Just one letter can change your whole world view (caution - possible religious thread) (Page 2)

Touche!

Just stick to LSD runs and everything will be ok. Trust me.  

Hmm... that's really interesting...  

(this is where if we were playing chess, I would use a lot of the time on my clock ) 

Well that has real world ramifications.  

What if the others denied your existence? 

Don't forget the part where you curse philosophical Lutherans under your breath.

And, fyi, the longer you take to respond the more nervous I get because I'm making this up as I go along.

Maybe the chess analogy was the wrong one.  I'm really not trying to win an argument, just start some discussion.

Your point about free will and where it fits into all of this is a really good one. 

Right. For some reason, that reminds me of what Chippy said yesterday,  "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen."

Who cares? The point is that I exist and my existence does not need validation by anyone's awareness of it. I think BOTH Decartes and Boogieman (I forgot his name) got the cart before the horse. I exist therefore others are aware of me. And because I exist as a fully-functioning human being, I am aware of my own existence. Seems pretty straightforward to me.

BTW, I think RLUSI and I are on just about the same page.

Say again why you believe that you would still exist if you never had another thought? 

Kim, at the root of this is Descartes "I think, therefore I am."  This is philosophy mumbo jumbo, but his statement is an attempt to prove something.  Philosophy boils down to trying to prove things.  You see a pen on your desk?  Prove it is there.  Prove it is a pen.  Prove it is on a desk.  Prove you can see (define seeing in the process).  All of those attempts to prove something can be boiled down to the question you pose which is do you think first or do you exist first.  If you say "I exist...." and I say prove it the response is usually that your self awareness (I think) proves you exist.  If you say "I think..." first then I say prove it the response is usually just that "I think."  Therefore, Descartes claims, the "I think comes before the "I exist". 

Is this making sense?  I'm not saying it is right and you're wrong, I'm just trying to explain the traditional philosophy point of view.

Care to explain? 

Rene Descartes said:

"Cogito, ergo sum": I think, therefore I am.

I am nothing without my consciousness, my senses, my feelings, my thoughts. I perceive the world and try to find my place in it.

The philosopher Baader says that the counter claim to this is:

"Cogitor, ergo sum": I am thought, therefore I am.

Without the people in my life who think of/care for me, my life would be emotionally meager. The people in my life, the people who have graced my life in the past, are what enrich my life. My place in the world would mean nothing if I had not allowed these people to touch me, nor I to touch them.

Which do you subscribe to?

I subscribe to both. Both apply.

Why?

How'd ya get there?

Reflection, meditation, listening to my heart.

What place does that extra '"r" have in your life?

That 'r' is why I'm moving to NC - to be closer to the people in my life who matter to me, who make my life sweet and enriched.

If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, did it make a sound?

If you go through life and no one sees you, where you ever here?

Well, it sounds to me like a lot of people have wasted a lot of time! I however, am quite happy that I didn't take philosophy in college. How dull sitting around proving the obvious.

To answer Don's question, I see things on a much more physical basis. Thought does not equal matter. Physically, I am matter and if I never had another thought, I would still be matter. As a fully functioning human being, there are biochemical processes which allow me to sense, move, eat, reproduce, and think. Thanks to many many generations of my species which proceeded me, I live in a society, have language, art, knowledge, technology and the ability to sit around proving that there's a pink highlighter sitting on my desk.

Now I think I'll go do something I'm actually good at... since philosophizing apparently ain't my thing.

Scout - I'm not an expert on Baader but I do not believe he applies the philosophy of existence to God the same way he is applying it to man. 

Apply Descartes inability to 'prove' anything other than 'I think' to Schroedinger's Cat and THEN you end up in an endless circle.  To really dig in to this conversation we would have to run through long-winded definitions of 'knowledge' and 'truth' and 'proof' as used by philosophers, which as most philosophers will tell you is time better spent over a cold one at the corner tavern.

You are good at it.  Don't go!!!  

It's an interesting twist.  (maybe another day we can talk about the relationship between transubstantiation and string theory, make it a catholic thing )

OK, so in the case of the cat, how do you open the box.  Is death the opening of the box? 

Kim - actually I very much agree with you on the wasting time thing.  And the statments you just made reflect how most people (myself included) feel.  Philosophical arguments are an important part of our history and they do serve an important purpose in their own way, but they often have little to do with our actual day to day lives.  I do not know the reference off hand, but I believe that even Descartes admitted that if people were to accept his theory that the only thing we can prove is that "we think, therefore....." as a life philosophy there would be little point in living it.  The fact is that we all must go on about our lives as we percieve them.  The lesson is be skeptical, and to ask questions of those who accept what is presented to them without hesitation, for what we think we know is not always correct.

Scout - re:  the cat I meant that if you posed that question to Descartes and he applied his high standards of proof he would say " how do I know there's a cat in the box?"  We'd get nowhere.

How about this.  Combine the cat example and Descartes as they can be applied to the question of God's existence.  If you say that we can neither prove nor disprove his existence that is similar to the fact that we cannot prove whether the cat is alive or not without opening the box.  Does that mean that, like the cat, we are supposed to think that God is both existant and non-existant until it is proven otherwise?

Lord, I need a drink, my head hurts.

Well it seems to me that the alternative to this are discussions like the Da Vinci Code thread, in which we throw facts and figures at each other in the hope of trying to convince the other.

I was hoping that this could be a thread where the argument was about getting to the heart of the matter, with everyone adding to the pot, rather than an argument against each other with everyone trying to protect turf.

Myself, I'm not sure how else to do it, except with art.

Sure, you can't go around all day just thinking about philosophical stuff or you'd go crazy [he says while trying to control the twitches] Mostly, you've got to chop the wood and carry the water.

I was just trying to find a way to talk about the notion of God (which seems to be a COJ mainstay and very popular topic) without it degenerating into a fight.

Oh yea, one other thing.

It's often a criticism of religious people that they are incapable of reason. It's argued that this is self evident, because if they could use reason, their reason would show them that it is in fact unreasonable to be religious.

So here you go. A thread about an exercise in reason. With no goal in mind. Just training. For folks not religious, or otherwise.

Don - I wasn't taking a shot at your thread, I was trying to reassure Kim that her position is as valid as any other in this discussion and if I made her feel otherwise I didn't mean to. 

I'm glad you started this thread as I haven't talked about this stuff in quite a while with anyone.

 (now I think I know why)  ba dum dum.

no worries... what you said just reminded me of the statement I should have started this thread with...