Slow,

I'm slow. I don't get it.

"Only by understanding one's unconscious inner nature-"the undiscovered self "-can we gain essential self-knowledge and begin to cope with and resist the dangers posed by those in power. "

He obviously knows about the Draconian and Reptilian creatures.

James wrote...



That is not about my character... I agree.



Nope, the topics are fine, your unsupported claims of me personally or your misconstructions of what I do write are not.

I would just like you to speak for yourself, and not for me or about me.



That is so ironic coming from one who cannot develop their understanding of a term without using it to define itself when asked.



That statement is not about my character, although one cannot point out something that does not exist.



Show me where I stated how philosophy should be done.



You showed nothing. You wrote your opinion of my view without quoting my words. Your opinion of my view does not match my words. The conclusions that you draw do not logically follow from what I write. If they did you could then show it.

You cannot show that your extrapolations logically follow from what I write because they do not.



You showed nothing of the sort.

One does not inductively gather information for an inductive argument James.



Whatever James. Here is where it all started. I had appealed for a dictionary definition to avoid the further attempts by you to distract from relevance by semantical bullsheeought...



Nothing personal there...



What you discuss is your own strawman arguments, which do not reflect nor follow from my writing.



For the umpteenth time James... Show me!



Why do you not just show me by quoting specific things rather than just offering your opinion only?

Your just pissed off because throughout that language thread the questions raised by me that you refused to answer had answers which logically contradicted your own belief system.

I am not that attached to mine.



Saying it and showing it are two completely different things. I showed it... you say it.



Is that right? What do you call this...









That is a bold statement coming from one who refused to further develop the meaning behind words without using the word itself to define itself. There are only two ways to come to an agreement on the meaning of a term - the dictionary and the furthered development through context without using the words to define itself.

I successfully chose both of those while you chose neither. You have the audacity to negate all possible resolution then call my philosophical efforts absurd?

That is quite a claim.

... Phew, am I glad the resolution's been reached...

Dear James/JB (and almost everybody else):
I cannot express precisely the pleasure I experience while "listening" to your arguments... Thus, I feel deprived when such a wonderful beauty of your minds is wasted for resolving a basically useless argument... (as James stated, "philosophy is an exercise in futility!") ***

* I do not necessarily agree with everything that Jeremy's mentioned, but he's been right about one thing:
wasting precious time and intellectual resources for resolving a personal Offence!!! * * *
Though, I do not necessarily agree with everything he's mentioned in the subsequent comments... But one thing is clear:
for the purpose of having an intelligent intercourse -- of the intellectual type, LOL -- everybody would have to accept the following condition:
____________________________________________________________________
AN ARGUMENT IS PERSONAL IN NATURE, AND AS SUCH, WARRANTS PERSONAL ATTACS -- since it is impossible separating the messanger from the message!!!
__________________________________*_________________________________
Thus, the claimant (i.e. the poster) must be ready to substantiate the assetion -- even on a personal emotional/illogical level -- WITHOUT GETTING OFFENDED !!!* * * * * * *
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Seems like something similar has happened once/twice before... Yet, we continue acting like teenagers until the mod intervene with a shout: "Break! Everybody, back off to your corners!.."

Do we really need such a humiliation ? ? ?

P.S. lighthouselover's point was that any word has many meanings and interpretations. For the sake of saving alot of aggravation, somebody should've been wise enough to claim he meant something else... -- rather than obviously offending the OP who refuses admitting his/her inappropriateness...

Good point JaneStar.

In my opinion taking offense is a choice.

I can choose to be offended by anything anyone might say simply because I don't like that person, or the person has opinions that don't agree with mine.

But what I have to do first is to look within myself and ask why does the other person perceive me like this.
I have to be honest with myself, otherwise I just keep feeling offended.
If I find that the other person may be right in his/her perception of me, it's up to me to change my ways. If I'm not prepared to do this I just can keep feeling offended, and what's more, I can feed on this feeling.
If, on the other hand, I find that the person is not right, then it should be water off my back anyway.

Every time I post something about a poster, and not his/her post its on purpose, Its choice to piss someone off.

I doubt anyone else is different, consciously, or subconsciously.

So from my perspective I am just going to announce that to the mods, its up to them what gets deleted and what who gets suspended/ banned.

I am going to let this one play out . . . maybe you guys will get it out of your systems . . .

wow..I really try with every part of me NOT to post something on purpose to piss someone off...so, everytime I post something about a poster, it is NOT to piss anyone off.

