I just broke your toys :(

[Trevor Salyzyn]

EI, switch the statement around:

If a man is killed, must he have been killed by something? Or could it have been caused by nothing whatsoever?

[ExpectantlyIronic]

Trevor,

If a man is killed, must he have been killed by something? Or could it have been caused by nothing whatsoever?

I normally assume that a fella doesn't just die for no reason at all. Nevertheless, my reasons for believing as much are inductive. I can imagine what it would mean for people to just die randomly without a cause.

[Trevor Salyzyn]

That is kind of the point. It is impossible to know what it would mean for something to be completely acausal, since it stands entirely outside of logic. This is not to say: "okay, there's something beyond logic that could do it."

That would be a ridiculous assumption. Logic is the limit of human thought. If something is not comprehensible logically, then it is impossible to comprehend it at all. Since part of wisdom is only doing things that are possible, it is actually very unwise to believe in anything super-logical. It is beyond thought, therefore it is beyond thought.

To restate: our collective limit in regards to causality (as with other ontological certainties that are established using logic) is that it is impossible to conceive of something without any cause whatsoever. On those grounds alone, we should not attempt to do so, since that would be to attempt the impossible.

[David Quinn]

Expectantly Ironic,

DQ: This is where Hume's arguments on causality break down. They depend on the false perception that successive events are discrete entities with beginnings and ends.

EI: No they don't. They only depend upon the fact that it makes sense to say something like "a man will die if he's hit by a train". Will he die? Experience and inductive reasoning says yes. Deductive reasoning is out having tea, and has nothing to say on the matter at the moment. Claims as to particular causal connections are inductive. That's the whole of it.

Like Average, you're confusing two separate issues. Our reason for thinking that a particular event is the cause of the man's death is certainly inductive. But nonetheless, our reason for thinking that his death does in fact have causes, whatever they might be, is deductive.

In other words, you are mistakenly using the uncertainty involved in establishing what exactly causes what to conclude that causality itself might not exist. It is like arguing that since it is impossible to prove beyond doubt that smoking can cause lung cancer, it is possible that lung cancer can arise without any cause at all. It is false reasoning.

It's an anthropomorphic form of reasoning, one that over-emphasizes the significance of our own human capabilities or lack of them. The reality of causality doesn't depend on our ability or in ability to establish specific causal connections.

I can imagine what it would mean for people to just die randomly without a cause.

At the very least, a person would have to be alive initially before he could die, so this is obviously false. The very fact of his being alive constitutes one of the necessary causes of his death.

This whole idea that there aren't particular events strikes me as entirely misguided anyways. I think Average and yourself are ignoring what we actually mean when we speak of such things. You're trying to understand what an 'event' might be, and not looking at how the word itself is used.

Events are easy to understand. The word "event" is used to describe an occurrance which has a beginning and an end of some kind. If these beginnings and ends are ultimately illusory, then strictly speaking, there cannot be any events.

-

[Faust]

Events are easy to understand. The word "event" is used to describe an occurrance which has a beginning and an end of some kind. If these beginnings and ends are ultimately illusory, then strictly speaking, there cannot be any events.

depends what you mean by event. for example, a concert could begin at 7pm and end at 10. the actual "show" that the public views has a beginning and an end. or, the 9/11 attacks happened when the first plane struck, or when the idea was conceived of, it depends on the definition.

Btw Hume was an extremely boring philosopher. he had no conception of the Infinite and his stuff is utterly tedious to read. Weininger called him superflous.

[average]

Expectantly Ironic,

DQ: This is where Hume's arguments on causality break down. They depend on the false perception that successive events are discrete entities with beginnings and ends.

EI: No they don't. They only depend upon the fact that it makes sense to say something like "a man will die if he's hit by a train". Will he die? Experience and inductive reasoning says yes. Deductive reasoning is out having tea, and has nothing to say on the matter at the moment. Claims as to particular causal connections are inductive. That's the whole of it.

Like Average, you're confusing two separate issues. Our reason for thinking that a particular event is the cause of the man's death is certainly inductive. But nonetheless, our reason for thinking that his death does in fact have causes, whatever they might be, is deductive.

In other words, you are mistakenly using the uncertainty involved in establishing what exactly causes what to conclude that causality itself might not exist. It is like arguing that since it is impossible to prove beyond doubt that smoking can cause lung cancer, it is possible that lung cancer can arise without any cause at all. It is false reasoning.

It's an anthropomorphic form of reasoning, one that over-emphasizes the significance of our own human capabilities or lack of them. The reality of causality doesn't depend on our ability or in ability to establish specific causal connections.

I can imagine what it would mean for people to just die randomly without a cause.

At the very least, a person would have to be alive initially before he could die, so this is obviously false. The very fact of his being alive constitutes one of the necessary causes of his death.

This whole idea that there aren't particular events strikes me as entirely misguided anyways. I think Average and yourself are ignoring what we actually mean when we speak of such things. You're trying to understand what an 'event' might be, and not looking at how the word itself is used.

Events are easy to understand. The word "event" is used to describe an occurrance which has a beginning and an end of some kind. If these beginnings and ends are ultimately illusory, then strictly speaking, there cannot be any events.

