(June 19, 2023 at 3:41 am)Belacqua Wrote:

(June 18, 2023 at 3:48 pm)FlatAssembler Wrote: Well, sometimes the language does matter when discussing philosophy. Croatian, for example, has the same word for "belief" and "faith", and it is annoying to explain people that those are not the same thing. The guy who rode the airplane in 9/11 attack presumably believed in heaven, but most people don't, most people just have faith that heaven is real.

EDIT: And it's not just philosophy, it's also, for example, control engineering. Croatian has different words for the "gain" as in "gain of an amplifier" (we call that "pojačanje") and "gain" on the Bode Plots (we call that "amplituda"). The fact that English uses the same word for both makes it harder to understand English texts about control engineering.

Language study is wonderful! Different languages cause people to categorize the world in different ways, and when you learn the difference it teaches you that your accustomed ways are not the only ones. 

Japanese has a lot of differences from English, which I've enjoyed learning about. For religion, the word kami is translated into English as "god" or "divine," but historically it's just not the same thing as what Europeans think of as God. 

And there's surprising semantic categories. In the dictionary it says that blue is ao, 青, and green is midori, 緑, but they are used differently than in English. For example, traffic signals are called blue. Beginners, who would be called "green" in English, are blue. 

Japanese has a lot more words for "love," which makes English seem a little imprecise. It sounds strange for a Japanese speaker to use the same word for loving your wife and loving ice cream.

I agree. And it's not only language determining which arguments make sense to people, it's also culture. Thomas Aquinas'es Argument from Degrees sounds ridiculous to a modern reader, but it probably didn't sound nearly as ridiculous to his contemporaries. Similarly, Baruch de Spinoza wrote in his Ethics as a postulate to his version of the Ontological Argument that "perfection" and "existence" are the same thing. Sounds ridiculous to a modern reader, but it probably didn't sound nearly as ridiculous to his contemporaries.

However, I don't think those things are an excuse for not presenting your arguments clearly. If you read the question I posted on StackExchange with both my argument and the Andreas Alcor's response, I think it will be obvious that I am writing much more clearly than Andreas Alcor is.

Do we need to get out a trauma doll?

(June 19, 2023 at 12:38 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Do we need to get out a trauma doll?

What does that mean?

(June 19, 2023 at 9:14 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote:

(June 19, 2023 at 8:40 am)FlatAssembler Wrote: What is "delta wing"?

The triangular profile you see on so many flying things.  From birds to earliest tech renditions to childrens paper gliders to cutting edge aerospace.  Timeless.  The term also refers to persistent aesthetic choices.  Grandfather clocks are timeless - despite keeping time..you see?  

What you're wondering about is chronoperception, not timelessness. "Souls" may be (or are implied to be) lacking in that area. A malfunctioning or non operative chronoperceptive apparatus would be a credible explanation for our inability to perceive the passage of time in such situations. Like a broken watch, lol.

What is an afterlife like if souls have no chronoperception? Certainly not the way most people imagine it, or so that the Near Death Experiences are glimpses of it.

It’d be like dreams, in that regard.

(June 20, 2023 at 1:47 am)FlatAssembler Wrote: What is an afterlife like if souls have no chronoperception? Certainly not the way most people imagine it, or so that the Near Death Experiences are glimpses of it.

Dante, following Thomas Aquinas and the general ideas of Neoplatonic philosophers, says that there is no time or space in heaven. It is not in the material world. 

The experience of heaven, according to those guys, is like a single instant of extreme bliss. But there would be no chronoperception because time would not be passing.

(June 20, 2023 at 2:31 am)Belacqua Wrote:

(June 20, 2023 at 1:47 am)FlatAssembler Wrote: What is an afterlife like if souls have no chronoperception? Certainly not the way most people imagine it, or so that the Near Death Experiences are glimpses of it.

Dante, following Thomas Aquinas and the general ideas of Neoplatonic philosophers, says that there is no time or space in heaven. It is not in the material world. 

The experience of heaven, according to those guys, is like a single instant of extreme bliss. But there would be no chronoperception because time would not be passing.

