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I appreciate this one. I think the comments on nilism at the end are interestingly framed.

The idea that we only have knowledge of this life and that one day regardless of our truths we will cease to exist is a powerful idea that I took a long time to come to peace with. I don't have a god or an omnipresent individual in my mind. I believe that the Cartesian principle casts too much doubt on the greater question of what is here.

I choose to aim myself to better this place that I am experiencing because when I do it provides me greater emotions of pride, satisfaction, and love. It is my choice or it is a full illusion that I decide on how I proceed, but forward is always the direction. I act as if it is real because there are drastic consequences if I don't. Just like when you lucid dream you don't stop what you are experiencing and give in to the idea that it is false you lean in and try to make it the best you can. If we all die tomorrow I know that being on nostr and maintaining the security of the blockchain is a net positive in this life.

I hope you find the peace I sought, and intimately knew it was only within ourselves as we are thinking things, and currently, we seem to have these physical things that greatly allow for us to build and interact, hopefully with other thinking things.

Great job nostr:npub12eml5kmtrjmdt0h8shgg32gye5yqsf2jha6a70jrqt82q9d960sspky99g nostr:npub1z9hy7a0n8zxnhgrcew2nnkr4sx6sum07exve99pqq30leujye3usgd858n

I feel for the pyramid scam too

https://fountain.fm/episode/EdwFGeEVOdugxYa2bXki

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Discussion

Neal 9mo ago

“I believe that the Cartesian principle casts too much doubt on the greater question of what is here.”

Doubt about what?

Dan Wedge 9mo ago

What is real, what is the life purpose? I can only be certain that I think, everything else here could be an illusion. The want for some to give in at that point and say there is no purpose provides no value is nihilism, which I reject as the easy way out.

I tend to think from a utilitarian viewpoint. I acknowledge the shortcoming of my inability to measure or create a scale of all the universe's utility, so try to act in ways that I believe will bring the most.

Neal 9mo ago

the intuition to reject nihilism is spot on, yet i arrive there logically from unpacking the cartesian doubt, “everything else here could be an illusion” itself .

let’s say everything we experience is an illusion, like it’s all the matrix and we can’t know what’s really real or not.

the cartesian doubt argues if we can’t know what is real or not, we cannot know anything but “i think”

but that doesn’t follow, because we do know something more of logical necessity.

there is an object that is the “I”

and the illusion presupposes that object. it necessarily must be true

if it’s all a computer sim, in some way, there is an objective reality with that computer in it.

the existence of objective reality is all u need to start the fire.

from there we get intelligibility, rationality, inter subjectivity, purpose, and morality.

at meeting point of metaphysics and anthropology, we find a coherent worldview that comports with objective reality.

Neal 9mo ago

would caution against utilitarianism.

it seems tempting, but is logically invalid. if you press on it a little honestly, kick the tires, you will find it doesn’t take much to derail it.

Dan Wedge 9mo ago

Please if you can recommend further reading, I am open to other ideologies as I accept all have their flaws. Its a compromise I have made to solve my cognitive dissonance and allow me to act.

Thank you its been 2 decades since I have been able to talk about philosophy with anyone.

Neal 9mo ago

I live and breath philosophy, and i’ve had similar trouble finding anyone IRL that likes talking philosophy since grad school.

the thing that was most helpful for me was reading Aristotle: physics, metaphysics, nicomachean ethics, politics.

before, i didn’t really understand the logical impasses we have to overcome in philosophy. and when i did, i realized most “modern” never contended with them, just brisked by the impasses, starting their thought with invalid assumptions.

that’s why aquinas really stands out from the pack, he deals with the problems from both extremes.

Dr. Edward Feser is probably the best Aristotelian/Thomist

while reading aristotle is great, it can be intimidating.

Feser’s beginners guide to Aquinas is great. https://a.co/d/h1dNmV4

Dr. J Budzsizewski’s Line through the heart is also amazing. https://a.co/d/ihIBSZR

Sokolowski is great for what it means to be human. https://a.co/d/gwt2dHX

Dan Wedge 9mo ago

I took a few ethics & epistemology courses getting my ba

Aquainus has sound reasoning based on the observable world; his reasoning and logic are very good. I think that my largest issue with his thinking is his formation of the omnipotent singularity, God. The arguments in the Five Ways are incredible. I do agree; I can't believe how many people don't at least give this thought consideration. Maybe they are too distracted by "life" and are unable to maintain a level of security (i.e. Maslow's hierarchy) to have the luxury of self-reflection upon what is and why. I think that's why organized religion works. It can distill down heavy concepts into themes. I see your credentials, and please forgive my ignorance in the subject of religion; I hope I am speaking kindly.

I was initially drawn to philosophy for answers. I self-described growing up as staunchly atheist. Plato was a beautiful read, but I found Aristotle harder. Through Aquinas and Descartes, I realized that I could not know for sure the presence or lack of the omnibeing, and that agnostic is a better term for myself. I think my main hesitation with the omnipresent is that it removes free will or brings it into question. If an outside entity knows what I will do or how it will turn out, how do I have the ability to choose? It's the reason I liked elements of Utilitarianism; it gave me as a simple individual a way to quantify moral choices. It can be a very dangerous ideology, as majority "positivities" can create strange outcomes that I think on a singular level are very worrisome. I think I need to go back and reread Russell with a lens that violence is not necessary.

Neal 9mo ago

All good, religion is just a word to describe whenever metaphysics and anthropology meet.

Everyone is a philosopher, credentials are not needed to talk and engage in discourse. I guess i list my credentials just because i know some people use them as an initial guage. I’ve had one on one conversations with PhDs that revealed how little depth they actually have. I just listen to what people are saying.

The existence of God isn’t even a “religious” argument. It’s just logic.

There is no other coherent explaination why somwthing actually exists, as opposed to nothing exists, without some being that is complete act.

Call that Zeus, God, a flying sphegetti monster, makes no difference, you need a god like being else you have no way around the impasse of the origin. you either say something came from nothing or something always was, both logical absurdities.

Aquinas argues, and i find his case completely compelling, that logic/philosophy gets you to “a god exists” but that it takes revelation to get to “God is a loving person, and we are made im His image”

Just my experience, but i haven’t encountered any atheist, anti god person who ever engages with the arguments directly. It’s always some strawman gross distortion of the philosophical issues.

And that is basically what makes Dr. Feser’s story so compelling. He was an huge atheist, teaching philosophy of religion, just bashing people who believed in a god to his class. Then he got bored and started digging into Aquinas instead of just regurgitating things others said about him. He found all the critiques he taught in class skipped by the issues, never dealt with aquinas’s arguments, yet claimed victory.

If u care about truth, u follow it where it goes.

Just like all things in this world, it’s proof of work. I don’t preach or tell someone they have to think something. but i care enough about people to tell them the truth.

To answer how can a god know what you are going to do and you still have choice. we could go into the entailments of what eternal, outside of time means, unpack rationality, freewill, love, and morality: building the dialectic argument, but this ramble is going on for too long, so i’ll answer with analogy.

if you have a child, or a wife, someone you know inside and out, you know how they will respond to a situation.

my wife knows if we are threatened, i will respond with force even if it means laying down my life. Her knowledge of that, does not affect my nature, doesn’t change my being. and takes nothing away from my deliberate decision in the moment to fight or flee.

simply put, it does not follow that knowledge of a decision changes the nature of the decision itself.

thx for the msg, i’ve just been consumed with trying to get my

book over the finish line, it was a welcome distraction to engage with another about some

philosophy.