I can't see how scathing verbals generate the ultimate goal of being of service. All that happens is Laird joins the affray and returns sometime later and authentically apologises
It's not scathing verbals to call a spade a spade.
Laird's whole long-winded essay rests on two basic illogicalities.
A: his absolute claim that no absolute statement can be justified. He goes on to make defamatory ones as well. For instance, (1) that David's absolute statements make him a self-deceived charlatan, and (2) that anyone accepting such of David's statements must be brain-washed cultists.
B: his further absolute claim that any validation or proof of truths must be made by a third party, being an authority. That is the logical fallacy of argumentum ad verecundiam on the surface; and that fallacy itself is internally contradictory, because an individual and not a third party has stated it as true by definition.
The fact Laird believes in evil spirits and demons because he trusts the absolute statements of the Xian Bible, shows he is the only brain-washed cultist around. So Laird's whole argument is riddled with hypocrisy and illogic. It is not kind to Laird to lie to him.
"It's my fate to steal," pleaded the man who had been caught red-handed by Diogenes.
"Then it is also your fate to be beaten," said Diogenes, hitting him across the head with his staff.
Dennis, you're still contradicting yourself. You think Laird as a bunch of causes is no different to me as a bunch of causes, or Diebert, etc. Yet if you really believed that all causes are identical, you wouldn't have been trying to correct me or Diebert. You clearly see that correcting others has a different function and result, than not interfering. That's why you interfere and try to correct others --- so telling them it makes no difference whether they interfere, is totally self-contradicting.
No other possibility for you Dennis as long as you keep clinging to that particular form of passive criticism and commentary, exposed not for the first time as disharmonious self-contradicting writings. Where's the harmony in the results you reap? You even have invoked hostile threats in some people, easy to blame them I suppose for their feelings, and ridicule, even complete rejection of a bad example of "house" philosophy in others. Have you ever examined the fruits of your work? Are they standing in "harmonious" relation toward truth, meaning: toward the universe? It doesn't appear to be so.
It's a possibility to enrol in.
It's not absolute truth.
It's for phenomenal existence.
It's a context to come from, existential thinking.
The noble 8fold is a similar in order to for the sake of.
The noble 8fold starts out as a practice formula that as a means to an end 'gets' a breakthru'.
Do you understand it?
Thinking categorically subtly generates the idea of fixed conditions and inherent existence,
not that.
That's still self-contradictory, Dennis. You believe you're offering an alternative to "thinking categorically", yet your "same shit" declaration is itself a category. You criticise others as openly and categorically as I do. The difference between us is, you pretend you aren't, where I am open about it.
Categories, criticism, and thinking don't create the delusion of inherent existence, for without them there is no chance of dismantling false concepts. It's because of this marvellous potential and power in these intellectual tools that people typically find open and unapologetic use of categories, criticism, and thinking, disharmonious and hostile. It forces them to look at the crazy mess of confusion in their minds, and all the problems they believe are completely unsolvable. This is why it's so important to set a good example: to show that thinking clearly and logically, actually works.
Coddling people with vague, mysterious, poetic, otherworldly babble under the pretence this is "Zen" or "enlightened speech" does people a massive disservice, by encouraging them to run away from the only solutions available to cut straight to the heart of the eternal mistake. Keep it simple and straightforward, and speak the truth. If people can't handle it, then they're not of sufficient potential to survive the philosophic metamorphosis at all.
Hi again, I just wanted to step back into this thread briefly to comment on the problem of misrepresentation, a common problem on this forum, and even in this thread, as I've pointed out a couple of times already re Russell's and David's "creative interpretations" of my meaning/attitude. Not to be left behind, Kelly has stepped up to the plate, offering helpful distortions by the bucket-load. Apparently, I have "announced piteously" that this is my "last effort" (But where is this announcement? I have not made one, least of all "piteously", and I even left room open in my concluding post for a response such as this), I am "depressed" that my "weaponry" has been revealed to be "flawed" (in fact, I am pleased with my efforts in this thread, and feel that my points stick even if nobody will admit it), I want the "lightness" offered by GF and its not-too-grossly-argumentative posters (in fact, rather than "light", I find GF to be rigid and doctrinaire, and its posters are amongst the most pointlessly argumentative I have come across, some even appearing to consistently contradict others just for the sake of it), etc etc.
It's really no mystery why I choose not to respond to Kelly: rational and meaningful conversation is impossible with someone who refuses to deal in what one actually writes, and instead contorts it into a shape that suits her own purposes. And really, there is very, very little of what Kelly has offered in this thread that is even close to accurate, and, in fact, some of it seems very much like a projection: having it pointed out to oneself that one is emotional and irrational, and having it explained very clearly how; resentment at this. This is in fact what has happened in this thread by proxy - through her heroes - to Kelly, and not to myself; Kelly clearly resents having it pointed out to her that she has bought wholesale into a rigid system of thinking, and that she zealously promotes this system, and my guess is that she resents that I refuse to respond to her, and, obviously, given her allegiance to the house philosophy, Kelly resents my challenge to its "absolute truth" and its heroes. There is even an element of spitefulness in Kelly's posts under their would-be "unemotional" surface.
