(February 6, 2014 at 11:13 am)max-greece Wrote: Not that its worth much but my take is that I really like aspects of philosophy and that it can be really helpful in clarifying thinking, yet, at other times it just seems to be a road block where rivalling factions of philosophers go way off the original point (whatever it was) to discuss esoteric elements that almost no-one outside of philosophy can understand - least of all, me.

It also seems that at times when I attempt to argue against some philosophical argument or other that I'm told I am not arguing in the right way - even when the point appears valid to me.

Yeah I don't go in for propriety when it comes to formulating arguments. I also don't care about scoring points. If I wanted to be taken seriously in the world of philosophy I'd have to catch up on all the literature so that I could pin down what points have already been brought up and dealt with. But I don't care about any of that. Just one more Joe in the world here thinking about shit for myself. In the end the only one you need to persuade is yourself.

Also I don't go looking for fun arguments to study. The only ones I want to engage are the ones that really interest me, so consciousness and the nature of the self. Unlike science, I don't think philosophy makes any any gains for the masses.

You I trust because you always seem grounded in the reasons you give. I'd rather hear your take than someone practicing presenting an argument for an intro to philosophy class.

(February 6, 2014 at 2:27 pm)MindForgedManacle Wrote: [quote='FreeTony' pid='599262' dateline='1391701827']
The universe is in the set of "everything". We do not know whether the universe, if it began to exist, had a cause. Therefore we cannot say everything that begins to exist has a cause.

Again, the set Craig is referencing is not "everything". The set is "everthing that begins/began to exist", which he says must have a cause for its existence if its existence had a beginning.

Quote:Just because everything we have observed so far has been seen to have a cause, it doesn't mean everything does. If his everything doesn't include the universe, then it doesn't work.

He obviously isn't saying EVERYTHING began to exist. Do you think Craig believes God began to exist? Of course not. Craig's fundamental claim is to say that the regress of causes and effects must logically terminate at a beginning and that only God can be that termination point.

Quote:Craig's definition of "begins to exist" is something like "X 'begins to exist', if and only X exists at time T, prior to which X did not exist". There are definitely problems there, and even Craig has realized that and amended it some (poorly).

"Everything that exists must have a cause" is wording from Aristotle's Unmoved Mover. It was changed by later thinkers to avoid Hume's reasonable objection.

No one has ever witnessed an *entirely* new thing come into being (I.e. The Universe) to justify "everything must have a cause". The "Necessarily, God must exist" conclusion is semantic sleight-of-hand. You could substitute anything after "Necessarily", as Bertrand Russell did with the Teakettle Argument.

Logical regress is a non-issue to anyone willing to accept the non-existence of capital-T Truth. We have a matrix of reasonably justified true beliefs to rest other true beliefs on, and it holds together just fine above the void.

(February 6, 2014 at 6:31 pm)FreeTony Wrote: No, you're not, don't worry. Trying to get ideas across on a forum is quite tricky - this is probably what leads to so many arguments.

Isn't WLC meant to be the number one apologist? I've no idea, I just got that impression, but I don't think I'd even heard of Apologists until recently.

Their number one debater, sure but as an apologist strictly, no. They've much better than he in academia such as Alvin Plantinga and Richard Swinburne. Craig comes in near 15th, which I believe is based on citations. Not bad, but I'm not sure how large the field is to say if that's good on Craig's part.

But as I say, the view of Craig I tend to hear from philosophers who learn of his existence and hear his arguments is that he's seen as a very lawyer-ish type, and no in a good way. In particular is his effectively zero change in his arguments over a longer time period that I've been alive (barring any perceived benefit to his side).

(February 6, 2014 at 11:13 am)max-greece Wrote: Not that its worth much but my take is that I really like aspects of philosophy and that it can be really helpful in clarifying thinking, yet, at other times it just seems to be a road block where rivalling factions of philosophers go way off the original point (whatever it was) to discuss esoteric elements that almost no-one outside of philosophy can understand - least of all, me.

... which is why one's philosophy is another man's trash.


Meh. People who don't like philosophy at all I think are too wrapped up by the "I'll believe it when I see it" mindset - so they tend to put little value on the faculty of reasoning ...

Or perhaps they don't understand what philosophy is.

I think most people have no idea what philosophy is and why it is so important.

(February 7, 2014 at 1:45 am)là bạn điên Wrote: I think most people have no idea what philosophy is and why it is so important.

I'll take it a step further, and wager most people -- from the hard sciences to the strictly religious -- have no idea how the foundation of their disciplines rely on previous philosophical inquiry, and that few to none of their musings about life are new, no matter how smart they think they are in their distain for strictly philosophical questions.

(February 6, 2014 at 2:55 pm)NoraBrimstone Wrote: Philosophy irritates me a lot. It's useless, annoying, bullshit.

Perhaps. But is your irritation rational?

William Lane Craig I find absurd. he seriously claimed that animals cannot feel conscious that they are in pain because god 'in his mercy' has so allowed them not to suffer (which is crap because whether conscious of what pain is or not they certainly feel pain and therefore the only reason why you would not inflict pain on animals was to 'respect something god had made'..and he calls himself rational.

Frankly I would prefer a bible thumping bigot frothing and screaming about hellfire from the pulpit than a man who has a pretence at rationality but is nothing of the sort.

(February 8, 2014 at 1:11 pm)là bạn điên Wrote: William Lane Craig I find absurd. he seriously claimed that animals cannot feel conscious that they are in pain because god 'in his mercy' has so allowed them not to suffer (which is crap because whether conscious of what pain is or not they certainly feel pain and therefore the only reason why you would not inflict pain on animals was to 'respect something god had made'..and he calls himself rational.

Frankly I would prefer a bible thumping bigot frothing and screaming about hellfire from the pulpit than a man who has a pretence at rationality but is nothing of the sort.

That's part of the common beliefs of the day, Descartes also believed animals were meat clockwork. It's a holdover from Christian Dominion, which we still see strong echoes today: From disbelief in anthropogenic global warming, to the belief that overpopulation or exhaustion of natural resources is "impossible" because of perfect design.

It's similar to beliefs that the moon is a circle in the sky: You can look, and clearly tell it's spherical. Anyone who's owned pets can tell you animals have consciousness.

I love philosophy! I am currently reading Nietzsche.