the philosophy of life thread

[KniggazInDemStreetz]

We overlook to much, there's a lot we don't see, mouth shut eyes open

[dirtydoses]

MONEY

CLOTHES

CARS

HO'S

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

duh.

[Theo Huxtable.]

and wow, your at 9,000 posts. No wonder you're 3 past accounts have been banned.

 

*you're

 

*your

[HOT TAR & DEATH]

I believe in the whole concept of karma. I also believe that thinks happen for a reason, no matter how bad or good they are, in order for something better to happen in life.

 

To me, life is purely negative, well atleast in our modern times with all the hardships the average person faces. We should cherish every happy and comfortable moment we can and know that sooner or later we'll be completely miserable. This is cynical but it helps you be happier during situations/whatever.

 

dood? how can you believe in karma and think shit happens for no reason?

"light shines on both evil and the righteous alike"-god

and paint as many armns as i can

[ﻵﻶﻷﻸﻹﻺﻻﻼ]

i guess i wasnt high enough to get that one

[^ . ^]

I agree, hot tar guy

 

"Your outlook on life is a direct reflection of how much you like yourself.."

 

I also am a firm believer of that statement.

[Elizabeth MontgomeryOner]

funny this thread came up now

i suppose there's another one in that other section down there but I don't read it

 

Anyhow i've been reading a lot on existentialism as of late kafka/sarte/camus an shit

& i'll be moving into postmodernism,

free will,

humanism,

etc.

Later later later on

 

The philosophy of life?...i'm working on it

I guess i'm searching for answers or confirmation of no answers. It's a little silly but I think it's keeping me sane.

 

“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life"

 

"Your outlook on life is a direct reflection of how much you like yourself.."

^ I can't agree. I can't stand myself and it has little to no correlation on my outlook on life.

Some days after a long day, I realize how much I like life and how glad I am to be living, yet still I can't stand myself.

[De sign]

* What is the meaning of life?

* Why are we here?

* What are we here for?

* What is the origin of life?

* What is the nature of life (and of reality itself)?

* What is the purpose of, or in, (one's) life?

* What is the significance of life?

* What is meaningful or valuable in life?

* What is the value of life?

* What is the reason to live?

* What are we living for?

 

fuck that shit.

 

don't worry. be happy.

[Porcelain]

Life's greatest questions have always been: Who am I? Where did I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going? You are about to see and hear one of the most significant messages given to us from God.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Porcelain is God

[De sign]

[Gat Bush]

Theo's post... :lol: ... that fucking stoner hippie... :lol:

[the dark horse]

the philosophy of buddhists and taoist are amazing...

 

was actually talking about this earlier .... kickin some zazen shit

[bigjalapeno]

 

yin and yang... the flow of nature... the philosophy of buddhists and taoist are amazing...

 

 

 

so wats the hole yin yang about wats the story on it??? cuz i see it but i dont get wat it means just some thing about good vs evil or some thing like that

[Gat Bush]

There is a balance to everything.

[Porcelain]

life/death

good/evil

 

 

you know

[bigjalapeno]

o wtf i thought there was like a long ass story to this shit

 

tight

[Prime Chaos]

do what ever the hell you think is right.. If someone wants you do do something but you think its wrong. not wrong as in breaking a law or pushing an old lady down, but wrong to yourself. if you are about to do something that everyone else thinks is wrong but to yourself its right, then do it. Live for the moment but don't ignore what those moments will add up to.

[Commanderkeen]

 

"dudebrah... like, the stars and galaxies and shit... spirits and heaven and earth... whoa and the government man...

ever think the universe was an atom and we're like part of some guy's fingernail?? and like... yaaahhh.."

 

THIS VIDEO SUMS UP MY PHILOSOPHY!!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a15KgyXBX24

 

BY THE WAY.... ya braaa it's like it's all about like ancient native american rituals and prayer and like crystal heeeaaalllinng and stuff. Like this one time I was tripping on lsd in the desert and i began to channel this ancient native american shaman who taught me how to like manifest energy and like expel negativity and stuff. and like yeaaaaaaaahhh.....

[Poesia [ ] T]

I libe bye the philosophy

 

To be

 

or

 

To not to be

 

 

I choose

 

1

 

 

First: Does reality include a supernatural realm, inhabited

by spiritual beings such as gods? Or is the familiar natural world

all there is to it?

Second: If there is indeed a supernatural world, how do we

relate to it? Are we composite creatures with a foot in both

camps, so to speak; creatures with souls as well as bodies? If the

latter, is it possible that our souls should live on after our bodies

are no more? Or is physical death the end for all of us?

Third: What is the nature of the free will that we commonly

suppose ourselves to enjoy during our sojourn here on earth? Do

we in fact have free will? Or are our lives little more than

pointless scribbles on the fabric of the universe, as devoid of real

significance as scratches on a piece of glaciated rock?

Their pertinence to the meaning of life.

Each of these questions is apt to come up in any discussion

of the more general one: "What is the meaning of life, if indeed

life does have a meaning?" So I'll say a little about each.

A : GOD AND THE MEANING OF LIFE.

How, for a start, might the existence of a god or gods affect

the meaningfulness of our lives here on earth?