Presumably not in The Divine Comedy? So why does he in that describe heaven, hell, and purgatory, in this other much more vividly imaginative sense... of a realm in space and time... of various levels and with distinct and imaginative 'sin-centric' punishments etc. If he really views heaven as a single everlasting moment of bliss, and presumably hell as something like the opposite (? ie something like a single moment of everlasting pain/suffering), then even if not literal how could the description in Divine Comedy be considered in any way analoguous, allegorical or symbolic (ie of a single, everlasting moment)?

(June 20, 2023 at 7:56 am)emjay Wrote:

(June 20, 2023 at 2:31 am)Belacqua Wrote: Dante, following Thomas Aquinas and the general ideas of Neoplatonic philosophers, says that there is no time or space in heaven. It is not in the material world. 

The experience of heaven, according to those guys, is like a single instant of extreme bliss. But there would be no chronoperception because time would not be passing.

Presumably not in The Divine Comedy? So why does he in that describe heaven, hell, and purgatory, in this other much more vividly imaginative sense... of a realm in space and time... of various levels and with distinct and imaginative 'sin-centric' punishments etc. If he really views heaven as a single everlasting moment of bliss, and presumably hell as something like the opposite (? ie something like a single moment of everlasting pain/suffering), then even if not literal how could the description in Divine Comedy be considered in any way analoguous, allegorical or symbolic (ie of a single, everlasting moment)?

Part of the punishment of hell is the awareness of passing time, and that the punishments won't stop. The souls the pilgrim speaks to there act out their punishments in repetitions, which require time passing. 

Purgatory is still in the world of space and time. Souls are separated from their original bodies at death but, since a soul is a form which requires matter to complete it, they form new bodies of less substantial material while ascending Purgatory. The bodies have extension and location, though -- characteristics of space and time. 

Most of the final canticle takes place not in heaven proper but in the planetary circles as the pilgrim ascends. Souls from heaven descend to an appropriate level to greet him and explain things to him, before returning to their proper place in heaven. Heaven itself is outside of the sphere of space and time. 

Dante understands that describing something that's outside of space and time in human language requires elaborate metaphor. Language itself requires time, and descriptions of relations require space. So he is at pains to say that what he is describing is "a manner of speaking," and translated into concepts that we can grasp. The nearer he gets to heaven the more he makes use of the ineffability topos, repeatedly describing something by saying it's indescribable. 

No one is exactly sure whether Dante thought he was describing the actual conditions of the afterlife or whether the whole thing is elaborate symbolism. Since it is largely a travel story meant to exemplify Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, it's very possible that the whole thing is allegory. Certainly the attempt to describe heaven in spatial terms, as rose-like, is symbolism.

(June 20, 2023 at 7:56 am)emjay Wrote:

(June 20, 2023 at 2:31 am)Belacqua Wrote: Dante, following Thomas Aquinas and the general ideas of Neoplatonic philosophers, says that there is no time or space in heaven. It is not in the material world. 

The experience of heaven, according to those guys, is like a single instant of extreme bliss. But there would be no chronoperception because time would not be passing.

Presumably not in The Divine Comedy? So why does he in that describe heaven, hell, and purgatory, in this other much more vividly imaginative sense... of a realm in space and time... of various levels and with distinct and imaginative 'sin-centric' punishments etc. If he really views heaven as a single everlasting moment of bliss, and presumably hell as something like the opposite (? ie something like a single moment of everlasting pain/suffering), then even if not literal how could the description in Divine Comedy be considered in any way analoguous, allegorical or symbolic (ie of a single, everlasting moment)?

The Divine Comedy is a comedy, it is intended to make people laugh, not to teach them what afterlife is like. Any more than Charlie and Chocolate Factory is intended to teach about how chocolate factories work.

(June 20, 2023 at 2:31 am)Belacqua Wrote:

(June 20, 2023 at 1:47 am)FlatAssembler Wrote: What is an afterlife like if souls have no chronoperception? Certainly not the way most people imagine it, or so that the Near Death Experiences are glimpses of it.

Dante, following Thomas Aquinas and the general ideas of Neoplatonic philosophers, says that there is no time or space in heaven. It is not in the material world. 

The experience of heaven, according to those guys, is like a single instant of extreme bliss. But there would be no chronoperception because time would not be passing.

I think hardly anybody today believes that afterlife is real, but that Near Death Experiences are not glimpses of it. Sure, that's entirely possible (and arguably probable if we assume afterlife is real), but we should be trying to refute the form of religion most people believe (or at least claim to believe) in.