Of course, since he dies before he can possibly psychologically benefit ex-post, it is impossible for him to really sense the satisfaction.
Check out Amartya Sen’s Rational Fools: A Critique of the Behavioral Foundations of Economic Theory for an excellent discussion of that issue.
I made a few changes to my original post on altruism after your response to correct errors and things I left out
I don’t know why people have to resort to sentence fragments in order to convey some trivial message.
Anyways, I am a pure-blooded Italian; I must know everything about being from an Italian culture.
Your past in the Christian church doesn’t make you a Christian; moreover, it doesn’t serve any purpose for this discussion, as calling oneself something neither means he actually knows what it means nor does it qualify him as ignorant of the subject.
Unless you can convey some understanding of the Christian faith, which you’ve done the opposite of, I’m not going to think of you as ever being a Christian - though I’m certain your parents tried to raise you in a church.
No, irrationalism, actually what you’re referring to is a doctrine interpretation of specific thoughts expressed by that of Immanuel Kant, does not say anything about “reality” in a sense of meaninglessness. You are conflating experience with reality.
What you are referring to is not a philosophy of irrationality, a misnomer as “irrationality” more-or-less just proposes that (A) human beings are not capable of perceiving/knowing everything, and/or (B) not all knowledge comes from experience - though knowledge does begin at experience.
The reason it’s called irrationalism is not based on irrational thought, it’s based on a revolt against the extreme empiricism of David Hume and other positivists of the time.
What do you mean by reality is an absolute? An absolute for what? Obviously true? Undeniable? Unknowable? Completely knowable? Deductive? Observable?
Define your terms.
Consciousness is an existent, but an existent is not necessesarily a material in the context of an identity empirically observable as constrained by the five, human senses.
Theists believe that a consciousness exists - a divine one exists and authors what eternally exists as he encompasses it.
Basically, what you’re trying to convey is that God = consciousness that created existence, but consciousness requires existence, and a consciousness alone can not create eternal existence.
If your argument was, however, that consciousness is an existent, then you wouldn’t be able to make the case that the consciousness could not create existence transcendent, dependant, or independant of that consciousness.
boinks the lord in heinee [H] gobble gobble
Kind of hard for him to go somewhere that doesn’t exist, don’t you think?
Again, why do you use sentence fragments in attempts to convey a point?
Actually, faith is not blindness, this is a mistake that people ignorant of theology make in attempting to define faith as simple belief. That is not to say that faith is “reason,” however, but rather merely that it is not JUST belief. In Christianity, faith relies on divine revelation, divine revelation means a form of communication revealing a truth by God in an absurd way, so that acting with faith requires one to act in virtue of the absurd.
Also, I have to ask again, what do you mean by reality? A theist would argue that God is reality. Are you referring to empirical existence? Deductive reasoning? Anything absent deductive reasoning? What?
You are again conflating reality, existence, and knowledge with empirical observations.
You really should expand your efforts in philosophy to Kant; I think it would teach you an awful lot.
The material “provided by the senses” can certainly be experienced, sure, but the material as a Ding an sich cannot be known. This is why math is knowable because it does not express the world around us as it really is, but rather it expresses the world around us as we experience it.
What’s reality? What you experience or what actually exists? You speak of senses, yet know nothing of the sensor.
This is not what faith means. Faith does not mean simple belief. Faith is something more than just belief.
Take Kierkegaard’s example in his Fear and Trembling on page 70 - 77.
Where is it said that faith stands alone and that no reason exists at all? Reason exists, and faith utilizes reason, but faith in the Kierkegaardian sense means more than that. Faith means passion, you deduce through reason, but you act through passion in light of the absurd or the apparent impossibilities.
Faith is not a guide to knowledge. Knowledge assists faith in the guide to action to reach a truth that one has faith in.
Wait… One cannot act for personal gain if one also acts for no more gain than the measurement of satisfaction delivered in helping others? What a strange world you must live in when two theori
Here, for those of you conflating faith with belief without really knowing what divine revelation is and what the theological tenants of logic as they relate to reason and knowledge are I’ll give you a quick definition from wiki:
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Faith according to Merriam Webster is “firm belief in something for which there is no proof” among other irrelevant definitions related top God and trust. According to dictionary.com, faith is “belief that is not based on proof,” again among other things. It is belief without proof, without evidence, without reference to reality, belief that is thus blind. To be blind is to be “unwilling or unable to perceive or understand,” unable to perceive reality.