Among the plausible answers that might be given are these:

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* that if there is deity to whose existence - as is often

supposed - we owe both our own existence and that of the

physical universe, then surely we should live our lives in

accordance with any plans that deity might have for us;

* that it is therefore incumbent on us to find out what

those intentions are; and

* that our lives will be most meaningful if we fulfill that

deity's purposes.

In short, some would say that the real meaning of life is to be

found in service to such a god, and in living according to his or

her dictates.

But which god are we talking about? And which of his or

her commands are we to obey?

Which god?

First: To whom does the term "god" refer?

Obviously not to some New Age god or other construct of

man's imagination. Few would suppose that such gods

communicate with us at all, let alone about how we should live.

And obviously not to the Aztec god, Huitzilopochtli, who -

only about 600 years ago - supposedly commanded the sacrifice

of 50,000 youths and maidens in a single year. Nor to his

brother, Tezcatilpoca, who supposedly consumed 25,000 virgins

annually. Nor, presumably, to any of the other 189 gods whose

"death" was celebrated by H. L. Mencken in his 1922 essay

"Memorial Service".1 There is no good evidence for their

existence. And no enlightened person could countenance the

idea that their commands were moral.

These gods deserve the oblivion to which thinking men and

women have consigned them.

3

But, by the same token, so does the God of our much

vaunted Judeo-Christian tradition. After all, this is the God who,

according to the Old Testament, is said to have drowned every

member of the human race, not just wicked men and women, but

innocent children, suckling infants, and the unborn, with the sole

exceptions of the drunkard, Noah, and his incestuous family.2

This is the God who himself slaughters hundreds of thousands, if

not millions, by means of his angels, serpents, hailstones,

windstorm, earthquake, fire, and plague.3 This is a God who:

gives 32,000 Midianite virgins to the soldiers who had killed

their families4; who allows his hero, Jephthah, to demonstrate his

devotion by sacrificing his daughter "as a burnt offering" 5; who

punishes the Babylonians by having "their little ones . . . dashed

to pieces before their eyes . . . and their wives ravished"6; who

declares "I will cause them [members of his own chosen people]

to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and

they shall eat everyone the flesh of his friend"7; and who

commands His chosen people to slay "both man and woman,

infant and suckling" in 31 kingdoms while directing the Israelites

in their policy of ethnic cleansing of the land that orthodox Jews

now call Greater Israel.8 And this is the very same God9 who, in

the New Testament, repeatedly promises eternal torment in the

fires of Hell10 for all those - the majority of the human race - who

haven't believed in Jesus (an obscure figure whose dates of birth

and death no-one knows and whose historical status may fairly be

likened to that of Hercules, Mithra, King Arthur or William

Tell)11.

The God of the Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - as

supposedly revealed in the Old Testament, the New Testament,

and the Koran - is depicted as a spiritual being who commits,

causes, commands, or condones violations of almost all the moral

precepts that we hold dear. He is a moral monster, infinitely

more evil than the moral monsters of human history: the

Ghenghis Khans, Hitlers, Stalins, Pol Pots from whom we shrink in

horror. And the world he supposedly created for us to live in is

one in which we - and his other creatures - are constantly being

assailed by his chosen weapons of mass destruction: natural

disasters such as tsunamis that kill hundreds of thousands, not

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just the 3,000 odd of September 11, 2001; radiological

bombardments from outer space; chemical and biological

minefields that await our blundering mis-steps because he has not

deigned to reveal them to us; and diseases such as cancer,

filariasis, hookworm, malaria, and schistosoma that cripple or kill

countless millions each year.12

Compared to Him, the Aztec gods were paragons of virtue.

So, too, is Satan - the mythical personification of evil - who is

portrayed as being guilty of nothing much worse than tempting

Eve with a piece of fruit or, with God's permission, giving Job a

bad case of boils.

Is this the God on whose behavior we ought to model our

own in order to give a meaning to our lives? If so, we have a

moral license for mayhem.

Or are we to say that what is good enough for God is not

good enough for us?

Which commands?

Second: If it were the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God in

obedience to whom we are to find life's meaning, which of his

commands should we obey? All of them? Or just those that now

satisfy our moral scruples?

One problem is that this God prescribes the death penalty

for over thirty offenses. These include: being a stubborn and

rebellious son; cursing or hitting one's parents; owning an ox that

happens to kill a man; blaspheming; committing adultery;

committing homosexual acts; picking up sticks or working on the

Sabbath; preaching other religions; and so on. If we were to obey

this God's dictates, we would have a quick solution to the world's

population problem. Are we really obliged to kill all who are

guilty of these offenses? Or is it up to us to decide which laws to

obey?

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Clearly, there are grave difficulties with the belief that the

meaning of life is to be found in service to any revealed god: the

the Yaweh of Judaism, the God Christianity, or the Allah of Islam.

Do any gods exist?

There are grave difficulties, for that matter, in the

supposition that any sort of god exists. If a god exists who does

not reveal himself, then we have no clear evidence for the

existence of that god. At best we can produce abstract

philosophical arguments for the existence of some sort of vaguely

conceived deity, or supreme being.

