Determinism

It doesn’t matter how you define ‘absolute’, because the way I define it means a singularity, an indivisible, immutable oneness.
This is what is absent, and though you can think it, name it, imagine it, represent it, you cannot show it.

Call it ‘Bob’ if you prefer. If it refers to what I defined it as then this is what is non-existent.
The Abrahamic one-god, is an anthropomorphic version.
The one, if defined literally as a singularity, is the secular version.

There is only multiplicity…sometimes conceptualized as a one whole, because only in the mind can it exist as a vague representation.

I think a problem in general is that there will always be a gap between what we perceive and what is actually real
Perceptions can never be a true reflection of reality and sometimes we do not try very hard to actually address this
But also as mind dependent beings we cannot help but make perceptions and so we need to become more self aware
To understand reality is truly independent of our interpretations while still trying to make them as accurate as can be
This is like an ontological catch 22 as those two factors appear mutually incompatible which makes resolution impossible

Of course. I am not saying all teams are the same. I am saying that people use their team belongingness to compensate, for example. As if being on the right team - as they must believe, regardless of the quality of that team’s ideas - means one is like the leaders or strongest members of that team. That’s where it ends for nearly all. The being on the right team is used in a way as if they had been creative. As if they shared the traits of the ones who actually came up with that team’s philosophy.

I used the word team because on the internet it becomes like teams, for ex. critiquing one’s own team is seen as betraryal by most of the team. One could use ‘group’, whatever.

If we focus on what is actually important, it does matter incredibly what team one choses or what group one finds oneself in or which ideas on works with and uses. I am not saying that it doesn’t matter. My focus is on what is happening in the teams and how people use this to pretend a number of things. And one can be on a more aware team, even, and be using this to hide from oneself, pretend one has actually done something. Perhaps one was just aligned with the dominant anger of that team, but really do not understand the ideas and certainly are not capable of extending them or improving them, of having a real dialogue intra-team.

Sure, it’s bettern not toll be a goth or a stoner in high school, because there is some other group or set of ideas or even one person there who is more aware. But most people just hang on to being a follower, and pretend strength by judging the members of other teams, by identifying with ideas, almost like they created them and certainly as if they understand them. In this belonging and judging they pretend they are something they are not, regardless of group potential quality.

Picking the right side is picking the side of integrity, honesty and accuracy, with immediate benefits.
Picking the side of hypocrisy, pretence, obscurantism, superstition, self-flattery, may have psychological benefits but only within sheltered environments, like the current one.
Idiocy has a cost; delusion has a price, self-aggrandizement has consequences if acted upon.

Of course that’s my point. There is either a definitive interpretation applicable to all rational human beings or individual interpretations are embodied historically, culturally, and experientially [intersubjectively] out in particular worlds grappled with and grasped from particular points of view rooted in dasein.

Then a thread like this comes along to probe the extent to which any interpretations at all are within our capacity to choose of our own volition.

No, those are not the only two possibilities. That’s a bizarre dichotomy.

You haven’t probed anything.

If not our capacity, then who’s capacity? If not our volition, then who’s volition?

Why use the word “our” if it is not our?

Sure. Positive nouns will always be better than pejorative ones, by definition.

Take any story from the Bible. It either occurred as the Bible [the word of God] described it or it did not. And mere mortals have either interpreted it in sync with the will of God or they have not. Now, until a God, the God makes the decision to manifest Himself and settle it once and for all, mere mortals inhabiting very, very different historical and cultural contexts, and having lived very, very different individual lives, are going to interpret the Bible in any number of conflicting ways.

That’s just the way it is, right? Not counting the objectivists who insist that only their own interpretations actually count.

But…

No, what I’ve suggested is that any probe that I have ever come across falls far short of demonstrating definitively either what the Bible stories mean or whether conflicting arguments regarding them are within the reach of autonomous human beings.

Let’s try this: Why don’t you demonstrate to me what a real probe would encompass in that regard. Yours for example.

Huh?

Until the human species here on Earth knows definitively whether its capacity to use any words at all comes attached to the capacity to have freely chosen other words instead, all any of us can do is to take that intellectual/philosophical leap to one set of assumptions or the other.