-

Causality has never, and can never be established, logically or empirically.
If you are going to subscribe to it, it will have to be via Faith. Which should come like breathing to you David, since you subscribe to Logic via Faith.

[David Quinn]

Faust wrote:

DQ: Events are easy to understand. The word "event" is used to describe an occurrance which has a beginning and an end of some kind. If these beginnings and ends are ultimately illusory, then strictly speaking, there cannot be any events.

F: depends what you mean by event. for example, a concert could begin at 7pm and end at 10. the actual "show" that the public views has a beginning and an end. or, the 9/11 attacks happened when the first plane struck, or when the idea was conceived of, it depends on the definition.

That's exactly right. Events only exist by definition.

-

[David Quinn]

average,

Causality has never, and can never be established, logically or empirically.
If you are going to subscribe to it, it will have to be via Faith. Which should come like breathing to you David, since you subscribe to Logic via Faith.

It is easy enough to prove the truth of causality via logic. In a nutshell, a "cause" is anything which is necessary for something else to exist. At the very least, a thing existing in time and space is necessarily dependent upon its own constituent parts, and upon time and space, for its existence. Thus, that a thing necessarily requires causes is automatically proven.

-

[David Quinn]

Expectantly Ironic wrote:

I can imagine what it would mean for people to just die randomly without a cause.

What you imagine to be possible doesn't really amount to anything if your initial assumptions are wrong.

For example, I can imagine a triangle not having three sides, but only if I strip away everything that makes a triangle unique - in other words, by turning it into a empty, featureless cypher: "A".

Similarly, I can imagine a particular thing not having causes, but only if I strip away everything that makes that thing existent, real and unique. These arguments of yours only work by engaging in an extreme level of abstraction such that all things become unrecognizable - dwelling in a sterile vacuum, divorced from the real world. That is, by ignoring the way in which a thing manifests in real life.

-

[Nick]

Similarly, I can imagine a particular thing not having causes, but only if I strip away everything that makes that thing existent, real and unique. These arguments of yours only work by engaging in an extreme level of abstraction such that all things become unrecognizable - dwelling in a sterile vacuum, divorced from the real world.

Right.

That is, by ignoring the way in which a thing manifests in real life.

In other words, insane?

[David Quinn]

It's definitely a form of insanity. The only way that academics get away with it is because there are thousands of others just like them, all of striving to intellectually divorce themselves from reality. It gives them a sense of validity via the illusion of numbers.

-

[ExpectantlyIronic]

Trevor,

I said that I can imagine what it would mean for someone to die without a cause. I am, of course, thinking of life as part of what death is (the end of life) as opposed to a cause of it. If we should say that a thing is caused by what it is, then I'll concede I can't imagine what it would mean to die without a cause, but I never have, and wasn't using the term 'cause' in such a manner. That aside, we can imagine that cells could begin the process of dying with no trigger event proceeding them in time, however much we should want to say that such a thing could never happen. It is conceivable, and thus possible for the purposes of determining logical necessity.



David Quinn,

At the very least, a person would have to be alive initially before he could die, so this is obviously false. The very fact of his being alive constitutes one of the necessary causes of his death.

As I said to Trevor, death is the end of life. Obviously the end of life cannot occur if there is no life to end. I would not, as I've said, say that life is then a cause of death. We wouldn't say that redness causes tomatoes, as redness is simply a part of tomatoes. If we can think of life causing death, and redness causing tomatoes, then so be it. I won't bother to argue a point where the difference is obviously and primarily semantic.

In other words, you are mistakenly using the uncertainty involved in establishing what exactly causes what to conclude that causality itself might not exist. It is like arguing that since it is impossible to prove beyond doubt that smoking can cause lung cancer, it is possible that lung cancer can arise without any cause at all. It is false reasoning.

I'm hardly guilty of poor reasoning. I just forget that you think lung cancer is caused by lungs.

Events are easy to understand. The word "event" is used to describe an occurrance which has a beginning and an end of some kind. If these beginnings and ends are ultimately illusory, then strictly speaking, there cannot be any events.

The beginning and end is not committed to in speech as anything that isn't arbitrary though. Nobody, when describing a particular event, means that such an event is to be distinguished from any other by anything beyond the potentially unique phenomena described. I know that you mean only that there isn't an essential beginning and end to mark particular events, but that strikes me as shoddy grounds on which to commit to there not being events. If there weren't events, then is it incorrect to speak of me typing at the moment as an event? Obviously not, because we don't mean to commit to such nonsensical essential beginnings and ends when using the term.

For example, I can imagine a triangle not having three sides, but only if I strip away everything that makes a triangle unique - in other words, by turning it into a empty, featureless cypher: "A".

I can't imagine a triangle that doesn't have three sides. Whatever you're describing isn't anything I do.

Similarly, I can imagine a particular thing not having causes, but only if I strip away everything that makes that thing existent, real and unique.

I don't have to invoke an apple as an abstract to say that a particular apple popped into existence without a cause.

It's definitely a form of insanity. The only way that academics get away with it is because there are thousands of others just like them, all of striving to intellectually divorce themselves from reality. It gives them a sense of validity via the illusion of numbers.

What self-congratulatory wanking nonsense. To dismiss a mans thought because he happens to teach or publish in journals is the height of close-minded. I am not an academic philosopher though, and neither was Hume, so I have no idea where you even pulled this from.

