01-06-2005, 01:56 PM | #961 |
Half-Elven Princess of Rabbit Trails and Harp-Wielding Administrator (beware the Rubber Chicken of Doom!)
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I like your last sentence too, Lief, it was exactly what I was wanting to wish Gwai, too, so I'll repeat it, if I may :
Gwai - Your experience with God I very much hope will be enhanced still further by your entering Catholicism. And I'll add that I pray that we all advance in our knowledge of the Truth Brownie - please be patient with me - I really, really want to engage you in dialogue further on your beliefs, but frankly, I've just been feeling too punk lately to think well. You know, I think, that I have a chronic illness; well, having 13 people in the house over Christmas was wonderful, but really threw me into a fairly serious physical setback, and I'm struggling thru a slow recovery of strength. I'll try to get in a few more questions to give me things to think about with your reponses, but I prob. can't really get into it until (hopefully) next week, if you'll please be patient with me
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. I should be doing the laundry, but this is MUCH more fun! Ñá ë?* óú éä ïöü Öñ É Þ ð ß ® ç å ™ æ ♪ ?* "How lovely are Thy dwelling places, O Lord of hosts! ... For a day in Thy courts is better than a thousand outside." (from Psalm 84) * * * God rocks! Entmoot : Veni, vidi, velcro - I came, I saw, I got hooked! Ego numquam pronunciare mendacium, sed ego sum homo indomitus! Run the earth and watch the sky ... Auta i lómë! Aurë entuluva! |
01-06-2005, 02:46 PM | #962 | |
Advocatus Diaboli
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*hugs* dissecting my pragmatic eclecticism can wait
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01-06-2005, 06:06 PM | #963 |
Half-Elven Princess of Rabbit Trails and Harp-Wielding Administrator (beware the Rubber Chicken of Doom!)
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thanks for the patience ... and the hug
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. I should be doing the laundry, but this is MUCH more fun! Ñá ë?* óú éä ïöü Öñ É Þ ð ß ® ç å ™ æ ♪ ?* "How lovely are Thy dwelling places, O Lord of hosts! ... For a day in Thy courts is better than a thousand outside." (from Psalm 84) * * * God rocks! Entmoot : Veni, vidi, velcro - I came, I saw, I got hooked! Ego numquam pronunciare mendacium, sed ego sum homo indomitus! Run the earth and watch the sky ... Auta i lómë! Aurë entuluva! |
01-06-2005, 06:46 PM | #964 | |
Half-Elven Princess of Rabbit Trails and Harp-Wielding Administrator (beware the Rubber Chicken of Doom!)
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(and btw, I'm not planning to stop the questions, only to slow them way down until I'm feeling better - I just wanted to tell you so you wouldn't think I had lost interest)
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I see what you're saying - it reminds me of math (my minor at uni) and how we would use polynomials to fit data curves. I'm rusty on the terminology (it's been awhile!) but we would use first-order polys to fit a curve, and you could fiddle around and get a somewhat decent fit. Then if you switched to second-order polys, you could fiddle around and get a better fit, and so on. And I see how if you don't know something, you try for fits, and then better fits, and so on. But that's for things like science. Don't you think there are truths that are, to use an analogy, digital rather than analog? IOW, it's either true or not true that I have 10 fingers. If someone couldn't see or feel well and was guessing how many fingers I had, they could approximate, and then I could correct them with "more" or "less", and their approximation would become better - but EVENTUALLY they would get an ENTIRELY true answer. Do you see what I'm saying? Do you agree?