Faith certainly is absurd in the tradition sense of the word. I couldn’t have been more articulate. It is absurd to think that one can gain knowledge, i.e., become aware of reality by refusing to examine it.
You say faith relies on divine revelation (“divine revelation means a form of communication revealing a truth by God”) even though I already demonstrated that God, a supernatural consciousness, could never logically exist. The phrase God exists is a contradiction. As Anton Thorn states eloquently,
" The claim that a god exists is self-contradictory. To claim that god exists, you must both assume the truth of the primacy of existence and deny it at the same time. When you say “x exists” (where ‘x’ is some entity, attribute or relationship), you are assuming that it exists independently of consciousness, which means: You imply the primacy of existence principle. But when you say what exists is a form of consciousness which creates existence, then you assume explicitly the primacy of consciousness principle, which contradicts the principle of the primacy of existence. In this way, the claim that god exists must be rejected as a falsehood. Either way, existence exists, and your god is out of a job."
Thus, since God is an impossibility, any purported communication with a non-existent should be treated as an impossibility as well.
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Reality, again, is the realm of existence and existence is the sum of all existents. God, as demonstrated above, is a non-existent. Reality is an existent. So your phrase “God is reality” essentially means “non-existence is existence.” Existence isn’t infered from any deductive reasoning. It is an undeniable, perceptually self-evident fact. It is perceptually self-evident because it is present in all acts of cognition and it is undeniable because the act of denying one’s existence would simultaneously affirm one’s existence.
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I’ve heard this before. Its an old attempt by past religionists who partially recognized the supremacy of reason over faith to somehow graft faith onto reason in order to simultaneously claim support for reason in addition to refusing to reject faith. I tried desperately to do the same thing when I was a religionist over a year ago. Its either faith or reason.
Again Anton Thorn states,
"Indeed, a revolt against reason can hardly be construed as the basis of reason. To accept “ideas or allegations without sensory evidence or rational demonstration” which reduces to sensory evidence [24], is to accept ideas without reference to reality. What, then, guarantees that these ideas have anything to do with reality? The claim that reason must be “accepted on faith” is the attempt to kidnap reason from objectivity and to recruit it in the effort to validate the arbitrary. It is the attempt to replace the perceptually available facts of reality with one’s wishes and whims as the arbiters of knowledge. But even to attempt this, detractors against reason (i.e., advocates of faith) must assume the validity of the axioms in their rejection of them, committing them to what Branden calls, in his essay noted above, “[o]ne of the most grotesque instances of the stolen concept fallacy.”
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It certainly isn’t. Don’t try so dilligently to defend a position not congruent with reality. Come to the dark side.
Uh huh, and if you had scrolled down just a little bit you would have also read a theological definition of faith;
What examination are you talking about? A naive interpretation of science captured and encaged by a high school Chemistry student’s understanding of science?
You actually didn’t demonstrate this. You demonstrated that if Christians adhere to a God with organs, then they don’t adhere to a God without organs, but I don’t think that can be considered as a demonstrative truth in finding the non-existence of God.
And yes, faith - in the sense of Christian theology - does rely on divine revelation, which can be deduced or observed.
The miracles of the Eucharist are examples.
This assumes “the primacy of existence” is both fundamentally true and applicable to all in existence, that existence of material out pases existence of consciousness, and all in existence separates itself from consciousness regardless of its state. Logically speaking… It’s illogical.
With consciousness as an existant, why does consciousness have to follow existence if an independant variable is given? You’re basically assuming that the existence of materials refutes the existence of God. However, if God transcends the existence of materials or is independant of them, then one can obviously see why consciousness as an existant can precede or correlate directly with material as an existant.
You’re putting a lot more stock in this internet personality than you should, you know.
You’re assuming that you’ve proven God does not exist - in which case if you believe it so much then I must ask why you have to continue to assert it.
Not if knowledge is an element of faith.
Apparently your hero Thorn has not read Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason either.
Again, knowledge begins with experience, but it does not come from experience.
I didn’t claim reason is “accepted on faith;” I said that reason as an element of knowledge is an element of faith.
I don’t know if you’re just grasping at straws or trying to throw the longest quotes with the most relevance at me that you can find, but at least make sure they’re on topic.
See, I can cut your sentences short to convey a different point too.
I know that the discussion in this thread has shifted, but I just wanted to give my two cents on Stefan.
Firstly, he does make some good points, but if one has posted on his forums, one realizes that the FDR forums have a very cult like aesthetic as has been made known.