But such arguments - the arguments of so-called natural

theology (as opposed to revealed theology) - are notoriously

feeble. The argument from design, when viewed in the light of the

disasters and diseases in the universe such a deity supposedly

designed, leads to the conclusion that the Great Watchmaker is

either incompetent or malevolent. And it raises the further

question, "Who designed God?" Likewise, the argument from the

alleged need for a cause of existence gets us nowhere. If we

postulate an existing God as an answer to the question "Why does

anything exist?" we merely add to the list of existing entities.

That only adds to the burden of explanation by raising the

question "What caused God?". We do better to avoid the regress

by accepting the existence of the universe as a brute fact.

There are no sound reasons, I would argue, for supposing

that there are any gods at all, either revealed or hidden from

view. A fortiori, there is no good reason for believing that we

should order our lives so as to take account of their alleged

existence and purposes for us.

B : SURVIVAL AND THE MEANING OF LIFE.

How about the supposition that the meaning of this life lies

in one that is to follow?

This wide-spread belief is implicit in the view that if all

came to an end at the grave, then life itself would be devoid of

meaning.

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Now it is clear that the question whether we are composite

creatures having spirits or souls that might survive our bodily

deaths is independent of the question whether other spiritual

beings such as gods, angels, or devils, exist. As for the latter, we

may well believe - and, for the reasons just given, also hope - that

they do not. Nevertheless, we might well embrace the idea of

ghosts while rejecting that of gods.

But is survival of our bodily deaths a real possibility? And

would having a second life confer meaning on the present one?

Is the concept of survival conceptually coherent?

I'll deal with these questions in turn.

Ask yourself, first, what it would be like for you yourself to

survive your bodily death? What do you envisage yourself

surviving as? I suspect it would give you little comfort to know

that the molecules, atoms, or subatomic particles of which your

physical body is composed are virtually immortal in so far as they

will probably survive as long as does the physical universe. These

are not the parts of you that you think of when you think of your

self surviving the death and dissolution of your physical body. So

- once more - what do you survive as?

One hypothesis is that it is your soul that survives? But

what is your soul? We commonly invoke the trilogy "body,

mind, and soul". But are these three things or just two? If three,

then it would be nice to have some sort of guarantee that when

your soul survives it will at least be accompanied by your mind.

Otherwise, the survival of your soul as some sort of mindless,

unthinking, unconscious entity, would carry as little significance

as would the survival of your appendix in a test-tube of nutrient

fluid.

The soul is nothing more than a hypothetical entity,

invented by theologians and metaphysicians as the bearer of

mental properties in much the same way as the ether was

invented to be the bearer of light waves. We have no more

7

warrant for believing in the soul than we do for believing in

ectoplasm, the faked emissions of spiritualist mediums.

Hence, since it is the thinking, feeling, you - your conscious

mind - that you want to survive, let's drop the term "soul" from

our discussion and concentrate instead on the ideas of minds and

consciousness.

What exactly do you envisage when you think of your mind

surviving the death of your physical body and brain?

You think of it, I submit, as some sort of non-physical

object that can be detached from the body and its brain and go

on existing in the absence of either.

But is this really the right way to think of it? Certainly

language encourages to think so. After all, the word "mind" is a

noun; and nouns - we have been taught - are naming words, and

names stand for things or objects. Hence, we conclude, the noun

"mind" must be the name of an object; and if not the name of a

physical object, then surely of a non-physical one.

Problems for dualism.

But this idea raises a host of problematic questions. When,

in the embryological story of the development of a human being

from the union of sperm and ovum does this object, the mind, get

"injected", as it were, into the growing embryo? When, in the

evolutionary story of the development of Homo Sapiens from

more primitive primates, does this object, mind, enter the

picture? More pertinently, if it is your mind that you identify

with the "you" that is to survive your death, will it be the mind

you had as a child, as a teenager, as an adult, or the mind you

have in your dotage? And what of the minds of paranoid

schizophrenics, imbeciles, still-borns, or aborted fetuses? Is the

meaning of their lives to be found in the continuance of the

minds they have at death?

When questions, like these, are so clearly imponderable -

admitting only of arbitrary answers if any at all - we would do

well to examine their presuppositions: in this case the

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presupposition that the mind really is some kind of substance or

object.

But what might the mind be if it isn't a substance, thing, or

object?

A non-dualistic conception of the mind.

The answer I would give is that when we talk about the mind

we are simply talking of a cluster of mental attributes or

properties: various dispositions, abilities, and activities;

intellectual properties like being rational, emotional properties

like being loving, artistic ones like being musical, and moral ones

like being honest.

Now if the mind is not itself an object but rather a set of

properties of an object, namely a set of properties of a physical

body with a properly functioning brain, then the mind can no

more continue to exist after the death of the physical body and

brain than can a grin continue to exist after the disappearance of

the face that does the grinning. To suppose otherwise is to

commit what I call the "Cheshire Cat fallacy". You may remember

the wonderful passage in which Alice, while in Wonderland,

chides the cat who keeps doing disappearing tricks:

". . . I wish you wouldn't keep appearing and vanishing

so suddenly: you make one quite giddy."

