Philosophy Now Forum

BigMike wrote: ↑Wed Apr 16, 2025 8:11 am

Dubious wrote: ↑Wed Apr 16, 2025 5:39 am

BigMike wrote: ↑Tue Apr 15, 2025 8:01 am What you call "cold" or "mechanistic" isn't a flaw—it's a feature. Nature is indifferent, and our job is to cut through illusions, not cater to them.

I know it's not a flaw. That nature is indifferent is not even a feature; it's a fact, as much as the impersonal processes of determinism is a fact. What else is new!

BigMike wrote: ↑Tue Apr 15, 2025 8:01 amYou mention Bayesian reasoning like it undermines truth.

As mentioned in my post, which you seem not to have read very well, Bayesian logic does not undermine truth because it doesn't deal in truth. Its sole function is to give a probability status to something being true, never reaching a conclusion that consummates in a final act of truth.

BigMike wrote: ↑Tue Apr 15, 2025 8:01 amIt’s a framework for probabilistic convergence—a method for getting closer to reality despite imperfect knowledge. No serious scientist claims absolute certainty. That’s not a weakness—it’s intellectual integrity.

Yes, I know! What do you think I meant by saying...

Even within Bayesian logic which includes science, truth was never the objective but the probability of something being true, which never yields or amounts to truth per se in any absolute sense whether it be positive or negative.

You write as if I'm denying what I, myself wrote.

BigMike wrote: ↑Tue Apr 15, 2025 8:01 amAnd here’s where your position gets dangerous: when you treat truth as inherently perspectival, you blur the line between opinion and fact. That’s not humble—it’s a gateway to manipulation.

That is far too simplistic. Perspectivism, as Nietzsche described, has long been a major subject in philosophy, in fact, going back to the ancients. Its ramifications and points of inflection go far beyond the simple dichotomies of opinion and fact.

It's the insistence on truth itself which has become the main gateway to manipulation throughout history. Had perspectivist views prevailed throughout history, most of the manipulations denoted as truth would have been severely limited.

Perspectivism, not your simplistic assumption of it, is one of the main breakthroughs in the art of thinking, a very complex subject in itself, not possible to successfully debate on this site without considerable frustration.

BigMike wrote: ↑Tue Apr 15, 2025 8:01 amIf anything can be “true for you,” then everything becomes debatable—even gravity, climate science, or history. That’s how we get vaccine denial, election conspiracies, and pseudoscience: the weaponization of doubt.

That is the usual conventional view and not what Perspectivism is about. To discuss if further would be useless. It's not unlike the silly idea, though meaning to be profound, that if god doesn't exist everything is permissible.

BigMike wrote: ↑Tue Apr 15, 2025 8:01 amOnce you accept a contradiction—a falsehood—as truth, anything can follow. If one lie is protected, it infects every conclusion downstream. That’s not philosophy. That’s collapse.

Yes, like god, religion and much of metaphysics hollowed out as truth. But eventually most contradictions get noticed, even if it takes a millennium or two.

BigMike wrote: ↑Tue Apr 15, 2025 8:01 amSo no—I won’t call truth “perspectival.”

Nor would I! To call it that would be contradictory since "truth" - assumed to be the perfection of the unconditional - while human thought, including its perennial recursive introspections on truth itself, are not.

Dubious, you’re clearly thoughtful, and you’re also clearly dodging the very foundation you claim to stand on.

You’re invoking Nietzsche like it’s a magic shield against clarity. But perspectivism doesn’t mean anything goes, and it certainly doesn’t mean truth is out of reach. Nietzsche’s perspectivism wasn’t a license for relativism—it was a tool for cutting through dogma. He wasn’t saying “truth doesn’t exist,” he was saying “be suspicious of those who pretend to have it unchallenged.” There’s a difference.

You say truth is manipulated by power? Absolutely. That’s why we need objective methods—not more philosophical fog. Bayesian reasoning doesn’t “avoid truth”—it aims at it incrementally, probabilistically, honestly. That’s not a flaw. That’s the only way anything real gets known.

And the most ironic part? You admit nature is indifferent. You admit we operate in a causal system. But when I say, “Let’s follow that logic all the way and ground our ethics, justice, and meaning in what’s real,” you flinch and reach for poetic hedges.

You want nuance? Fine. But let’s not pretend the refusal to commit to truth is more evolved—it’s just more evasive.

Truth matters. Without it, all we’ve got left is noise.

There is no point in further discussion. Think as you like!