Why she and others on this forum take it upon themselves to misrepresent challengers seems obvious to me: because to refute honestly on its own merits what has been written is impossible, and thus the only way to "defeat the challenger" is to pretend he said something other than what he actually said. And, of course, the challenger must be defeated, because the house philosophers are in possession of absolute truth, which necessarily *does* withstand all challenges.
There are several "scripted exchanges" in operation at GF, and, naturally, according to those scripts, the house philosophers always win - and so, frequently, a dialogue is shoe-horned into the closest available scripted exchange, even when to do so requires misrepresenting the other party in the dialogue. An example of this is Kelly's assertion that I have made an "absolute claim that no absolute statement can be justified": whereas in fact I have made no such claim, it is helpful to Kelly to pretend that I have, because then she can recur to something like the tight little scripted exchange that runs:
Challenger: Absolute truth does not exist.
House philosopher: You contradict yourself, because that claim itself, if true, is an absolute truth.
So, for the above reasons, I still see no point in engaging with Kelly: it is pointless to respond to misrepresentations and strawman arguments other than to point out that that's what they are, but I did just want to step back into this thread to clear that up, because it does become irritating to be misrepresented and to see others accept those misrepresentations as accurate, as several in this thread seem to have done.
Dennis, thanks for pointing out to me that some of my approach in this thread has been overly unkind in tone - I tend to get a little carried away sometimes, and need to step back a little, to remember that we're all human and all in this together, and that the point of my posts should be to shed helpful light rather than merely to castigate.
guest_of_logic wrote:Challenger: Absolute truth does not exist.
House philosopher: You contradict yourself, because that claim itself, if true, is an absolute truth.
Not too long ago I got into a short playful round of this exchange with my father in which he refused to see the contradiction in such a claim, no matter how may variations of "How sure of that are you?" I threw at him. It was amusing.
It's not hard to tell that the weight of responsibility that comes with admittedly knowing an absolute truth stifles most from admitting their own certainty.
guest_of_logic wrote:...in fact, rather than "light", I find GF to be rigid and doctrinaire, and its posters are amongst the most pointlessly argumentative I have come across, some even appearing to consistently contradict others just for the sake of it
And you are deeply attracted to this place filled with rigidness and doctrine so you can challenge it intellectually just for the sake of it? Know thyself first and foremost!
Laird wrote:I just wanted to step back into this thread briefly to comment on the problem of misrepresentation, a common problem on this forum,....An example of this is Kelly's assertion that I have made an "absolute claim that no absolute statement can be justified": whereas in fact I have made no such claim,
Briefly? It took you several paragraphs to come up with your single piece of evidence. Without needlessly harping on the irony of "misrepresentation" here, Laird, you did made that claim. Check it out:
Russell, I think it's fine to say, "This is the best of my current understanding", which is pretty much what I do in this analysis, but to go from there to, "I am without doubt, and it is absolutely true that I am, [correct/enlightened/whatever]", is a leap that none of us are justified in making.
None of us are justified, you say. None. Absolutely none. Not one single person escapes your claim. Not one doubt emerges in the slightest trace about its veracity. You haven't added any qualifiers, contingencies, provisional scenarios, etc. It's utterly absolutist.
In effect, you're saying, "It's never justifiable for anyone to say 'I am without doubt, and it is absolutely true that I am correct' about anything, and I am without doubt about this, and it is absolutely true that I am correct about this statement."
So there's your absolute claim, that no absolute statement can be justified. And it's illogical, because it contradicts itself.
Regards your other illogical argument, although you haven't asked me to provide the evidence to show how you support the logical fallacy of argumentum ad verecundiam in a nutshell, check out the very same paragraph, where you wrote:
The human mind is too prone to all sorts of self-deceptions for us to ever be able to make such a claim on our own at least. I think the Buddhist tradition of masters validating their students is a reasonable one,
So, there, you made another absolute claim. And that one was also internally contradictory, since it wasn't validated by anyone but the person making it. You haven't referred to some masterly authority other than yourself in making these statements. You claim them to be absolutely true on your own authority.
Let's not belabour this. It's obvious to anyone with a twinkling of reason in their nut.
Laird wrote:Challenger: Absolute truth does not exist.
House philosopher: You contradict yourself, because that claim itself, if true, is an absolute truth.
Kelly wrote:You haven't added any qualifiers, contingencies, provisional scenarios, etc. It's utterly absolutist.