"All right,' said the Cat; and this time it vanished quite

slowly, beginning with the end of the tail, and ending

with the grin, which remained some time after the rest

of it had gone.

"Well! I've often seen a cat without a grin," thought

Alice; "but a grin without a cat! It's the most curious

thing I ever saw in my life!"

Curious indeed. In fact, conceptually absurd.

If I am right, the idea that we - our minds, our souls, or our

consciousnesses - might survive our bodily deaths in any

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meaningful way is a philosophical fiction as little deserving of

rational belief as Lewis Carroll's story of the Cheshire Cat in Alice

in Wonderland (Chapter VI).

I have a general piece of advice to offer here: In thinking

about such allegedly deep and intractable questions as "What is

the mind?", "What is intelligence?", or "What is consciousness?" -

any question involving the name of some non-physical

abstraction - we do well to avoid the noun and concentrate

instead on the corresponding verb, adverb, or adjective.

The question "What is consciousness?", for instance, about

which so many neuro-scientists and philosophers currently seem

so deeply puzzled, is better replaced by questions like "What is it

to be conscious?" [the verb], "What is it to do something

consciously?" [the adverb], or "What is it for someone to be in a

conscious state?" [the adjective]. It then becomes clear that the

abstract noun "consciousness" isn't the name of some elusive

thing; it isn't the name of a thing at all. To be conscious is to be

aware; to do something consciously is to do it while being aware

of what one is doing; to be in a conscious state is to be in a

general state of awareness of one's self or surroundings.

The fallacy of reification.

It is so easy, you see, for us to fall into the trap of

reification: the tendency to think of an abstract noun as if it were

the name of a real thing, object, or substance that is capable of

independent existence. The fallacy of reification is epitomized

for us in a passage from another of Lewis Carroll's works, this

time from Through the Looking Glass, ch. VII:

"[The two Messengers have] both gone to the town.

Just look along the road, and tell me if you can see

either of them."

"I see nobody on the road," said Alice.

"I only wish I had such eyes," the King remarked in a

fretful tone. "To be able to see Nobody! And at that

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distance too! Why, it's as much as I can do to see real

people, by this light.!"

As Peter Heath, in The Philosopher's Alice,13 comments:

Because nobody functions grammatically very like

somebody, there is a temptation to believe that it is

the name of a peculiar, diaphanous sort of somebody,

who is then unnecessarily added to the world's

inhabitants. In such a way does the language of

abstraction darken counsel, corrupt communications,

and beget bad philosophy, a theme much insisted on

by Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, and

their many modern successors.

Properly conceived, consciousness or awareness is a

property of a living organism. It is a property that we human

beings share - though to a different degree - with members of

various other species such as alligators, bats, cats, dogs,

elephants, frogs and gorillas (to list just a few in alphabetical

order). Likewise with other mental properties like intellect, will,

and emotion. Like the properties of having temperature and

being fluid, all are emergent properties: properties possessed by

complex objects though not by their simplest constituents, the

molecules, atoms, subatomic particles from which they are

constructed. All these mental properties are designed by what

Richard Dawkins has called "The Blind Watchmaker": they have

emerged in the natural course of evolution.

The term "mind" is just a compendious way of referring to

all such properties. None of them can exist in the absence of the

organism that has them. It follows that none of them can

continue to exist when the organism that had them is dead. When

the organism dies, so does the mind, and so does consciousness.

Why survival wouldn't give meaning to life.

There is another grave problem facing the hypothesis that

our lives here on earth wouldn't have any significance if all came

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to an end at the grave, that it would be meaningless unless we

could look forward to life in another world. This hypothesis

leads to the kind of absurdity that philosophers call an infinite

regress. For in what would the meaning of this second life lie? In

its sequel? And in what would lie the meaning of that sequel?

Still another sequel? And the meaning of that? The answer gets

postponed ad infinitum.

Once more, the question admits of no non-arbitrary answer.

If any of the unending hypothetical series of "other" lives can

have a meaning, surely this one - the one we have here on earth -

can too.

For reasons like these, my answer to the question "What is

the meaning of life?" is akin to the answer I would give to the

question "What is the meaning of such and such a book?" The

meaning of a book is to be found in the words, the sentences, the

paragraphs, and the chapters it contains. Likewise, the meaning

of life is to be found in the meaningful moments, episodes, and

achievements that occur within our brief appearance here on

earth. A book doesn't lack meaning because it comes to an end

on the last page. Nor do our lives lack meaning because they

come to an end when all neural activity ceases.

To be sure, some lives are lived in meaningless fashion.

Some lives are lived in pursuit of goals which we can only

deplore. But the lives of still others, gifted by nature or favored

by circumstance, will have value not just for themselves but for

others. And some - by virtue of their physical, intellectual,

artistic, moral, or social achievements - may even achieve a

different kind of "immortality": they may live on in the memories

of those who follow them.

No gods are needed to give our lives meaning. No future

life is needed to give meaning to the present life. We ourselves

can choose to give our lives meaning, purpose, and value right

here and now.

Or can we?

12

Opinions differ on the matter.

C: FREE WILL, FATALISM AND OTHER THREATS TO THE

MEANING OF LIFE.