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Apr 15, 2025 11:02 pm

Pistolero wrote: ↑Tue Apr 15, 2025 5:24 pm A prisoner is relatively unfree because he has less options.

A slave's options are limited by his master.
Who is your master.

Who is the magician that has tricked you into believing you have a choice?

Who is the magician that has tricked you into believing you have no choice?

His name was Merlin.
Good chap...very talented.

The most entertaining thread in the history of PN threads-- hands down

BigMike wrote: ↑Tue Apr 15, 2025 11:42 pm

seeds wrote: ↑Tue Apr 15, 2025 11:30 pm _______

Seeds, if I ever need a bedtime story narrated by Deepak Chopra high on bath salts, I know exactly where to look.

Okay, I'll brush up on my Indian accent, wear some garish horn-rimmed glasses, and then regale you with theories about "placebos" and "nocebos."

BigMike wrote: ↑Tue Apr 15, 2025 11:42 pm Let’s be clear: lucid dreaming is a fascinating psychological phenomenon, but it’s not a portal to transcendental truth—it’s your brain in REM stage, throwing up vivid simulations.

No, it's not.

It's a situation where the lucid dreamer is using its "free will" to literally "create" vivid simulations - of its own "personal" choosing - out of the fabric of its own mind, with the mind, along with its free-willed "agent," being the product of "strong emergence" from the brain.

And just in case you need a refresher, here's what Copilot had to say about the difference between "Strong" vs "Weak" emergence (emphasis mine)...

Weak Emergence: This occurs when high-level phenomena arise from the interactions of a system's components, and while these phenomena might be unexpected or surprising, they are still predictable or deducible in principle from the system's lower-level rules.

Strong Emergence: In contrast, strong emergence refers to high-level phenomena that cannot, even in principle, be deduced from the properties or interactions of the system's components. These phenomena are considered irreducible and may involve "downward causation," where the high-level system influences its lower-level components. Consciousness is often debated as a potential example of strong emergence.

BigMike wrote: ↑Tue Apr 15, 2025 11:42 pm So no, Seeds—I won’t be citing lucid dream mirrors next time I write about neuroscience, because I prefer explanations that survive waking up.

And therein lies the problem, BigMike, for it's your unwitting membership in the Dunning-Kruger Club® that prevents you from realizing that what you call "waking up"...

...is actually a situation where you are still sleeping (sleepwalking through life) and completely unaware of the fact that there is yet a higher level of wakefulness awaiting you.

If it's any consolation, the vast majority of humans are right there with you.
_______

Dubious wrote: ↑Wed Apr 16, 2025 8:32 amThere is no point in further discussion. Think as you like!

I heard you, Dubious!

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Apr 15, 2025 10:56 pm I have a strong feeling that BigMike wants man to be reduced to a pliant putty. The philosophy he subscribes to must have as its ultimate concern power: the power to control man, man described as (seen as, believed to be) a machine. The man, or the power-system, that will control this ideology (in the education system and also as a general socially accepted ethics) will have fundamental control over that machine. Note this: the machine does not have agency! But Mike’s operational policy will have all sorts of agency. Exactly of the sort Mike demonstrates that he has, but must deny he has.

In my experience, with these duplicitous freaks, they conceal their collectivism behind their rejection of any cocnept that inhibits the establishment of their Utopia.
Free-will and choice is a big issue.
Convince a slave that freedom is an "illusion" and you have a slave you need not cage - his mind is already caged.

Biological identifiers is another issue. They must dismiss appearances as superficial, but only for one species.
Differences are illusions. Not real.

They use words to manipulate themselves and others.
Words referring to others words, referring to texts, referring to authoritative icons etc.
Priests and their flocks

According to Mike “thinking wrong is evil”. And Mike has the Truth.

A truth he can neither define nor justify, like Mary, he must undermine.
The method is to critique threatening perspectives, as if this validities their own.

Culture of critique....Critical Theory..... Endless critiquing, ceaseless interrogation, they call skepticism....never offering a superior argument.
Subversive.

You do not! You cannot. Because you are a “rolling rock” etc.

If they convince men that they are no different than a stone, they can use them to build their castles in the sky.
Noetic structures made entirely with words and symbols.

Their words never refer to anything tangible....anything men can independently verify. It's always abstract......psychologically substantial.
If men lose trust in their own senses then all they have is what they hear.

