Philosophy Now Forum

Nick to fooloso4 wrote: You don't know what it means to know oneself and how it is made possible.

Nick, what gives you the right and authority to say this about another person? How do you know what someone else knows, better than what they know for themselves?

Lacewing wrote: ↑Sun Jul 23, 2017 4:58 pm

Nick to fooloso4 wrote: You don't know what it means to know oneself and how it is made possible.

Nick, what gives you the right and authority to say this about another person? How do you know what someone else knows, better than what they know for themselves?

First tell me what gives fooloso4 the right and authority to say this about me.

And so you don’t. You lull yourself to sleep by the sound of your incessant self serving chatter. You are not awakening, you are dreaming that you are waking. You look at the Bible in the same way you look at everything else, through the lens of your own beliefs and opinions. And so, all you see are your own beliefs and opinions.

Nick_A wrote: ↑Sun Jul 23, 2017 5:18 pm

Lacewing wrote: ↑Sun Jul 23, 2017 4:58 pm

Nick to fooloso4 wrote: You don't know what it means to know oneself and how it is made possible.

Nick, what gives you the right and authority to say this about another person? How do you know what someone else knows, better than what they know for themselves?

First tell me what gives fooloso4 the right and authority to say this about me.

And so you don’t. You lull yourself to sleep by the sound of your incessant self serving chatter. You are not awakening, you are dreaming that you are waking. You look at the Bible in the same way you look at everything else, through the lens of your own beliefs and opinions. And so, all you see are your own beliefs and opinions.

Why can't you answer my question based on what you, yourself, said?

Personally, I saw a lot of accuracy in fooloso4's creative assessment based on the things that you have claimed. And your statement to him appears to be just another one of your unfounded claims about what you know that someone else doesn't.

So, regardless of anyone else, what gives you the right and authority to say: "You don't know what it means to know oneself and how it is made possible."?

Nick_A:

Do you wish to know God? First learn to know yourself. Abba
Evagrius, Fourth Century

This axiom is really ancient.

But not nearly as ancient as the temple to Apollo at Delphi. You cite a source from about 900 years after the temple was built that refers to a God no one had even heard of.

About 800 years earlier Plato’s Socrates refers to it in the Charmides as a riddle. It is a double riddle, the first is what it means to know yourself, the second is that the self is a riddle to itself, that is, you are unknown to yourself. It is not The Self but one’s own self that is to be known.

Is being aware of oneself the same as knowing oneself?

They are not the same but unless or until you are aware of yourself you will never know yourself. What you show of yourself both intentionally and unintentionally is of fundamental importance and something that you look past by fixing your gaze on the inner life. This is why Plato wrote dialogues between Socrates and various real people. He could see what they could not see about themselves. In this way he exposed what was true not simply of man in general or of human nature but what was true of this man or that. What is true of you is not something that can be found elsewhere. It is not something revealed by universal truths.

I’d like to post a few observations from this thought provoking discussion between Jacob Needleman and Richard Whittaker

And by doing so you retreat one step further from the questions asked of you.

You miss what he says about Socrates the:

master at taking away people’s certainty

It is your certainty, your inability to doubt what you think you know that stands in your way:

And that’s the liberation he brings. To really deepen a question puts you in touch with another part of yourself that your “answers” usually cover over …

Take care of your true self, your true consciousness and divest yourself from the things you think you know, not only about the world, but about yourself.

Until you divest yourself from the things you think you know you will never know yourself.

I disagree with Needleman in that in my opinion (note that I talk about opinion not knowledge claims) your true self is not something other than the self that shows itself to the world.

Leo Strauss said in a different context but still instructive here:

The problem inherent in the surface of things, and only in the surface of things, is the heart of things.

While you are busy burrowing in search of your true self you fail to attend to the problem inherent in the surface. It is this problem that is the heart of things. The character of a man is fundamental to Plato. To see one’s own character, to know yourself, is where he leads us.

Can we agree that to “know thyself” isn’t about changing anything to create what we assume to be better reactions …

In order to make appropriate and needed changes we must know ourselves well enough to recognize the problem. I think of philosophy as transformative practice not as a retreat to an inner sanctuary.

"The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained liberation from the self." - Albert Einstein

This seems to contradict what you just said. To liberate oneself is to change oneself, to transform oneself. Einstein was an admirer of Spinoza. Perhaps what he has in mind here is the freedom of the self that is accomplished by the perfection of the self.