But one of my biggest problems with him is the arrogance with which he views his own arguments. When he made the argument that the relationship between the state and its subjects, is similar to parents and their children respectively through evidence from Crito, he seemed to suggest that this argument is totally original. Unfortunately, for him, I know that when I read Crito, I thought exactly the same thing. His argument was not profound by any standard, and it gets a little upsetting when someone considers themselves the saviour of philosophy, when the points they are making are not groundbreaking by an standards.
You positive he got it from Crito? I was under the impression he got it from the (acclaimed) psychologist Alice Miller. And my source would be Molyneux himself as he’s always highly recommended her works. You could be right though although I’m not sure where he claimed it was his original idea.
You could be right. I just remember watching a specific video where he discussed Socrates’ position in Crito, and the metaphor Socrates used to justify his position of not fleeing Athens. He never explicitly claimed it as his own original idea, although the tone he employed seemed to exhibit the fact that he at least thought the point was a profound one. He used Crito as an example of the philosophical reasoning inherent in statism, but if he was just using that to portray Miller’s point, I could have misinterpreted his statement.
But, on another note, I am unsure if Stefan was able to extract the ought from the is. I am reading UPB at the moment, and I am unsure of the meta ethical content in his position. He seems to be making a descriptive statement about behaviours that are universally preferable, but showing that this somehow translates to a normative property is something far more difficult, and thus far I have not been convinced.
I discuss that problem on my blog as part of my (slowly) ongoing project on Stefan’s book. If you have anything to add, I’d love to hear what you think
I have read Molyneux’s articles and listened to his podcasts and viewed several of his videos on youtube. It is obvious you are not being the least bit honest in your characterization of his religious beliefs. If you can so easily confuse militant Atheism with Wotanism and Satanism it is quite clear your opinion of Molyneux is not to be trusted. The only aspects of Molyneux’s stated beliefs I find somewhat questionable are his ideas regarding universally preferred behavior. I am not fully convinced those are completely sound. However, he is far more fearless in taking libertarian ideas to their logical conclusion than a great many other people seem to be. I also do not share his confidence that the state is doomed to wither away. I wish I were so optimistic.
Molyneux certainly has some good stuff, and I have listened to a lot more of his stuff since this thread was started, but I still believe that he alienates a lot people who otherwise could be influenced. I’m sure the way he goes after some topics causes some people to feel that they are being attacked themselves.
I haven’t listened to everything, but I think he may have improved in his approach on some topics. Some of the nasty responses to his YouTubes may have help him a bit. And he certainly seems more civil when on someone else’s radio show or podcast.
My personal favourite is that “it all starts with the family”, lol.
To the OP:
You don’t need a long argument to tell everyone the obvious fact that Molyneux is an overly self-assured jerk. Hell, I’m an atheist and I can tell you that Molyneux goes right into diving into the cooler of Kool-aide (rather than just drinking it like a normal kook) on many of his [pseudo] psychological rants.
On the whole, I like his work. You can find most of his ideas in other places, but the way he packages them is unique, and I think it opens things up to a wider audience. But I have a few problems with him:
-He’s a bit like a home run hitter to me. Sometimes he just nails it, other times his arguments and evidence are grossly lacking. For example, in addressing the issue of national defense he said something along the lines of, “No country with a nuclear weapon has ever been attacked. All a private defense company needs to do is spend a few million dollars on a nuke”. For such a weighty subject, that’s a bad explanation, especially when you don’t reconcile the topic of nuclear warfare with your views on individual freedom and non-aggression (i.e. how you can use a nuke without hurting innocents).
-He tends to be “black and white” with things. There’s a right answer and there’s a wrong answer, and when it comes to morality, we can logically figure it all out right now. His Universally Preferable Behavior book is based on this. Personally, I think there are grey areas. I’ve seen him address some of these criticisms, but he tends to miss the point or put it off saying that there are bigger fish to fry right now than figure out some unlikely scenario. But when you try to equate your philosophy to something as objective as mathematics, you can’t say it’s not important when your philosophy tells you 23709124 + 1578470981 = 3 because “how likely is it you’d have to add those numbers?” or “there’s a special rule when you add those two numbers”
-I like some of the connections he makes between family and the state, personal problems, etc. but I think he takes it too far, using family as a scapegoat at times or neglecting other causes/solutions to problems.
-He definitely has a chip on his shoulder. He, and some of his followers, have an air about them like “I am the holder of truth”.
The funny part is he calls Ron Paul followers a cult.