Boman, Thorleif wrote:• …for the Hebrew the most important of his senses for the experience of truth was his hearing (as well as various kinds of feeling), but for the Greek it had to be his sight; or perhaps inversely, because Greeks were organized in a predominately visual way and the Hebrew in a predominately auditory way, each people’s conception of truth was formed in increasingly different ways.

I think that in a larger sense BigMike is part of an ideology that can only be understood as “communistic”. It is an ideology with vast power in our present.

Postmodernism is the progression of Marxism from economics and class, to culture and identity.
And Marxism was the evolution of Abrahamism, from spiritual to secular variants.
They change the jargon, but keep the concepts intact.
For example...for Mikey, absolute order replaces God, as the absolute totalitarian rulers of human destiny.

To put it another way...when the god of Abraham, was declared dead....mankind took up his place.
Gods represented cities - their power determined by the number of followers they mustered.
God = Humanity
Humanity = God
In Abrahamsim this power must be absolute - all humanity must become worshipers of the one-god.
Messianism
This becomes Americanism's Globalization agenda.

I determined, I suspect I am right, that the real core in Mike’s personal position is his acute atheism. He simply cannot conceive of, cannot accept, any ideas involving the metaphysical or the supernatural.

No, it's his addiction to God, defined as a totalitarian, authoritarian absolute. He needs that.
He needs a scapegoat to blame and an absolute to reduce all men to the equal status of sinners.
Only now they are simply duped by an illusion.

These are consequences of acute materialistic philosophy and anthropology.

Um....The psychological source, is unique to every man.
In general the weakness is dependence on an external authority - an all encompassing, all-inclusive abstraction, within which all men are of equal value.
If negating agency accomplishes this end, then they will negate agency, completely and absolutely.
They will nullify anything that prevents their uniformity from becoming real.
Absolute Oneness failed them...now the absolute Nil promises uniform nothingness.
In the dark all appears to be the same. The light distinguished and differentiates.
They want this light to be illorory.
What we see as being different, is really the same - we're tricked, you see?
Satanic flavors touch our lips.... Existence is the devil's playground.

We think we have choice, but we don't because then we'll get better and worse choices, made by superior or inferior minds.
This is their problem....choice. The apparent.
This they must convince themselves, and the wold, that it is illusory.
If you cannot provide absolute evidence that it actually exists and that ti matters, then they will continue believing its an illusion.

They need parity.
Reducing men to the stratus of ants or bees, makes their communist beehive possible.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Wed Apr 16, 2025 11:18 am

Dubious wrote: ↑Wed Apr 16, 2025 8:32 amThere is no point in further discussion. Think as you like!

I heard you, Dubious!

Not sure what you're referring to!

Pistolero wrote: ↑Wed Apr 16, 2025 11:19 am In my experience with these duplicitous freaks, they conceal their collectivism behind their rejection of any concept that inhibits the establishment of their Utopia.

In other parts of your post I did register the reference to “a culture of critique”. And I also believe that I understand your references to a universalizing abstraction referred to as “god”.

It is compelling to see Mike’s thought as being linked to a subservience to an abstraction. One the levels and enslaves.

What is perversely curious about Mike is his revealed “mathematical mindedness”. He establishes a statement (equation) as being “absolutely true” and then carries the logic of his assertion to its totalizing end through the force of mathematical logic. It has an odd correspondence to religious faith.

They use words to manipulate themselves and others.

In Mike’s case his “words” are actually mathematical formulae. The model here is a Euclidean proof.

Convince a slave that freedom is an "illusion" and you have a slave you need not cage — his mind is already caged.

Yes, I have always sensed this. Which leads to the question — it has tremendous dimension! — how to 1) keep a mind from becoming caged, and 2) how to free a man who is confined in a cage.

The notion of “spirituality” enters in. But not in the sense of enslavement to an abstraction. But a man’s true achievement of freedom.

Postmodernism is the progression of Marxism from economics and class, to culture and identity.

And Marxism was the evolution of Abrahamism, from spiritual to secular variants.

They change the jargon, but keep the concepts intact.

For example...for Mikey, absolute order replaces God, as the absolute totalitarian rulers of human destiny.

Dubious wrote: ↑Wed Apr 16, 2025 11:37 am

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Wed Apr 16, 2025 11:18 am

Dubious wrote: ↑Wed Apr 16, 2025 8:32 amThere is no point in further discussion. Think as you like!

I heard you, Dubious!

Not sure what you're referring to!

To this:

Dubious: As mentioned in my post, which you seem not to have read very well, Bayesian logic does not undermine truth because it doesn't deal in truth. Its sole function is to give a probability status to something being true, never reaching a conclusion that consummates in a final act of truth.