Lacewing wrote: ↑Sun Jul 23, 2017 5:32 pm

First tell me what gives fooloso4 the right and authority to say this about me.

Fooloso4 wrote:And so you don’t. You lull yourself to sleep by the sound of your incessant self serving chatter. You are not awakening, you are dreaming that you are waking. You look at the Bible in the same way you look at everything else, through the lens of your own beliefs and opinions. And so, all you see are your own beliefs and opinions.

Personally, I saw a lot of accuracy in fooloso4's creative assessment based on the things that you have claimed.

Yes, an articulate and resonant description of Nick's solipsist approach.

How do you get through to solipsists and narcissists? You don't. They are effectively social black holes where ego and fear finally overcomes curiosity and empathy, and then afterwards they absorb ordered information but simply mangle it and release some of it as Hawking radiation - heat noise. In this thread we are close to Nick's event horizon - pull back! pull back!

Still, I'm glad such people are around. He is an explorer of the inner self, and why not? I hope there are always people who are enthusiastic inner explorers. Just that it would help if he was not such a dick about it and actually made some effort to understand what others are trying to get across. Instead he repeatedly airily dismisses or ignores almost all of what others say and then intimates that they are merely weak 2D imitations of his own most admirable 3D self.

Like many deep thinkers, he has crawled so far up his bum hole that he forgets that others are also fully human, just that their psyches are less accessible and familiar to him than his own.

Fooloso4

But not nearly as ancient as the temple to Apollo at Delphi. You cite a source from about 900 years after the temple was built that refers to a God no one had even heard of.

About 800 years earlier Plato’s Socrates refers to it in the Charmides as a riddle. It is a double riddle, the first is what it means to know yourself, the second is that the self is a riddle to itself, that is, you are unknown to yourself. It is not The Self but one’s own self that is to be known.

I meant by ancient is that the idea is far older then we might expect. For example, according to this it was alive and well in ancient Egypt as was the essence of Christianity

http://whgbetc.com/ifbm/egytian-proverbs.html

“Man, know thyself … and thou shalt know the gods.” Proverbs from the Ancient Egyptian Temples - From the Inner Temple

They are not the same but unless or until you are aware of yourself you will never know yourself. What you show of yourself both intentionally and unintentionally is of fundamental importance and something that you look past by fixing your gaze on the inner life.

A person in order to know thyself must make the transition from reacting to external stimuli and experiencing that there is not only this creature reacting to external stimuli but there is a higher part of ourselves that witnesses it so can have the experience of the self. What normally happens is that one part of our lower self comments on another. Conscious witnessing isn’t commenting, it is about witnessing or knowing the self.

And by doing so you retreat one step further from the questions asked of you.

No, The question is how we can verify the existence of levels of reality? Conscious witnessing which is the process that makes self knowledge possible is verification of the connection between two levels. That is a beginning. Our animal reactions take place on one level. Conscious witnessing takes place at a higher level that doesn’t originate with animal Man but with a level of reality appropriate for conscious humanity. When a person becomes able to know thyself they have verified the relationship between mechanical reaction and conscious action normal for two different levels of reality.

It is your certainty, your inability to doubt what you think you know that stands in
your way:

Doubting as opposed to blind denial invites conscious contemplation of what causes doubt. The trouble with secularism as I’ve experienced it is that it supports itself through the emotional reaction of blind denial. That is why it is a spirit killer. I value the doubt. It is what makes conscious contemplation possible

Jacob Needleman begins the discussion with Richard whittaker by saying: “I should start by saying, only half-jokingly, that philosophers don’t do answers. We do questions. We deal with discovering and deepening our sense of something that is unknown.

The trouble with secularism is it doesn’t doubt itself. It has all the answers. It doesn’t know how to doubt itself much less deepen the question. It demands its superficiality to be catered to.

Until you divest yourself from the things you think you know you will never know yourself.

I have verified that I am the wretched man as described by Paul in Romans 7. If I have verified it, what good does it do to deny it? I have verified that I am dual natured. I have a conscious part and an animal part. Why deny it to appease secularism?

I disagree with Needleman in that in my opinion (note that I talk about opinion not knowledge claims) your true self is not something other than the self that shows itself to the world.

Leo Strauss said in a different context but still instructive here:


The problem inherent in the surface of things, and only in the surface of things, is the heart of things.

I see you do not take the relationship of the outer man to the inner man seriously.

“Give me beauty in the inward soul; may the outward and the inward man be at one.” Socrates

This must be nonsense to you since you do not believe there is an inner man. Only the outward man is real. Obviously I disagree and support Socrates.

The character of a man is fundamental to Plato. To see one’s own character, to know yourself, is where he leads us.

If we see that we are the Wretched Man there is nothing wrong with that. The question is what to do once it has been verified?

In order to make appropriate and needed changes we must know ourselves well enough to recognize the problem. I think of philosophy as transformative practice not as a retreat to an inner sanctuary.

Modern philosophy is such a retreat. Plato remarked that justice is normal for the soul of Man. You forget that we live in the fallen human condition. We are not normal for what it means to be human. A normal human being would be governed by consciousness. A person would receive higher conscious influences from above and give to below by the quality of their being. The man animal whose life is programmed by the ground would sense the value of so be of service to conscious man. But we are upside down. The fallen human condition has made it so that the collective human organism is governed by the lower parts of the soul and its appetites while the potential for consciousness remains dormant. The solution isn’t philosophic indoctrination but rather how to become normal.

This seems to contradict what you just said. To liberate oneself is to change oneself, to transform oneself. Einstein was an admirer of Spinoza. Perhaps what he has in mind here is the freedom of the self that is accomplished by the perfection of the self.

And how is the self perfected so that it serves higher consciousness and allows conscious humanity to serve its purpose by consciously connecting above and below? Freedom from the self takes place when the self serves Man rather than Man serving the self.

Lacewing wrote: ↑Sun Jul 23, 2017 5:32 pm

Nick_A wrote: ↑Sun Jul 23, 2017 5:18 pm

Lacewing wrote: ↑Sun Jul 23, 2017 4:58 pm
Nick, what gives you the right and authority to say this about another person? How do you know what someone else knows, better than what they know for themselves?

First tell me what gives fooloso4 the right and authority to say this about me.

And so you don’t. You lull yourself to sleep by the sound of your incessant self serving chatter. You are not awakening, you are dreaming that you are waking. You look at the Bible in the same way you look at everything else, through the lens of your own beliefs and opinions. And so, all you see are your own beliefs and opinions.

Why can't you answer my question based on what you, yourself, said?

Personally, I saw a lot of accuracy in fooloso4's creative assessment based on the things that you have claimed. And your statement to him appears to be just another one of your unfounded claims about what you know that someone else doesn't.

So, regardless of anyone else, what gives you the right and authority to say: "You don't know what it means to know oneself and how it is made possible."?

You made my day with this one. You've got a little of King George in you. Like the king, you know right and wrong and who the svoloch really is. Progressive education.

I wish nothing but good; therefore, everyone who does not agree with me is a traitor and a scoundrel. ` King George III

Greta wrote: ↑Mon Jul 24, 2017 1:59 am

Lacewing wrote: ↑Sun Jul 23, 2017 5:32 pm

First tell me what gives fooloso4 the right and authority to say this about me.

Fooloso4 wrote:And so you don’t. You lull yourself to sleep by the sound of your incessant self serving chatter. You are not awakening, you are dreaming that you are waking. You look at the Bible in the same way you look at everything else, through the lens of your own beliefs and opinions. And so, all you see are your own beliefs and opinions.

Personally, I saw a lot of accuracy in fooloso4's creative assessment based on the things that you have claimed.

Yes, an articulate and resonant description of Nick's solipsist approach.

How do you get through to solipsists and narcissists? You don't. They are effectively social black holes where ego and fear finally overcomes curiosity and empathy, and then afterwards they absorb ordered information but simply mangle it and release some of it as Hawking radiation - heat noise. In this thread we are close to Nick's event horizon - pull back! pull back!

Still, I'm glad such people are around. He is an explorer of the inner self, and why not? I hope there are always people who are enthusiastic inner explorers. Just that it would help if he was not such a dick about it and actually made some effort to understand what others are trying to get across. Instead he repeatedly airily dismisses or ignores almost all of what others say and then intimates that they are merely weak 2D imitations of his own most admirable 3D self.

Like many deep thinkers, he has crawled so far up his bum hole that he forgets that others are also fully human, just that their psyches are less accessible and familiar to him than his own.

Those damned solopsists and narcissists ruin everything. How are we expected to radite Love, joy, humour, creativity, optimism and gratitude when these SOBs keep disturbing the peace? We need more money for education to get rid of the SOBs. If that doesn't work just give them the hemlock and be done with it so we can return to peace and love.

Nick_A wrote: ↑Mon Jul 24, 2017 4:30 am

Yes, an articulate and resonant description of Nick's solipsist approach.

How do you get through to solipsists and narcissists? You don't. They are effectively social black holes where ego and fear finally overcomes curiosity and empathy, and then afterwards they absorb ordered information but simply mangle it and release some of it as Hawking radiation - heat noise. In this thread we are close to Nick's event horizon - pull back! pull back!

Still, I'm glad such people are around. He is an explorer of the inner self, and why not? I hope there are always people who are enthusiastic inner explorers. Just that it would help if he was not such a dick about it and actually made some effort to understand what others are trying to get across. Instead he repeatedly airily dismisses or ignores almost all of what others say and then intimates that they are merely weak 2D imitations of his own most admirable 3D self.

Like many deep thinkers, he has crawled so far up his bum hole that he forgets that others are also fully human, just that their psyches are less accessible and familiar to him than his own.

Those damned solopsists and narcissists ruin everything. How are we expected to radite Love, joy, humour, creativity, optimism and gratitude when these SOBs keep disturbing the peace? We need more money for education to get rid of the SOBs. If that doesn't work just give them the hemlock and be done with it so we can return to peace and love.

You show contempt for love, joy, humour, creativity, optimism and gratitude and yet claim to be a man of God.

This is because, according to you, your God wants you to annihilate all secularists, so there's no time for niceties. Right Nick? One day you hope to complete what you see as your life's work - the destruction of secularism (aka Nick's Great Beast) or, better still, to be a martyr trying. That would really tickle your yarbles.

Once the Earth is scoured clean of atheists and any other kind of foul godless secularist, then the righteous remainder can enjoy love, joy, humour, creativity, optimism and gratitude. Until then they must remain angry and grim. While one secularist lives there is no place on this Earth for happiness, nothing to love, nothing to be grateful for.

Just hangin' out for the end of days, eh Nicky?

You probably didn't read it because you're not a very good reader, but just above I said I was glad explorers of the inner world existed. So it's actually you wanting to scour the Earth of Fooloso and me, not the other way around. You do tend to project an awful lot. Others would agree with me on at least that.

Nick_A wrote: ↑Mon Jul 24, 2017 4:21 am

Lacewing wrote: ↑Sun Jul 23, 2017 5:32 pm

Nick_A wrote: ↑Sun Jul 23, 2017 5:18 pm

First tell me what gives fooloso4 the right and authority to say this about me.

Why can't you answer my question based on what you, yourself, said?

Personally, I saw a lot of accuracy in fooloso4's creative assessment based on the things that you have claimed. And your statement to him appears to be just another one of your unfounded claims about what you know that someone else doesn't.

So, regardless of anyone else, what gives you the right and authority to say: "You don't know what it means to know oneself and how it is made possible."?

You made my day with this one. You've got a little of King George in you. Like the king, you know right and wrong and who the svoloch really is. Progressive education.

That doesn't even make any sense. You're projecting your own crap again. Can't take responsibility for it, can you?!

You've now TWICE diverted the focus to avoid answering the question, again demonstrating how much of a dishonest coward you are.

Nick_A wrote:

Is being aware of oneself the same as knowing oneself? I’m not being critical but just raising a deep question What is the self and what is aware of it? To know oneself is to have the conscious direct experience of oneself as opposed to a casual awareness that we are doing this or that.

What is knowledge? It's, one, immediate subjective experience such as you claim to have of the divine and of being beyond the Cave. Knowledge is also, two, justified true belief.

So what justifies my belief? What justifies my belief is not, to be fair, what I would wish to justify my belief .Nevertheless being an ordinary person I cannot simply make all my prejudices and fears to vanish, as they will crop up later and have to be dealt with.

What justifies my belief is proportionate to what is brought into focus by reason and by my affection for and trust in reality whatever that may be in practice. Science is one way to access reality, and science's record of success impresses me. Arts is another way that I can access reality, and I can be more intuitive in my approach to arts than I can to science. However arts and sciences are means to know reality and are not reality, as I am sure you would agree.

I wish I knew reality . However the only knower of reality is God, and I don't happen to believe in any all-knowing entity, and I am even more sure that I am not an all-knowing entity and that I cannot ever be an all-knowing entity: I can never get out of the Cave. The best I can hope for is that what I understand is closer to reality than what it was.

I think that if I were to imagine that I had got out of the Cave I would also imagine that my useful little demon of doubt had gone to sleep.

My useful little demon of doubt has helped me to conclude that I am a self but that I don't have a self like I have a foot or a brain.

I am (or to put it another way, Belinda is a name for ) a particular body-mind. Therefore a self is a body-mind. With reason I conclude that Nick too is a body-mind.

It is quite possible to know the nature of any body-mind which can be known pretty well by way of the several sciences and arts. Belinda body-mind has not been studied by scientists and artists because Belinda body-mind has not been and is unlikely to be interesting. However some body-minds have been so studied and I have no reason to believe that Nick body-mind is any different in general from any other common Cave dweller such as Belinda, Fooloso4, Greta, or Immanuel Can. I wish strength to all us Cave-dwellers' demons of doubt.

Nick:

… according to this …

You have made your disdain and disregard of history and facts known but the site you link to is has no historical credibility and cannot be cited as authoritative evidence that your opinion about what the admonition to know yourself means is the true and correct meaning.

Man, know thyself … and thou shalt know the gods.

Tossing this in you only compounds the problem. Without reliable context it might mean know that you are gods or that the gods are the creation of man. (The latter informs Socrates discussion in the Charmides. I will say only that it is not something he denies.)

A person in order to know thyself must make the transition from reacting to external stimuli and experiencing that there is not only this creature reacting to external stimuli but there is a higher part of ourselves that witnesses it so can have the experience of the self.

This bifurcated view is too simplistic. What we do is not simply stimulus response and to the extent that it is we do not all react in the same way, How you act and how you react says something about you not some mechanism that is other than you. It is not a “lower self” hiding an inner true self. It is all you. That you want to be other than you are, to find in yourself something that is pure and noble and good says something about you. It has two sides though. It cannot simply be a retreat to an imagined better self. It requires making the only self that you are better. But you do not acknowledge this as is evident in your remark that to know yourself has nothing to do with changing anything.

No, The question is how we can verify the existence of levels of reality? Conscious witnessing which is the process that makes self knowledge possible is verification of the connection between two levels.

You have not verified anything. You simply assert that an awareness of a reflex response is a level of reality. One might find the same thing in any “secular” pop psychology self-help book. You claim that conscious witnessing makes possible self knowledge, but the claim that it makes something possible cannot be verified unless what it makes possible has been actualized. You are equivocating.

That is a beginning.

If you set out to go somewhere you have never been you cannot say anything about what you will find when you take the first step on your way there.

Our animal reactions take place on one level. Conscious witnessing takes place at a higher level that doesn’t originate with animal Man but with a level of reality appropriate for conscious humanity.

More equivocation. Self-awareness or consciousness of self is a level of awareness. Your claim that it does not arise with man but with a level of reality appropriate for conscious humanity is nothing more than an unfounded claim, a claim that cannot be verified by pointing to self-consciousness. It is like saying that sight originates with a level of reality appropriate to sight, or, more simply, that sight originates with things to be seen rather than organisms that have developed the ability to see.

When a person becomes able to know thyself they have verified the relationship between mechanical reaction and conscious action normal for two different levels of reality.

You are talking in circles.

I value the doubt.

“The” doubt? Do you ever doubt your views on secularism? Have you never witnessed that ‘secular’ is for you an emotional trigger?

Jacob Needleman begins the discussion with Richard whittaker by saying: “I should start by saying, only half-jokingly, that philosophers don’t do answers. We do questions. We deal with discovering and deepening our sense of something that is unknown.

The trouble with secularism is it doesn’t doubt itself. It has all the answers. It doesn’t know how to doubt itself much less deepen the question. It demands its superficiality to be catered to.

This reminds me of an argument we had elsewhere.

I said:

Some desire answers to things unknown and grasp hold of some myth and mysticism as if to a life raft.

This was in reference to your Christian Neo-platonism and claims about what you remember the Forms from when you were dead, your experiencing objective value, etc. Instead of responding to the issue of the philosophical priority of questions versus the religious priority of answers, this just triggered your emotional reflex and you went off on secularists and experts and the young and of course Simone Weil. And now here you are attempting to fault secularists for having all the answers.

I am not going to speak for secularists, only for myself. I have said many times that I am a zetetic skeptic. Apparently you do not know what this means and have not bothered to look it up. If you did it would be clear that responding to me by all your talk about secularism has nothing to do with what I have said.

I have verified that I am the wretched man as described by Paul in Romans 7. If I have verified it, what good does it do to deny it? I have verified that I am dual natured. I have a conscious part and an animal part. Why deny it to appease secularism?

Paul claims that you are wretched because you are a slave to sin and powerless against it. His putting the blame and solution elsewhere is very much in line with your looking past yourself. The examined life is about examining how you live, and includes examining what you say, what you do, and what you see. It is not about looking past yourself toward some manichean cosmic forces.

I see you do not take the relationship of the outer man to the inner man seriously.

I see that you have misunderstood what I said.

This must be nonsense to you since you do not believe there is an inner man. Only the outward man is real. Obviously I disagree and support Socrates.

We have discussed this before as well. You seem interested only in posting slogans as a substitute for thought and reasoned discussion. The inner man is not separate and distinct from the outer man. You fault secularists for dualist thinking but your misunderstanding of what Socrates meant is based on your own dualist thinking. Rather than rehash it I looked up what said before in order to repost some of it here:

It is not about the inner qualities a man is born with. Socrates is asking to be given inner beauty, that he can become a better man. This is not a minor point. Your assumption is that we are born with an inner beauty. Socrates says no such thing. He knows better. The inner qualities of a man may be quite ugly and monstrous.

… it is the inner man that determines what to show to the world. What is acquired is motivated by what the inner man desires.

The qualities of the inner man are, like the outer qualities, varied. We are all born with different dispositions and desires. Some men are gentle and moderate and some are tyrannical. It is, however, within our power to change, to improve if we so desire. But this is not done by returning to some unsullied inner state.

You assume that when Socrates quotes the inscription “know thyself” he is referring to some inner nature or inner man with “evolving qualities”. He is not. That is not self-knowledge. That is an image, an idea, a belief that stands in the way of self-knowledge. Self-knowledge means seeing yourself as you are, warts and all, not looking for some ideal inner self that does not exist.

It is possible for the inner man to change but if he does and the extent to which he does is inextricably tied to who he was at birth. If one is attracted to wealth or power or fame or honor or love or any number of other things it is not because of external circumstances or the outer man but because of who he is, because of the inner man. And so, he will develop accordingly.

The personality is the public face of the man, what he shows to the world through his actions. This is influenced by the world but is not created by it. The developing potential of the inner man can also be influenced by the world. The inner man develops toward whatever it finds desirable. Some men desire wisdom, some men desire recognition, some men desire bodily pleasure, and most of us desire some combination of the above. These are not foisted upon us but may be fostered by society

.

Nick:

If we see that we are the Wretched Man there is nothing wrong with that. The question is what to do once it has been verified?

Once again, it is not about what we are or the “Wretched Man” it is about who you are. Once again you look past yourself to some concept of man. What one does about it is change. But you say of transformative practice:

Modern philosophy is such a retreat.

Transformative practice is not a retreat of modern philosophy, it is an ancient practice, a way of life. It was, as Pierre Hadot shows in Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, something that was practiced by Socrates, Plotinus and the Neo-platonists, early Christians, and others in the ancient world.

Once again you demonstrate your disregard form history and blurt out whatever comes to mind.

You forget that we live in the fallen human condition.

I don’t forget it, I just don’t buy into it. This is just another way in which you look past yourself and put the blame elsewhere.

The solution isn’t philosophic indoctrination but rather how to become normal.

Nor is it religious or Christian indoctrination. Nor is the solution to be found in a retreat from your way of being in the world to an inner sanctum where you are pure and innocent and blameless for what you say and do.

Belinda

What justifies my belief is proportionate to what is brought into focus by reason and by my affection for and trust in reality whatever that may be in practice. Science is one way to access reality, and science's record of success impresses me. Arts is another way that I can access reality, and I can be more intuitive in my approach to arts than I can to science. However arts and sciences are means to know reality and are not reality, as I am sure you would agree.

Is a justified belief anything other than an opinion? An opinion may be based on reality but since it isn’t verified it is still an opinion. Plato asserted that it was possible to transcend opinions and experience the world of forms. Would you agree?