[ExpectantlyIronic]

Faust,

Btw Hume was an extremely boring philosopher. he had no conception of the Infinite and his stuff is utterly tedious to read. Weininger called him superflous.

You think so? I've always found Hume to be a joy to read compared to many others who dealt with similar subject manner. Oh well, different strokes... as they say. Also, well we're talking about who said what about whom, Wittgenstein said something incredibly fascinating about ol' Otto:

"It isn't necessary or rather not possible to agree with him but the greatness lies in that with which we disagree. It is his enormous mistake which is great."

[Trevor Salyzyn]

EI: Agreed. But Hume is a complex read, and it's very difficult to appreciate him.

First, you need to realize that he's essentially a Devil's Advocate. Then, grasping this, you need to see that he's not really one. :)

Considering his youth (he was somewhere around 26 when his masterpiece was published; he'd started it when he was 16), it's all the more impressive. He captured one thought along the path to Infinity, wrote about it, and was well-beyond the thoughts in the book by the time he finished. That Hume is read most often by the people he had the least respect for -- scholars and academics -- is a complete shame. These are the same people who said his book was too hard to read when it first came out (as though it somehow becomes less difficult to read over time).

If all I knew about Hume was that he was the author of his Treatise, I would say he must have had a clear understanding of the Infinite. Any argument against this claim would have to be supported by other works.

[Faust]

You think so? I've always found Hume to be a joy to read compared to many others who dealt with similar subject manner. Oh well, different strokes... as they say. Also, well we're talking about who said what about whom, Wittgenstein said something incredibly fascinating about ol' Otto:

"It isn't necessary or rather not possible to agree with him but the greatness lies in that with which we disagree. It is his enormous mistake which is great."

The subject matter he talked about was boring and can be easily solved of, ie causation, the existence of god (YAWN), etc etc.. Not to mention the most boring titles i've ever heard, "An Enquiry into human understanding" "an enquiry into bla bla bla" more like, an UNenquiry. He had no conception of the Infinite, never saw a glimpse of it, his eyes did not sparkle. He never spoke of the "ego" and he was a terrible psychologist.

Wittgenstein was an overrated loser. Linguistic philosophy is the true philosophy of evasion. We've already refutted his "tautology" argument countless times, yet you hold on to it because of its post-modernist appeal. About the quote, why isn't it possible to agree with him? What IS Weininger's enormous mistake?? Wittgenstein was Jewish btw, perhaps he couldn't fully get that sickly and disgusting state of mind out of his head, Weininger utterly debunked Judaism and he did a damn good job.

Trevor,

Hume didn't conceive of the Infinite because first his problem of causation wasn't really a problem. Second he wasn't a psychologist to my knowledge, I don't think he found out about the Will-To-Power pervading our thinking. oh and Hume was NOT a fan of Absolutes was he?

[ExpectantlyIronic]

Faust,

He never spoke of the "ego" and he was a terrible psychologist.

He wasn't at all a psychologist. If you read him hoping to find a theory about how womanish Jews are running around being slaves to sexual desire (or whatever), I can see how you would be terribly disappointed.

Wittgenstein was an overrated loser. Linguistic philosophy is the true philosophy of evasion. We've already refutted his "tautology" argument countless times, yet you hold on to it because of its post-modernist appeal.

You refuted Wittgenstein's invention of the word 'tautology' to describe the negation of a contradiction? I don't remember that, and don't know if such a thing could be refuted. What form would a refutation take? That that isn't what we should call that? Or maybe you mean that you refuted the idea that any tautologies that are made to seem substantial are false. I don't remember that either. If a tautology is made to seem like something that someone might imagine isn't the case, but nevertheless is the case (y'know, substantial), then it is clearly false via (ironically) tautological reasoning. That's due to the fact that tautologies are always the case by definition (if something is always the case, then it is so due to the fact one can't imagine it being otherwise). You haven't so much refuted anything, as utterly failed to understand it for a lack of trying.

bout the quote, why isn't it possible to agree with him? What IS Weininger's enormous mistake??

I have no idea if there was one or what it might be. I've never read anything by ol' Otto, but I'm not fond of what I do know about him. Wittgenstein, on the other hand, was incredibly fond of him, and is the main reason why anyone pays attention to Weininger at all these days (by my understanding).

Wittgenstein was Jewish btw, perhaps he couldn't fully get that sickly and disgusting state of mind out of his head, Weininger utterly debunked Judaism and he did a damn good job.

Wittgenstein was a Christian of Jewish heritage, just like Weininger. Unlike Weininger, Wittgenstein wasn't raised knowing he was a Jew, and only discovered his heritage when the Nazis came after his family. Regardless, you sound like an anti-Semite. Christianity is just as bad as Judaism from a philosophical standpoint (if not worse, as the later involves a commitment to the mythology of the former as well as its own). Neither of them are "sickly and disgusting", but are both simply wrong.

[David Quinn]

Expectantly Ironic,

DQ: At the very least, a person would have to be alive initially before he could die, so this is obviously false. The very fact of his being alive constitutes one of the necessary causes of his death.