On the one hand, it is indisputable that we do, at least in

many circumstances, believe ourselves able to exercise freedom

of choice and freedom of action. The concept of free will is

entrenched in our commonsense beliefs and ordinary language.

We can and do distinguish between the freedom conferred on

some by virtue of economic status, education, and good health,

for instance, and the relative powerlessness of others who are

handicapped by poverty, ignorance, or disease. The choices open

to one may not be open to another. The freedoms enjoyed by the

master are not enjoyed by the slave. The freedoms of the jailer

are not enjoyed by the prisoner. The freedoms of oppressors are

not enjoyed by those who are their victims. These differences do

in fact exist. We recognize them in practice as well as in theory.

And we mark them, in language, by talk of various kinds and

degrees of freedom, or its absence.

Yet, on the other hand, many philosophical arguments have

been advanced to show that commonsense and ordinary language

are fallible guides to truth. The truth of the matter, it has been

argued, is that free will is an illusion since we are all in fact mere

slaves of fate, products of and subject to the constraints of laws

that rule our lives.

Two main arguments have been advanced in support of this

fatalistic conclusion. One has to do with the laws of logic; the

other with laws of nature.

The threat from Logical Determinism.

The first is an argument from the doctrine that all of reality

- whether past, present, or future - is subject to the laws of logic.

These are laws, theologians have usually conceded, that even an

almighty God cannot violate.

One of these laws is the Law of Excluded Middle which says

that every statement must be either true or, if not true, false

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(there being no "middle" possibilities). Another is the Law of

Identity which says that if a statement is true then it is true, and if

false, then false. Applied to statements about future events, these

yield the obvious conclusions:

Either it is true that such and such an event will occur or it

is false;

If it is true that it is going to occur then - of necessity - it is

going to occur;

If it is false that it is going to occur then - of necessity - it is

not going to occur.

Generalizing, we infer:

The future will be what it will be.

And from this we infer, in turn:

You can't change the future from what it is going to be any

more than you can change the past from what it was.

At this point, the dark clouds of fatalism seem to threaten our

cherished belief in free will. We may well be tempted to start

thinking of our lives as mere pawns of fate. Hence the famous

stanza from Fitzgerald's The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:

'Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days

Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays:

Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays,

And one by one back in the closet lays.

Each of these statements is an expression of the doctrine

that I once christened as "Logical Determinism", a doctrine which

- even expressed in these general terms - seems to imply that the

future is fated and that we are powerless to do anything about it.

Over forty-five years ago, I tried to illustrate how easy it is

to draw fatalistic conclusions from Logical Determinism by

writing an article entitled "Must the Future Be What It Is Going to

Be?"14, in which I predicted that a fellow doctoral student at the

Australian National University - Bob Hawke - would one day be

Prime Minister of Australia. Now obviously, if my prediction was

true at the time when I made it, then Bob was indeed going to

become Prime Minister, and there was nothing that anyone could

do to prevent this since otherwise my statement would have been

false. Equally obviously, if my prediction was false, then Bob

14

would never become Prime Minister, and there was nothing that

anyone could do to make him Prime Minister, since otherwise my

statement would have been true. No matter what final outcome

the future held, in neither case could anyone do anything to

change it from what it was going to be.

But - I asked - does this imply that Bob's future was fixed or

fated in advance, irrespective of his own choices in the matter?

The fatalist fallacy.

My answer, now as then, is "No." To conclude that it does is

to suppose that what the future is going to be owes nothing to an

individual's goals, ambitions, or choices. It is to suppose that our

wills are causally inefficacious, that none of our efforts or

strivings can have any effect.

Bob Hawke did indeed become Prime Minister of Australia.

But not because of blind fate or string-pulling deities, let alone

because of my predictions. He became what he became with the

help of others, no doubt, but at least in part because of his own

ambitions, his own efforts, and his own political will. No-one who

knew him - as I did in his capacity as neighbor, friend, and

occasional baby-sitter - could ever deny him that. True, nature

and nurture may have given him those ambitions and political

will. And political circumstances may have fostered his plans.

But they operated, as it were, through him, not despite him.

It wasn't my prediction's being true that made him Prime

Minister. It was his becoming Prime Minister that made my

prediction true. Bob Hawke gave his own life meaning by aiming

for, and achieving, - among other things - his status as political

leader of Australia.

The laws of logic don't imply fatalism. The answer to the

factual question as to whether someone's choices and actions will

make a difference to the future cannot be deduced from the

logical truth that the future will be what it will be. True, we can't

15

change the future from what it is going to be. But the fact

remains that what it is going to be may - to some extent - be a

consequence of what we do in the present.

The threat from Causal Determinism.

A second argument for the illusoriness of free will is

derived from what we call Causal Determinism: the belief that

there are exceptionless causal laws connecting states of affairs

and events such that, for any system governed by such laws, the

state of the system at any given time determines a unique state of

the system for any later time. This doctrine is implicit in such

claims as "Everything has a cause", "Things don't just happen",

and "Nature is law-governed". It holds that the past determines

the present, and the present determines the future.