And other points made in that post.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Wed Apr 16, 2025 11:52 am In other parts of your post I did register the reference to “a culture of critique”. And I also believe that I understand your references to a universalizing abstraction referred to as “god”.

It is compelling to see Mike’s thought as being linked to a subservience to an abstraction. One the levels and enslaves.

What is perversely curious about Mike is his revealed “mathematical mindedness”. He establishes a statement (equation) as being “absolutely true” and then carries the logic of his assertion to its totalizing end through the force of mathematical logic. It has an odd correspondence to religious faith.

Yes. Secular versions of the same absolutes.
God = one
Satan = 0
Absolute order = God's totalitarian omnipresence.
Natural Laws = God's commandments.

In his psychosis humanity is Divine. They can create Utopia - paradise on earth.
Paradise is brought down to earth, projected into an an imminent future that is never realized.
Utopia is always 'a day away'...and men are held accountable for its failures.
But if man has no agency, then what does this imply?
That the cosmos has not yet determined it. But it will - faith.
They are always on the "right side of history."
They are doing divine work when they subvert all the satanic forces standing in the way of Utopia.....like choice and biological identifiers, such as race, sex etc. Anything divisive. God is a divisive cocnept so they eliminated it and replaced it with an abstraction: absolute order.
God's will becomes determinism.

In Mike’s case his “words” are actually mathematical formulae. The model here is a Euclidean proof.

Yes, the binaries of good vs evil - Yin/Yang, 1/0. One being the absolute abstraction of uniformity.
No divisions in a singularity.
No choices to blemish its perfection.

But one is not a thing - it is a symbol that can refer to any unity.
How do people like Miker conceptualize the cosmsos, as a complete unity - projecting themselves "outside existence" to perceive it as oneness.
But, there is no "outside existence."From within existence there is no oneness.
One is how organic brains reduce fluctuating patterns down to a level they can process and store in memory.
Mathematics is a representational language. there is no one in existence, other than in organic brains as representations.
There is no absolute one - no indivisible, immutable, singularity.

Yes, I have always sensed this. Which leads to the question — it has tremendous dimension! — how to 1) keep a mind from becoming caged, and 2) how to free a man who is confined in a cage.

My method is to use words are connectors.
their original utility was to connect noetic abstractions to phenomena, outside minds.
Define words by using them to connect ideas, in the mind, with phenomena, independent from all minds.
As I did with the cocnept of free-will.
'Will' defined not as a metaphysical abstraction, like Schopenhauer's and Nietzsche's, but as an action we can all experience in ourselves and in others.
'Free' defined, as all qualifiers are defined, as descriptive of the concept they refer to.
Free relative to an objective, or relative to another will. Measurable, Falsifiable.

The notion of “spirituality” enters in. But not in the sense of enslavement to an abstraction. But a man’s true achievement of freedom.

I always knew you were spiritual.
If we apply my empirical method to the concept of 'god,' then we must admit that god refers to natural forces, to what men cannot comprehend, or to a collective - idealization of man, by man.
Natural forces became the Olympian gods. Then they became representations of city-states, of collectives.
In general 'god' represents man's idealization of himself.
The concept's best utility is as a method of decreasing man's anxiety, relative to the unknown, the incomprehensible, the unforeseen - the human condition.
A plausible lie helps man cope with truth that remains indifferent to his plight.

attofishpi wrote: ↑Mon Apr 14, 2025 1:41 am

Fletcher Radcliffe wrote: ↑Mon Apr 14, 2025 1:14 am

Atla wrote: ↑Sat Apr 12, 2025 4:12 am
Looks like a bot

What do you mean by that? what bot?

Don't worry Fletcher, many people upon this forum are obsessed with 'bots' - AI - they seem to think so many new to the forum are some auto AI bot. They tend to be the people that cannot discern the difference as to when a a human is using AI for research and making valid points, in comparison to some AI bot that has self joined the forum and started posting! They don't understand the technology - that AI has NO ability to self reason.

Haha, thanks for the heads-up!

Fletcher Radcliffe wrote: ↑Wed Apr 16, 2025 12:25 pm

attofishpi wrote: ↑Mon Apr 14, 2025 1:41 am

Fletcher Radcliffe wrote: ↑Mon Apr 14, 2025 1:14 am

What do you mean by that? what bot?