EI: As I said to Trevor, death is the end of life. Obviously the end of life cannot occur if there is no life to end. I would not, as I've said, say that life is then a cause of death. We wouldn't say that redness causes tomatoes, as redness is simply a part of tomatoes. If we can think of life causing death, and redness causing tomatoes, then so be it. I won't bother to argue a point where the difference is obviously and primarily semantic.

Nevertheless, it still remains true that an event can only happen if the conditions are there for it to happen.

In the case of a person dying, one of the conditions that is needed is the person being alive. But there are numerous other necessary conditions as well - e.g. the person's body possessing the capacity to die; the existence and functioning of the person's organs, cells and all the other elements which comprise the existence of his body; the existence of a breathable atmosphere and livable environmental conditions; the existence of time and space which create the room for his body to exist; the existence of his parents which created his body's existence in the first place; the existence of a society which sustained the lives of the parents; the evolution of the species which enabled his parents to come into being; and so on. All of these conditions are essential to the occurrence of his death.

Given this, the idea of his death happening without any cause at all doesn't mean anything. One could only make that claim by ignoring all of these countless causal conditions which do indeed contribute to the death.

DQ: In other words, you are mistakenly using the uncertainty involved in establishing what exactly causes what to conclude that causality itself might not exist. It is like arguing that since it is impossible to prove beyond doubt that smoking can cause lung cancer, it is possible that lung cancer can arise without any cause at all. It is false reasoning.

EI: I'm hardly guilty of poor reasoning.

There is a lot more to reasoning then simply being able to string syllogisms together in a vacuum. I think you probably are capable of being a good reasoner, but at the moment your reasoning faculty is being hampered by mental blocks.

DQ: For example, I can imagine a triangle not having three sides, but only if I strip away everything that makes a triangle unique - in other words, by turning it into a empty, featureless cypher: "A".

EI: I can't imagine a triangle that doesn't have three sides. Whatever you're describing isn't anything I do.

It is precisely what you are doing.

DQ: Similarly, I can imagine a particular thing not having causes, but only if I strip away everything that makes that thing existent, real and unique.

EI: I don't have to invoke an apple as an abstract to say that a particular apple popped into existence without a cause.

Not to say it, no. But you do have to invoke it in order to give meaning to the claim that an apple can pop into existence without cause.

You see, I can easily say that it is possible for a triangle to not have three sides, but it won't be a meaningful statement in my own mind unless I completely ignore what a triangle is and just focus purely, abstractly, on its status as a "form". After all, there is no inherent reason why a "form" cannot have something other than three sides. In effect, I would have to mentally make the triangle, as a unique entity, possessing its own unique traits, disappear - only then can I reach the conclusion. But the moment I recognize and accept what a triangle is, it becomes impossible for me to affirm the idea of it not having three sides.

In the same way, a person can only begin to entertain the possibility of an apple being without cause by mentally making the apple, as a unique physical entity, disappear and replacing it with an abstract featureless entity, such as a "form" or "thing" or "event". Once this happens, reaching the desired conclusion becomes much easier.

In a sense, it is understandable why you would reach the conclusion that there is no inherent reason why a "form", "thing" or "event" cannot be without cause, as there is nothing about a featureless abstract entity that can stop such a conclusion from taking place (provided that you block out certain logical realities, such as the reality that a form is logically caused by what is not that form). But it is a meaningless conclusion in the end because featureless "forms" are themselves meaningless.

That aside, we can imagine that cells could begin the process of dying with no trigger event proceeding them in time, however much we should want to say that such a thing could never happen. It is conceivable, and thus possible for the purposes of determining logical necessity.

I personally can't imagine it, in the same way that I can't imagine a triangle not having three sides. I can't mentally divorce causes and consequences from an existing thing, not without emasculating the thing's existence and turning it into a non-entity.

DQ: Events are easy to understand. The word "event" is used to describe an occurrance which has a beginning and an end of some kind. If these beginnings and ends are ultimately illusory, then strictly speaking, there cannot be any events.

EI: The beginning and end is not committed to in speech as anything that isn't arbitrary though. Nobody, when describing a particular event, means that such an event is to be distinguished from any other by anything beyond the potentially unique phenomena described. I know that you mean only that there isn't an essential beginning and end to mark particular events, but that strikes me as shoddy grounds on which to commit to there not being events. If there weren't events, then is it incorrect to speak of me typing at the moment as an event? Obviously not, because we don't mean to commit to such nonsensical essential beginnings and ends when using the term.

We can, for practical purposes, refer to your typing as an "event". But from a deeper perspective, since the act of typing cannot really be divorced from all the processes which led up to it, nor from the processes which follow on from it, we can't really separate it out from the rest of Reality, not without engaging the imagination.

There is only one event at root and that is Nature itself.

DQ: It's definitely a form of insanity. The only way that academics get away with it is because there are thousands of others just like them, all of striving to intellectually divorce themselves from reality. It gives them a sense of validity via the illusion of numbers.

EI: What self-congratulatory wanking nonsense. To dismiss a mans thought because he happens to teach or publish in journals is the height of close-minded. I am not an academic philosopher though, and neither was Hume, so I have no idea where you even pulled this from.

It is not the teaching or publishing in journals which concerns me, but the act of emasculating existence and confining the reasoning process to a sterile vacuum within the abstract mind. That is what I call "academic". Hume did it, and you do it too.

