Christianity

[uwot]

Uwot, you are one of the majority who prefers pleasure to truth through denial.

Well Nick_A, I had to work very hard and make real sacrifices for the understanding I reached and the qualifications I earned.

I have the highest regard for the small minority with the need for truth to reveal meaning and willing to sacrifice pleasure to experience it. I would like to be more like them.

Good for for you Nick_A. The way to be more like them is to stop whining, get off your arse and do some proper fucking research.

[Nick_A]

Uwot, you are one of the majority who prefers pleasure to truth through denial.

Well Nick_A, I had to work very hard and make real sacrifices for the understanding I reached and the qualifications I earned.

You have qualifications but what have you understood? Do you even know the difference between knowledge and understanding? Do those who offer qualifications understand anything either?

I have the highest regard for the small minority with the need for truth to reveal meaning and willing to sacrifice pleasure to experience it. I would like to be more like them.

Good for for you Nick_A. The way to be more like them is to stop whining, get off your arse and do some proper fucking research.

You are the one whining. I am the one questioning. Do you know that this site has never had an exploration of the depths of meaning within Plato's Cave analogy. It means that people are more content with denial, whining, and complaining rather than exploring what is considered the essence of philosophy. The normal result of qualifications

[FlashDangerpants]

Do you know that this site has never had an exploration of the depths of meaning within Plato's Cave analogy. It means that people are more content with denial, whining, and complaining rather than exploring what is considered the essence of philosophy. The normal result of qualifications

Well Phil8989897899 is right there talking about nothing but Bibles and Plato. So why don't you fill your sacred little boots while he's still in town for you?

[Nick_A]

I have the highest regard for the small minority with the need for truth to reveal meaning and willing to sacrifice pleasure to experience it. I would like to be more like them.

A main problem with all these shifting "meaning & truth" chimeras is that once denoted it becomes rigid especially so when accepted by whole societies. Anything which attempts to dissolve it, at whatever time or period, due to the advancement of knowledge is met with the utmost resistance and violence. The point being, meaning remains relative to the age however long or short that may be. One of the worst things that can happen is to root and grow meanings which require another age to disengage from before the next one pops up.

The collective search for meaning turns in circles and often produces its opposite. There are no straight lines in nature. But who understands the laws which determine this functioning living machine we call nature? Such people are willing to sacrifice pleasure to experientally understand why they are in the prison of Plato's cave and seek to escape.

[Nick_A]

Do you know that this site has never had an exploration of the depths of meaning within Plato's Cave analogy. It means that people are more content with denial, whining, and complaining rather than exploring what is considered the essence of philosophy. The normal result of qualifications

Well Phil8989897899 is right there talking about nothing but Bibles and Plato. So why don't you fill your sacred little boots while he's still in town for you?

Commenting on Bibles and Plato has nothing to do with the psychology of Plato's cave. Modern theories will claim it to be Trumps fault.

[FlashDangerpants]

Do you know that this site has never had an exploration of the depths of meaning within Plato's Cave analogy. It means that people are more content with denial, whining, and complaining rather than exploring what is considered the essence of philosophy. The normal result of qualifications

Well Phil8989897899 is right there talking about nothing but Bibles and Plato. So why don't you fill your sacred little boots while he's still in town for you?

Commenting on Bibles and Plato has nothing to do with the psychology of Plato's cave. Modern theories will claim it to be Trumps fault.

Well he has this whole other interpretation. You should absolutely duke it out with him to find out which of you is the Plato master.

[Alexis Jacobi]

A main problem with all these shifting "meaning & truth" chimeras is that once denoted it becomes rigid especially so when accepted by whole societies. Anything which attempts to dissolve it, at whatever time or period, due to the advancement of knowledge is met with the utmost resistance and violence. The point being, meaning remains relative to the age however long or short that may be. One of the worst things that can happen is to root and grow meanings which require another age to disengage from before the next one pops up.

My solution? Throw about a thousand galaxies at them.

[Dubious]

I have the highest regard for the small minority with the need for truth to reveal meaning and willing to sacrifice pleasure to experience it. I would like to be more like them.

