Roll Call 44

Your place looks wonderful, so you're doing really well. Thank you for the kind words and thoughts. I dream of being in a better place but I can't really believe it will happen. I hope it will. I'm so miserable here.

I'm with you on that....even on the philosophy thread I feel like there should be a definitive answer of some sort...

I'm glad you like you class. My class wants me to analyze sentences to find which words have the most emotions and are the most thought provoking which is pretty hard for me. I'm better at math and science, but can be good at English if it's focused on grammar and writing assignments. When it comes to analyzing figurative language I struggle a lot with it.

I mostly took a philosophy class because there's a scholarship at my college for students who have taken a philosophy class so I did it to increase my odds of wining. I also needed three humanities for my degree.

i sort of understand where your coming from but theres so much to ponder in life.

my favorite question is "why?". because its ongoing. i never had a favorite question until i saw the movie Manic (2001). about a teen with bipolar who assaults a kid. he ends up in a psych facility with other teens who cut and have agoraphobia and anxiety and drug use and violent behavior.

Yeah I think it's really uncreative of me to be looking for a single answer but somehow my mind gets out of control if I leave things at maybe it just keeps circling around and around until I come up with something more definitive.

i know i dont have a huge number of people looking at my blog yet. but i noticed i get more views during may and december. i know may is mental health month. but idk why december.

my sister kept saying she was going to come over all day. kept changing the times. said she was gonna spend the night. then last moment says shes not.

It is very hard. My best advice to you is to go to secondary sources to get a general idea about the philosopher, his ideas, and his time period. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is an excellent academic source. Also, just give Wikipedia a try. I wish you lived near me because I have so many good introductory books. If you need me to provide amazon links to a few good ones I will with ease.

Sorry I haven't been popping into the philosophy forum. It's my passion but with all the pressure I'm under I can't even focus on brushing my teeth let alone give logical, concise commentary on philosophers. I'll try to poke my head in there, but... I'm in too dark and wild of a place right now. I feel wasn't made for this world.

Maybe because people have more time off to peruse the web in December?...Both in terms of vacation time and because it's cold and yucky out.

good point.
i get the lowest views in february and june.

The only certainties are in mathematics. Logic can be valid but based on faulty premises. Sometimes the best course of action is to take a pragmatic one. Not a vulgar pragmatism as if it works then it must be true, but one in which one thinks what is in one's best virtue to believe in. This is William James approach to pragmatic philosophy. It's usually the cord of last recall where problems simply aren't solvable because you could go either way on the matter.

In one example he posits one sitting alone in a darkening forest and your hungry. There is a path in front of you. You have two choices. Believe that it will lead you to civilization, food, comfort and salvation or you can sit on your butt and be skeptical knowing it will lead nowhere. This is where one gives up hope, sits there and starves to death. Which is best to believe?

He also posits in his book "Pragmatism" imagine a squirrel and a man chasing around a tree, one moving as the other moves around the tree. Now, as one watches this one can ask, "Who is chasing who?" You see what he did there? The squirrel could be playfully chasing after him as well as he it. But if you have to make a choice which do you believe?

In this case the consequences do not matter much, but raise the stakes to your soul and an afterlife. Then decide what's in your highest virtue to believe when a simple outlook could lead to a healthy, happy, and active lifestyle.

For me, a life too spiritually thin robs one of motivation, expression and transcendence of some sort. There are three major ways to transcendence I believe. There is through God, and chiefly religion. There is through art and there is through truth, which is my path. The way I feel when I open an old book hypothesizing metaphyics, ethics or governance is that spirituality where I feel closer to something bigger than myself, maybe even God, if there is one.

So what do I choose to pragmatically believe in while I live my life in a world full of suffering and sorrows, unrequited love and disease, one that shows there might be design, where mathematics is the best explanation we can come up with when we attempt to describe something? Does that type of explanation hint to a rational plan, a rational designer? Why is there something other than nothing? Would it be so foolish to believe there is a greater conscious, a grand conscious out there, more thoughtful, giving purpose and hope?

If there were no humans on earth would one prefer it be full of beauty and growth, or rank ugliness? Our consciousness would prefer the former and I think it says something about how we think. However, I think it would be more beautiful if there were humans there to experience it.

I'm optimistic that there is one, but all good arguments are welcome.

ugh god that was like the best thing i read today. thank you for that. i feel finally like i exercised my brain today finally at 7pm by now.

we have ody back!

anyway i want to say that - i know no one here will agree with me but when i go looking for truths i look to either a religious book or something like philosophy. i feel like im finding truth through religion and the practices of it.

but anyway i know what you mean by all that. i need to post something to the thread.

That was helpful, thank you for writing all that. I suppose I should explain a little more, I'm a scientist and we use math in all our work, if something isn't at least at a 95% confidence level we throw it out.

Still I have heard that beliving in God is the most rational option as there is a rewarding afterlife if you're right but little consequence if you're wrong. There is actually a more advanced version of this where you even get to postulate whether God is a jerk or not.....ie does it have to be one specific religion? If so pick the wrong religion or no religion and you're out of luck. If God is benevolent then there are a number of scenarios that play out from that.....I wish I rembered what this theory is called.

Oh ok I think I found it...atheists wager but it can be lost if faith is required anyway, kind of interesting to see it laid out this way....

Atheist's Wager - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

ive seen that movie twice. i really liked it

i kinda want to drink so bad. but im still taking my xanax and ambien tonight...so not sure if i should.

...thinking about having some liqour tonight. what should i do?

There is an ancient myth about a man, Theseus, caught in the bowels of a labyrinth unraveling a golden cord as he steps further into the darkness. He sees the monstrous minotaur and kills it. Next, he follows the golden cord out of the darkness of confusion and back into the light of reason.

I think religion is a beautiful idea, however, a word of caution. If you believe a text word for word without question-- not even questioning the foundation of how it is being translated to you then your intellectual life is no longer your own and you've become a puppet on a string, moving whichever way men want to move you. If we are puppets, there is one cord we can pull back on, and that is the golden cord of reason. There's that golden cord again that helps us out of the deep dark labyrinth of confusion.

There are many religions and it's good to get a taste of all of them. You make a very valid point of the problem of selection, and doubt plagues my every belief. However, after reading Thomas Aquinas, and his common sense arguments for the belief in a god, (which are hotly debated) http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...#Nature_of_GodI came to the conclusion that I'm optimistic that there is one. I personally don't strictly subscribe to any religion but when I go to church from time to time I find comfort, community and a bit of that transcendence that I love to chase after.

Yeah I'm not particularly religious mostly because none of them are strict enough...

Don't drink and use ambien and xanax please!

yea i shouldnt.very tempted tho...

You'll mess up your brain receptors if you do that. It increases your physical dependency on benzos and makes them less effective.

I feel like doing the same thing to tonight newtus but I wouldn't advise it.

The same message is under this post..

And I triple posted trying to edit that I double posted for trying to edit.

Calm..

I would say no to drinking if I were you

Just some reassurance because some people just tell me to drink with meds because they think it's funny and then I feel like no one has faith in me so I basically just do it and not care if I OD

Nvm I tried to change the "so" to "do" but it wrote a whole other post..