It's a form of cowardice, really. It's a way to make logic harmless and ineffectual when it comes to personal issues - which, unfortunately, is the all-pervasive and overriding dynamic of human society as we currently know it. Nearly everyone is hard at it - academics and Christians alike.

-

[ExpectantlyIronic]

David Quinn,

All of these conditions are essential to the occurrence of his death

Many of the things you listed are hardly part of what death is at all, and we would only say are essential due to inductive inference.

Given this, the idea of his death happening without any cause at all doesn't mean anything. One could only make that claim by ignoring all of these countless causal conditions which do indeed contribute to the death.

It is quite meaningful to suggest that once we get past those things which are sufficient to make an event describable as 'death', those events which proceed them in time can only be inductively inferred to be necessary causes. Again, I would not call those events that are necessary to make an event describable as death, causes of death, but rather part of what death is.

There is a lot more to reasoning then simply being able to string syllogisms together in a vacuum. I think you probably are capable of being a good reasoner, but at the moment your reasoning faculty is being hampered by mental blocks.

Thanks sage David for your analysis of my progress towards enlightenment. I don't care about such things though, as I'd rather be right then you. Also, I don't think in syllogisms, and only ever use them to help me describe what deductive logic is to someone who seems confused on the matter.

You see, I can easily say that it is possible for a triangle to not have three sides, but it won't be a meaningful statement in my own mind unless I completely ignore what a triangle is and just focus purely, abstractly, on its status as a "form". After all, there is no inherent reason why a "form" cannot have something other than three sides. In effect, I would have to mentally make the triangle, as a unique entity, possessing its own unique traits, disappear - only then can I reach the conclusion. But the moment I recognize and accept what a triangle is, it becomes impossible for me to affirm the idea of it not having three sides.

That's a rather elaborate straw man. You've invented and refuted a totally nonsensical view that nobody holds. Good job.

In the same way, a person can only begin to entertain the possibility of an apple being without cause by mentally making the apple, as a unique physical entity, disappear and replacing it with an abstract featureless entity, such as a "form" or "thing" or "event". Once this happens, reaching the desired conclusion becomes much easier.

I would say all apples are caused to exist by various things, but that's an inductive inference on my part.

I personally can't imagine it, in the same way that I can't imagine a triangle not having three sides. I can't mentally divorce causes and consequences from an existing thing, not without emasculating the thing's existence and turning it into a non-entity.

There is nothing to imagine about a triangle without three sides. It's just a nonsense contradictory description. It's easy to imagine a billiard ball moving about a table without being struck. It's more difficult to imagine a person dying without cause, but that's because we happen to know all sorts of things that biologists have inductively inferred about such things. Nevertheless, it isn't incredibly hard to do. Just visualize some dude walking down the street and dropping dead. Don't imagine whatever hidden causes you think might be present, and you've successfully imagined an acausal death.

[Faust]

He wasn't at all a psychologist. If you read him hoping to find a theory about how womanish Jews are running around being slaves to sexual desire (or whatever), I can see how you would be terribly disappointed.

exactly he wasn't a psychologist, which makes him utterly boring to a large extent. I never said ANYTHING about wanting to read about Judaism from him, I have no idea where you got THAT from.

You refuted Wittgenstein's invention of the word 'tautology' to describe the negation of a contradiction? I don't remember that, and don't know if such a thing could be refuted. What form would a refutation take? That that isn't what we should call that? Or maybe you mean that you refuted the idea that any tautologies that are made to seem substantial are false. I don't remember that either. If a tautology is made to seem like something that someone might imagine isn't the case, but nevertheless is the case (y'know, substantial), then it is clearly false via (ironically) tautological reasoning. That's due to the fact that tautologies are always the case by definition (if something is always the case, then it is so due to the fact one can't imagine it being otherwise). You haven't so much refuted anything, as utterly failed to understand it for a lack of trying.

what the hell IS tautological reasoning?

I have no idea if there was one or what it might be. I've never read anything by ol' Otto, but I'm not fond of what I do know about him.

this is why you're an idiot. You have no idea what the quote is about yet you mention it. You haven't read anything of Otto yet you "don't like what you know about him."

Wittgenstein was a Christian of Jewish heritage, just like Weininger. Unlike Weininger, Wittgenstein wasn't raised knowing he was a Jew, and only discovered his heritage when the Nazis came after his family. Regardless, you sound like an anti-Semite. Christianity is just as bad as Judaism from a philosophical standpoint (if not worse, as the later involves a commitment to the mythology of the former as well as its own). Neither of them are "sickly and disgusting", but are both simply wrong.

ahahah "anti-semite" there's another too commonly used token word like pocket change, along with "misogyny" "racism" and "sexism." Semite means arab also by the way, so you could be referring to the entire middle-east, including some of me. Semite does not mean strictly Jewish, although that's what 99% of what idiotic Pavlovian people think. Second, Judaism is NOT a race. It is strictly a religion, there's no such thing as a Jewish culture outside of the religion. That's why you cannot be an Atheist Jew. Jews were Amorites and were the same stock of Arabs. So they aren't really a distinct race with a seperate culture outside of their religion. Everything about Judaism comes from the religion, it cannot be seperated. That's why a blue-eyed blonde or a White Jew makes no sense from an ethnic point of view, yet there are plenty of them. And the rule "if you're mother's Jewish then you're Jewish" is just pure bullshit, shows how tyrannical and tribal Judaism is.

