Karl

You are twisting your own idealism. When I say "you must hold your own life as a primary value" this is not a command. It is a recognition that if you don't hold your life as the primary value, then you won't hold anyone else's life as a value-hence your description of a human plague and your latest assertion that your life is 'no more valuable than anything else'. Here it is clear you hold a conflict by saying you hold your life dear, but not more than anything else, then this should be a clear signal to your own consciousness. You can't have your cake and eat it. Either you hold your life no more valuable than anything else-and thus you care not if you live or die, or you don't believe that at all. If you hold your life as the primary value by which you judge all other values then it is inescapable that man is an end in itself. You deny good and evil and then you argue against 'plagues of men'. If you could not determine moral values then you would be as an animal.

That doesn't surprise me that you think of man as a dreadful plague. You see man as the villain and I see him as the hero. I have said many times that the over arching belief on this forum is predominantly anti-life-man. For some bizarre reason you despise the material of man, but praise the spirit-as if the two could ever be seperated. If you eventually accept there is no body/spirit dichotomy then this will turn your world upside down. The first value is mans life. It is a value that you must hold as principle and by which everything else is valued. Man is an end in himself. Realising this truth is enlightenment.

It likely is, but the universe is a huge place way beyond our current capacity to travel around even the tiniest portion of it. It's also necessary to factor in time factor. It may well be that there are civilisations that have died out long ago and those which will come into existence in millions of years time. It might also be the case that some civilisations live at a faster rate than we do, possibly winking into and out of existence in a fraction of our own lifetimes, then others that are almost static by comparison-or a great deal more giant or smaller. However, regardless of the possibilities, we don't actually need other races to complicate our own lives or to give context. We are what we are and need to get on. With making the most of what we have.

We are the opportunity. We have all the tools required to spread ourselves throughout the galaxy and the universe. We have cowered under the shadow of mysticism for so long that we can't seem to grasp that we are not minnows at the behest of Gods or chemical, but potential Giants. We have-as far as can be assessed-virtually unlimited capacity to continually expand our integrations of concepts and therefore our consciousness. If we just stop clinging to myth we can realise our potential, but if we continually refuse to see it, then we may well perish as a race-something else will evolve in our place anyway. Life carries on even if we are no longer a part of it. We should grab the moment. I like what John Taylor Gatto said "human genius is as common as dirt". We only need to dare to think and we can grow.

It isn't about happiness 'reaching' anyone as if it's some kind of irrigation system. As long as we are free to apply our minds and bodies to the task of achieving values through virtue, then we may or may not gain happiness. The fact is, by being moral, by consciously and actively thinking and acting our chances of achieving success and happiness is increased. Every normal, healthy person has the opportunity the gain values and the happiness that proceeds from an ethical gain. Every normal person must first choose to use their mind, to think hard, to apply reason, to learn. Many people refuse to think, the reason is that it's hard work and they have been taught that there isn't any truths, that we can hop from one flower to another as we need to and therefore everything is flexible without absolutes, so, thinking-if it's needed at all-need only be very short term and pragmatic.

Normal, average person not encumbered by mental problems or severe disabilities. By healthy I mean they aren't suffering severe debilitating health issues which preclude them acting/ thinking freely. I don't know what you mean by 'creation' except in the sense that man must use his mind to gain and hold value, his greatest value being his life. If he has no control of his life-be that self inflicted or externally inflicted through slavery, imprisonment, totalitarian state, then he is not free. If he is free, then he should be productive and must use his mind in order to be productive. That is creative. Learning requires an active conscious decision to learn, to take in new information and integrate the concepts that arise from those new perceptions. We must learn in order to better survive and to increase our store of values thereby increasing our happiness. So, absolutely, ignorance, is the decision not to learn, not to think, or to evade willingly.

For a normal, healthy, grown adult, good and bad is a choice, that does not mean that we always choose the good automatically, it means we must think carefully and hard about each action. This is a very active conscious process requiring a set of principles (virtues) by which you strictly adhere in order to gain or hold value. Good action produces long term happiness, bad action produces nothing or negative emotions (negative value attainment). If you are not sure about anything then you are ignorant. That you are not automatically certain about everything, to have doubts, to question, to need to reason, is to be human. However to evade or to simply refuse to think is an evil in itself, it is immoral to blank out or deny conscious thought.

I only answered Brian's question.

I forgot myself in the heat of the moment. I blame it on the shock.

Isn't heaven, hell, God and physics all jumbled up in the answers ?

Oooohh. Ahhhhaaa ahhaaaaa ooo ooo wah wah

What the fuck ? Really Junko ? You have a brain and you can find out all kinds of things but you are unhappy about the questions your parents didn't ask you ?