A main problem with all these shifting "meaning & truth" chimeras is that once denoted it becomes rigid especially so when accepted by whole societies. Anything which attempts to dissolve it, at whatever time or period, due to the advancement of knowledge is met with the utmost resistance and violence. The point being, meaning remains relative to the age however long or short that may be. One of the worst things that can happen is to root and grow meanings which require another age to disengage from before the next one pops up.

The collective search for meaning turns in circles and often produces its opposite. There are no straight lines in nature. But who understands the laws which determine this functioning living machine we call nature? Such people are willing to sacrifice pleasure to experientally understand why they are in the prison of Plato's cave and seek to escape.

All I can say is to understand nature to the utmost of our ability - if we're still around - science becomes much more potent than Plato's Cave or other strictly Christian or religious analogies. There is nothing in all our temples of symbolic mysticism that can even approach The Doors of Perception required to understand the literally profound abstractions which forces every other creation into being, including us who keep imagining our thoughts will lead to some objective truth eventually. It could very well do so but with very little hope of ever finalizing it remaining always as a functioning and refining cosmic Glass Bead Game and the word Cosmos be further abstracted as container of multiple universes.

The potency of symbols we create are limited by our own mental horizons. What should keep us from looking beyond?

[Alexis Jacobi]

There is nothing in all our temples of symbolic mysticism that can even approach The Doors of Perception required to understand the literally profound abstractions which forces every other creation into being, including us who keep imagining our thoughts will lead to some objective truth eventually. It could very well do so but with very little hope of ever finalizing it remaining always as a functioning and refining cosmic Glass Bead Game and the word Cosmos be further abstracted as container of multiple universes.

All well and good but can that dog hunt?

[Nick_A]

Well Phil8989897899 is right there talking about nothing but Bibles and Plato. So why don't you fill your sacred little boots while he's still in town for you?

Commenting on Bibles and Plato has nothing to do with the psychology of Plato's cave. Modern theories will claim it to be Trumps fault.

Well he has this whole other interpretation. You should absolutely duke it out with him to find out which of you is the Plato master.

You want to fight while philosophy is the love of wisdom with the goal of understanding. So enjoy your dualistic debates leading to what Fyodor Dostoevsky describe as "pouring from the empty into the void." You may win.

[uwot]

You have qualifications but what have you understood? Do you even know the difference between knowledge and understanding?

More precisely than you, I expect. Let's start with the easy bit; do you know what knowledge is?

Do those who offer qualifications understand anything either?

Well Nick_A, while it is true that academic achievement is no guarantee of profundity, you can be quite certain that those charged with examining the others behind them, have the chops to do so.

You are the one whining. I am the one questioning. Do you know that this site has never had an exploration of the depths of meaning within Plato's Cave analogy.

Now who's whining? If in the 10 years that you have darkened this forum there hasn't been the exploration you wish for, whose fault is that?

It means that people are more content with denial, whining, and complaining rather than exploring what is considered the essence of philosophy. The normal result of qualifications

Lemme guess: you haven't got any qualifications. The mechanics of Plato's Cave will be understood by most who have studied philosophy, and nearly all who have a Bachelor's degree in the stuff. As I said, no competent philosopher is a naïve realist and if you understood that, you would appreciate that there has been a lot of discussion about what Plato's Cave means.

[Belinda]

Women's nature, like human nature, is what is possible. It's impossible for a woman to breathe water or be a species of reptile. Possibility is the ground of being. I imagine the Creator dwells with possibility, and men do the creating from possibility.

A couple of comments. First is that I agree that man can choose an infinite array of possibilities as well as *identities* (my asterisks are simply for emphasis). One can be influenced to operate with traditional notions, and one can also be influenced to operate with radical notions. And one can even be influenced to go to ultra-radical definitions such as identifying as a 'furry':

The furry fandom is a subculture interested in anthropomorphic animal characters with human personalities and characteristics. Examples of anthropomorphic attributes include exhibiting human intelligence and facial expressions, speaking, walking on two legs, and wearing clothes.