Now, according to the arguments I've advanced so far,

reality has no place for a supernatural domain, either one

inhabited by gods or one inhabited by ghosts. The only world

that exists is the natural one, the material one, the world that we

can best learn about by observation and experiment, the methods

of scientific inquiry.

Man, so conceived, is a wholly natural being: and, like any

other natural being, is subject to the laws of nature.

But, once more, there is an apparent problem with this

conception. If we, like other natural entities, are products of

nature, then what account are we to give of free will? To what

extent, if at all, do we have control over our own destinies? What

meaning or significance could our lives have if we are designed to

be what we are by the "blind" processes of evolution?

The plausibility of Causal Determinism stems largely from

the success of the various sciences in providing causal

explanations of why things behave as they do: things like the

motions of the heavenly bodies; the rise and fall of the tides; the

rising and setting of the sun; the recurrence of the seasons; the

workings of machines; the incidence of disease. Thus it used to

16

be said that every scientific inquiry presupposes the truth of the

Causal Principle, "Every event has a cause", (i.e., the existence of

causal laws "governing" the phenomena under investigation), and

that every success of science confirms its truth.

With the arguable exception of events in the microphysical

world of quantum physics, causal laws seem to apply quite

universally throughout the universe, not just to inanimate objects

but animate ones as well. Even human beings and their behaviour

seem to lend themselves to causal explanations by various life

sciences. Consider the biological sciences such as genetics,

endocrinology, molecular biology, etc. They abound in causal

explanations for why we do what we do. So do the behavioural

sciences of psychology, sociology, etc. That much human

behaviour is determined by an interplay between nature and

nurture - not to be identified with heredity and environment,

respectively - seems clear. Couldn't all of it be?

In the minds of some thinkers, the answer must be "No".

For Causal Determinism, like Logical Determinism, seems to have

fatalistic implications that would render the notions of free will,

responsibility, and the meaningfulness of life itself totally

illusory.

The great physicist Sir Arthur Eddington - an early promoter

of Einstein's Relativity Theory - voiced this objection when he

asked:

What significance is there in my mental struggle

tonight whether I shall or shall not give up smoking, if

the laws which govern the physical universe already

preordain for the morrow a configuration of matter

constituted of pipe, tobacco, and smoke connected

with my lips? (Philosophy, 1933)

According to Eddington, the concepts of significance and freedom

can be rescued only by denying the universality of Causal

17

Determinism and embracing the so-called indeterminacy of

quantum physics.

Yet this conclusion is fraught with difficulties. The

argument is that we can't really have significant freedom if what

we do is determined by what we are, and what we are is itself

determined by factors over which we have no control.

But by the same token it is hard to see how our acts can be

free if what we do is determined by what we are and what we are

is undetermined in the sense of being the outcome of mere

chance.

We seem to be faced with a dilemma: Either what we are is

the outcome of causal factors in the past or it is the outcome of

sheer indeterministic chance. Yet in neither case can be really be

in control of what we are, or - it is further argued - of what we

do.

How might one escape from the horns of this dilemma; the

so-called "Determinism or Chance Dilemma"?

One option, countenanced by Eddington and numerous

other thinkers, is to take recourse to a dualistic conception of the

human being: the supposition that our immaterial minds, or

souls, stand outside the material world and interpose themselves

in the causal breaks postulated by quantum indeterminacy. As he

put it:

. . . we must attribute to the mind power not only to

decide the behaviour of atoms individually but to

affect systematically large groups - in fact to tamper

with the odds on atomic behaviour.15

Likewise, Nobel Prize laureate Sir John Eccles speculated that the

mind or soul can intervene in the otherwise orderly flow of

deterministic laws by virtue of indeterminacy at the

microphysical level. He even suggested that free will may be

located between the synapses in the brain

But this hypothesis will not do, for two main reasons.

18

First, it presupposes the kind of dualism that we have

already seen reason to reject: a dualism that sees reality as

comprising two sorts of realms, the natural and the supernatural,

the physical and the spiritual, the material and the immaterial. It

thinks of the mind or soul as a mysterious entity that can violate

the laws of nature. In short, it thinks of mind or soul as an entity

that transcends the world of nature, one whose acts - designated

acts of free will - are nothing short of miracles.

Second, this conception of free will offers only a temporary

respite from the difficulties posed by the Determinism or Chance

dilemma. For the dilemma arises again with respect to the

postulated mind or soul. How did we come to have it? Was it

preordained for us, by God perhaps, or by other causal factors in

the spiritual domain? Or did we get it just by chance? In either

case we seem to have no choice in the matter. After all, it is not

up to us to choose the nature of our immaterial minds or souls

any more than it is up to us to choose what genes we inherit from

our parents or what chance mutations our genes may have

undergone. Clearly, there is no escaping this dilemma.

The conclusions we are forced to if we accept the

presuppositions of this dilemma are stark ones. No-one ever

does, or even can, make genuine choices or act freely. No-one is

really free in a deep sense of the word, any beliefs to the contrary

being shallowly conceived. No-one is ever truly responsible for

his or her actions since there is no possible circumstance -

whether in a deterministic world or in an indeterministic one,

whether in a natural world or a supernatural one - in which we

choose, or have control over, the self that is "given" to us.