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. I should be doing the laundry, but this is MUCH more fun! Ñá ë?* óú éä ïöü Öñ É Þ ð ß ® ç å ™ æ ♪ ?* "How lovely are Thy dwelling places, O Lord of hosts! ... For a day in Thy courts is better than a thousand outside." (from Psalm 84) * * * God rocks! Entmoot : Veni, vidi, velcro - I came, I saw, I got hooked! Ego numquam pronunciare mendacium, sed ego sum homo indomitus! Run the earth and watch the sky ... Auta i lómë! Aurë entuluva! |
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01-08-2005, 04:29 AM | #965 | |
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01-10-2005, 12:50 PM | #966 | ||
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either way, while we can not prove whether or not there are "basic truths"... we can certainly prove without a doubt that we do not yet, and may never, know what they are so everything is an "approximation", based upon, and limited by, our ability to perceive the world around us Quote:
take it a step further and imagine a force like gravity that we can not see directly, but only observe the effects of... might it be possible that there is a whole lot going on with the force we call "gravity" that we just haven't associated with it yet... or maybe it is not just a single force, but a combination of factors... which may help to explain the breakdown at the atomic level bottomline... if nothing else, we cannot know absolute truths... so the only productive way to observe the universe and human behavior is to assume they do not exist until proven otherwise... or in scientific terms, don't insert an arbitrary constant just for the sake of trying to solve an equation
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01-10-2005, 01:28 PM | #967 | ||
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I don't understand what you're getting at with the "don't insert an arbitrary constant" idea It's not arbitrary if it's always there and always the same. Of course, we could say, "well, it might not work next Wednesday", but then one must abandon all science and knowledge if you're always going to assume that type of thing. I think it's healthy and good to realize that conclusions might be in error, but IMO it's absurd and pointless to say, "well, yesterday there was this constant we call "pi", but today it might not be there, or it might not work for all circles, so we can't do anything today with it until we re-discover it for today." The moon wasn't landed on using those types of attitudes. The moon was landed on using mathematical ideas/constants/equations that have proven stable for hundreds of years. As far as your colorblind idea - I don't see how that negates absolute truths. It would be an absolute truth that your father sees light in a defined range of wavelengths as the same color, and most other people see two colors in that range, and certain animals see certain wavelengths differently than humans, etc. We give names to things we perceive. If we, personally, don't perceive something, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. If your dad doesn't perceive red, that doesn't mean that energy in that wavelength suddenly disappears whenever it's around your dad.
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. I should be doing the laundry, but this is MUCH more fun! Ñá ë?* óú éä ïöü Öñ É Þ ð ß ® ç å ™ æ ♪ ?* "How lovely are Thy dwelling places, O Lord of hosts! ... For a day in Thy courts is better than a thousand outside." (from Psalm 84) * * * God rocks! Entmoot : Veni, vidi, velcro - I came, I saw, I got hooked! Ego numquam pronunciare mendacium, sed ego sum homo indomitus! Run the earth and watch the sky ... Auta i lómë! Aurë entuluva! |
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01-10-2005, 01:29 PM | #968 |
Half-Elven Princess of Rabbit Trails and Harp-Wielding Administrator (beware the Rubber Chicken of Doom!)
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BTW, is it true that you posted at Entmoot today?
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. I should be doing the laundry, but this is MUCH more fun! Ñá ë?* óú éä ïöü Öñ É Þ ð ß ® ç å ™ æ ♪ ?* "How lovely are Thy dwelling places, O Lord of hosts! ... For a day in Thy courts is better than a thousand outside." (from Psalm 84) * * * God rocks! Entmoot : Veni, vidi, velcro - I came, I saw, I got hooked! Ego numquam pronunciare mendacium, sed ego sum homo indomitus! Run the earth and watch the sky ... Auta i lómë! Aurë entuluva! |
01-10-2005, 02:48 PM | #969 | ||
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so while pi isn't terribly arbitrary (i.e. it works and no one has come up with a constant that works better) the big bang is a bit more so (i.e. one of the better solutions in terms of observations, but there are other ones too) any specific "religious truths" however are terribly arbitrary, since they have no basis in direct or indirect observation Quote:
that's why i'm agnostic
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01-10-2005, 02:49 PM | #970 | |
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Your reality, sir, is lies and balderdash and I'm delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever. |
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01-10-2005, 03:40 PM | #971 |
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brownjenkins,
"any specific "religious truths" however are terribly arbitrary, since they have no basis in direct or indirect observation" Is that also true of psychology?
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Inked "Aslan is not a tame lion." CSL/LWW "The new school [acts] as if it required...courage to say a blasphemy. There is only one thing that requires real courage to say, and that is a truism." GK Chesterton "And there is always the danger of allowing people to suppose that our modern times are so wholly unlike any other times that the fundamental facts about man's nature have wholly changed with changing circumstances." Dorothy L. Sayers, 1 Sept. 1941 |
01-10-2005, 05:42 PM | #972 | |
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i prefer to think of it as the "art of counseling"
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01-10-2005, 05:50 PM | #973 | |
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. I should be doing the laundry, but this is MUCH more fun! Ñá ë?* óú éä ïöü Öñ É Þ ð ß ® ç å ™ æ ♪ ?* "How lovely are Thy dwelling places, O Lord of hosts! ... For a day in Thy courts is better than a thousand outside." (from Psalm 84) * * * God rocks! Entmoot : Veni, vidi, velcro - I came, I saw, I got hooked! Ego numquam pronunciare mendacium, sed ego sum homo indomitus! Run the earth and watch the sky ... Auta i lómë! Aurë entuluva! |
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01-10-2005, 06:04 PM | #974 | |
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Your reality, sir, is lies and balderdash and I'm delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever. |
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01-11-2005, 01:30 PM | #975 | |
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Your reality, sir, is lies and balderdash and I'm delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever. |
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01-11-2005, 06:40 PM | #976 |
Half-Elven Princess of Rabbit Trails and Harp-Wielding Administrator (beware the Rubber Chicken of Doom!)