So, then to be clear, IF you cannot post anything about the poster, that would include anything positive as well...

or can it be both ways?

This is not meant to piss anyone off, so it is their responsibility if they are. I am just saying that the subjects which are discussed that are of someone's thought, DO concern the person. It is their PERSONAL belief or thought that is being discussed here...

Many times I have read the words/similar words..."Please quote me on that..."

The THOUGHT PROCESS is being discussed here, and that is part of the person.

The topic is the thought...

I do hope that this thread is left standing so I can again go back and read the parts that I want to learn from...

guess your edit would wipe out my previous response...

As far as I am concerned, at least for me, the matter is closed.

I am sure that the mods will appreciate you giving them permission to do that!

But yeah, i think this should just die a death now.

But similar stuff will occur again, its the way these kind of forums work. I have seen it over and over and over for years now.

Hidden members... stroking the ego of judgemental ignorance... it is all quite absurd.

I am not that offended actually...

Denial is not just a river in Egypt.

To this...



Not a philosophical one... Not only is it possible to keep the author separate from the writing, it is required. So the above quote reflects something other than what is true about philosophy and philosophical discourse.

I already did show you as clearly as I possibly could. You're just not understanding.

You work backwards!

You start with conclusions, and then try to either tear them down or support them by arguing backwards to show that they stand on valid premises.

That's backwards.

That will always fail in an arguments because the fundamental premises are unprovable. So working DOWN to premises will always end with an unprovable premise that must be accepted as 'self-evident'. But that's entirely subjective.

So you can demand that you've proven anything other than your conclusion logically follows from a premise that many people may simply not accept as being 'self-evident'.

There's also the semantic drain associated with premises. Because people will differ in their personal subjective opinions of preciesly what how a primal premise should be defined or precisely what it mean.

The correct way to do philosophy is to state your primal premises right at the begining. Define them in your terms and then you can only argue FORWARD logically with those who accept your primal premises. People who aren't prepared to accept your premise simply aren't on-board.

You can't prove anything in any absolute way.

Everything is ultiamtely dependent upon subjective acceptance of your unproven premises.

You want to work the other way around!\

You want to start with a conclusion then work backwards, down to some premises that you claim are undenyable! Thus claiming to have established some absolute truth that cannot be denied.

You work BACKWARDS.

You'll always go down the semantic drain if you work that way.

You can't prove your primal premises. Nobody can.

The 'self-evident' truth of a primal premises in entirely open to individual subjective acceptance.

You work BACKWARDS.

That's not sound philosophy. Especially not if you're going to claim that this has established some absolute undenyable truth.

At the very BEST, working backward can help you to personally see what premises you would need to accept if you want to believe that your conclusion is true.

But to think that you've proven something in an absolute way is just nonsense. All you've done is who what premise you would require, along with how you would need to define it.

But no one else would need to accept those definitions as representing any absolute truth.

All you would have done is proven that in order for your conclusion to logially hold you'd need to accept certain premises. But you can't prove the validity of those premises. So you haven't gotten anywhere.

You do philsophy BACKWARDS.

You need to understand that you can't prove ANYTHING at the most fundamental primal level.

All logic stands on the sand of unprovable premises.

You just don't seem to get it.

Great job using my words to develop the discussion about my words.

Great job.

You take comments about your philosophical arguments personal!

I told you that you should become a mathematician because you seem to always be out to prove something.

You too personal offense to that statment.

But it was a statement directly related to HOW you do philosophy. You're always out to show how your conclusions cannot be denied because you can show irrefutable logic to support them.

But you can only do that in mathematics, because in mathematics the premises have been carved in stone and called AXIOMS. All mathematicians start with the same AXIOMS. So they CAN work backwards because they have a solid foundation of premises to argue DOWN to.

But philosophy has no such thing. There are no sacred premises in philosophy that all philosophers must accept. You can't work BACKWARDS down to the premises (or axioms) like they do in mathematics. Because there are no absolute premises in philosophy.

In philosophy you need to state the premises that you would like to begin with and work UPWARD from there.

But you can't claim any absolute truths. You can only speak in terms of relative truth that are relative to, and dependent upon your accepted premises.

I stuck with your arguments until you finally crashed in the ocean of semantic gobbledygook.

Your arguments ended up precisely where I predicted they would end up.

Again you took personal offense to this simply because I showed that your methods can only lead to empty semantics.

You took personal offense to this. But it was entirely a comment ABOUT your philosophical arguments.