Right?

Or, if not, where is the link to the argument linked to the demonstration that does settle it once and for all.

There are interpretations of various qualities. It’s not a case of a definitive interpretation versus all other interpretations of equal merit. It’s not Word of God versus infinite blather.

But you insist on making it black and white.

This sums up the extent of your probing - repeating this mantra no matter what anyone says.

Again, the same sort of dichotomy - one definitive answer or everyone is leaping to assumptions.

You have thrown away all the “tools of philosophy”, so now you can’t evaluate anything and therefore nobody can demonstrate anything to you.

:eusa-violin:

Therefore a return to the proper use of language is not about sounding ‘positive’ or implying great rewards,. nor is it arbitrary.
Proper use of words means returning them to their original utility: mediating connectors between mind and the body, physical tangible, reality; returning words, as much as possible, to their original role as connectors between noumena (abstractions) and phenomena (apparent).

Corrupting, misusing and abusing language can only hide a secret motive - this is the only occult - which is not to reveal but to selectively or completely conceal; not to clarify but to obscure.

You can eliminate the gap you speak of (the gap between what one thinks is true and what is really true) purely by coincidence. No thinking required. Just throw a dice and if you’re lucky enough you may discover what is true. That’s why Plato said that knowledge is justified true belief not merely true belief.

The idea that there has always been a gap between what we think and what is and that it will always be there is simply unbelievable; in the general sense, of course.

This just mimics our discussion of Communism. There are interpretations of various quality regarding that too. And the manner in which objectivists of you ilk differentiate meritorious assessments from mere blather, is to insist that there are two kinds of people in the world:

1] one of us [who grasp what Communism really is]
2] one of them [who don’t]

No, that is what the objectivists do. I’m the one suggesting that interpretations in the is/ought world are derived existentially such that a definitive interpretation does not appear able to be pinned down.

You know, assuming any of us at all have any capacity at all to do anything at all of our own free will.

That encompasses your rendition of a sophisticated probe?!

In other words, bitching about me again.

I don’t throw away the tools of philosophy. I suggest only that, in a universe in which we do have some measure of free will, they are of limited use value and exchange value in regard to assessing particular human behaviors as [morally] either necessarily good or bad.

The stereotype of "objectivist. Again.

It remains black and white so long as you don’t bring out the shades of grey. And you don’t. You don’t go into any detail.

To explain why discussions with you don’t go anywhere, one has to say what it is that you are doing.

Then you are not using them.

They have value to other people.

Again, someone either believes that their own assessment of Communism or stories from the Bible reflects the most rational frame of mind, or they don’t. That’s just a fact.

Instead…

If noting one’s assessment of Communism as the embodiment of “I” being an existential contraption rooted in the manner in which I construe dasein in my signature threads isn’t bursting at the seams with the potential for ambiguity, confusion and uncertainty…what argument is?

And, in my view, one will never go into enough detail with objectivists of you ilk until they share your own details.

In other words, if I really were using them, I would think like you do. I get that part, but: when are you going to get it too?

Then we are back to the components of my own moral philosophy in assessing those values.

So it’s a “universal truth”. Good to know.

Words and sentences have the potential for ambiguity, confusion and uncertainty.

You’re just stating a trivial observation.

Where is the meat?

You don’t go into any detail. :open_mouth:

I don’t see you using them at all. And I’m not the only one who has noticed that.

You assessed it and they have no or limited value to you. Others have assessed it and they do have value to them.

It can end there. There is no reason for you to be here insisting that they have no or limited value to anyone.

Two things.

1] Around and around we go. I suggest that, until either one of us comes upon something new in the other’s argument, we just move on. Bottom line: If I appear to you as obtuse as you appear to me, we are entirely wasting each other’s time.
2] this is a thread devoted to grappling with determinism. Of which our own exchange of late [compelled or not] barely touches on.

Practically everyone has stopped talking to you and now you are relegated to posting quotes from books and articles and reacting to them.

If that’s what you want, then add me to the list.

Nope, nothing new here.

I’m glad that’s over. :banana-dance: