aphilosophy

[chaz wyman]

You seem to be tying your hands behind your back by assuming there has to be essential knowledge. What is it, even?
We always have to accept that all out knowledge is confined to the human scale. Even when we try to break out of it we still see in anthropic terms which always ends up viewed as subject to our personal filter

Only in a particular way of knowing. I am attempting to address what you state here, and not let it sit in some essential "thats the way it is" platitude.

I would think, or at least it appears that when you say you dont agree with the proposition "God exists" that you are drawing upon some sort of essential truth of the matter. If you are not, then you are merely stating your personal belief.
I am attempting to crack into and give voice to this silent 'essentiality', this 'unadmitted' truth that occurs when atheists, like yourself, state, simply, "I do not agree with the validity of theism" as if it posits of some essentialilty.

Unless you are some sort of regurgitated Platonist, I can't really see where you want to go with this. There is no essence of being when it comes to atheism. It's a reflexive terms that lives and dies with the existence of theists. No god = atheist, no belief in god = no atheists.

[Thundril]

Where does this end? Or else, why does this go on and on?
Somebody asks me 'Do you believe in X?"
I think about it for a minute and go "Nah."
This same somebody says "So you're an a-Xist?"
I go, "OK, whatever."
They're like "Well, your a-Xism is a faith, just as much as Xism itself!" Like that's supposed to be a big deal.
WTF?
If somebody asks me if X seems like a good idea, and after thinking for a minute I decide it seems like a daft idea, I'm going to say it seems like a daft idea. Where's the 'faith?'

[lancek4]

"I know I am only an atheist because I do not agree that Theists beliefs are valid, or I have never heard a theist belief that has been convincing."

I have said this before:
Do you think I, or others, do not understand what you are saying? Do you think I am being obstinate?
I am saying though, that to understand what you are saying does not imply that i believe it, or that I am an atheist. I simply understand what you are saying. I agree with your explanation, and, in the other post, I put ot you to communicate it to me that I may be an atheist, that I would feel it and know it in my whole being. the implicit argument is that you cant, and that no matter what you would argue, it would not make me think that it is true in an essential, absolute sence. It is merely the truth that is eveident to our experienceing reality reflected in our discourse about it.
So the question that floats up is: does such discourse reflecting The Truth of Reality, or is it reflecting a particular truth?

..and to answer you most recednt post that came up while i was typing this post:
you are revealing the limits of your reality by your statement there. It cannot be all there is, it is simply the limits of your knowledge cannot see anything beyond it. Nor can it admit there might something more. It is saying "thats the way it is".

[chaz wyman]

"I know I am only an atheist because I do not agree that Theists beliefs are valid, or I have never heard a theist belief that has been convincing."

I have said this before:
Do you think I, or others, do not understand what you are saying? Do you think I am being obstinate?

No, I do know. you know what I am saying, and yes, you are being obstinate.

I am saying though, that to understand what you are saying does not imply that i believe it, or that I am an atheist.

never implied that was the case.

I simply understand what you are saying. I agree with your explanation, and, in the other post, I put ot you to communicate it to me that I may be an atheist, that I would feel it and know it in my whole being.

That is an odd thing to say. I am not the sum of my labels. I am who I am and the labels come after, they are not in any sense essential. I am only an atheist in the face of theists. I think you are a Platonist at heart


the implicit argument is that you cant, and that no matter what you would argue, it would not make me think that it is true in an essential, absolute sence. It is merely the truth that is eveident to our experienceing reality reflected in our discourse about it.
So the question that floats up is: does such discourse reflecting The Truth of Reality, or is it reflecting a particular truth?

I don't think it is either. I don't see the distinction you are trying to make, at all.


..and to answer you most recednt post that came up while i was typing this post:
you are revealing the limits of your reality by your statement there. It cannot be all there is, it is simply the limits of your knowledge cannot see anything beyond it. Nor can it admit there might something more. It is saying "thats the way it is".


I am completely flummoxed by this - where the hell are you going with this?
I think you have long exceeded the limits of your struggle with reality here.
Tell me exactly what the word "IT" means in the above!

[lancek4]

"It" is your statement of limit. I suggest that you cannot argue beyond it because 'it' , your retoric of argument, will not admit anything else. 'It' reveals the limits of 'your' reality. Because you refuse to even attempt to discuss what else there may be Because your reality is limited in that way.

[lancek4]

..
Interesting point: how do you know that 'you', your 'subjectness' came first and then the terms and definitions?
But ok. An odd thing about you Chaz: we seem to come together on so many points. I'm trying to understand where the discrepancy lay.
Perhaps I am a Platonist (haha). But so far as labels, I think no matter what label was put upon me I think I would partially agree and not agree.

I cannot understand how you could say that atheism is not a belief. In the sense of labels as you point out.

[lancek4]

Perhaps my mis-text contributed to the misunderstanding.
Restate: does discourse reflect The True Reality,or
Does discourse reflect a particular truth?

Maybe we could discuss along these lines.

[chaz wyman]

..
Interesting point: how do you know that 'you', your 'subjectness' came first and then the terms and definitions?
But ok. An odd thing about you Chaz: we seem to come together on so many points. I'm trying to understand where the discrepancy lay.
Perhaps I am a Platonist (haha). But so far as labels, I think no matter what label was put upon me I think I would partially agree and not agree.

I cannot understand how you could say that atheism is not a belief. In the sense of labels as you point out.

I think this has been done to death.
ATHEISM IS NOT A BELIEF. To make it so is the invalidate its essence. Its essence is a reflexion of negation. By suggesting that I believe a thing, you have to define that thing. A non existent thing does not admit to definition. It is an absence. There is no god and there is no content to that fact, just void.

I leave you with Theodore Adorno, who in his book Negative Dialectics, said many thing, but one of the most telling for this argument was "Every affirmation involves a negation." Or as Spinoza put it omnis determinato est negatio.. In making a label you negate all else that pertains to the person. If I had witnessed a thing whilst on my motorbike it would be reported as "a biker witnessed ....". It negates me being a philosopher, a person even. I refused to be labelled - I am more than the sum of my labels.
When the label is a negative one there is nothing left. Just a question begging about which or what god is rejected.
If you are going to insist that atheism involves me in a belief, then I am telling you that I am no atheist. If that means that you want to call me a theist - then I deny that too. You can chew on that as much as you like.

[chaz wyman]

Perhaps my mis-text contributed to the misunderstanding.
Restate: does discourse reflect The True Reality,or
Does discourse reflect a particular truth?

Maybe we could discuss along these lines.

Okay - then what do you mean by "TRUE REALITY"?

[lancek4]

Perhaps: EV, perhaps I am as tall as I am. But the 'route' by which I know how tall I am is suspect. Am I such and such tall because of the terms that tell me I am that tall, or are the terms relecting a kind of condition of reality in which I find my 'tallness,?
Thue question is about essential things. Am I thus tall Because I have terms of measure, or are these terms reflecting merely a particular take on what tallness is?

So what you're really saying is that you can't live unless you complicate everything far beyond reason. George is a little taller than Harry. It absolutely does not require any particular unit of measure, or any reason for the fact at hand. All it requires is that George and Harry have the ability to observe and compare. And then stop worrying about the inconsequentials and move on...

Are you advocating the summary of Typist's 'just observe' aphilsophy? George may be taller than Harry by mere observation, but how is this situated in the reality that we know - this is the question I pose. Is the observation directly transcribed into the terms we use to compare? That is to say: if I know reality in another form of meansure, say, I understand their difference in terms of a horse's head's height, what does that say about the reality that we live in if I can communicate the difference thereby, in contrast to saying "Harry is 5'3" and George is 5'1" ?
i do not propose that these may relate, but the fact is that I compare by the 'conventional' standard for measure. To reduce meaning into a relation between these two (horse vs conventional) schemes, I have only reified the conventional sheme. So far as aphilsophy: I would propose that the activity of the convnetional scheme, in this sense, is a particular method, a particular technology of terms we use to solve the probelm, and is dialectically proposed as 'philsophy'.
I suggest that if 'philsophy' is situated in the terms that reduce all solution to itself, then aphilslophy may be that which considers the philsophy as a particular method, not an absolute method. Aphilsophy then might be a way of situating what we could call a 'philsophical paradigm'.

A question might be then: is the 'horse' scheme included in the conventional scheme historically such that the conventional scheme is seen as a more progressed scheme? In that the conventional scheme has a better route or better scheme by which to come upon a True reality?

To me this is simple, not complicated. But this is perhaps because I do not consider philsophy as advocating a method for living, but is critical of such method, but not so much approached from within it as a "whole means" (above), but as a particular proposed, indeed demanded, scheme.

[lancek4]

[quote="Mark Question]do you believe "this is arbitrary"?

[/quote][/quote]
Indeed; the problem with this 'visual' representation of what you are saying MQ, I beieve, is that it has been taken by some as your quotes to refer to the mere quoting of what was said. I take it as you refering to the belief: "this is arbitrary". The 'unit', say, of belief that is [this is arbitrary].

And I think you are point to an idea consistent with what I am proposing with the idea 'aphilsophy'.

[lancek4]

Where's the 'faith?'

Yes, indeed: how do we distinguish faith and belief?

[chaz wyman]

Yes, indeed: how do we distinguish faith and belief?

Did you miss my question accidentally on purpose?
What is "True Reality"?

[lancek4]

..
Interesting point: how do you know that 'you', your 'subjectness' came first and then the terms and definitions?
But ok. An odd thing about you Chaz: we seem to come together on so many points. I'm trying to understand where the discrepancy lay.
Perhaps I am a Platonist (haha). But so far as labels, I think no matter what label was put upon me I think I would partially agree and not agree.

I cannot understand how you could say that atheism is not a belief. In the sense of labels as you point out.

I think this has been done to death.
ATHEISM IS NOT A BELIEF. To make it so is the invalidate its essence. Its essence is a reflexion of negation. By suggesting that I believe a thing, you have to define that thing. A non existent thing does not admit to definition. It is an absence. There is no god and there is no content to that fact, just void.

I leave you with Theodore Adorno, who in his book Negative Dialectics, said many thing, but one of the most telling for this argument was "Every affirmation involves a negation." Or as Spinoza put it omnis determinato est negatio.. In making a label you negate all else that pertains to the person. If I had witnessed a thing whilst on my motorbike it would be reported as "a biker witnessed ....". It negates me being a philosopher, a person even. I refused to be labelled - I am more than the sum of my labels.
When the label is a negative one there is nothing left. Just a question begging about which or what god is rejected.

you say: your subject, your self, exists apriori to the labels about it/you. Are they innate? "Intimate"? You suggest that there is a dualism: subject - label. Then you say that a label negates all else that pertains to the person. In your examples, you point to particular labels having a potantial to negate one another (which has been argued philsophically). So you are particularizing.
What is this 'self', this person/subject of your self?
Are you not likewise negating this 'self' in the conflation of labels ?
It may be that I can say Im a person, and then argue that it negates me being 'a biker witnessed', but this is just dilectical; it seems you are arguing differently, that there is a person upon which labels are placed, which then deny the person, as if really there is no person there. Did you not say that the person aprirori labels? And are you not subsequently submitting that the labels negate each other?

As to a True Reality: is not this condition that you argue considered by you a True Reality? If it were not, why would you argue it? Is not the condition of axiomic negation of labels being proposed here as a True Reality?

If you are going to insist that atheism involves me in a belief, then I am telling you that I am no atheist. If that means that you want to call me a theist - then I deny that too. You can chew on that as much as you like.

munch..munch...munch....
Ok mmmm good. We seem to concur on this point. But it also seems to me there is an inconsitency in you argument as to above and below.

You seem to withhold the subject as an essential thing, then propose that labels exist in an essential condition which tend toward negation. all the while this negating element (labels) likewise negate the subject, as if the essential condition of the labels negate the essential condition of the subject. So are you proposing a type of theistic dogma here, the essential Gods called "the subject" and "the labels", respectively. And that the God "Labels" is more powerful than "Subject"?

[lancek4]

Yes, indeed: how do we distinguish faith and belief?

Did you miss my question accidentally on purpose?
What is "True Reality"?

...and indeed, "True Reality" is always put off to another sphere, if you will; the point then is "what is the route by which we propose to come to a True Reality"? What is the method? Or, what is that method that has, in the Sartre-ian way of choice, as its past and future, a True Reality?

oh, and yess, I have already agreed that atheism is a short-term strategy to confront theistic ethical inconsitencies.