GENIUS FORUMS

If you pursue far enough your thoughts about things and concepts you find them ultimately incoherent. Again, that is meaningless, since you have to cohere the fact that things and facts are ultimately incoherent. We can try a different approach. We must deal with conventions in order to communicate...

Sweetie? Reminds me of Alex's sickly "little sister". It's a needless paternalism, laughably used to convey a sense of superiority. When I see such epithets, I realise the person has little faith in their own reasoning. They're nervous. For, if one's posts are substantial and logical, the...

Emptiness doesn't mean 'nothingness' but it does mean, in a sense, that things and concepts are actually incoherent. That's meaningless. If things and concepts were incoherent then you couldn't make that very statement about them. If you pursue far enough your thoughts about things and concepts you...

Firstly, you don't understand the nature of the law of identity yet. - Kelly Jones I've understood it well enough to dispute it relying on sources in Buddhism and Daoism. For my purposes A = A is useless mentation. This banana is self-identical to this banana ; how profitable it is to know it! A=A ...

... The emptiness of a particular phenomenon doesn't mean the complete non-existence of that phenomenon as an appearance. That is, emptiness doesn't mean nothingness. And it also doesn't mean that the phenomenon loses its identity as an appearance. That is, emptiness doesn't mean incoherence. - Dav...

'... perhaps I simply view animals as more complex than they are typically given credit for - and it seems to me that the more complex they are, the more complex are the models that they construct of reality in their minds, which models could reasonably be referred to as belief structures. You take...

One last post for the evening - I'm sure you can do quite well without me. :) Dan wrote, 'I think there's a distinction to be made between belief and prediction based on heuristic dynamics. When I cross a busy street I do not so much "believe" that I'll be safe as predict it based on exper...

'What is incoherent to one is reasonable to another. 18:8, 'Everything is real, not real; both real and not real; neither not real nor real: this is the teaching of the Buddha.' (- Stephen Batchelor online translation, http://www.stephenbatchelor.org/nagarjuna/verses%20centre.html ) The certainty w...

The body/brain would be paralyzed with uncertainty and indecision, otherwise. Even when it comes to the simplest, most routine tasks, the body/brain assumes that the world will continue to behave in the same way as before. This assumption is always in play. The body/brain only becomes conscious of ...

[I hate longass {longarse} posts.] 'Horses can proceed without erecting beliefs about the safety of their journeys or thinking about them at all and which is a very good thing for horses since they don't have the time for beliefs.' - Larkin 'Their beliefs are largely, like many of our beliefs, impli...

Descartes was forced to turn to an undeceiving God to support the matter. But how did Descartes define his God? If if he did that with his "most perfect being" *) one could argue this God, as absolute or infinite reality - "there is only God" - is indeed unavoidably essential to...

'... an existence has been posited; it is not the existence of the object; it must be the existence of the subject. The reality of the existence is not in the first A or the second A, but in the simultaneous identity of the two. And so the proposition A = A is no other than the proposition “I am.” ...

@Dan Rowden, why do you think that A=A is not a belief? What proof can you give for the truth of A=A? It's impossible to coherently imagine A=A to be untrue, therefore it cannot be "believed". It is either understood - or not; that's all. What is incoherent to one is reasonable to another...

Laird is talking here about provisional assumptions, not beliefs. At least that is how a more conscious person operates - taking nothing for granted, thinking of the future in terms of proposals and tentative assumptions. Belief represents the end of consciousness. A person with a belief is saying ...

'... if you're trying to imply that beliefs are unnecessary in the world, then I disagree - at least if one wants to be active in the world: then, at the very least, implicit beliefs are inescapable. For example, to take a walk on solid ground is to implicitly believe that that ground will remain s...

samadhi wrote:Your enlightenment sounds like mental gymnastics. But if it works for you, hey, go for it.

I'm interested to see how the big boys will take it. It's sort of like nuclear proliferation - very dangerous.

Kevin, please don't forget the very nice favicon.

Great - wish we had such quickness at Yuku. Despite my disagreements with David, Dan, and Kevin I was pleased to contribute recently to Genius Forum. What you appreciate should be nurtured.

Are you really saying that you can't think of a single truth which is true for both humans and donkeys, or for both humans and aliens from other worlds? Look within. Your very own belief system is full of such truth-assertions. Look within, yourself. Observe your failure to share anything true for ...

Robert: Are there thoughts without thinkers, sir? Are there worlds without thinkers? Your absolute truths - if they are true in the first place - are not true for donkeys, i.e., they are not true for all sentient beings, and whether they are in fact useful for anything but claiming you have them, n...

Robert, dude, shadow box. Steven, dude, are you suggesting I just try to make the positive case or are you remarking on the futility of sharing Zhuangzi and J. Krishnamurti with this group? One usually doesn't get legitimate answers, forced to settle instead for presumptions that mentioning 'modal ...

Dave Toast wrote:How very ungrateful.

Not at all; I'm grateful to your continuous vacuity - mere references to modal whatevers and absolute truths are not serious discussions of them. Points were made and Quinn at least tries to answer them, unlike yourself.

If you can't figure out how your snotty response, 'Anyone for Logic 101?' is 'to the man', then you are beyond hope. I might say the same about your ability to discern the logical content of a statement through those egotistical filters of yours, but I won't. The logical fallacy of ad hominem does ...

Robert Playin': You do not occupy all possible worlds. DT: Oh dear. Anyone for Logic 101? Robert Playin': As you can see, you have already been answered. Oh, where was that then? The continual vacuity of your answers is 'amazing'. Erm, I asked a question, in response to a statement. It was a pertin...

[Sorry Robert, I don’t want a discussion about this, I just want to make a point about the quote Okeydokes, but your point in my mind was not well made. In the conversation with Diebert a parallel was drawn between the quote you criticized and one from Zhuangzi. Disagree if you must, but Zhuangzi...