Ultimately, we are puppets of the fates of causality or chance,

living lives that are meaningless.

According to this line of reasoning, there are no

conceivable circumstances, no possible worlds, in which the

concepts of freedom, responsibility, or meaningfulness have any

application. These conclusions, if correct, would have profound

consequences, not only for our theoretical conception of our

status in the universe, but also for our practical dealings with our

19

fellows: it would mean that our ordinary practices of praising and

blaming, of assigning responsibility in private judgments or in

courts of law, would be unfounded and without justification.

The fallacy of persuasive redefinition.

But we don't have to accept these bleak and

counterintuitive conclusions. The reasoning from which they are

derived involves an all too common kind of fallacy: the fallacy of

persuasive redefinition.

Let me illustrate in terms of a different example: the

concept of solidity. Just as we ordinarily distinguish between

circumstances in which we are free and ones in which we are not,

so we also distinguish between objects that are solid and ones

that are not. A concrete floor and a thick plank of sound wood

are solid; marshy ground and rotten planks are not. As Aristotle

pointed out: "it is the business of the language of 'properties', as

also of definitions, to distinguish."16

Now consider an argument which purports to conjure this

distinction away. Arthur Eddington once claimed that if we were

able to inspect a block of concrete at the sub-microscopic level

we would see that the molecules and atoms of which it is

composed are at least as distant from one another as the planets

in our solar system. At the "deep" level of atomic physics, he

pointed out, our block of solid concrete and our solid plank are

full of empty space. He even went to so far as to suggest that this

profound discovery had radical practical consequences: stepping

on a concrete floor or a solid plank, he concluded, is as risky as

stepping on a swarm of flies. We ordinary folk, he claimed, are

shallow folk who don't understand what "solid" really means. Its

real meaning is such that nothing ever has the property of being

solid.

But this is preposterous. Eddington seems ignorant of

Aristotle's point about the function of language. It is not we who

don't understand the meaning of "solid"; it is Eddington. He17 has

used seemingly subtle and sophisticated reasoning to try to

persuade us that our commonsensical beliefs are mistaken. But

20

in fact all he has done is to try to persuade us to forget the

ordinary criteria for the use of the word "solid" and adopt new

ones. He is trying to persuade us to redefine the word "solid".

Yet if we were to accept his redefinition of the term, we'd not

have learned a new fact about the world; we'd merely have fallen

victim to his word-play. The old distinction between what one

can safely rely on to support one's tread would now have to be

marked by a new pair of words. Instead of saying that the

concrete is solid whereas the marshy ground is not, we'd have to

say something like "The concrete is dolid but the marshy ground

is not dolid". We'd have changed our language but made no

advance in our understanding of how the world works.

Much the same needs to be said, I submit, about the

reasoning of those who would try to persuade us - on the grounds

given above - that no-one is ever "genuinely", "really", "truly", or

"ultimately" free in the allegedly "deep" sense of the word "free".

The weasel-words ("genuinely", "really", "truly", or "ultimately"

and "deep") are the give-away. They are sure signs that a

linguistic conjuring job is taking place. We are being subjected to

an attempt to persuade us to abandon what we ordinarily mean

by the words "free" and "not free", and to adopt new - allegedly

"deeper" - criteria for their application. But we make no advance

if we go along with these persuasive arguments. We would still

need to find words to distinguish between the master and the

slave, the warden and the prisoner, the cases where we make

choices and those in which we don't, and so on. All that will have

changed is that we will have had to invent new words for the old

distinction, new bottles for the old wine.

Those who have tried to persuade us that we are never

"really" free have subjected us to nothing more than semantic

sophistry.

This should become clear when we step back and take a

closer look at one of the presuppositions relied on by both horns

of the dilemma with which they try to confront us: the

presupposition that if I have no control over what I am, because -

21

in the final analysis - I don't choose what I am18, then I have no

control over which acts I will perform.

Is this presupposition true?

I think not. From the indisputable fact that - ultimately - we

don't choose, and hence aren't responsible for, what we are, it

does not follow that we don't choose, or aren't responsible for,

what we do. In other words, from the fact that nature, nurture -

and perhaps even sheer chance - make us what we are, it doesn't

follow that we ourselves don't play a role in determining what

actions we will perform. Equally, from the fact that neither the

master nor the slave chose their parents or the circumstances in

which they would be born, it doesn't follow that the master can't

make choices and exercise freedoms that are unavailable to the

slave. We all know that he can.

The doctrine of Causal Determinism is consistent with the

view that Eddington's morrow is determined in part by what he

does today. It does not commit us to saying that his tomorrow is

determined independently of what he does today.19 Causal

Determinism says that the future is determined by the present

and the present by the past. It certainly does not say that the

future is determined irrespective of what happens in the present.

Causal Determinism, in short, no more implies Fatalism than

does Logical Determinism. As I put it earlier with respect to Bob

Hawke's political ambitions and machinations, his nature and

nurture may well have given him these. But they operated

through him, not despite him. Likewise with Arthur Eddington.

The laws of nature, both those of nature and those of nurture,

may well have determined what decision he would make about

whether or not to smoke the next day. But these, once more,

operate through him, not despite him. Both were free agents to

the extent that they were neither compelled to do what they did

nor prevented from doing what they chose to do.