The fideist theory (N.B. fideism is the view that any affirmation of the mind does not come from reason, but from feeling): one believes something because one wants to believe it; belief in certain things becomes an obligation. Fideism is a view very well suited to all forms of spiritual tyranny; fideism always ends up in the subordination of thought to a social myth.
But the fact that doubt is possible shows that fideism is false. What is more, whenever one tries to suppress doubt, there is tyranny.
- Simone Weil, Lectures in philosophy (Leçons de philosophie)

It seems right to me. Attachments to either dogmatic secularism or religious fanaticism is emotional rather than intellectual. Would you agree that emotional blind belief is as dangerous to the human psych as emotional blind denial? Both sacrifice truth for emotional self justification.

In order to obey God, one must receive his commands.
How did it happen that I received them in adolescence, while I was professing atheism?
To believe that the desire for good is always fulfilled--that is faith, and whoever has it is not an atheist.
- Simone Weil, First and last notebooks (last notebook 1942)
(Oxford University Press 1970) p 137

Would you call this an opinion, a justified belief, or both?

The best I can hope for is that what I understand is closer to reality than what it was.

If we can get that far we will have gained.

Dharma in Vedas and Upanishads. ... This development continued in the Upanishads and later ancient scripts of Hinduism. In Upanishads, the concept of dharmacontinues as universal principle of law, order, harmony, and truth. It acts as the regulatory moral principle of the Universe.

The dharma suggests universal principles that human beings should reflect on earth. If the universe has no objective meaning than there are no universal values but just those people create. Under these conditions there is no reason to think of leaving the cave since without these principles the origin of values comes from the cave. If the Vedas and Upanishads are right can you see how harmful secular intolerance and the attitudes it projects are on developing minds feeling the natural attraction to eros..

Do you agree with F4 that there is no distinction between the inner and outer man and that all truth is on the surface. Does "Know Thyself" mean analysing what the outer man does? You find it hard to say "I have a self" Is it also hard to say "I have a personality?" IMO the human organism is a plurality consisting of many selves so we have no inner unity. Our personality is created through reconciling the diverse influences of the myriad and often contradictory selves that comprise our being. The outer man and its personality is a creation of life. We are born as an inner man with unique characteristics. Our personality begins to exist around the age of five. To "know thyself" is the process of what is real in us consciously witnessing the reactions of outer man or our personality. When a person witnesses what their personality has done to them in relation to acquiring a human rather than conditioned perspective it can be horrifying, but at the same time provide the impulse to have the courage to impartially witness truth.

Lacewing wrote: ↑Mon Jul 24, 2017 6:27 am

Nick_A wrote: ↑Mon Jul 24, 2017 4:21 am

Lacewing wrote: ↑Sun Jul 23, 2017 5:32 pm
Why can't you answer my question based on what you, yourself, said?

Personally, I saw a lot of accuracy in fooloso4's creative assessment based on the things that you have claimed. And your statement to him appears to be just another one of your unfounded claims about what you know that someone else doesn't.

So, regardless of anyone else, what gives you the right and authority to say: "You don't know what it means to know oneself and how it is made possible."?

You made my day with this one. You've got a little of King George in you. Like the king, you know right and wrong and who the svoloch really is. Progressive education.

That doesn't even make any sense. You're projecting your own crap again. Can't take responsibility for it, can you?!

You've now TWICE diverted the focus to avoid answering the question, again demonstrating how much of a dishonest coward you are.

Lacewing

hy can't you answer my question based on what you, yourself, said?

Personally, I saw a lot of accuracy in fooloso4's creative assessment based on the things that you have claimed. And your statement to him appears to be just another one of your unfounded claims about what you know that someone else doesn't.

So, regardless of anyone else, what gives you the right and authority to say: "You don't know what it means to know oneself and how it is made possible."?

It isn't a matter of having a right to say it but rather why say it. F4 is throwing meaningless ad homs around so I threw one. He and Greta do it all the time. It is there way. They feel they have the right as educated secularists to act superior. You believe his ad homs are justified giving him the right but my statement is not so I lack the right to say it. This is King George 111 logic

Nick_A wrote: ↑Tue Jul 25, 2017 12:44 am It isn't a matter of having a right to say it but rather why say it. F4 is throwing meaningless ad homs around so I threw one. He and Greta do it all the time. It is there way. They feel they have the right as educated secularists to act superior.

Nick, I think you are actually the one who acts superior, which was again demonstrated by what you said -- so I wanted to hear your answer for why you thought you could know what another knows or doesn't know. You also often claim to know something that others don't. Could this be because you've actually made it up to suit yourself, so no one can possibly know that better than you?