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Because you have at other times is not any guarrantee that it will happen again. Everything is different, a different universe, every moment. It is not necessarily irrational, necessarilly. But you seem to draw much conslusion from very tentative and scanty data.
Okey dokey, then...
Actually, I don't much 'think about' whether or not I will be able to pick up the spoon, I just watch my hand and a spoon is either picked up or not. The moment in itself is sufficient. Life happens.
So you think it is irrational for you to believe that you can pick up that spoon? Never mind whether you think about it.
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Because you have at other times is not any guarrantee that it will happen again. Everything is different, a different universe, every moment. It is not necessarily irrational, necessarilly. But you seem to draw much conslusion from very tentative and scanty data.
Okey dokey, then...
Actually, I don't much 'think about' whether or not I will be able to pick up the spoon, I just watch my hand and a spoon is either picked up or not. The moment in itself is sufficient. Life happens.
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So, regardless of whether you think about it, is it irrational for you to believe that you can pick up that spoon?
That means you have absolutely no reason to think so.
...doesn't saying that philosophy based on time is crap also imply that science based on time is crap?
- which dumps an enormous chunk of science down the crapper! ...
Depends on how you define 'believe'.
Is a 'belief' a necessity of 'rational thought'? I say, hardly!
It is non-rational (not necessarily 'irrational') to 'believe', it is 'rational' to 'think. Very weak beliefs can often appear rational, but the act of belief in itself is non-rational, and the stronger the belief, the more obviously non-rational but egoically emotional and needy.
Critical thought is 'rational'.
Things do not happen for 'reasons', things happen, and some see reasons and causes and values and beauty and evil where one will as per Perspective. 'Reason' that you find/see is the 'reason' that you imagine, that exists in your thoughts.
Do you understand 'probabilities'? The notion of a 'working hypothesis'? 'Belief' is unnecessary to 'thought'. There are 'probabilities' that a spoon will fall if released from your hand above the ground, all things being equal. Generally, on the earth's surface, the spoon will 'fall' to the ground whether you 'believe' or not. The probabilities are such that it remains a 'working hypothesis', which is not the same as 'belief'.
'Beliefs' are symptomatic, often pathologically so, at any level of strength (of belief) beyond the weak and superficial. People identify with their 'beliefs'. That can easily be viewed as 'pathological'. Critical thought and examination and evaluation of evidence is not applicable to a 'belief' to the extent of the strength of that 'belief' (the strength of the 'identification').
Yup! Newly discovered 'truth' dumps many lies down the crapper. Quantum dumps an awful lot (of 'classical physics' and 'philosophy') down the hole. It changes everything, informs all the branches of science (or they are become obsolete)!
An individual suffers from akrasia when they form an all-thing-considered judgment that they should do one thing (i.e. that they have strongest reason to do that thing) and then without changing their mind do something else instead. Sartre uses the example of an akratic gambler that cannot stop gambling even though they judged that they should stop gambling, and then say they cannot help themselves to highlight this feature of human nature.
How is it possible for you actions to come apart from you self-conscious commitment (e.g. I will no longer smoke, but smoke a cigarette anyway)?
This question goes all the way back to the ancient Greeks. According to Socrates, it is not possible to do something that you didn't believe is the best thing for you to do, because you must not have believed it in the first place. According to Aristotle it is possible, but only when one's thinking is distorted.
A better form of the question may be, how is it possible for your self-reports to come apart from what you really believe?
... I don't think science works that way ... there are many things explained by general relativity for which quantum mechanics has nothing to say (and vice versa) ... so the two are complementary, even if interpretationally contradictory (a situation that is to be expected to occur over and over again in the never-ending advance of science) ... and given that the jury is still out on whether or not one or more interpretations of the mathematics of quantum mechanics can make time "go away" (which is very much speculation at this point), I think a philosophy grounded in time cannot be said to be "crap" as it remains intensely relevant from the perspective of general relativity ...
Do a search on 'time'. I offered plenty of links (the 'eternity' thread).
It was you who said it was irrational to believe "one could do anything other than what one does. All the evidence supports what 'is', and there is NO evidence that anything else could ever have been done. It's irrational."
Well here I am about to eat my soup. and I am about to pick up a spoon to do so. Although I have successfully picked up a spoon to eat soup many times in the past, it follow from your principle that irrational to believe one could do anything other than what one does, that it is irrational for me to think that I can now pick up that spoon. Isn't that right?
So, since "all the evidence supports what is, and no evidence supports that anything else could be done" then it follows that I have no evidence that I can pick up this spoon to eat my soup, for that has not (yet) been done.
I didn't find your links very useful or very authoritative. One of the pages had section headings for Matrix, conspiracy, and aliens. Seems like fine truthiness to me.
... but every day science is denying the universality of 'time'.
'Time' will tell, eh? *__-
... agreed - even general relativity implies that time is, well - relative! ... but isn't that a far cry from saying that time simply doesn't exist? ...
Ok...
If you pick up the spoon, that is all that you could have possibly done at that moment, and there is, nor can be, any evidence that you could have done anything else at that moment.
Perhaps what is sought is what is found? If you already walk in with an agenda, in this case supporting your opinions/understanding, you will naturally do as you did. If you put your agenda aside and made the attempt to see, you might have an easier time learning something, at least broadening youPerspective a bit. Believe as you like. I think there was a simple mathematical explanation that balanced! Perhaps you are unable to understand that language. It is rather unequivocal...
I think you aren't being intellectually honest, and that you are merely supporting your horse. Those links had lots of nutricious food for thought if actually interested in learning/understanding something beyond your current 'beliefs'. Anything I might say or offer on this subject will, I'm sure, be similarly dismissed. That is a symptom of 'belief'.
Your apparent intellectual dishonesty, your 'belief', is too large an obstacle to your understanding of what I offer. 'Understanding' is an active energetic process. You have to want to try to understand, which you are obviously not doing. So, before our conversation repetitiously spirals down the crapper (and wastes more time with 'is' /'is nots'), wisdom tells me that I'm going to have to duck out now.
Sorry, perhaps another topic where 'beliefs' are not involved...
Peace
Not to mention, you have totally derailed my thread with your anti-choice, anti-belief, anti-freewill comments that serve as examples of choices, beliefs, and some resemblance of apparent freewill.
Not to mention, you have totally derailed my thread with your anti-choice, anti-belief, anti-freewill comments that serve as examples of choices, beliefs, and some resemblance of apparent freewill.
How is it possible for you actions to come apart from you self-conscious commitment... a better form of the question may be, how is it possible for your self-reports to come apart from what you really believe?