Don't worry Fletcher, many people upon this forum are obsessed with 'bots' - AI - they seem to think so many new to the forum are some auto AI bot. They tend to be the people that cannot discern the difference as to when a a human is using AI for research and making valid points, in comparison to some AI bot that has self joined the forum and started posting! They don't understand the technology - that AI has NO ability to self reason.

Haha, thanks for the heads-up!

For the record, I also thought it had an AI cadence to it. AI writes in a very neat, structured way. It's not necessarily an insult.

attofishpi wrote: ↑Mon Apr 14, 2025 1:41 am

Fletcher Radcliffe wrote: ↑Mon Apr 14, 2025 1:14 am

Atla wrote: ↑Sat Apr 12, 2025 4:12 am
Looks like a bot

What do you mean by that? what bot?

Don't worry Fletcher, many people upon this forum are obsessed with 'bots' - AI - they seem to think so many new to the forum are some auto AI bot. They tend to be the people that cannot discern the difference as to when a a human is using AI for research and making valid points, in comparison to some AI bot that has self joined the forum and started posting! They don't understand the technology - that AI has NO ability to self reason.

As I recall you were the one who said Mr. Mike the Big was AI...

BigMike wrote: ↑Tue Apr 15, 2025 11:22 pm Alexis, your reply reads like the fever dream of a man who just discovered the word "metaphysical" and decided to use it as a bludgeon for anything that frightens him. You claim I’m part of some grand Marxist conspiracy to turn society into a hive of mindless drones—while ignoring that what I actually argue for is understanding human behavior through cause and effect, not mysticism and magical thinking.

No Mike, there is nothing fevered in what I say.

The term ‘metaphysical’ is a necessary one in order to have a means of discussing and considering how our ideas and motives and values are very distinct from what is non-ideational in Nature and determined by mechanical motives. Everything about values in our world is in so many senses distinct and different from what occurs in Nature. And man is different. For this reason the term metaphysical has genuine utility.

And as you know I “believe in” the existence of Ideas that transcend our own thoughts. And I know that you cannot.

You keep accusing me of denying “agency,” as though agency must mean uncaused willpower delivered by some invisible metaphysical puppeteer. What I deny is that we float above physics like little demigods. You, on the other hand, are clinging to an outdated fantasy that your thoughts are lightning bolts thrown from some noble inner sky-god called “the self.”

Keep it simple, Mike. I have agency. I choose things. I mull things over and I make choices. I have this capability despite any avalanche of obscuring and obfuscating terms that you (neurotically) send forth.

I think it more accurate to assert — in relation to this: “What I deny is that we float above physics like little demigods” — that by providing this conceptualization you have actually explained both what you do, and what I assert we can do.

You see? You have conceptualized it as a possibility for man and for men.

In this sense the agency that we do have is poetically similar to that of your demi-god.

Your larger argument (battle) is with a clergy, or more likely the religionists of your oppressive youth.

And the irony? You say my worldview is “dangerous” because it refuses to flatter people with illusions. But you’re the one pushing untestable beliefs, vague spiritualisms, and the desperate need to pretend humans are exceptions to the natural world. That’s not profound—it’s cowardice in a cloak of poetry.

That is not at all why I say your reductionist ideology is dangerous!

Human being is indeed exceptional within Nature. Quite obviously so.

You’re not defending freedom. You’re defending a fairy tale. And worst of all, you’re pretending it’s virtuous.

You are talking back to the religionists who raised you (?) but not to me. And I definitely am very interested in “freedom” yet have strong doubts that your ideological project, based in scientistic reductionism, can offer “freedom”.

I definitely agree with Pistolero that your ideology is more like a cage. But you already knew that, didn’t you?

If you think the real threat to children is teaching them how the world actually works, rather than filling their heads with ghost stories about metaphysical agency and cosmic purpose, then I’ll wear your scorn as a badge of honor.

You’re fighting here against a simplistic binary. That is, against outmoded religious fundamentalism.

I think your ideology, more than anything else, mirrors religious fundamentalism! You are also a religious zealot. But you use a different set of terms.

Trippy, eh?

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Wed Apr 16, 2025 11:56 am

Dubious wrote: ↑Wed Apr 16, 2025 11:37 am

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Wed Apr 16, 2025 11:18 am
I heard you, Dubious!

Not sure what you're referring to!

To this:

Dubious: As mentioned in my post, which you seem not to have read very well, Bayesian logic does not undermine truth because it doesn't deal in truth. Its sole function is to give a probability status to something being true, never reaching a conclusion that consummates in a final act of truth.

And other points made in that post.

Oh! In that case, good of you to say!