David Cross on Atheists and Judaism, from his stand up comedy routine, "Shut Up You F-cking Baby"

"You know I was brought up Jewish, You know, which I, I'm an Atheist, well whatever, I don't care. I don't care, I'm an Atheist and I was at an early age, and uh, again, I don't care. Whatever. You guys can sign up for little committees, give yourself orange...alright Atheists get orange shirts and Jews get red shirts and then we'll f-cking have at it, we'll have a tug-of-war, we'll see who wins, we'll see who's right. But, but it's you know like so like if I said, Ahhhh, you know, I'm in synagogue one day, I'm in temple, and I'm twelve years old, and I'm listening to stuff, and I've been going since I was a kid, and I'm listening to these stories from the Bible or the Torah, and I'm looking around at all these adults.........and I'm like, You don't really believe this bullsh-t, do you? Are you serious? Angels dip blood and took a first born.... What? There was a plague? God put a plague......This is Crazy! This is nonsense! Where are the Unicorns? This is insane! This is fictional crap. I can't......And so at an early age I was, ahh whatever, and I promised my mom I'd get Bar Mitzvahed, and then you get three hundred bucks, so it's not that big a deal. Not a bad deal.
But that's how I feel, I'm an Atheist. I'm an Atheist, I don't believe in god. So therefore, I would think, I can't be Jewish. Basically because the absolute beginning and end and the foundation of everything Judaism is about is predicated upon the belief in God. So if I don't believe in God, then clearly I can't be Jewish, right? No? You can't, Judaism came up.....It's the only religion that does this, it came up with this f-cking bullsh-t, arbitrary rule that if your mother is Jewish, then you're Jewish. It doesn't matter what you think, it doesn't matter what you believe in. I could believe that there is no God, there's only only a devil and Joe Garagiola, those are the only two people on the planet.....So you're like, well I can't be. Look, no offense, but I just don't want to be part of your tribal, superstitious nonsense. This is silly, I don't really subscribe to that, so if I don't believe in God, then I can't be Jewish right? That just makes sense. Right?

(In a comical voice, similar to Woody Allen) - Well, Ehhhhhhhh, That's Ehhhhhhhhh, Not necessarily...Its Ehhh, You know, its an interesting point you bring up, but Ehhhh, you know, it's ehhhhhh, its a question, that ehhhhhh, man has ehhhh, you know, asked himself and of God, Ehhhhh, several times, and, Ehhhhh, you know, let me ask you one question, you say this now, but, Ehhhhh, Was your mothers vagina Jewish?

(replies) Yes, ....Yes it was. F-ck! They got me with a technicality.

(Comical voice) See, well then you're a Jew! Thank You! Move along, we might need you later. Alright.

So anyway, no matter what I believe in, it doesn't matter, just Jew for life. That's it. And again, Judaism is the only religion that won't allow you to not be Jewish, and its unfair."

Christianity is false, but the attitude is a much better improvement than Judaism. Judaism is cowardly and feminine, it's submissive and materialistic. Jews use their submissive cunning to survive, whereas christianity is more courageous and noble. Weininger goes through it pretty well.

[ExpectantlyIronic]

Faust,

what the hell IS tautological reasoning?

Any reasoning which arrives at a conclusion that can't be otherwise based upon the premise. I did screw up my explanation a bit in my previous post. A tautology is never false, but a theory which makes them seem substantial is always false. An example of such a theory would be:

Many don't have a deep enough understanding of logic to see that everything is one. They would say, in their delusional state, that there is a great multiplicity of things. Yet, I ask you, what is there other than everything? For a clear mind there is no doubt that everything is one, as there is nothing beyond it.

There are no conditions under which we can imagine a tautology not being true. So saying that there is nothing more than everything is a tautology. The opposite of that statement would be a contradiction: there is something more than everything. The theory above is appealing to the obvious truth of such a tautology to make the stronger claim that there isn't a multiplicity of things. It is effectively using "everything is one" to mean two entirely different things: there isn't something other than everything, and there is only one thing. I never argued for the second claim in my above theory, but simply used deceptive language to make it seem entailed by the tautology I pointed to. I was effectively saying that if there is nothing other than everything, then there isn't more than one thing. That is false, and thus the theory is false.

I hope that's clear. Regardless, the moral of the story is that one should be weary that multiple claims can often seem like a single one. We can differentiate such claims via their truth conditions. For instance, "the duck swam" makes two claims. That there is one and only one "the duck", and that that duck swam. The second claim can only be true if the first is, but its truth isn't entailed by that of the first. That duck could easily exist, but not have swam. I know I'm off on a tangent, but treating every proposition in kind is at the heart of the analytic method, and understanding Tractatus era Wittgenstein at all requires a bit of knowledge of it. So, a tautology is a proposition that has no conditions under which it could be false. A proposition being the content of a sentence which can be said to be either true or false depending if its truth conditions are met.

this is why you're an idiot. You have no idea what the quote is about yet you mention it. You haven't read anything of Otto yet you "don't like what you know about him."