The notions of free will and responsibility, and the sort of

significance we attach to both, are in no way compromised by our

conception of man as a wholly natural being.

22

Nor are they in any way compromised by the supposition

that what we are is a consequence of factors - deterministic or

indeterministic - over which we have no control. The kind of

freedom that is required if we are to live our lives in meaningful

fashion isn't threatened either by determinism as such, or by

indeterminism as such. It is threatened only by causes and

accidents that prevent us from acting in ways we choose or that

compel us to act in ways we do not choose.

Thus if Bob Hawke had chosen to pursue a political career

and had been prevented from doing so by ill health or accidental

incapacitation, for instance, then to that extent he would not

have been free. And if Arthur Eddington had chosen to give up

smoking but had been in the grip of an addiction to continue,

then to that extent he too would not have been free to act

otherwise. But in the absence of such compulsions or

impediments to action both were free to act as they chose. And

the lives of both men, politician and physicist respectively, had a

significance that was in no way impaired by the fact that they

were products of evolution, nature's blind designer.

As it was with them, so it can be with us.

To repeat what I said earlier: "No gods are needed to give

our lives meaning. No future life is needed to give meaning to the

present life. We ourselves can choose to give our lives meaning,

purpose, and value right here and now." In short, life can have

meaning in the natural, purely material, world - the one with

which we are all familiar.

[pissdrunkwhat?!]

i hope you didnt type that shit cause im to drunk to read it but its way long /no homo

[blood fart]

I basically just try to make everything even out.

I did/do a lot of bad shit.

So I just try to do more good shit and hope that it all balances out in the end.

 

Ride Fast.

Live Slow.

[Dawood]

My philosophy is not really a philosophy at all. It's a complete, comprehensive way of life. Prayer is important in my life. It's one of the most important pillars of my faith after belief in God.

 

- 1 - Prayer is something that causes one to receive sustenance.

 

- 2 - It is something that safeguards one's physical health.

 

- 3 - It keeps away harmful things.

 

- 4 - It keeps away illnesses.

 

- 5 - It strengthens the heart.

 

- 6 - It brightens one's countenance.

 

- 7 - It delights the soul.

 

- 8 - It gets rid of laziness.

 

- 9 - It makes the limbs active.

 

- 10 - It increases one's physical strength.

 

- 11 - It expands the chest (making one at ease and giving him insight).

 

- 12 - It is nourishment for the soul.

 

- 13 - It illuminates the heart.

 

- 14 - It safeguards one's blessings.

 

- 15 - It repels catastrophes.

 

- 16 - It brings on blessings.

 

- 17 - It keeps away the Shaytaan (the Devil).

 

- 18 - It draws one close to Ar-Rahmaan (Allaah, the Most Merciful).

 

In the heart there is a void that can not be removed except with the company of Allah (God).

 

And in it there is a sadness that can not be removed except with the happiness of knowing Allah (God) and being true to Him.

 

And in it there is an emptiness that can not be filled except with love for Him and by turning to Him and always remembering Him.

 

And if a person were given all of the world and what is in it, it would not fill this emptiness.

[sexME.1ER]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a15KgyXBX24

 

that video is on point!!!

[Tyler Durden]

every single line that dmx says in the film "belly".... essentially sums up my philosophy on life.

[banana fish]

Recently I have been reading Searle.

I agree to his philosophy to some extent.

"There is a real world that exists independently of us, independently of our experiences, our thoughts, and our language."

Mainly probably typical I am into Socrates.

“The only thing I know is that I know nothing.”

In my opinion you limit yourself when you right off the bat assume you know the answer and you let your already acquired perception get in the way of actually listening and analyzing.

[KILZ FILLZ]

dalai lama says the key to happiness is compasion

 

holla

[rubbish heap two]

Recently I have been reading Searle.

I agree to his philosophy to some extent.

"There is a real world that exists independently of us, independently of our experiences, our thoughts, and our language."

Mainly probably typical I am into Socrates.

“The only thing I know is that I know nothing.”

In my opinion you limit yourself when you right off the bat assume you know the answer and you let your already acquired perception get in the way of actually listening and analyzing.

 

Socrates was cool in how his influence spawned the entire Western philosophical tradition prety much, but as far actually philosophy, well we have the Socratic problem where it's debatable which ideas were his and which were Plato's.

The first quote you gave sounds like Platonic idealism to me, which in turn was influenced by Greek Mystery religions of which Plato was an initiate, which basically dealt with mysticism. That's how I see it atleast.

[BELTOLEUM]

MONEY

CLOTHES

CARS

HO'S

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

duh.

 

its all about that

 

PUSSY

MONEY

WEED

 

 

really tho

 

i try to follow this but

it doesn't always happen:

live life to the fullest.

 

 

i dont really follow this one:

live everyday like it is your last.

[soupBDC]

*The brain is only happy when the body is suffering.

[rubbish heap two]

As far as a life philosophy goes, I think opposing forces provide meaning in the world.

The key to happiness is balance in these extremes, or the middle path as Buddhists would say.