When moorings are severed, or consciously abandoned, just imagine the endless possibilities! So let me cut to the chase: it is possible for people to also 'go crazy' or go hysterical and seek identifications in the wildest of possibilities. But then someone will have to assess: Is this madness? Is this right? And what will result from it?

Who will do that?

For inanimate things possibility and actuality are the same. It was always determined from the beginning of time that inanimate things, that have no notion there will be a future, would do as they did. Intelligent animals look to the future and decide accordingly.

Yes, I surely get your point.

If you "surrender " to motherhood you are behaving like an inanimate thing that does what it must do. Sure pregnancy and motherhood are possibilities. It's a human responsibility to decide whether or not to actualise that possibility or not.

No, here I would not agree with you. I would ask questions to one who has chosen, for whatever reasons, to abandon motherhood. True, my tendency would be to ask questions based on my traditionalist sense of things. I agree with you though: one could choose not to actualize the motherhood role. But again one could do any number of different things as well. Some of them would be understood as 'sane' and others would be questioned.

Who questions? Quo warranto?

The fact that some of the woman's genitals are hollow organs does not imply that she must inevitably be a receptacle. Sometimes there are other receptacles for sperm, penis, or fertilised ovum. Your informant mistakes Christian symbolism for reality.

Well, according to nature and nature's enforced rules I think you are wrong. Young girls are driven, against their own wills, to seek mates, to realize themselves as sexually attractive, and often to give themselves to those desirable boys. It is something that is done and not thought about. Nature is a dominating power. Mother Nature a tyrannical power.

I agree that culture can intervene and can restrain the most basic and insistent drives. That is what culture is. And I agree with you that cultural rules have become flexible and challenged and that no one agrees as to what is 'right'.

BTW instead of "exploring all the different modes of possibility" why not edit it to "exploring possibilities"?

You can say that if you wish! But as I have pointed out I think we have a duty to come to definitions, to base them on sound ideas, and then to enforce them through cultural mores.

My view of possibility differs from yours. You wrote:

When moorings are severed, or consciously abandoned, just imagine the endless possibilities! So let me cut to the chase: it is possible for people to also 'go crazy' or go hysterical and seek identifications in the wildest of possibilities. But then someone will have to assess: Is this madness? Is this right? And what will result from it?

Whereas my belief is that possibilities are finite, and that finity is God's or Nature's finity. The result in this world is we can select from a finite number of possibilities. There are no relative possibilities. True there are a huge number of them and their relationships one with another, but in the end possibilities are finite. We can't number them that is all. I suppose all this means I do sort of believe in God. I mean God as opposed to Chaos.

But again one could do any number of different things as well.

(AJ)

Oh No you can't!


Young girls not only can possibly be sexual psyches but probably are sexual psyches. However these facts are psychological not physiological. Physiologically she is able to enjoy sex and have babies. In the conditions of a free society psychologically she may choose how she wants to behave. Ethically her psyche is important and we should ensure she has choices.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Well Nick_A, while it is true that academic achievement is no guarantee of profundity, you can be quite certain that those charged with examining the others behind them, have the chops to do so.

::: bites tongue in painful restraint :::

[FlashDangerpants]

Commenting on Bibles and Plato has nothing to do with the psychology of Plato's cave. Modern theories will claim it to be Trumps fault.

Well he has this whole other interpretation. You should absolutely duke it out with him to find out which of you is the Plato master.

You want to fight while philosophy is the love of wisdom with the goal of understanding. So enjoy your dualistic debates leading to what Fyodor Dostoevsky describe as "pouring from the empty into the void." You may win.

You wanna talk about Plato and the Bible and the Cave. But you won't talk to the other person who wants to talk about those things. You are both total window lickers, you should have a playdate.

[Belinda]

Well he has this whole other interpretation. You should absolutely duke it out with him to find out which of you is the Plato master.

You want to fight while philosophy is the love of wisdom with the goal of understanding. So enjoy your dualistic debates leading to what Fyodor Dostoevsky describe as "pouring from the empty into the void." You may win.

You wanna talk about Plato and the Bible and the Cave. But you won't talk to the other person who wants to talk about those things. You are both total window lickers, you should have a playdate.

I would talk to you Flash.