It's not even only in those claims, it goes way further and perhaps needs to be pointed out.
We enter a realm of crude fetishism when we summon before consciousness the basic presuppositions of the metaphysics of language — in plain talk, the presuppositions of reason. Everywhere reason sees a doer and doing; it believes in will as the cause; it believes in the ego, in the ego as being, in the ego as substance, and it projects this faith in the ego-substance upon all things — only thereby does it first create the concept of "thing." Everywhere "being" is projected by thought, pushed underneath, as the cause; the concept of being follows, and is a derivative of, the concept of ego." -- Nietzsche in Twilight of the Idols
Compare that with:
One no longer projects ultimate reality onto any particular appearance and thus one no longer has a personal stake in any one of them being real. -- Quinn in Wisdom of the Infinite
So by projecting "faith in the ego-substance" or "ultimate reality" onto appearances or things, the claim to absoluteness is already being the case, as demonstrated in reasoning just as well in the way we substantiate our experiences. This is not about some semantic issue of making the claim by saying "none" or "all" somewhere. It goes way beyond it: we're all absolutist to begin with, but do we know we are? And since we are, we better do it right.
Diebert van Rhijn wrote:And you are deeply attracted to this place filled with rigidness and doctrine so you can challenge it intellectually just for the sake of it? Know thyself first and foremost!
Deebs, good to hear from you again. Re knowing myself, wasn't it me who provided you with the above analysis in the first place? But there was a little more to it than that, it's not merely for the sake of it: as I mentioned to you privately, I have been interested in deeper truths since I was young, and am particularly interested in challenging those who claim to offer them but whose offering is in fact, in my opinion, lacking. Sure, though, there's a sense in which my posts here are solely for intellectual stimulation, much like some people keep physically fit/stimulated by running or cycling or swimming - I'm sure, though, that that could be said of everyone who posts here.
Kelly, I'm going to make an exception and respond to you directly, because I think it might clear up some confusion, at least in your own mind. If not, then I'll probably go back to ignoring you. So, here's the thing: in your most recent post to me, you continued your misrepresentations through equivocation. I'll try to explain. About this time last year, in another thread, I posted an analysis of the meanings of "absolute" used on this board, and how people sometimes talk past one another by using different meanings. I'd suggest that, in this exchange, you start off critiquing me based on the meaning I numbered "1", 'universal [as of truth]: true in all possible worlds', since you quite fairly point out the universality of my statement ("Not one single person escapes your claim"), but then you go on to conflate this with the meaning I numbered 4: 'utterly unamenable to the possibility of being wrong; uncontestable and unmodifiable', since you suggest that I am claiming that "it is absolutely true that I am correct about this statement", which is not fair, because I have not made that claim, and would not make that claim. Whilst my statements can be seen as "absolute" in the sense of being universal statements, they are not absolute in the sense of being uncontestable: in that sense they are made in the same spirit which I suggested in that very same quote was "fine" - that they are simply the best of my current understanding. Clearly, the sense in which I critique absolutism is the sense of #4 (incontestability), so it is hardly fair for you to criticise me for being "absolutist" in the sense of #1 (universality), and to then conflate this with a claim to incontestability that I never made.
Diebert van Rhijn wrote:And you are deeply attracted to this place filled with rigidness and doctrine so you can challenge it intellectually just for the sake of it? Know thyself first and foremost!
[...] wasn't it me who provided you with the above analysis in the first place? But there was a little more to it than that, it's not merely for the sake of it: as I mentioned to you privately, I have been interested in deeper truths since I was young, and am particularly interested in challenging those who claim to offer them but whose offering is in fact, in my opinion, lacking. Sure, though, there's a sense in which my posts here are solely for intellectual stimulation, much like some people keep physically fit/stimulated by running or cycling or swimming - I'm sure, though, that that could be said of everyone who posts here.
Yes, it could be said of everyone therefore it was interesting to highlight you stressing that members here "are amongst the most pointlessly argumentative I have come across" and that they are "appearing to consistently contradict others just for the sake of it". Why even let notions like "pointless", "argumentative" and "sake" enter the observation? Again, you say yourself intellectual stimulation might be a proper reason for yourself and everyone. The same with interest in deeper truths I suppose. So again, why is it pointless and argumentative when others are into it?
Anyway, my last post on ultimates and substances was way more interesting.
Diebert van Rhijn wrote:Yes, it could be said of everyone therefore it was interesting to highlight you stressing that members here "are amongst the most pointlessly argumentative I have come across" and that they are "appearing to consistently contradict others just for the sake of it". Why even let notions like "pointless", "argumentative" and "sake" enter the observation? Again, you say yourself intellectual stimulation might be a proper reason for yourself and everyone. The same with interest in deeper truths I suppose. So again, why is it pointless and argumentative when others are into it?
