duga

couldn't be said better...debates rarely end with someone admitting they are wrong. however, having a debate introduces ideas and promotes understanding why the other person thinks they way they do. and maybe it can lead to some different trains of thought for both people. i can't stand a debate that turns into a personal attack, however. that is just ignorant.

as for me...i am agnostic, even though that is an incredible generalization of my beliefs. it implies i haven't taken the time to think about my beliefs, but that is not the case. i have my own theories on spirituality. i feel the universe is intelligent and everything is connected. even atoms and the particles that make them up have been shown to act with intelligence and purpose...so in a way...you could say that is god.

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Confusion will be my epitaph...

cardboard adolescent

49% of all americans claim to have had a religious or mystical experience... HOLY FUCK THE SINGULARITY IS APPROACHING I DONT WANT TO BE ALL ALONE AGAIN

cardboard adolescent

of course, the paradoxical thing about solipsism is that it can be true for everyone

duga

what counts as a religious experience...i've hallucinated but it wasn't particularly religious.

favorite quote of all time from my man carl sagan:
"we are a way for the cosmos to know itself"

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Confusion will be my epitaph...

cardboard adolescent

it's one of those things where you know when you know

Inuzuka Skysword

Fixed.

cardboard adolescent

it's one of those things where there's no longer a difference between feeling and knowing

Inuzuka Skysword

Would you like to explain why? I don't think anyone can. You may believe in the "high narrow road" but it only exists if we throw away our standards of knowing,

What I would like to ask is why you are willing to make the exception. In other words, why is there any place where there is no longer a difference between feeling and knowing?

cardboard adolescent

there just is, i didn't decide anything. it's not something that can be explained. an explanation is a series of logical steps from the statement in question back to an axiom, which is ultimately unexplainable. why does x=x? why is a point indivisible? what is a point? if you define a point in terms of something else, you then have to ask, well what is that? ultimately you hit a zero-level where the mode of rational explanations no longer works, and it simply is what it is. and since reason breaks down at this point, if there is any way of "knowing" what that thing is, it has to be by "feeling" it.

i will admit that there is a positivist way out of this paradox--which is by saying a point is that which can make a line, and a line is that which can make a square, and so on and so on, so that it doesn't really matter what a point is, you come to understand that by the things it does. what this way of reasoning actually does though, is take that bottom-level ambiguity and spread it all over the entire system. although a line might be that which allows you to make a square, you have to realize that when you refuse to say what a line is in itself you also can't say what a square is in itself. it's just a clever mode of deferring the paradox.

when euclid started axiomatizing mathematics, he actually did something very clever. he said a point is "that which has no parts." that's another clever way of avoiding the paradox--give the simplest elements in your system an entirely negative definition. however, i would suggest that that mode of dealing with the paradox implies that your entire system is built out of... nothing. which hegel fully embraces, by the way

maybe one of the most obvious places where the difference between "feeling" and "knowing" breaks down is in trying to answer the question: "what is existence?"

Inuzuka Skysword

You don't need to feel the law of identity. The law of identity can only be argued by being presented as itself. How is that not a logical argument. It is the basis of what constitutes logic.

What is outside of logic in rationality is no longer thought. When one decides to make life decisions by rolling the dice, he is not using his consciousness to decide. That is why we say he is not thinking about the decisions, but instead gambling.

Emotions and feelings arise out of the subconscious. They are not conscious decisions. It is still a gamble to choose on feelings because you are negating your consciousness.

The bottom line is, the only way to think consciously is to use reason and logic. The axioms that are established here, such as the law of identity, are established because they yield progress. You can't build a bridge questioning the law of identity. In fact, if you truly question the law of identity then you won't be anything. You will be voluntarilly unconscious.

The plague of post-modern philosophy is that they overcomplicated things. "Overcomplicated" may be a bad word to use, but what I mean is that they propose to be free thinkers, and in doing so they abandon the actual thinking process. They question ideas such as whether consciousness can be proven without using your consciousness. They either ask for this to be proven or they just give up and say that it can't. It can't, and the answer most have is to fall back on abandoning their consciousness in the hopes of some sort of transcendence. However, reverting to the subconscious shows the exact opposite results. If there is any hope of transcendence it must involve the use of rationality and logic, the consciousness.

tl;dr: One can only express A=A in the way it is expressed, but that doesn't make it less true. If anything, the questioning of it only further suggests that we need to have axioms. Otherwise we fall into uselessness.