out.
Unless, of course, you’re just playing a character here. Tongue in cheek perhaps?
Though, seriously, the philosophy board is not the place for that.
Or, rather, so it seems to me.
Every moment of my life, I’m using the “tools of philosophy”.
Is that a strange idea?
This is not the place to say it?
Not at all. But if philosophy is understood to revolve around such assessments as…
1] The word “philosophy” literally means the “love” (philo in Greek) of “wisdom” (sophia). So, a philosopher is somebody who loves wisdom.
2] Philosophy is the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence.
…it behooves us to grapple with that which we are able to actually determine and to demonstrate is the embodiment of wisdom given a particular context.
The cat in fact has the shits. The neighbor in fact [for whatever personal reason] is poisoning the cat.
John owns an arsenal of guns. Joe believes that private citizens ought to be prohibited from owning an arsenal of guns.
Now, we can then argue over what the role of philosophy might be in confronting these contexts. Are there limitations here beyond which philosophers are not able to go?
More to the point, what constitutes wisdom in reacting to the each particular context? How are we to understand each context in terms of the “fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence”.
That’s what this thread certainly revolves around. Each of us [quite often] think that different things are true in regard to human interactions. Some claim that particular things are true objectively, others universally.
While some [like me] think [here and now] that particular things and particular relationships are neither one. Instead, they seem to reflect more the subjective/subjunctive “personal opinions” rooted existentially in dasein.
Oh. That’s somehow different from what I consider philosophy?
To start off, if you take the case of you and the cat living isolated …
The cat is alive and it feels pain and pleasure.
You have a relationship with the cat.
There appear to be ethical and unethical ways to deal with the cat. Even if there is nobody else involved.
Certainly you need to determine a correct course of action. That’s where logic and rationality come into it.
I’m not sure why you would need to demonstrate anything to anyone.
Philosophy still seems to be applicable.
Iambiguous,
It is quite simple. People are being VERY NICE to you. Your posting history BEGS for people to violate your consent. But they don’t.
You’re being coddled in your delusions because people are actually quite nice.
That does not mean that you aren’t being coddled in your delusions… you are. People are just being nice to you.
Don’t you understand that?
Given two ways to treat the cat which achieve the same expected result, most people would consider causing it less suffering to be the wiser choice.
That a particular cat exists and that a particular person has a relationship with that cat is in fact true or it is not. Now, sure, technically serious philosophers can squabble over whether this demonstrable fact is an objective truth or a universal truth.
But, for most of us, the fact that it can be demonstrated to be true works fine. For example, Miley Cyrus exists. She owns a “fluffy white kitty Shanti Om Bb”. Does that qualify as an objective truth? a universal truth?
Are there in turn things that she can do or not do with this cat that qualify – objectively? universally? – as immoral behavior.
How would an ethicist go about demonstrating it?
If, for whatever personal reason, someone abuses or kills a cat, are philosophers able to establish this as either objectively immoral or universally immoral?
In a No God world?
In other words, if someone agrees with you regarding the correct course of action here, they are being logical and rational.
Trust me, I get that part. Just as if someone agrees with you in regard to abortion or Communism they are being logical and rational. They are “one of us”.
How come whenever I see biggy in a thread, I also see phyllo?