Get real.

Why must I formulate an answer for a group that isn't on the forum ? Ridiculous. Let's formulate an answer for primates then, what about newborns ?

Not really. They haven't yet created enough concepts to deal with it. Most of them probably don't know where they came from at that age, never mind the origin of man.

Infinite regression then. I will go along with that. It's pretty much the same positive argument against the creation of the universe by some omnipotent being. That isn't a surprise, as that's where Neo platonists took the idea of a heaven. I think it's just a good exercise. Sometimes it exposes internal conceptualisation which are weak which I enjoy discovering in myself.

Well, I often feel like a banana.

Yes, you borrowed the concept and you have also committed a second fallacy of an appeal to authority in both qualitative and quantitative senses (by western philosophy and thousand of years ago). However, if it was discounted, then what argument was used ? :-) If you are going to refute an argument, you must know on what grounds you refute it. It's not acceptable to say that you refute it by standing on the platform by which you are attempting to refute it, it's not acceptable to suggest that Western philosophers-no matter how genius-are proof of a refutation, and it's certainly not acceptable to use the temporal argument to substantiate your view. The one thing you said was that it wasn't provable :-). And this is true because it is up to the platonists to prove that their theory of perfect forms is true and not yours to disprove beyond that. Then you must apply that to your own theories like a bright sword. Cut, cut, slash.

She canna take it captain the engines will fly apart. There is no deep mystery. We certainly might find some interesting things in radiation and convection, but the 'flow' of time is simply the relationship between cause and effect. We never find effects that don't have causes, if we did, then the flow would be reversed. So, it isn't really time, it's causality. This is the same problem encountered with space and fields-they aren't defined, they are partially defined and have grown themselves into seperate entities-funny that on a forum that revels in connectivity and a lack of identity/existence that you should cling to the idea of time as an entity. Time is a relationship between the age of little Tim and big John. Between the beat of a heart and the orbit of a planet, but flow of 'time' is a metaphor only. Things are just causing and effecting and that gives a metaphorical direction, not a real one.

You have put yourself in a logical bind. You are a something so you cannot conceive a nothing. Only when you are a nothing will you be a nothing and then you can't imagine anything. Secondly you are flirting with infinity which is also logically impossible. Everything is finite. Vivid emotions are caused by underlying thoughts that you may or may not be conscious of, but they exist never the less.

So your saying that the bullshitness of bullshit has been intrinsically transmitted to you as a way to refute platonic realism ? Problem is that you are now using the fallacy of a stolen concept in order to disprove platonic realism. Rather than refute it, you have unwittingly argued for it. :-) But it made me laugh, so even though it's a bad logical argument, it was still funny :-) Damn those platonists with their caves, shadows, candles and forms.

You should talk to my younger brother, he invented his own language at school. I used to translate for the teachers. It's quite a lot of fun to invent words.

Does a structure necessarily have nodes ? I wouldn't particularly recognise that as a net. Certainly as a network. One of the reasons I suggested that you define fields was because of your wider knowledge of these things. The thing about a definition is that it must be easily understood by someone of average intelligence otherwise it's useless. It can be added to of course by mathematical formula etc, but that specialises it.

I wouldn't class inflexible materials as a net. I thought about all the kinds of net. Net curtain, fishing net, hair net, net work, Internet etc. None were inflexible, rope best described the kind of traditional materials used and easily led to incorporation in the concept of networks/internet. You want me to define 'lattice' ? That 'structure of crossed wooden/metal strips arranged to form a diagonal pattern' is good enough for what we are attempting I think. I've learned not to go too general. I did an exercise to define a sandwich in which I ended up trying to incorporate every kind of sandwich from metallic to bodily. It was better when I stuck to the genus of food. Here, for net, I could have begun with the genus 'structure' but lattice seemed to have that property. I could refine it now to 'a flexible structure in the form of a lattice traditionally made from rope'

The gaining of earned values is the product of correct actions. We don't have total freedom, some things are absolute. Purpose cant be lower or higher; either you have purpose or you don't. You must choose what that purpose is. How can you not be self discovered ? Is it possible to volitionally hold some part of you back from yourself in the manner of a half person ? You know all there is to discover, even to the point of knowing what you are evading or avoiding. Hard work is not always good, productive work and the only truth is that which you know about your self. If you lie to yourself, if you evade, if you are dishonest, corrupt, unjust or believe pride is a sin then you will know yourself as unhappy. We all have our nature, our capacity both physical and mental which is unique. We can do some things to enhance both, we can also do many things to damage them. Choose to have a healthy body and mind by respecting ones primary value of life. Harmony is attained within yourself by adhering to ones virtues and being a moral person. Go after values with reasoned determination knowing what is good.