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So that's an absolute truth?
(or if you're going to be difficult, I could give you a particular date)
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. I should be doing the laundry, but this is MUCH more fun! Ñá ë?* óú éä ïöü Öñ É Þ ð ß ® ç å ™ æ ♪ ?* "How lovely are Thy dwelling places, O Lord of hosts! ... For a day in Thy courts is better than a thousand outside." (from Psalm 84) * * * God rocks! Entmoot : Veni, vidi, velcro - I came, I saw, I got hooked! Ego numquam pronunciare mendacium, sed ego sum homo indomitus! Run the earth and watch the sky ... Auta i lómë! Aurë entuluva! |
01-11-2005, 09:37 PM | #977 |
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Obviously it's not an absolute truth, Rian. How can we know that Brownjenkins actually exists? How do we know we aren't "brains in a vat" that are simply receving sensory input from some unknown external source?
Bahaha...gotta love my philosophy class. (sorry, couldn't resist.)
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01-12-2005, 03:11 AM | #978 |
Half-Elven Princess of Rabbit Trails and Harp-Wielding Administrator (beware the Rubber Chicken of Doom!)
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Why "obviously", and why is it not an absolute truth?
Note that I was asking HIM if it was an absolute truth. He would know. Now he could lie to us, or he could be under the influence of drugs and not really know the answer , but that does NOT remove the fact that either he DID post today or he did NOT post today. There IS a yes/no answer to that question; it is NOT an approximation-type question. I just don't really get into the brain in a vat thing ... if you're gonna have that as a possibility, then why bother to think or talk at all? Sure it's possible - and it's also possible that things are pretty much as they seem (i.e., we're NOT brains in a vat). So as a personal choice, I choose to believe that things are pretty much as they seem. Otherwise, why bother with talking? Why bother with anything? And it's either true or false that we're brains in a vat
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. I should be doing the laundry, but this is MUCH more fun! Ñá ë?* óú éä ïöü Öñ É Þ ð ß ® ç å ™ æ ♪ ?* "How lovely are Thy dwelling places, O Lord of hosts! ... For a day in Thy courts is better than a thousand outside." (from Psalm 84) * * * God rocks! Entmoot : Veni, vidi, velcro - I came, I saw, I got hooked! Ego numquam pronunciare mendacium, sed ego sum homo indomitus! Run the earth and watch the sky ... Auta i lómë! Aurë entuluva! |
01-12-2005, 03:17 AM | #979 | |
Half-Elven Princess of Rabbit Trails and Harp-Wielding Administrator (beware the Rubber Chicken of Doom!)
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IMO, philosophy used correctly is a great thing. Philosophy that just says, "How do we know everything is not just an illusion?" just doesn't cut it for me. It doesn't put bread on the table or ease suffering or increase beauty or show love. I think the correct answer to that question is, "Well, I don't know - but I'm going to act like we are NOT brains in a vat. If we are indeed brains in a vat, it certainly wouldn't hurt to act like we're not. If we are NOT brains in a vat, it would CERTAINLY hurt to act like we ARE. So the best choice, given that we'll never know for sure, seems to be to act like we are NOT brains in a vat. End of answer - let's go out there and do good!"
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. I should be doing the laundry, but this is MUCH more fun! Ñá ë?* óú éä ïöü Öñ É Þ ð ß ® ç å ™ æ ♪ ?* "How lovely are Thy dwelling places, O Lord of hosts! ... For a day in Thy courts is better than a thousand outside." (from Psalm 84) * * * God rocks! Entmoot : Veni, vidi, velcro - I came, I saw, I got hooked! Ego numquam pronunciare mendacium, sed ego sum homo indomitus! Run the earth and watch the sky ... Auta i lómë! Aurë entuluva! |
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01-12-2005, 09:59 AM | #980 |
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The Socratic/Platonic story of the guy with the Ring which makes him invisible is an old philosophic discussion which touches on this subject directly. If we had the power of invisibility which rendered us incapable of being caught, how would we then act? It is our choices which make us what we are - even when not held accountable for them by our fellow humans. The conclusion: to act rightly in accord with the Good is mankind's highest attainment. See NICHOMACHIAN ETHICS.
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Inked "Aslan is not a tame lion." CSL/LWW "The new school [acts] as if it required...courage to say a blasphemy. There is only one thing that requires real courage to say, and that is a truism." GK Chesterton "And there is always the danger of allowing people to suppose that our modern times are so wholly unlike any other times that the fundamental facts about man's nature have wholly changed with changing circumstances." Dorothy L. Sayers, 1 Sept. 1941 |