From my own personal point of view I don't even see where you logic held within your own reasoning. As you continued to work BACKWARDS be continually refining the word 'language' to a more primal definition, it became so abstract and meaningless that it no longer had enough specificity to even be a meaningful concept.

Not to mention the fact that the new abstract definition would conflict with much of your 'logical construct' that you had already previously required.

That's another problem that comes from working BACKWARDS.

You work BACKWARDS.

That's not a personal comment or personal attack.

It's a direct statement about your philosophical arguments and why they have no logical merit.

You just find that observation to be personally offensive.

But it's not a comment about your character at all.

It's just an observation that you do philosophy all wrong and your so-called logical 'constructs' are totally backwards and don't hold water.

That may sound like a mean personal attack.

But it's just an observation about how you argue philosophy.

And in light of the fact, that you're attempting to demand that your BACKWARD thinking must be PUSHED onto the entire forum via a rule that no one have any 'groundless thoughts' is utterly absurd.

You're thoughts are the ones that are 'groundless'.

You have totally failed to first ground them by offering your starting premises at the onset of your philosophical arguments.

Most people aren't on here to argue that their ideas cannot be denied. So they don't need to begin with premises and show how everything they say follows from their premises. They aren't out to prove anything.

You ARE!

You are clearly out to prove that your ideas logically sound and based on the most impeccable and irrefutble logic.

But you aren't even doing it correctly.

You so-called 'logical constructs' don't even hold up to logical analysis. And even if they did, they would still be dependent upon arbitrary primal premises which other people would be totally free to reject.

You can't prove any philosophical notion to be absolute and irrefutablely true Michael.

Yet this is what you are attempting to do!

You're trying to treat philosophy as though it's based on specific premises (AXIOMS) like mathematics.

But it's not.

And there is no personal attack in that at all, so get off your wounded victim wagon altogether.

You do philosophy all backwards and you're trying to demand that everyone else work backwards too.

But that's never gonna happen.

It amazes me this thread still lives . . .

I guess its too much to request this go to PM's?

You the one who demanded that there be no 'goundless thoughts' in philosophy.

Yet all premises are 'groundless'.

Or to put that another way, all premises are 'self-evident' only to those who accept them as being so.

All philosophy is ultimately based on intuition.

All of it.

You're trying to hide behind the facade of being 'personally attacked'. But all the while I've been addressing precisely the issue that you're accusing everyone else of!

The issue of 'groundless thoughts' (and/or poor philosophical techniques)

I'm also trying to explain that most people on these forums aren't out to prove anything.

But by your very demand that no 'groundless thoughts' be premitted in philosophy you certainly appear to be demanding that people substantiate their idea via logical constructs (i.e. proofs).

You're approaching philosophy as though it's mathematics.

But it's not.

This is NOT a personal argument!

Creative accused the ENTIRE FORUMS of having 'groundless thoughts' in their philosophical discussion.

This is NOT a personal attack, nor a personal argument.

Creative was trying to tell the entire FORUMS how to do philosophy.

I'm addressing that issue directly!

The mere fact that I need to demonstrate that Creative has philosophy all wrong is just to show where his claim that the people on these forums are doing philosophy all wrong is totally BOGUS!

There's nothing personal in it at all.

He's accusing the ENTIRE FORUMS of doing philosophy all wrong!

This isn't a personal private argument between him and me!

I wouldn't even bother arguing with him in private emails.

Let him do philosophy however he wants!

He's accusing the ENTIRE FORUMS of doing philosophy all wrong!

This is a FORUM ISSUE!

There's nothing personal about it from my point of view.

It just appears that way because one person has made this accusation that the ENTIRE FORUMS of doing philosophy all wrong!

I'm just standing up for everyone one the FORUMS.

Not true.

There are many philosophies that are based on empiricism.

One example.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism

Again I really think anyone who claims to have absolute knowledge on a subject such as philosophy is kidding themselves.

Making absolute statements is really just a way to pretend authority.

Also if you really believe that to be true, why even engage in such a conversation for so long?

I once heard someone say that the definition of crazy is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result . . .

Well, as you well know, in today's world even empiricism is open to personal intuitive interpretation.

Unless you have a single concrete explanation or interpretation for Quantum Mechanics that you think everyone would accept?

Even Relativity leaves us with room for personal intuitive interpretations concerning the very nature of spacetime.

There is no such thing as 'absolute' empiricism. That died with Classical Newtonian thinking.

So even the premises of any so-called emprical philosophy must necessarily be based on ideas that may not be accepted as 'self-evident' by everyone.