So that's why I'm an idiot. And all this time I thought it was just because I don't know stuff good.

ahahah "anti-semite" there's another too commonly used token word like pocket change, along with "misogyny" "racism" and "sexism." Semite means arab also by the way, so you could be referring to the entire middle-east, including some of me. Semite does not mean strictly Jewish, although that's what 99% of what idiotic Pavlovian people think.

So a word can have a really real meaning that the vast majority of people who use it aren't aware of? That strikes me as kinda queer (not the sort of 'queer' that Weininger was bigoted towards mind you).

Christianity is false, but the attitude is a much better improvement than Judaism. Judaism is cowardly and feminine, it's submissive and materialistic. Jews use their submissive cunning to survive, whereas christianity is more courageous and noble. Weininger goes through it pretty well.

Oh no, not submissive cunning! That's like what the bad fox used in those old Native American stories.

[David Quinn]

Expectantly Ironic,

DQ: In the case of a person dying, one of the conditions that is needed is the person being alive. But there are numerous other necessary conditions as well - e.g. the person's body possessing the capacity to die; the existence and functioning of the person's organs, cells and all the other elements which comprise the existence of his body; the existence of a breathable atmosphere and livable environmental conditions; the existence of time and space which create the room for his body to exist; the existence of his parents which created his body's existence in the first place; the existence of a society which sustained the lives of the parents; the evolution of the species which enabled his parents to come into being; and so on. All of these conditions are essential to the occurrence of his death.

EI: Many of the things you listed are hardly part of what death is at all, and we would only say are essential due to inductive inference.

They are all critical to the occurrance of the person's death. For example, if there was no time and space, then there would be no person to begin with and therefore no possibility of his death. So there is no question that time and space play an essential role in the death. The same goes for all the factors I listed.

There is no reason to exclude these causal factors from the equation, other than arbitrarily deciding to adopt a narrower perspective which focuses purely on the immediate. From a broader perspective, the role of time and space is just as critical to a person's death as is a heart attack or organ failure.

DQ: You see, I can easily say that it is possible for a triangle to not have three sides, but it won't be a meaningful statement in my own mind unless I completely ignore what a triangle is and just focus purely, abstractly, on its status as a "form". After all, there is no inherent reason why a "form" cannot have something other than three sides. In effect, I would have to mentally make the triangle, as a unique entity, possessing its own unique traits, disappear - only then can I reach the conclusion. But the moment I recognize and accept what a triangle is, it becomes impossible for me to affirm the idea of it not having three sides.

EI: That's a rather elaborate straw man. You've invented and refuted a totally nonsensical view that nobody holds. Good job.

Well, you have to say that in order to keep your narrow perspective on the matter unchallenged. But in reality, the two cases are identical. It is in the very identity of an existing thing that it has causes and consequences, just as it is in the very identity of a triangle that it has three sides. Thus, in order to promote the view that non-causality is possible you have to mentally block out the identity of what it means to be an existing object. That is, you have to emasculate its existence.

DQ: I personally can't imagine it, in the same way that I can't imagine a triangle not having three sides. I can't mentally divorce causes and consequences from an existing thing, not without emasculating the thing's existence and turning it into a non-entity.

EI: There is nothing to imagine about a triangle without three sides. It's just a nonsense contradictory description. It's easy to imagine a billiard ball moving about a table without being struck.

Sure. But it is impossible to imagine, for me at least, that the ball can move without any exerting force at all, either internally or externally. For that would be a case of saying "it just happens", which is meaningless and ignores the reality of what it means for something to exist.

It's more difficult to imagine a person dying without cause, but that's because we happen to know all sorts of things that biologists have inductively inferred about such things. Nevertheless, it isn't incredibly hard to do. Just visualize some dude walking down the street and dropping dead. Don't imagine whatever hidden causes you think might be present, and you've successfully imagined an acausal death.

Again, we could only imagine such an occurrence by subconsciously blocking out the sheer reality of the man's existence, in all his substantial glory, and turning him into a abstract, featureless non-entity. That is what you are doing in the instance of imagining a man "just dropping dead". In that instance, you are mentally switching from the reality of the man's existence as a physical, unique reality and replacing him with a featureless non-entity, before switching back again. It is the only way that the logic of it can work.

You have probably done it so many times now that you don't even realize you are doing it. It has become an invisible blip in your reasoning process.

-

[Faust]

A tautology is never false, but a theory which makes them seem substantial is always false. An example of such a theory would be

Many don't have a deep enough understanding of logic to see that everything is one. They would say, in their delusional state, that there is a great multiplicity of things. Yet, I ask you, what is there other than everything? For a clear mind there is no doubt that everything is one, as there is nothing beyond it.

There are no conditions under which we can imagine a tautology not being true. So saying that there is nothing more than everything is a tautology. The opposite of that statement would be a contradiction: there is something more than everything. The theory above is appealing to the obvious truth of such a tautology to make the stronger claim that there isn't a multiplicity of things. It is effectively using "everything is one" to mean two entirely different things: there isn't something other than everything, and there is only one thing. I never argued for the second claim in my above theory, but simply used deceptive language to make it seem entailed by the tautology I pointed to. I was effectively saying that if there is nothing other than everything, then there isn't more than one thing. That is false, and thus the theory is false.