I'd refer back to my earlier conversation with Leyla in this thread in which I agreed with her that passion for meaningless things could be considered "neurotic" (probably not the word I'd have chosen, but it's workable). Contradicting someone for the sake of it, just to make out that they're wrong so as to feel right yourself, as opposed to contradicting them because you have a genuine point to make, seems to me to fit the bill. Behaviour like that might be one reason why exchanges from this forum have on at least one occasion been featured on a humour website for their kookiness value: a whole bunch of people having pointless arguments about pointless notions and minutiae is kind of amusing to the average person, you have to admit.
Diebert van Rhijn wrote:Anyway, my last post on ultimates and substances was way more interesting.
I didn't respond to it because it went over my head. Your conclusion seemed like a non sequitur. I have no idea how you got from "faith in the ego-substance" to "claim to absoluteness". Perhaps you can elaborate for this confused duck.
guest_of_logic wrote:I didn't respond to it because it went over my head. Your conclusion seemed like a non sequitur. I have no idea how you got from "faith in the ego-substance" to "claim to absoluteness". Perhaps you can elaborate for this confused duck.
Perhaps it's better to summarize it instead of more elaborations. What I wrote there was about ultimates and absolutes being already the case in people's comprehension, manifesting as things, ego, self and world, usually. The point of "absolute truth" in the philosophies discussed at this forum is to limit oneself to only one absolute. Therefore you need to know first yourself and your own "ultimate realities" (a.k.a. self) or like Nietzsche named it "ego-substance". And any critique highlighting "absolutism" at this forum of all places would become therefore major irony.
I hope you're well. I've just come back from an amazing light show on the Brisbane river, which I shared with my wonderful aunt and beautiful sister. Good times. And now, I will do my best to offer a "light show" for your post. :-)
I'd be interested to know in which sense you intend "absolute" in your suggestion of what people believe of "things, ego, self and world". Out of the four I suggested in my post from last year (linked to above), the only one that seems to fit is #4, the sense of being uncontestable; of being 100% certain. Is that the sense you intend, or is there some other sense that I've missed? If that is it, then I'm curious how you reconcile incontestability and 100% certainty with the sort of words used in Nietzsche's quote: "believes"; "projects"; "faith". None of these seem to me to connote "absolute" certainty. Even David's quote references a "personal stake" - hardly a reference to absolute certainty either. What do you say?
Laird wrote:Challenger: Absolute truth does not exist.
House philosopher: You contradict yourself, because that claim itself, if true, is an absolute truth.
Kelly wrote:You haven't added any qualifiers, contingencies, provisional scenarios, etc. It's utterly absolutist.
It's not even only in those claims, it goes way further and perhaps needs to be pointed out.
We enter a realm of crude fetishism when we summon before consciousness the basic presuppositions of the metaphysics of language — in plain talk, the presuppositions of reason. Everywhere reason sees a doer and doing; it believes in will as the cause; it believes in the ego, in the ego as being, in the ego as substance, and it projects this faith in the ego-substance upon all things — only thereby does it first create the concept of "thing." Everywhere "being" is projected by thought, pushed underneath, as the cause; the concept of being follows, and is a derivative of, the concept of ego." -- Nietzsche in Twilight of the Idols
Compare that with:
One no longer projects ultimate reality onto any particular appearance and thus one no longer has a personal stake in any one of them being real. -- Quinn in Wisdom of the Infinite
So by projecting "faith in the ego-substance" or "ultimate reality" onto appearances or things, the claim to absoluteness is already being the case, as demonstrated in reasoning just as well in the way we substantiate our experiences. This is not about some semantic issue of making the claim by saying "none" or "all" somewhere. It goes way beyond it: we're all absolutist to begin with, but do we know we are? And since we are, we better do it right.
Laird wrote:Whilst my statements can be seen as "absolute" in the sense of being universal statements, they are not absolute in the sense of being uncontestable: in that sense they are made in the same spirit which I suggested in that very same quote was "fine" - that they are simply the best of my current understanding.
That is internally contradictory, Laird. It is saying,
"No one is justified in saying they are without doubt and speaking the absolute truth, but this is qualified by the fact I could be wrong. So what I should have written is 'Some persons might be justified in saying they are without doubt. Some persons can be speaking the absolute truth.' For, I cannot justifiably say no one. And, I know this is absolutely true, because my prior statement was a flat-out contradiction, and internally contradictory statements are falsehoods, based on the law of identity which defines truth."
And it's also lying to yourself, because you obviously believe your absolutisms. You don't have to offer absolute statements with your kind of emotional investment (that's the essence of self-deception). It's possible to offer them as rational statements. But you do invest in a deeply emotional way. Otherwise you wouldn't call people intellectually dishonest and "so blind as to not be worth talking to", when they don't see things your way.