I hope that's clear. Regardless, the moral of the story is that one should be weary that multiple claims can often seem like a single one. We can differentiate such claims via their truth conditions. For instance, "the duck swam" makes two claims. That there is one and only one "the duck", and that that duck swam. The second claim can only be true if the first is, but its truth isn't entailed by that of the first. That duck could easily exist, but not have swam. I know I'm off on a tangent, but treating every proposition in kind is at the heart of the analytic method, and understanding Tractatus era Wittgenstein at all requires a bit of knowledge of it. So, a tautology is a proposition that has no conditions under which it could be false. A proposition being the content of a sentence which can be said to be either true or false depending if its truth conditions are met.

I don't think there was anything significant in this description. All it says is, "be careful when analyzing and denoting." Not only that but it's terribly obscure and screwy. It's like saying something like, "some things ARE absolute, but sometimes the content of this absolute can be false if it's not true." This rubbishness is a waste of time, WTF is it saying!!

So that's why I'm an idiot. And all this time I thought it was just because I don't know stuff good.

what?

So a word can have a really real meaning that the vast majority of people who use it aren't aware of? That strikes me as kinda queer

yes the definition of words can easily become warped if too many people first use it for something else and thus it becomes a paradigm. What's so queer about this?

Oh no, not submissive cunning! That's like what the bad fox used in those old Native American stories.

yes, submissive cunning, that's what I said, and it's cowardly and weak, Weininger goes through it pretty well. I always reveal submissive cunning for what it ultimately is, submission, and it always annoys the girls :)

[ExpectantlyIronic]

David Quinn,

They are all critical to the occurrance of the person's death. For example, if there was no time and space, then there would be no person to begin with and therefore no possibility of his death. So there is no question that time and space play an essential role in the death. The same goes for all the factors I listed.

A breathable atmosphere is hardly required for death (and did appear on your list). It's pretty hostile to death. Using that same line of thought, we could say that time and space could very well hamper death as well. It kinda depends upon how you want to define "death", but I think we could consider a fella essentially dead if time and space were to take a permanent holiday. On a more serious note, it isn't at all logically necessary that a breathable atmosphere is required for life. Thus it is hardly a requirement for death. That's not to say that I don't think we need oxygen to breathe, or anything so silly, but rather that we inductively infer the relationship amongst such things.

There is no reason to exclude these causal factors from the equation, other than arbitrarily deciding to adopt a narrower perspective which focuses purely on the immediate. From a broader perspective, the role of time and space is just as critical to a person's death as is a heart attack or organ failure.

I imagine they don't let you preform autopsies then. Cause of death: time and space. That aside, I still don't see why I should think of time and space as a cause of death. Such things are just part of what it is. I don't say that redness causes tomatoes or that wheels cause cars.

It is in the very identity of an existing thing that it has causes and consequences, just as it is in the very identity of a triangle that it has three sides. Thus, in order to promote the view that non-causality is possible you have to mentally block out the identity of what it means to be an existing object. That is, you have to emasculate its existence.

Are you simply asserting that something needs to have causes and consequences to exist? Such a thing doesn't strike me as clear at all.

Sure. But it is impossible to imagine, for me at least, that the ball can move without any exerting force at all, either internally or externally. For that would be a case of saying "it just happens", which is meaningless and ignores the reality of what it means for something to exist.

You can't imagine it, or you 'can't imagine it'? It's become a rather frequently used expression to say that one can't imagine something, but when I speak of not being able to imagine something, I'm speaking quite literally. I'm guessing that you can imagine it, as I shouldn't think that you lack basic mental capabilities, and thus are simply using the weak form the expression. Otherwise, I don't know what to tell you.

Again, we could only imagine such an occurrence by subconsciously blocking out the sheer reality of the man's existence, in all his substantial glory, and turning him into a abstract, featureless non-entity.

It seems to me as if you're saying that we have to ignore all that we've inductively inferred to "imagine" it. Which is exactly what I'm saying.

In that instance, you are mentally switching from the reality of the man's existence as a physical, unique reality and replacing him with a featureless non-entity, before switching back again. It is the only way that the logic of it can work.

So you're suggesting that I should focus on that which I've inductively inferred from observation, as opposed to thinking in terms of what's logically essential. I'm prone to agree, as that's what I've been saying all along.

[Leyla Shen]

I just love it when this happens. I see exactly what you are saying to David, ExI.

Good job. Perfect, in fact, by my reckoning.

[Trevor Salyzyn]

Are you simply asserting that something needs to have causes and consequences to exist? Such a thing doesn't strike me as clear at all.

If causality is a true transcendent feature of reality, then if something exists, it has causes and consequences.

From this, it follows that if something does not have causes and consequences, then it cannot exist.

So, if causality is metaphysical -- with it implied that for something to be metaphysical, it also has to be absolutely true -- then what you have said is tautological. If it's not clear, it's a failure of definitions.

What David is saying, then, is that:

1) All things are causal. (Transcendent feature of reality)
2) To be causal, a thing is dependent on another thing for existence.

POSSIBLE STEPS (since there are many ways to go from here):
3) All things are dependent on the Totality for existence.
4) The Totality is dependent on each individual thing for existence. (otherwise it would be less than the totality)

THEREFORE,
5) All things are dependent on each individual thing for existence.

David's list could have contained anything, so long as each thing in that list exists.

No wonder my teachers hated me. I think I'm going to sit on my hands now.